Tag: personal development

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Go beyond “lift and shift” to build new markets

The most recent Hay Group newsletter continues its series on the World’s Most Admired Companies. This edition focuses on PepsiCo and its drive for innovation and a healthier portfolio of products.  Take a read.

The Leadership Professor calls your attention to two key issues: 

1.  PepsiCo’s belief in the importance of personal development: “You can’t have business growth without personal growth.” Amen!

2.  Innovation and creative thinking – not simple “lift and shift” of the same old products to new markets – will drive Pepsico’s future. The company is hiring different kinds of folks to encourage new thinking and what Clayton Christensen calls “disruptive innovation.”

Interesting for us all to think how much of what we do to grow our programs and organizations is “lift and shift.”  What can you do to drive real innovation and creativity in your organization?

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PepsiCo: Driving hard into emerging markets

With nineteen billion-dollar brands, PepsiCo is home to some of the world’s powerhouse food and drink brands. In recent years the company has expanded internationally and is looking to emerging markets for growth. At the same time it’s moving to a more nutritionally responsible portfolio of products. SVP of talent management David Henderson outlines PepsiCo’s growth strategy and how it’s using innovation and people to reach its goals.

The 2011 World’s Most Admired Companies survey revealed a focus on growth, especially in emerging markets and for high-growth business units. How does that resonate with PepsiCo?

First, in developed markets we’re aiming to do more with less, unlocking operating synergies and freeing up investment capital for our emerging markets and nutrition businesses. Growing share in key emerging markets is our next priority: for example we just bought a very large market-leading dairy company in Russia which makes us the largest food and beverage company in that key market for us. Overall, we anticipate that emerging markets will grow from 30 to 45 per cent of our next revenue mix over the next five years. Our third priority is developing our nutrition portfolio, offering a more balanced portfolio of enjoyable and wholesome foods and beverages.

Has recession affected your growth strategy?

Yes, in that commodity prices have gone up very significantly, consumers are spending less and retailers are consumed with the concept of value. So we’ve had to look internally and probably harder than ever before for operating efficiency, because it would be irresponsible to pass the cost of this on to the consumer. And also we’ve shifted the portfolio mix over that period.

"We’ve been really surgical and forensic around which markets offer the best growth prospects"

Another theme this year was innovation. What does PepsiCo do to drive and foster it?

A few years ago we started a process called ‘Innovation and Growth Planning’, where we moved from a three to a five-year horizon to help drive breakthrough innovation. Then to support this we brought in people from outside to disrupt our dominant logic, for example hiring a chief scientific officer from a pharmaceutical background. We changed our operating model from ‘lift and shift’ – where we transfer successful products to different markets – to a faster-moving mode where a globally matrixed organization has R&D ‘hardwired’ in and a multidisciplinary global nutrition group drives new innovations.

What challenges have you had spreading this culture of innovation and keeping it alive?

We’ve a few of examples and failures where innovations cannibalize other products, taking share away from more profitable products. But if you accept that more of your growth is going to come longer-term from innovation and more of that is going to be breakthrough (farther out) innovation, inevitably your failure rate is going to go up. So we have to build a culture that’s more risk tolerant. You’ve got to almost encourage people to forget what has made them successful in the past.

"You need ‘keepers of the flame’ and a few mavericks in there who are really going to shake things up"

Employee involvement was another characteristic of Most Admired Companies this year. What does PepsiCo do in this area?

This comes right back to the heart of our performance management systems. We have a model of performance management in PepsiCo which is geared fifty per cent on business results and fifty per cent on people results. And that’s true for every manager from the CEO of the company right through to first level supervisors in the organization. For example our ‘Manager quality performance index’ uses a set of twelve very simple questions that are consistent right across the organization. They’re heavily geared towards how effectively the manager is in engaging with the employees on his or her team. We baseline the manager’s performance and then we’ll track that over the twelve month period.

Building on this point, enabling employees to succeed is something Most Admired Companies have focused on. How does PepsiCo approach this?

"Our philosophy is that you can’t have business growth without personal growth"

In fact, they’re inseparable. When the business is growing and you’ve got employees that are themselves growing professionally it’s a very powerful combination and one can really drive the other. For us the most effective formula has been one of continuous learning and development through the organization. We also segment our talent, for example based on who’s prepared to be mobile and who wants to stay where they are. It helps us better manage both personal life and professional life considerations.

Are there generational issues or any other new issues that you’re keeping an eye out for?

