The competencies which are important for Dimitar Alexiev, CEO Heineken Russia, are mobilizing people, developing the strategy of the company and applying the cultural differences of Russia into the strategy of the company.
1. What is your strongest leadership trait?
We talk about business now and in order not to be theoretical, it's about competencies that are needed in Heineken Russia at a certain stage of its development. And this certain stage for me is now. It's not a big surprise that the competencies that I'll start listing now are in the Heineken leadership model of competencies. We talk about mobilizing the organization - it's very important for me and at this stage for Heineken Russia. It's about coaching people - we have a big number of people, we have great people within our organization, also we help our people to develop their skills which suit them best and of most importance for the company. It's about creating successful teams and making one team out of these people, not individuals, but something that in Russian is called команда. It's about what the business is for: creating value for our customers first of all. Very often in the books we say that creating shareholders' value is very important and that is why shareholders are investing their money for, but first of all we have to create value for our customers because we create product and our customers have to appreciate this product and to buy it. And at the end of the day it's about achieving results and then we come back again to the shareholders and deliver results to them.
2. What does mobilizing people mean for you?
I'm sure you're aware that money motivation is probably the one that works shortest in time. There're plenty of researchers who have proved that, and if I can take the liberty, the proof is here in Russia. During recent years we have seen an awful lot of turnover of personnel which was mainly motivated by getting more money in this or that organization. But the fact that people were moving from one organization to another says that money is not enough motivator. Mobilizing the organization starts from voicing the strategy of the company, making it a part of everybody's understanding. It starts from the fact that we look at out company an we say what we were doing until now, whether it was good - and it was good - which stage of our development we have reached, but the world, Russia and our market is changing, the overall environment is changing. So we have to update and adjust our strategy and make sure that we're one step ahead.
3. How do you manage to develop the strategy?
We have to involve our people in developing of this strategy because if it's only my strategy then it will not work, it would be only top-down. So the first step is involving the wider management team of Heineken Russia where a few thousand of people are working into establishment and reconfirming that this is the strategy which our company will follow in the next years. This is easy to say that this is going to be the strategy, but that people have to get their ownership that it's not only the strategy that the big management had established, but this is also them who had been a part of it, who had been delegated with a power to execute it. Yes, we say that we talk about one skill but we cannot talk about only one competence. Then you go about the coaching - is the team prepared well enough to implement this strategy, it would be great if the answer is "yes", but most probably there are quite a few people who need a certain coaching and help to develop those competencies and skills to own those tools with which they can really become the owners of the implementation.
4. Could you give any examples?
I think I'm a big fan of empowerment, at least my previous experience proves that. Normally I try to hire people who are extremely good at their own function, and I never afraid to hire people who are in their own function better than me. I have an opportunity to learn from them, but of course, it's much easier to empower them within their function. I've been also quite successful in creating the teams of these people. Because this has been the main reason why my previous assignment in Slovakia and Bulgaria had been so successful because I had really great teams there who had been working greatly without me, the company had never gone down after my departure, and the teams had always been performing excellent after my departure also. I think in Russia my team is also quite comparable to what I was just describing; it's becoming stronger and stronger with every next period which we leave behind us.
5. What can you say about your team?
Are my people empowered? I would say yes. Are my people controlled? I would say also yes. Both is true because empowerment goes together with control, with alignment, with commonly shared strategy, so the teamwork is by far a matter of willingness, alignment is a matter of company strategy and company rules. In our organization we have a lot of business units around Russia, it goes hand-in-hand with empowerment and control. The control means not only physical control when a big boss is asking the employee about what he is doing, it's about creating the right systems. It's creating the right models and making sure via internal control of the company that these rules and guidance are well-followed. So managing by guidelines is more effective than managing by direct commands when the big boss is standing over you and looking behind your shoulder.
6. What is the strategy in Russia built around?
It's built around more clear focus of the brands which we're developing those brands which could meet our consumers' demand and which could meet the expectations of our consumers and customers, so it's about a good knowledge of our consumer universe. It's focusing on less number of brands than we have been doing before. But developing all these strategic brands is also about talking about business portfolio, and brand portfolio is about selecting regional brands which can play a strong role in their regions and defining of what is the role of our tactical brands. We're also looking at the SKU of our products and we are in the process of optimizing, it was clearly intentioned in the newly developed strategy that we want to have only profitable SKUs and only such products which are really demanded by our customers. In was made public a month or two ago that we have decided to decrease the distribution of some SKUs in Russia which are not creating value and profit.
7. What else is important here?
This goes hand-in-hand with a capability of sales and commercial organizations to implement that strategy, and this goes specifically to people and to their qualities and capabilities. We are also going to a major restructuring of ourselves and building its capabilities to implement this SKU focus. Also we're making a very thorough review of our cost structure which is also imposed by still developing economic crisis worldwide and in Russia, and we have to be more sensitive about the cost structure within our company. Making all these and delivering more value than volume, this is also a cultural change for the organization through which we have to go with the whole organization with all our people. People have to believe in what they're doing and only then they're doing it professionally and in a motivated way, only then the empowerment is working.
8. What in particular are you doing to apply the cultural differences?
It's very easy: talking about business and talking about profits and cash we talk about achieving results. The competence model is that if it's something that is only theory then it doesn't work. When business is on one side and competencies are on the other side then it's a kind of a theoretical exercise for some university teachers but not for the business. It's an amalgam of both. When we talk about strategy, it's normal when we're developing the strategy of Heineken Russia to be in coordination with our corporate strategy, but it doesn't mean that we're getting a corporate model saying that this is the strategy for Russia and this is the strategy for the USA and this is the strategy for any other country. This is something that is developed here by the team, but of course, as in any corporate organization before we say a final "Go!" we'll first go to our shareholders and tell them what we have developed and explain them the reasons for developing it and ask them for their approval that this is the part of a corporate strategy.
9. Have you done the same with the strategy for Russia?
Yes, we're focusing ourselves on two key priorities for Heineken which make more profit and more cash. How successful our corporate strategy in reflecting the corporate one, I would say it's very successful. How successful are the first results - I would quote our head quarters - we're doing quite ok on the road. And I'm sure we will continue like that. Yes, it's about making these big words into specific targets, about translating this strategy into specific key-performance indicators for me and I'm transferring it to the managers who are reporting to me and they translate it to the managers who are reporting to them. So it's again about the delegation or cascading as I call it of the targets. But it's also not so simple to cascade it, it's about interpretation. Because if I say that I should target my brewery manager in Yekaterinburg on brands or there are more specific targets to his job which are related to his productivity: to the consumption rates, to the losses, to the energy consumptions, etc. So it's about specifying: it's about cascading and also interpreting the targets and the KPIs so that they reach everybody. And then of course it's about the follow up because it doesn't work, not only in Russia. Follow up, controlling, coaching, helping, correcting, taking some measures if needed - and the process starts.
10. What is the secret of your success?
I would never be successful if I wouldn't be able to translate my targets and my business performance indicators to my managers. And if I cannot read my targets into the targets of the sales representatives working on the market or to the targets of the operator on the bottling line - everything is in vain. It's not theory, it's the matter of life.
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