Brian Niccol was appointed to Chipotle Mexican Grill’s board effective March 5, 2018, at the same time he became CEO. Niccol previously served from January 1, 2015, as CEO of Taco Bell, a division of Yum! Brands, Inc. He joined Taco Bell in 2011 as chief marketing and innovation officer and served as president from 2013 to 2014.
Prior to his service at Taco Bell, from 2005 to 2011 he served in various executive positions at Pizza Hut, another division of Yum! Brands, including general manager and chief marketing officer. Before joining Yum! Brands, Niccol spent ten years at Procter & Gamble Co., serving in various brand management positions. Niccol has an undergraduate degree from Miami University and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He serves as a director of Harley-Davidson, Inc.
Brian Niccol:
Hi, I’m Brian Niccol, Booth graduate 2003, and currently I am the chairman and CEO of Chipotle Mexican Grill. What I would tell leaders, future leaders, is, “Look if you commit yourself to doing the right thing, you’ll be making the right kind of impact.” People don’t follow spreadsheets. They follow the individual. And if the individual is seen as a person that cares, and they care about doing the right thing, you can have a tremendous impact in so many different areas.
One of the reasons that Booth was such a great experience for me is, a lot of what I learned at Booth I still put into application today. And I’d say that just at the high level, you know Booth gets categorized a highly analytical place. I think what people miss, though, is the analytics really are only as good as your intuition on how you synthesize that information.
One of the things that I’ve always really pushed in myself is, “Let’s make sure we get the facts, so that we can analyze the facts.” But if you don’t have the institution and the ability to synthesize that information, all you’re going to do is be stuck in analysis.
One of the things that was great at my time at Booth is, it was like, “Let’s get the facts, let’s analyze the facts,” but then you’ve got to make a decision and use your intuition on how you’re going to behave with those facts, and where you’re going to go with those facts. I use that every day.
I remember when I first got accepted to Booth, and I was like, wow, this is going to be amazing, and it turned out to be the case. The professors were outstanding, my classmates were outstanding, and to be recognized from that community is just really special. I think it’s something that frankly, when I first went to Chicago, I remember reading all of the names on there, and now I’m kind of like, “Jeez, I’m going to have one of those names on there,” so it’s kind of crazy. It’s great.
