Name: General Mills CEO Leadership Advice
Uploaded: 2017-09-01
Duration: 4 min 10 s
Description: CEO Jeff Harmening has a plan to bring up sales by the end of 2017.

So Jeff you've been CEO of General Mills for two months, if the first time that you're a CEO of a big fortune 500 company, what's the most important leadership lesson that you've learned so far as the CEO. First most important lesson I think is authenticity and to be yourself and you know we've had a variety of great CEO's at General Mills through out the year. I remember Brew Southwater and Steve Sanger, and certainly Ken Powell and, And they've all led the company really well and it's been wonderfully successful and they've each done it in their own way. And I think the key for me, and for General Mills, is for me to do it in my own way and to do it in a way that's authentic to my leadership and my style. You have a new plan to turn things around at. General Mills, you've got a vision. What do you have to do as a leader to get everyone in the company pointed and looking in the same direction? One of the things that I really been emphasize is playing to win. And we just set a to develop a long range plan. We developed a plan to win, cuz we know what we want the outcome to be. And the second piece, I would say, in addition to developing a plan to win, we've been very candid with each other. About the kinda year that we had and we did some things well and we'll celebrate those. But we didn't have the kind of year that we wanted and we said okay let's be candid about that. Let's develop a plan that we believe in that can get us to winning. And let's be transparent with the leadership fo the company on where we're going. And give them a voice in it which is what we've done. And all those things have been really well received. You're obviously trying to make General Mills a more innovative company and come up with new things for Your shoppers and consumers. But how do you get your people thinking innovatively when you're with a company that's been around for over 150 years? I think one of the keys for us to be successful is making sure that everybody in the company knows that they can innovate. And innovation doesn't just mean new products. It means doing things differently, it means adapting to the change that's around us. Every company is feeling this urgency to come up with innovative things, and to steer clear of the disruptors. What are you doing to get your employees to feel this sense of urgency, And also for yourself. The key for employees getting fired up and having a sense of urgency, is first knowing what they're working on is important. Prioritization is really important, because when people work on something that they feel is important, they work harder, and faster, and smarter. And so having those priorities, saying look, we're gonna gross zero, we're gonna return US Yogurt to growth, we're gonna differentially grow on a few different platforms. That tells employees these are the things that are important. And when people are working on important things, they work really hard and really fast to try to achieve them. I'm guessing that you're getting some pushback on this time table for change and doing things differently. How do you as a CEO, lead through that resistance to change? But I would tell, our employees are looking for us to change. We've got a lot of employees around General Mills for a while, and they love the company, just like I do. They want us to be successful, just like I do. So what I would tell you is that I think right now we're at a time when our employees, they're ready for us to change and do things differently. And they're excited about the strategic direction that we've set. Jeff, you've spent most of your career At General Mills, 23 years and I'm sure you've had a lot of mentors along the way. As you look back, what's the best advice that you've ever received when it come to leadership and how did it shape you as a leader. I started my career actually at Eli Lilly and Company when just out of college. There was an executive there and one of the things that he said to me, it was my first job Out of college. He said, Jeff the key to success is what you do when nobody else is looking. You know it's easy in a time of crisis to behave one way or when the cameras are turned on it's easy to behave one way. But the question is what are you doing when no one else is watching? And for me that's been a big influence on my career because it helps provide a values based guide to leadership. But it also say, look, every day and every hour counts. So what are you doing during those times? And that's something that's stuck with me for 25 years. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

General Mills CEO Leadership Advice

Leadership

CEO Jeff Harmening has a plan to bring up sales by the end of 2017.