# Strategic Leadership: Innovation, Focus, and Human Value

**Podcast:** LEITWOLF Podcast - Leadership, Führung & Management
**Published:** 2026-02-22

## Transcript

The best thing I've done is to venture abroad.
I mean, let's face it, who gives honest feedback today?
If you're afraid of the dark, what is the best way to deal with that?
Is you take a lot of walks in the dark.
You get familiar with the dark.
What a wonderful opportunity today.
A warm welcome to you, my dear guest Martin Hettich.
Well, Stefan, it's a lovely day here in Cincinnati, Ohio.
It's an absolute pleasure to be talking to you today.
Awesome.
Welcome.
And dear Lightwolf podcast listener, it's my huge pleasure today to welcome an exceptional leader and manager who I have known and respected for decades.
And you'll soon learn when Martin and I met.
So it's my true honor and I'm delighted that you are here today, Martin.
One of the most impactful leaders I've ever worked with during my corporate career with more than three decades of experience in one of the most successful companies on the planet.
And since roundabout a year starting your career after your corporate PNG career, and as always, with roaring successes from the get-go.
So, welcome, dear Martin, here to the Lightwolf Podcast.
How we recently reconnected.
Let's think back.
Let's keep it as a secret how old we are.
It's a while back.
But I vividly remember being an assistant brand manager on Ariel, and you were my senior, and you handed over in the most professional structured and focused handover I've ever received throughout my career.
A brand called Ariel.
We've been in touch on and off and recently reconnected.
We had a few chats, and it's been a pleasure, and it felt like we just parted ways last week.
So great to be in touch with you again, Martin.
Do you remember when you handed over Ariel to me?
Oh, yes, I do remember.
Uh, now that you say that there is a piece that makes it less than perfect, because I forgot to hand over this to you, which is a mini replica of the famous Ariel 10 kilo drum, a packaging format that is now that not there anymore, right?
But I think would be a good keepsake.
Yeah, keep that nurture it.
This is a treasure.
One day this will be value valued very, very highly, maybe already today.
And I still remember that one of our handover elements was also an advertising campaign including a celebrity called Clementine.
I 100% remember that.
Um, and Clementine was uh very much attached to the traditional um Ariel user, right?
Because in her time, she was a rebel and a revolution.
It was the first time a female character embodied the role of the uh technician, right?
Um, the engineer, and said, I stand for washing machines and I recommend a certain detergent.
And she'd been out of favor with the then management in the early 80s.
So by the time you and I were running the business, uh, Clementine was about to turn 75.
And the business, you may remember, had a serious problem, right?
It had very convincing, very pushy advertising, but at least half the population hated it, and especially traditional users hated it.
Um, and so one of the nice things we did back then that went against all the rules is we brought back a 75-year-old, right, and did TV advertising with Clementine with the character and with Johanna Koenig, the actress, and created a huge PR event in Berlin celebrating her birthday, which gave us a lot of uh free uh press.
Today we would say it went viral, but of course, that was not even a word back then.
And so, yeah, you're conjuring up very fond memories of uh successful marketing work.
Exactly.
And you were at the heart and in the driver's seat of creating this this very effective work.
Always keeping an open mind and an open ear for consumer response, not only for their thinking, but also for their feeling.
Because advertising does have to do not only with rational convincing but also with emotion, as the example you just illustrated really well connected.
Let me share a few words up front about you as a person, Martin, so that the audience, again, thousands of people here on the call today, will get a little bit of a picture who you are.
So when you share with me who you are, I hear citizen of the world.
And know even from those three decades ago, your passion for innovation.
Yeah, you are an innovator.
Whenever we talk business, innovation is part of the conversation.
Then you are at the heart of what Brocterang Gamble, I think is exceptional in scaling them from 200 million to multi-billion.
So you created multi-billion dollar brand franchises.
