Filip Kegels (Danone): "We Should Really Give People that Are Working in Your Company the Perspective Why They Should Get Up Every Morning and Start Working Very Hard for Your Company besides Just Getting a Salary"
Filip Kegels, General Director, Danone Russia & CIS, is telling us about what he thinks every leader should do - make employees be passionate about their jobs. He also explains why it is important; how he does it in Danone and how it helped him to make his company a market leader.
1. What do you consider as your strongest competency?
What I'm trying to do as a leader, first of all, is to give perspective to the people. Which means trying to clear out in very simple but very, I would say, clear way what we are aiming to do as a company, what is our mission as a company, what are our goals in the company, and, basically, what is the role of each of us in order to make this mission happen or this goal reached. I think that's the first thing leader should do because we should really give to the people which are working in our company the perspective why they should get up every morning and start working very hard for our company besides just getting a salary.
2. Can you be a little bit more specific about how do you create this passion for job?
I actually worked in Russia in two periods. I was here from 1996 till 2001 when we were building the Foundation of our company Danone here in Russia, and I came back three years ago and I met a company which was pretty successful. It became pretty big but still had a huge potential, and a company which was nearly driven on a second part of what I'm saying day-to-day operation, pretty ambitious but without too much vision, without too much perspective. So, what I did is I, first of all, gathered all the managers at that time, it was somewhere in winter 2005, and we sat together in order to define what we wanted to do in the upcoming two years. Not ten years because honestly, we are living in such a changing environment, these very long-term plans do not make too much sense, so on a pretty short-term vision of three years where we want to go. In our case we honestly had a goal to become market leader. At that time we were still behind our main competitor, at least in our scope of products, and we were lacking like 6 points of market share. We said "ok, in two years time we want to become market leader because we think we will achieve something in those three years if we become a leader in Russia, on top in the market which is very dynamic and very important". On top of that I also put a little bit more longer term vision; I said "ok, that's good, that's absolutely key. On top of that let's also put a vision of becoming the biggest company of Danone in the world which in two years, we knew, was difficult because we were company #8 or #9 three years ago but at least that was a little bit longer term vision.
3. What did you do after and how did it help you to motivate your people?
People are very much motivated by not only from economical point of view because, first of all, they like to feel important. You are doing your job so at the end of the day you work hard so you want to see whether it's contributing to the results and, secondly, is it serving a bigger purpose. So we set this kind of vision and after that we worked together in order to try to understand how we get there; not going into detailed marketing plans or detailed sales plans or operational plans but trying to understand what are the important things we should do, maximum five, in order to get there. We defined it, it's there on the paperboard because then I asked people to make pictures around that, and we defined five I would say strategic lines which we would like to follow in order to become market leader. We said, we have to focus our resources and energy on the important things; we had to invest much more behind innovation; we have to become much more excellent in operations, we had to continue to drive our ambitious mindset, and finally we had to put people in the center of our strategy. People are the center of our strategy. We kind of build on that for three years, and it was a kind of a common denominator, a common line which was used in communication, in motivational plans, etc. so that people understood where we wanted to go to. Last year we already became market leader so we had to invent something else. Now we go from leadership to domination. That's a little bit an illustration of what you can do.
4. What do you think is important in this process?
It should be a kind of a bottom-up approach but a canalized bottom-up approach not a bottom-up approach that you say: "Hey guys, where you want to be in five years". No, you first make them think in a canalized way a little bit what is important for them, not important for them, where you think we should go, not go... manage this process. I think, yes, from one point of view, it is very important that it is very much shared and it is very much bottom-up approach for the simple reason of ownership. If I say myself "I want to be a market leader" but 3500 people behind me say "this guy is crazy and who cares what he says". Well, I can be very bright and brilliant but I will never reach it. If I ask people and they say by themselves "I want to become a market leader", and they say themselves how they want to reach it, of course the probability is much higher that you will actually become a market leader. I think that's a nice illustration of what we did here in Danone in order to give vision and purpose to what we're doing.
