Filip Kegels, General Director, Russia & CIS, tells us about values which are important to him - openness and enthusiasm, and why they are important. He also tells us what, in his opinion, the company should have in order to be successful and how he does it in Danone.
1. What values are important for you?
Well, we have our company values which are basically based on openness, enthusiasm, humanism and proximity, and, of course, you have to find yourself in those values. For me personally, I think within those values I really have and what is most important for me is openness.
2. Why openness is so important?
If you want to work well together you have to be open, you have to be transparent, you have to be honest. This is absolute key. So, I will fight like hell against things that are withheld or things that are not told, etc. They will not survive a very long time in our company. Much better to say "I have a problem, let's try to fix it" than to hide the problem until it explodes in your face which is honestly happening a lot of times. Openness, transparency which brings trust is for me absolutely key.
3. Can you be more specific about enthusiasm?
It means that, I'm a strong believer that companies that have people on the floor that feel good, that are convinced about they do, and they like what they do will have much better results, of course, than people that have companies where people hardly identify themselves with what they are doing. I think it's absolutely key also that people show enthusiasm, involvement and aspiration.
4. Why people should be enthusiastic?
Because it's the way we work. It's the way we function. I cannot imagine having key people in my company who are not enthusiastic. You can be critical but it has to be constructive criticism. If it's always to say "oh, this is bad", ok, - bye, go and say it somewhere else not here. You say "this is bad but I think we should do this in order to be better" - great, perfect. I think this is important. One of my managers called it once "contagious enthusiasm". I like this. That means enthusiasm that kind of multiplies itself.
5. Do you have an example when you benefited from doing business the fair way?
We are here since 1992. We have Danone shop on Tverskaya and we built the factory in the middle of the crisis in 1998. I had factory closed because I didn't want to pay and we were doing things in the right way. I think we are doing things in the right way; we are paying taxes as we should pay not more, not less. We are treating our people in the right way; give them the right working conditions. We are respecting the environment to an extend which is much higher than anybody else and to an extend which is typical to our culture worldwide. The legislation in Russia is huge to be "solicitated", let's call it like that. Well, we will not accept it, and sometimes it even brought me to closing factories and costing me a lot of money but it's against, first of all, our culture and our philosophy, and I'm sure and it has been proven, that even those people respect that, even the ones that solicitated you. Honestly, after a while they understand you.
6. What would be your advice on how to behave in those situations?
You have to bite the bullet because you have a huge payback after that which means they will understand the way you work and they will not solicitate you anymore, not anymore. If you once opened the door, what I can tell you, you will have a huge queue in front of your door. I think it's really depending on the way you behave and the way you have your philosophy and your principles. Stick to it even if it's costing money for a while, it will have a good payback.
7. According to you what should company have in order to be successful?
If your company wants to reach a certain degree of success it's the way how the people in the company work together. It's not the way of just pushing people to get the results and to show a lot of energy. The real success of the company is in way people interact and work together because there are no more simple things - this is just sales department, and they sell. No, if marketing department doesn't feed them with the right advertising and with right promotions they will not sell. If supply chain department doesn't feed them with the right service levels and with the right delivery schemes they will not sell. If the finance department doesn't feed them with the right figures and profitability per client they will not sell profitably. It's a whole mixture of interactions between departments, and even with the best leader on the top you have to feed it from below.
8. How do you make people work together?
This is not easy. It differs a little bit from culture to culture, from country to country but making people work together it's one of the keys for success, actions for success. And it's normal because in the beginning there was conception "We are the sales department. We are the logistic guys. We are marketing". Now, what we would like to have, we call it "business acceleration teams". I would like to install it more and more which are cross-functional teams. We have Actimel team but there you have a supplier chain guy, you have a marketing guy, you have a sales guy, you have a key account manager, you have a financial guy, you even have an HR guy, and this team cross-functionally pushes one brand. Then, they say "we are Actimel team". If you can make that work you will make a difference because then everybody in the team is only thinking about Actimel. They are all in the same boat. That needs a lot of work and a lot of time, and a lot of investment.
9. Why is it hard to do?
Because people still see many times the work they do with other departments as something on top. In Russia it's still pretty hieratical: "I'm the boss of customer service". No, no my friend, you are in team which has to optimize our customer satisfaction. It needs time.
Prepared by Liza Barzova, Good2Work Intern, on February 9, 2009