You are, you have always been an entrepreneur, but now in your career post PNG, you are an entrepreneur on your own, and quickly, with three different sources, filled your day with fantastic work.
The Martin I know.
Um, driven by curiosity, a desire to unlock growth, to unlock human value in business and in society, a leader, an athlete, and a loving husband and father.
So great to hear these things about you.
Which of those are dear to your heart?
Which of those attributes would you like to highlight a bit more, Martin?
They're all.
They're all.
I mean, these days, I think is more important than ever to be a citizen of the world, since the world is breaking apart and in a time of upheaval.
I think truly understanding the world and building bridges is critical.
Also, curiosity, right?
In a time when uh science is actually forced to retreat sometimes, and uh scientific truth is hard to come by, um, and people are spinning stories for political or business gain, right?
Uh, taking curiosity and really putting hypotheses on the table and trying to establish some truth is um also critical.
And then, of course, unlocking human value.
When a lot of people for the right reasons are saying we want to unlock AI value, right?
You have to ask yourself what is the job that AI can't do, where you need human leadership and human qualities to come to life, right?
So all of that, I think in today's world is, I hope, um, as critical as it was in the world you and I started into.
Yeah.
When we zoom back a little bit to shed a bit of a light on who you were as a teenager, Martin.
I vividly remember what dreams I had when I was 13.
Who were you as a teenager?
That's a very good question.
One, you have to imagine a lot more hair, uh, Beatles' hairstyle, right?
Um, but there are certain aspects that I don't think you would put together with the businessman of today.
Um, and critical life lessons I learned back then.
One of the life lessons I would say is about perseverance.
I remember in uh what in the US they would call um elementary or middle school, um, my doctor telling me my pediatrician telling me, young man, everything is all right with you, you need to eat a few more steaks to gain some weight.
And you can do lots of things in life, my friend, but there's one thing you cannot do.
You're not made a runner, right?
Your feet, um the way they're formed, et cetera, forget about running, right?
Now looking back at my life, uh, 18 marathons later, I beg to disagree.
I'm so the the perseverance lesson of if you tell Martin something is impossible, you can't do it, uh, that makes me try harder.
So I think that's one interesting lesson here.
The other one that might almost be the opposite.
Um, when I was 10, I started the sport of fencing, right?
Um, obviously inspired by um by beautiful films and the three musketeers, etc.
And so I'm still fencing today, but the point was um I was only middle successful at best, right?
What I really learned there is learn to lose.
That sounds so counterintuitive, but it's important because you need to learn to be humble, and you need to learn that after losses, right?
As a 10-year-old, of course, I cried, right?
But I learned how to deal with losses and stand up again and keep fighting and feet keep fighting for the right goals.
So those are things as a teenager.
The other things, um, one that might not surprise you, where I got my values from is my mom was very important.
We're a family of four kids, but we're always five around the table because there was always somebody invited, often an international guest from Canada, Finland, the US, etc.
So the family was always five, and there was always space at the table.
And my mom always treated everybody equally.
So the fairness of whether we were from the inside the family, the outside, whether you were the smallest or the oldest, like I was, um, everybody needed to be treated fairly.
And then the last thing as a teenager that would surprise you today, um, you said you were dreaming at 13.
I was dreaming at 14, 15 to become an archaeologist.
My first foreign language was Latin.
I then did five years of ancient Greek.
I had an impressive Greek teacher, right, who instilled in me the sense of curiosity and always wanting to discover whether it's in the past or in the present, and the sense of dialogue, truly in the sense of Socratic dialogue.
Um, and that curiosity hasn't left me.
I mean, long story short, of course, I did not end up studying archaeology, but um the sense of always digging for discovery, truth, and even some sense of adventure that has accompanied me as I've lived in many places in the world.
I think that hasn't left me from my teenage years.
Yeah, awesome.
Let me shed some light on two particular areas, Martin.
First off, I have never done a full marathon.
I have a great excuse.
