(Post 1 of 4) During my Country visit to Poland, I had the pleasure of holding a Townhall with our Central and Eastern Europe Market Supply team and the Bielsko Distribution Centre. In the meeting, I was asked a great question that made me stop and think. It was something like: ‘what did it take for you to have a successful career across the various Companies that you have worked for and what can we learn from this?’ I thought I would share my answer, drawn from a career at P&G, Unilever, Amazon, Avon, and Coty, across four posts. I hope these reflections offer some help as you think about your own careers, and perhaps they will prompt further searching questions in future meetings. It has always been clear to me that you need to deliver results to be successful. Get stuff done, make a difference, and add value. This was clear from my first days at P&G, where I would update my quarterly action plan regularly and take on new challenges and responsibilities whenever they were offered. I had green scorecards almost all the time but wasn’t getting the promotions that I expected. It showed just how much I had to learn. As our business partners and leaders increasingly ask us to do more and faster, we need people who relish stepping up to the challenge of delivering these results. While the business environment is not going to get easier or simpler, thanks to advances in areas such as machine learning and generative AI, there are huge opportunities for us all to make a difference and rethink how we can deliver better results. More on that in the next post, but in my view, results are only part of the story. My most significant promotion at P&G came from pure chance. I was on a flight to Cincinnati and met my boss’s boss in the airport. He asked me if I was busy and I told him I wasn’t, thinking nothing of it. Less than 30 minutes after landing, my boss called to let me know that I’d been selected to lead the multi-functional Wella integration into P&G Europe. Such a defining role in my career at P&G came from that chance encounter at the airport. Conversely, as a leadership team at Coty, we are trying to reduce the element of luck required to progress, by bringing teams closer and spending more time getting to know each other. Everyone knows that results matter for every company; so, I encourage you to make sure that decision-makers know what you are delivering. Although every leadership team I have worked in shares this same ambition of creating a clear pathway for talent, luck still inevitably plays a part – don’t be afraid of making your own luck! #coty #leadership #leadershipinsights #teamcoty
Tony Zhu
10mo
so insightful and inspriring advice, thanks for sharing
Marcos Meibergen
10mo
Graeme, that airport story is gold! Digital has its advantages, but misses the magic of genuine connections. How do we maintain that magic while pushing for efficiency?
Patrick RUHE, EmLog
10mo
Useful and nice insights. Sharing is caring for eachother to leverage results
Vic Ning
10mo
Great post,thanks for sharing 😊
Karen Soo
9mo
Creating luck is all within our own hands! We mould it and shape the future
Mary Ann Kerr
10mo
Thx for sharing.
Carol Keers
9mo
Oh, Graeme, so happy to hear you deliver tis important advice to so many others!
Esther Cedillo
10mo
Can’t wait for next posts!
Tina Chen
9mo
Great 👍 thank you for sharing!
Package Engineering – Innovation, Commercialization and Management – R&D
9moInsightful post - letting the decision makers know what you are delivering struck me deep . It is equally relevant for individual themselves and for the team leaders to cut out clear path for their talent.