Inzo,
at Tony's Chocolonies,
you set out to disrupt an entire industry by creating a movement.
So you could argue that it started as an external
movement and then was translated into an internal change.
How did he do that?
Well,
by being slightly outspoken,
slightly willful,
a little bit hardheaded and very skeptical
about how things were going until then.
We were not hindered by any former knowledge of the
chocolate industry and simply launched a company,
not to become a chocolate company,
but to become an impact company.
So you've grown tremendously over the past 15 years.
How has this bold external approach shaped your internal culture?
Could you share a few examples?
We work on a very serious subject on a day to day basis.
And so we try to make that work as fun as possible.
And when I was head of people in culture,
I always used to tell my team,
you know,
this is the one team that doesn't work in the company,
but that works on the company.
How can we grow as a company,
but at the same time still remain flexible and
fun without too many procedures and processes.
We changed our contract into a one page ticket of trust,
which has no competition clauses anymore in it because we're convinced
that if anybody wants to do what we're doing at a different company,
then go for it.
Right.
Because in the end,
it's about a movement of change for everybody.
Now, over to you, Vivek.
You are obviously working for a much larger company,
Denfoss.
And you talk about these three elements,
structures,
processes and mindset and behavior.
Could you elaborate a bit more on how you
use these elements in self-managed teams?
From a structure point of view,
what we did was we were actually
inspired from holacracy and sociocracy.
And we changed our traditional hierarchical
structure to a decentralized circle structure.
From a process point of view,
we really worked with performance feedback in teams and actually set
up 360 feedbacks with process guidelines and tools and templates.
And thirdly,
from a mindset and behaviors point of view,
we invested in the team by training them in doing
conflict resolution in teams and how to handle conflicts.
You talk a lot about self-managed teams
and you've obviously implemented that.
And the one question I get a lot from leaders is,
what is my role?
Am I not going to be made redundant?
And so I am curious,
Vivek,
if you could elaborate a bit more on how are you spending your day?
What is your role as a leader?
Yeah,
you know,
I think that's a that's a very pertinent question.
I think a lot of people are sitting with
that kind of I think of misconception.
In my viewpoint,
self-management requires more leadership
from all than than no leadership.
I can spend less time on operations and day to day part and
spend more time on the strategic thinking and looking ahead.
I think a lot of my fellow leaders would complain today
that they wish they had time to spend on the strategy and
the long term thinking because their calendars are booked
in with many operational decisions that they need to take.
And that's where I would welcome them
to to let go of those decisions and say,
OK,
which of those decisions do they really need to make?
I can tell you just to give an example,
as with everybody during Corona periods,
you know,
we had to consider cost restrictions.
And while my peers were,
you know,
sitting in the corner with their finance controllers
and making the cost calculations and the planning,
you know,
actually,
I handed over to the team that,
you know,
this is the goal that we have to deliver.
And actually,
it was one of our project managers who assembled the
team together and came up with the list and said,
this is the this is the final savings list.
I actually was not in agreement with
some of the items that were on the list,
you know,
but they said,
you know,
Vivek,
we know the business more than you.
So so please go ahead.
And this is the commitment from East
Earing on on the savings that we had.
Now,
that's really important to highlight the fact that
even though you didn't agree with your project manager,
you trusted him because he's much closer to
the problem for him to take that decision.
A lot of people use the word or
especially a lot of fellow leaders say,
you know,
I have empowered my teams,
but but I would challenge them if they cannot show some decisions
that their teams executed on which they did not agree on.
That's real empowerment.
Otherwise, it's approval.
You know,
you cannot say my team is empowered to take decisions.
But, you know, when it comes to this decision,
you know, I agree to all of them.
If you agree to all of them,
that's an that's approval,
not empowerment.
Lena,
I'm curious about your approach to unleashing the creative
potential of your organization being so many employees at Unilever.
You know, firstly, you've got to believe that.
Valuing and unleashing human contribution is
far better than wasting human contribution.
You've got to believe that as leaders,
that it is important that our people are engaged and aligned
and they are getting 100 percent of their selves to work.
The other thing you have to do is
give a venue for people to contribute,
you know,
create much less bureaucracy,
allowing people to bring their ideas on how to make the world
better to each other and to teams that are working on it.
Could you elaborate a bit more specifically on how you create that
space so that the ideas aren't sitting on the shelf collecting dust?
Let's say you discover your passion for plastic.
You really want to work on plastic and make
sure plastic in this world is a lot less.
We have a platform called Flex,
which is our internal marketplace tool,
where you can put your hand up and say,
hey,
I have capacity.
I want to work on plastic.
That's what my purpose is.
And people who have stuff to do in plastic can say,
hey,
I'm working on some interesting
projects to recycle and reuse plastic.
If you have capacity,
would you like to come and work with me?
And I'm happy to report that 10,000 people have discovered
through this Flex platform stuff they're passionate about.
Some of them do it full time.
Some of them do it on top of what they're doing.
Some of them do it for part of their time.
But 10,000 such matches have happened.
Now, over to all of you.
What advice do you have to change makers,
other activists that are sitting in
organizations right now with an idea for change?
How do you get started?
Inzo, what about you?
I would say there's two angles there.
One is the realization that you're
never too small to make a difference.
Never, ever.
Right.
The second answer would be focus on your team.
I'm convinced you can only reach the humongous goal in our
case of 100% slave free chocolate by having the most committed,
engaged,
inspired and energetic team you can imagine.
Really focus on having the right people in there,
enabling them to make that change
and having a lot of fun along the way.
And Vivek, what about you?
I think start with getting started yourself,
right?
So start to change with yourself.
When I interact with a lot of my fellow
peers inside and outside the company,
I think I can sense this.
If only the CEO decided to change the organization or
if only the divisional president decided to do this X,
Y,
Z.
And honestly,
most people and my peers,
they have enough flexibility and decision
making authority to change their department,
their teams.
And the question is, why don't they do that?
Why don't they start with their teams and themselves?
Exactly.
And Lena,
how do we get started?
You can't sit in the old mindset,
in the old leadership,
in the old ways of thinking and expect to lead for a new world.
You've got to shift your mindset.
You've got to shift your leadership style.
You've got to shift your beliefs about how to make change happen
for you to lead in this new world.
Thank you so much, everyone.
Thank you.