I'm a football player by birth.
My father already said, Stefan, you wanted to play before you could solidly walk.
Not sure you remember, but I created together with two friends, I founded the PNG Global Soccer Tour.
I remember starting in in Schwaibach.
So I'm I'm a football player, and football player can only run 12 kilometers, right?
So for me, running half a marathon was already quite an achievement.
And I never really seriously planned for a full one.
But when this doctor had told you, looking at your feet, you shouldn't choose running.
How did you feel before your first full marathon?
Look, my first full marathon was back in 96.
So it took me a while over the years to build it up.
And I felt absolutely well nervous, right?
I mean, adrenaline was high.
Um, I was nervous.
It was close to home.
It was the Frankfurt marathon.
And uh but it was more excitement than anything, right?
I mean, the excitement went from top to toe.
Finally, I get to do this.
And of course it was tough.
It was exactly as everybody had predicted, right?
Uh, at kilometer 32, 33, really when your body switches from carbohydrate to then drafting from the fat reserves.
Um, that's when you you hit some kind of wall, and that's when I had to remember certain things.
Marathon is really in the head.
That sounds uh so much like uh a truism, but it's worthwhile.
Uh, you need to imagine the finish line.
You need to imagine the alternative to the finish line, which would be limping onto the bus and being transported.
Um, and when you're comparing those two alternatives, you know what you want to go for.
And so those were my feelings uh around that first one.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Awesome.
And the second, thank you for sharing this.
Uh again, I just did 21 kilometers, and I can just imagine how it must feel if you do it twice that the distance.
The other topic I'd like to dig a little deeper is Socratic curiosity.
Me too.
Who knows if we ever live again?
If we do, I'd like to meet Socrates.
I read a book years ago called Socrates in Sneakers by a Dutch author, Elke Wis.
Greetings to Elke at this moment.
A wonderful book that really shares and highlights the potential you can unleash around you if you truly ask good insightful questions with the sheer intent to understand, not win or dominate, just learn with this Socratic curiosity.
Now, if we do a first transfer into business, and you are passionate about organizing growth, you're passionate about innovation.
Has this Socratic curiosity that defines you consciously or subconsciously ever helped you in business, Martin?
I think that's an outstanding question, Stefan.
It has helped me a lot.
If you think of what true dialogue can do in business, right?
First, it starts with you show some vulnerability by saying, Here is a lot of things I don't know.
I'm truly asking the questions.
And then you put that out there to a team and you're inviting them to be similar, right?
And so you're not the boss anymore, right?
You're somebody with a sense of inquiry who wants to find a better third way, right?
And that better third way, I mean, these are themes that they find their way into the teachings in management, right?
If you think of the famous business book, it's a little dated, but I think still one of the most valuable, the fifth discipline.
If you want to read the chapters on the art of dialogue in the fifth discipline, it's very foundational for being a good leader and a good leader that builds something that goes beyond micromanagement and uh beyond inspection.
So it has helped me a lot, both in procuring gamble, and then as you can imagine, later as a consultant, where the entire basis for the work is asking really, really good questions.
But even in PG, I mean, PNG hired um Roger Martin, right?
Um, who came up with uh a book, I think it's called The Opposing Mind.
The idea of the opposing mind is that there is always a better third way, right?
When you have a discussion and it's black or white, it's proposal A or B, then teams tend to uh snap into advocacy.
Here are five reasons why this one is better, here are five reasons why that one is better.
What you really want is build a third way, which is neither the black nor the white, and for that to even come out of the discussion, you need to hone the art of the dialogue and embrace skills like this third-way thinking.
So, yes, it has helped me a lot throughout my entire career.
Awesome.
In a way, I think this attitude is one of the most important either openness of leadership impact for great leaders like yourself, or also a potential limitation if people never manage to adopt this attitude.
If people stick for too long with an advocacy mindset, trying to be right themselves, rather than trying to find out what's right and what's best.