Talent scarcity is an issue. R&D is one of the hardest areas to recruit into because there’s such demand for companies that are looking. There’s just not enough talent coming through into the market at the right skill levels.  In emerging markets, the talent is less bonded to the company because there’s greater demand. This scarcity is a constraining factor on our growth. Voluntary attrition has dropped very significantly, so there is an aging demographic in a lot of organizations. Too many leaders will be exiting the organization in the next five to ten years. And it also means we need a delicate balancing act between continuity and potential.

PepsiCo was number 26 on the 2011 FORTUNE World’s Most Admired Companies list.

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Creating a Truly Great Workplace

Tony Schwartz posted a piece on the Harvard Business Review Blog Network worth the read: The Twelve Attributes of a Truly Great Place to Work.

It’s important, Tony tells us, because more than 100 research studies have found that the most engaged employees are significantly more productive, drive higher customer satisfaction, and outperform the less engaged. The kicker: only 20 per cent of employees around the world say they’re fully engaged at work.

Tony’s meta-advice: employers need to shift their focus from trying to get more out of people to investing more in them. They do that by addressing four core human needs — physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. His twelve suggestions for creating truly great workplaces are offered below.

My two cents: the first six are structural interventions that take special funding, policies, and time to get in place. The last six are things we can implement right now. They make a huge difference and enable people to bring their best to work.

I don’t know about you, but respect, appreciation, autonomy, clarity, meaningful contribution, and capacity to learn and grow go a long way for me. Which on the list speak most powerfully to you?  

  1. 1.  Pay everyone a living wage. We know the gap between CEO compensation and pay to those at the bottom of the organizational heap. No more need be said.
  1. 2.  Give employees a stake in the company’s success. Profit sharing plans, stock options, or bonuses tied to performance let everyone share the fruits of their labor. 
  1. 3.  Design safe, comfortable and appealing work environments with space for privacy, for collaboration, and for community building.
  1. 4.  Provide healthy, high-quality food, at the lowest possible prices – even in the vending machines.
  1. 5.  Create places for rest and renew during the day and encourage breaks. Naps can fuel higher productivity.
  1. 6.  Offer a gym, encourage employees to stay fit, and provide incentives to use the facilities during the work day for renewal.
  1. 7.  Define clear expectations for success, and give employees autonomy to do their jobs.
  1. 8.  Introduce “two-way performance reviews” where employees receive feedback and provide it to their supervisors without fear of retribution.
  1. 9.  Hold managers accountable for treating all employees with respect and care and for acknowledging their positive contributions.
  1. 10.  Enable employees to focus without interruption on their most important priorities and to think more strategically and creatively,
  2. ideally on projects that fuel their passions.
  1. 11.  Provide ongoing opportunities and incentives to learn and grow in job-specific skills and in softer interpersonal, leadership, and life skills.
  1. 12. Stand for something beyond profits: products and services that add value in the world and enable people to feel good about their companies.

 

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10 Reasons Not to Ignore Malcolm Gladwell’s Mind-Blowing Ideas

I’m a Malcolm Gladwell fan. He has a capacity that educators treasure: the ability to review research on a complex topic and synthesize it into a teachable moment. To add icing on the cake, Gladwell also makes his teaching points usable by putting them in a form others can easily remember. Whether you buy everything Gladwell proposes or not, he gets you thinking.

BusinessInsider.com has a series on Gladwell’s Top 12 Mind-Blowing Ideas. Take a look.

Why is this important to leaders? Here are my Top 10 reasons why you can’t afford to ignore Gladwell’s work.

  1. 1.  Change and influence are complex social processes, difficult under the best of circumstances. You increase the odds of success when you understand Gladwell’s Law of the Few. One person can change the world, but it’s a lot easier and quicker for the right strategic few. Learn how to start a social epidemic.
  1. 2.  Leading is hard, and you don’t want to go it alone. Who can help give voice to your vision? You need allies, especially credible ones. Connectors, mavens, and salespeople add social weight to your message. Make sure you understand the difference among the three roles and have a few of each in your court.
  1. 3.  A sticky idea is a memorable way to frame a message – and if you can’t remember the message, how will you heed it?
  1. 4.  We are all social beings, influenced by the environment in which we live. The tacit and influential Power of Context is huge. Use it to your advantage, and you’ll enhance your influence skills. 
  1. 5.  Strong diagnostic skills involve capacities to form good judgments quickly and from limited data. That’s Gladwell’s blink phenomenon. We all can improve our powers of rapid cognition. Great leaders have it, and it serves them well.
  1. 6.  Data gathering is at the heart of informed decision making, but there can be too much of a good thing. Gladwell’s prod toward information frugality helps avoid information overload and analysis paralysis. Leadership, after all, is about action.
  1. 7.  Authenticity is a characteristic of effective leaders, but it isn’t shooting from the hip – or the mouth. We all make unconscious snap judgments that can get us in trouble if we act on those tacit thoughts before we really think them through. Better to stretch through priming: broadening our experiences and positive interactions with more and different kinds of people so that our first reactions will be more positive than those with a more narrow set of experiences.
  1. 8. It takes 10,000 hours of practice to perfect a skill or talent, according to Gladwell. Practice does make perfect. 
  1. 9. Genius is more about practice (see above), persistence, and a supportive environment and family than natural skill or IQ alone. There’s hope for us all.
  1. 10.  Talent is important. Experience key. Persistence required. But so is luck. May we all have some.
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Avoiding the Misery of Yves Saint Laurent: Happiness Strategies When L’Amour Fou (Crazy Love) is Not Enough