5. Is there anything else what you are doing?
What we are trying to do at the same time and we have done over time is also to give a little bit of more social purpose so that our mission is not only economical but also social. There we are giving to people as much as opportunities but what we are doing here is, basically, we work a lot on one side Orphan program and on the other side we work a lot on what we call a Danone Nation's Cup; it's a football Cup which we do as a main sponsor for "Koganiy Myach" (rus.: "Кожаный мяч") the tournament which is pretty much known for a long time in Russia so that we have hundred thousands of kids playing football, going to tournaments and then getting kind of qualification to go to the World Cup of the Danone Nation's Cup which is played most times in Paris with the participation of Zidane. The Russian team won in 2005 and were finalists this year. Can you imagine eyes of a kid when he can touch Zidane? It's a dream that comes true. So, we also try at least from social point of view to reach much more so that we say "Danone is not here only to make money, to become market leader, but Danone also try to contribute to its local communities in order that life is better at the end of the day for everybody. That's another dimension I would say you should put into your vision and in what you are trying to do.
6. How you produce this effect of bottom-up approach?
I think it is also a little bit involving in time. When I came here there was certain number of urgencies which needed strong leadership and, honestly, in the very beginning if you measure bottom-up it was probably 30-70. It means 70 - up, 30 - bottom because it's very depending on the situation you are in. Sometimes people need a strong leader to set the course and not ask everybody to set the course. And then in time what you do is you work on the percentages. It means I started more with 30-70 but to get people involved by letting them express themselves about you are pretty clear about the strategy and giving the opportunity of course to enrich it but you set pretty strong framework from the start. So you put the bottom-up approach more on those key issues which you think are anyway the key issues and you leave one issue open which you say "ok maybe I've not thought about one".
7. For what situations is it good?
This is good in the situations where you need to act urgently and where there is a need of strong leadership and vision which was the case three or four years ago here. Of course in time you are adapting because then the trust is installed, the strategy is working so the enrichment is bigger and bigger. So then you work from 30-70 to 50-50 and even 70-30. For example in the last big meeting we had most of the presentations or most of the settings that was on, were already done by managers which are not even reporting to me, and I did that on purpose in order to give them, first of all, visibility and, secondly, in order to make people understand that within the strategy everybody is important, and that the strategy doesn't depend on one guy and not even on executive committee. So in the process, first of all, I think you have to manage to which degree you want to do bottom-up. I think in the beginning it's better to define if there is a lot of confusion... you have to pretty much define but you let people express; after that you open up more and more but always on specific subjects. Otherwise, it happenes very often, you fall into generalities.
8. Is there something that is also important?
I think another thing which is very important is that you are consistent. I think this is one of the biggest problems I would say many leaders have is consistency. Because we are very much in a changing environment and today it's profit tomorrow it's market share, and after tomorrow it's cash flow. I think you have to think very seriously from the start how you want to manage your economical equations and then stick to it. It's very important. In our case it was very clear that we wanted to have growth but profitable growth from the start; growth just for the sake of growth; market leadership just for the sake of market leadership, - not interested. So what you do also to canalize is you make people think how to make profitable growth not just growth because otherwise people will say "we have to double our marketing budget and we have to double our promotional budget, etc". Then, once you fixed that you have to be consistent. You have to repeat the messages. People sometimes are very much tempted to change messages every year because they think they are better leaders that more they change things the better leaders they think they are. I try to change the form to enrich it but the basic message I will not change.
9. Was you ever faced with the problem when you are consistent but you need to explain other people where is the consistency of your approach?
First of all, I think you have to measure that. We have employees' surveys, and try to understand whether the strategy is well understood, etc. I think as a leader to certain extend you also have to protect your company from these outside pressures. Because one of the main pressures you have is basically from the headquarters. Headquarters will always ask more money, in tough conditions and even in very good conditions. It's never enough to a certain extend. I think what you have to do you have to manage as good as you can upwards then you are managing downwards. In order to be consistent in time you have to manage very well upwards because I get personally requests and every three months it's another objective.
Prepared by Liza Barzova, Good2Work Intern, on January 30, 2009