You're just prompting another question in me, Martin.
My observation, and maybe I've been when I was very young, maybe I've been partially guilty of this myself, creating myself, trying to understand what role I will play in the business world.
Maybe I also sometimes early, very early on in year one or two, tried to be right.
But I can say about myself, I got rid of it.
Did you ever help anyone who was not curious by design to become more curious as a leadership trait?
Yes, I've done that.
But interestingly enough, first I needed to learn a similar lesson as you did about being right or finding right, which is a huge difference.
I remember in my times in Brussels in the mid to late 90s, um, I had a couple of managers who gave me really good advice there, right?
One uh Rul van Nerbos, a Dutchman, Chris Stark from the UK, and you can imagine me, right, in my uh mid-30s or early 30s, highly energetic and uh research-driven, etc.
Of course, I was convinced that whatever proposition I put on the table that I was right.
And both made me pause and said, Martin, just assume for a moment, right?
That this other person who works in regulatory services or in RD, or even your boss could be right.
If you imagine that for a moment, and then really go deep into their mind and say, well, if they're right, what are the consequences?
And why are they right?
And what is that world?
And now use that art of the dialogue that you mentioned to me, right?
And build a proper dialogue and find a better third way, right?
Which means you need to really be able to say, yes, let's start from the assumption that I'm not right, that the other side is right.
And so this anecdote I've told to dozens of people who I had the chance to mentor or to be the formal boss of over years.
And with some of them, I think it worked.
And they started scratching their head and say, Yes, there may be a point.
Let me try and practice this.
Yeah, brilliant.
Thanks for sharing this.
Now, another personal question.
I think many people in the corporate world, many corporate leaders, sometimes feel a lack of time.
Although it's not lack of time, it's more like lack of control over your own time.
And it's interesting to hear what people say to the following question.
If you think about your entire life so far, what has been the best thing you have ever done in your life?
I think the best is a very good question.
The best thing I've done is to venture abroad or to venture out.
I grew up in a nice cozy town called Freiburg in the Black Forest, where for all intents and purposes, you could have stayed there forever because it's lovely.
And my parents said the option of studying in Freiburg is good, right?
And it's academically great, but uh we encourage you to venture abroad.
So I went to a city that I've never been in, Munich.
And I think the rest is history because I've always had the bias to venture out, right?
I landed in PNG, and the first thing I said is I want to go international, uh, etc.
etc.
Right.
And in a way, I feel I'm still venturing out, right?
Um today I'm venturing out in how do you make social commerce run?
Um, what is the role of AI and how do you truly make it productive?
And where are the limits of it?
And so always on the forefront, whether it's on the business or geographically, of venturing out.
Um, so I feel that this journey is still ongoing, but the first step was the most important.
Yeah.
Awesome.
Now, this is a leadership podcast, and most people dial in because they are interested in learning from people like you why good leadership matters, um, and what it is in the first place.
So it may sound obvious for someone who grew up in a company like the one that educated us, right?
PNG is a good management and leadership school from the get go.
Still, why does good leadership matter to you, Martin?
It matters to me because it has both aspects of you improve yourself and you improve others.
Because that way you have a double impact.
And impact to me is the key word, right?
Why do you care about others?
So they can rise to fully unlock their potential, they can go after their dreams, they can recognize their own vulnerabilities and work on them because you've led them, you've given them honest feedback.
I mean, let's face it, who gives honest feedback today?
Right?
People are polite, right?
They're within social norms, right?
You come to the US, to the Midwest, they're especially polite, right?
Um, and so it's even harder to get uh honest feedback.
But if you want to have an impact on people's lives, and often it is just as much their personal dreams as it is their career dreams, right?
You need to show up as a leader and you need to care as a leader, which means you're not in the middle, right?
You're not, yeah, it's okay, and it's not positive or negative.