Pierre Berge, the long-term lover and business partner of the late fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, has been in the news. Friday marked the U.S. release of a French documentary about the relationship between the two men, and everyone is abuzz about the film’s attention to the frantic 2009 Christie’s mega-auction of the more than 700 art objects the men jointly collected during their 50 years together. The film’s title: L’Amour Fou – in English, Crazy Love.

Saint Laurent was complex, as creative genius often is. The relationship between the two men anything but simple, as relationships mixing the personal and professional rarely are. The art was indeed something – and the auction netted close to $500 million dollars. And Saint Laurent was a colorful public character with an enviable array of riches beyond the astounding collection: he had talent, fame, fortune, physical attractiveness, a profitable outlet for his creative expression, a comfortable life surrounded by beauty, a long-term relationship with someone who cared, influence in his field and beyond, access to people and international opportunities, and more.

I was struck, however, by Berge’s comment in a New York Times interview: Saint Laurent “was a very, very unhappy, unhappy guy.” He lived in misery and depression despite his success – and “even with a wonderful collection.” He eventually descended into alcohol and drugs.

The story begs the 64 thousand dollar question: what does it take to make someone happy? Think about your life. What makes you happy? Chances are your list includes the expected: a good job, family, friends, success, home, life partner, contribution. But even having it all doesn’t assure happiness. Just look at Saint Laurent.

Harvard psychologist and author of Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert, offers insights into why that is so. Basically, we’re all poor predictors of what will make us happy: choices we make in the short run don’t deliver as anticipated. Couple that with the fact that everyone wants happiness – it ranks above money and health, according to research by University of Illinois professor and happiness guru, Ed Diener – and you can see the problem.

We all want something that we’re not very good at getting for ourselves – and as a result, some version of the Yves Saint Laurent misery story could easily become our own.

Accomplish much. Live out dreams, passions, and talents. Choose a path – and a partner, hobby, and vocation – that we think will make us happy. Work hard. Build a credible and influential track record – and end up unhappy. A sobering thought.

We don’t help the world or ourselves when we’re miserable. And Saint Laurent’s story reminds us that, even if we’re content, we’re apt to run into unhappy others in unexpected places. Fake it ‘til you make it strategies are, well, fake. They can’t be sustained over time. What will get you closer to the happiness prize – and help others do the same?

Research and experience support two routes: (1) embrace mindfulness, and (2) give yourself permission to change, grow, and develop.

You don’t need to be a Zen master to employ the first. Mindfulness is basically training yourself to stay alert to the present and to enjoy it in all its richness.

On any journey, it’s easy to get bogged down in the details and complexity of the travel, focus excessively on the destination – are we there yet? – and fall into complaints about what and how long it takes to arrive.

An alternative: engage every moment of the trip. Enjoy the scenery, the newness of each place, your progress. See detours and delays as opportunities. Find splendor in the rush, the surprises, the unexpected. If Gilbert’s research is right, by the time you arrive at your final destination, you’ll wish you were somewhere else anyway. You might as well enjoy the process of getting there.

Second, give yourself permission to experiment and to change. Deepak Chopra, in Why is God Laughing: The Path to Joy and Spiritual Optimism, makes a case for how fear and ego lock us into patterns of behavior. We keep on doing what we’re doing even if it no longer works for us – or, worse yet, even if it never worked.

Happiness is, after all, more than happy feelings, concludes Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology, in his hot, new book Flourish. It’s finding ways to spend time daily on the things that matter – and being honest with ourselves about how we actually use our time and about what really matters most.