FranklinCovey On Leadership Carol Tomé: Leading UPS With Head, Heart, and Hands
May 12, 2026
Carol Tomé, CEO of UPS and former Home Depot CFO, led major transformation with a people-first, customer-focused approach. She discusses guiding UPS through 2020 disruption, the shift to “better, not bigger,” expansion into healthcare logistics, and how AI and automation are changing supply chains. She also covers talent development, leadership traits like curiosity and empathy, and keeping human connection in tech-driven operations.
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Prioritize Safety Hire Fast And Pivot To Critical Capabilities
- During disruption prioritize people safety, hire to keep operations running, and pivot into emerging capabilities that meet urgent needs.
- Tomé hired 45,000 people in Q2 2020 and moved into cold-chain healthcare to deliver COVID vaccines with high reliability.
Purpose As A Rallying Cry For A Huge Company
- Defining and communicating a clear company purpose helps unify large organizations and reveal broader ways to create value.
- UPS landed on 'moving our world forward by delivering what matters' after cross-functional interviews and used it to guide both commercial and philanthropic work.
Choose Better Not Bigger For Portfolio Focus
- Focus on profitable, high-value segments and divest low-return businesses instead of pursuing size for its own sake.
- Tomé called the strategy 'better, not bigger' and sold businesses that weren't making money to sharpen UPS's focus.