You need to be ready and have the courage to say positive when you mean it, and to be negative in that sense in your critique, because that way you make impact in the world, and that way you're able to shape leaders who shape leaders, who shape more leaders, and if you follow that um image of concentric circles, that way you make an impact on the world, right?
If you think of the saying that if you want to change the world, you start with yourself and your own village and go from there.
I very much believe in that.
Yeah, awesome.
Thank you very much.
Now let's define what it really is.
Um I started thinking about this in a more regular way.
In a moment, I don't know where you were located at the time, but it was when our at the time young new CEO, A.
G.
Lefley, took the helmet.
And after our share price had collapsed and cut in less than half in 48 hours, just a few weeks before he came into our Schweibach office.
And I remember that he came in, probably 300 chairs and 400 people in the room, carpet on the floor.
You could still hear a needle fall despite the carpet.
There was tension in the business, tension in the company.
And within just 15 minutes, he shared his 10 beliefs.
And I still vividly remember now what number one and number 10 were, right?
And I also remember the humanity he showed and the vulnerability, a word you also used already in this call, Martin.
So that was one way of defining good leadership.
That's what it meant to him.
Yeah, and his principle one was consumer as boss, with all respect to all the other stakeholders in the value chain.
And the tenth command was lead change rather than following it or uh trying to ignore it.
Yeah.
Really terrific.
And I left there, I went straight into my office.
I sat down and asked myself, gosh, what would I have said had I been in his place?
To define what good leadership means.
Yeah.
I now have a definition, but I'm constantly open to further improving it and updating it.
But I'm now curious to understand what it means to you.
What does good leadership mean to you, Martin?
Yeah, I've thought of it, and like you, I'm constantly updating this.
What are my leadership values?
I've talked to many PNG meetings and some other meetings about that.
I like when things are simple and you can remember them.
So I've used three the three Vs and the four C's.
The three V's is more the overall framework.
Good leadership means it needs to be grounded in values, right?
Um, like in your AG Laughley examples.
The second is it needs to be vulnerable.
Only if it's a vulnerable, right, then you're um inviting um everybody who you try to impact into your world.
And then the third means you need to be vested, right?
You need to be ready to get in the reads, right?
Um, and not just stay at the surface and be lofty.
Um, so that that's almost an overall almost the entry door into the house.
Now, what once you're in the house of my leadership, I will share with you the four C's, right?
To keep it simple, according to my to my motto, einfach machen.
Keep it simple, which is one half of the double meaning of einfach machen.
The first one you would not be surprised after everything we've talked already is curiosity, which means a commitment to lifelong learning and also that art of the dialogue.
To me, those are both vital aspects of the first of the four C's, which is the curiosity.
The second one is courage.
And courage means be ready to have a bold vision, right?
To say I'm gonna run marathons when you were told impossible, or to say we're gonna get into the air care business when all you have inherited is something positioned as a tough odor-eliminating fabric refresher with very limited niche potential, but almost more important in uh the courage is the other two aspects, is the readiness to face the unknown.
I always say, I said this the other day to my daughter, if you're afraid of the dark, what is the best way to deal with that?
Is you take a lot of walks in the dark, you get familiar with the dark, right?
What does it feel like?
What do you see?
What don't you see?
Use your other senses, etc.
And use that metaphor of facing the unknown, right?
Um, I told you I wanted to become an archaeologist, and then what did I start studying?
I studied the one thing that I knew absolutely zero about, which was economics, right?
And so I faced the unknown.
Yeah, right.
Um and then as part of that courage, you need to be ready to fail harder, because um, if you haven't failed, you haven't pushed yourself, and then you can't debrief from your own failure and put new lessons together, like I learned back then in fencing.
And that lesson of failing harder, right?
Um, of course, if you're in the world of venture capital, right, or in the world of front-end innovation, you need to start with a hundred ideas if you want to have at the end one or two solid leads that is worth investing in millions in, and that will actually have um success.
So that second one, courage to me is the second C of my four C's.
The third one is commit, right?
Commit to me is a two-way street.
Um, the one is be accountable.
So, as a leader, that means when something goes wrong in the business, and as you know, it goes wrong a lot of times, right?
You can't go and ask who approved this, right?
You say, Look, I'm the leader, I'm taking the blame, right?
Um, so this is not a we moment, this is an I moment.
I take the blame, right?
Um, and I'll deal with the superiors and the board and what have you, right?
Um, and now let's find solutions.
Um, but you start with that.
You are accountable for it.
Don't try and shift the blame.
Yeah.
But second, the two-way street, you also hold accountable.
And you'd be shocked the number of companies I've seen where that principle of accountability is not there.
Where you have people working in departments, and you say, Well, what is the accountability?
Who is accountable for that result?
And who's holding them accountable, and what are exactly the measures, etc.
And you get very vague answers and diffuse answers.
Um, but as a leader, you need to be ready to hold somebody accountable and say, this result was not good.
It clearly is off the mark.
And now let's see a way how I can make you succeed better the next time we try this.
What are the lessons?
And then, so that's the third one, the commit, right?
Two-way street, being accountable and holding accountable.
The fourth one is care.
Care means that of course we've been business leaders, we've been in organizations with dozens, hundreds, thousands.
I see it as a work family where you truly care.
I mean, to me, the most extreme moment was in Latin America, right?
I spent six years in Panama.
We built up that office.
So there were hundreds of people reporting to me.
And to them, I tell you, Stefan, I was just as much the father as I was the whatever the title was, the vice president or the senior vice president.
Because they came to me with everything, right?
Personal problems, visa problems, their family back in Colombia needed, uh somebody had uh problems getting pregnant and needed uh extra time for fertility treatments.
You name it, right?
Um the problems were endless, but I felt like I was the trusted advisor on everything.
It was truly a work family.
Now, the same care is for the at-home family.
If you ask people that have worked with me, and has Martin been ready to walk out of an important meeting to drop everything when a crisis happened at home, uh, and the answer is always 100% yes.
So that's the care portion.
And then the last is there is a community aspect to whenever you do business, you're not alone, right?
You're in a location, you're impacting that community, you're leading a plant, you're hiring sometimes.
You're firing people, and you have to do that responsibly.
And you do it in a way where you create a future for them.
So the community aspect is to me the third leg almost of that care anchor.
Yeah.
Very interesting and very inspiring and clear how you define leadership for yourself.
Has there been a moment in your career where your leadership beliefs or leadership principles, as you named them, have been tested, or where you even changed the way you define leadership for yourself?
Yes, a number of times.
I mean, courage always hits a wall, uh the larger the organization in bureaucracy.
And make no mistakes.
I think corporations don't create bureaucracy because they want to, um, but they want control, right?
They want to manage financial risk, risk of failure, failed launches, other liability, therefore, you build in a lot of governance, middle management mechanisms, etc.
But of course, taken as a whole, um, that often flies in the face of courage and experimentation and trying out things.
So there have been many years where that has been tested, and then you need to go back to find third ways and say, how can we address governance and risk management and still uh create freedom, create room for breakthrough innovation for trying new ways of cost innovation, for trying new ways of rewarding your best leaders, etc.?
Yeah, great.
Thanks.
Now, when you think about your career so far, you have had hundreds of people reporting to you, working with you, you interviewed, you selected.
Is there a special moment in someone that you remember when you suddenly but clearly detected leadership potential in a person?
What was that moment?
What did you see?
How did you see that that woman or that man has strong potential to become an impactful leader?
Yeah, these uh critical moments or light bulb moments, typically three things have mattered for me.
One is when you see critical thinking.
That sounds very general, maybe for some people, but if you don't just take the brief received from the company, if you don't just take the mantra, but you really step back and say, what really matters?
Um, what is the landscape around this?
Um, what are the rules you're handed?
Because um, and I don't mean the laws of a country, right?
Every organization, small, medium, or large, has a set of rules.
This is how you do business.
And some of them are explicit, but a lot of them are implicit rules.
The critical thinking, when people step back and say, wait a moment, right?
Do we really need to follow all these rules as we enter this new market, create this new brand, try and change the game?
Which of these should we be ready to challenge?
And when you see that in people, and they bring it up and are ready to stand the test of a healthy discussion on that.
That's one of the moments where I say leadership potential, critical thinking.
Because it's harder to train that if it's not if it's not there.
The second I see it is I would call the moment when the boss is not around.
Because in large corporations, people are trained to please the boss.
And not the consumerist boss that you mentioned that A.
G.
Laughley put out as the mantra, but they please the boss.
That's the reality.
Now, how do they behave when the boss is not around, right?
How do they treat people?
How do they solve problems?
Where do they ask for help as they should?
Um, that's a really defining moment.
And then, of course, the third is when crisis happens, when the going gets tough, right?
That's when you see do some people retreat, right, to a closed mindset, to their agenda.
Some people actually freeze and do nothing anymore.
They await instructions in one way or another, or do they take the initiative and say this is a crisis?
Somebody needs to step up and say, guys, here's how we're gonna organize.
Here's how we can get out of this.
Here's the next thing we need to do.
Um, and so it's these three types of situations where I've said, aha, here is a really remarkable leader emerging.
Yeah, great.
Resonates a lot.
Um, now you've had an incredibly successful career in PNG.
Uh early days when we met as youngsters on Aerial.
Later on, as you said, you spent six years in Panama opening the business and growing it fast.
And in the last chapter, you've been a very senior leader in the company, really unleashing billions of dollars of growth, uh, organizing growth, unleashing growth with innovation.
So a lot of experience in Proctrend Gamble, a global consumer goods company with a slightly tangible American soul, with brands whose products years ago already were in the hands of more than five billion consumers.
So, so truly a global business.
Now, you have opened a new chapter, uh, the next element of curiosity and growth, and you are working as part of your consulting life also for BCG for the Boston Consulting Group.
One of the most successful consulting organizations on the planet.
But now I'm curious again regarding learning.
If you pinpoint to maybe one point each, is there an a leadership element that PNG could learn from BCG and vice versa?
I think that that's not easy to answer that question.
That's why you are here, Martin, right?
No, in PNG, as you say, gets many things right, but PNG doesn't get everything right.
And if you look at the history, every few years, right, there is a slowdown, and PNG somehow loses their way and they have to reinvent themselves, right?
Or double down on certain areas, right?
Um, like when David Taylor took over, PNG hires uh top-notch people, and that's an advantage because they are all achievers and they want to push hard, etc.
Uh, but the risk with that is PNGers tend to think they really know it all and they can do it all.
That's a massive risk.
So, in a way, PNG is not very open to outside advice, right?
And even in times when I think it was A.
G.
Laffley who pushed for connect and develop, and periodically there've been partner labs and semi-open learning ways and inviting vendors, etc.
But as many vendors will tell you, it's very hard to work with PNG, right?
PNG has a list of requirements and they're very stringent, and their bias is always we know better, right?
And as you and I know, that's not true, because there is a number of areas where PNG doesn't know better.
Um, and where PNG needs to be pushed to reinvent themselves uh harder and faster, right?
And so what PNG can learn from BCG, um, who I think they're not the only ones, but they're one of the best when it comes to velocity of learning.
And um, in fact, partnering, BCG partners a lot, right, on technology, on AI, in specific functional areas, and almost creates mini learning institutes inside the company that are very externally focused and bring fresh blood, fresh thinking, etc., new insights constantly.
And that is something that PNG's mindset uh does not truly allow, right?
So that's clearly where PG could learn.
Where BCG can maybe learn, and I need to be careful because I've been a senior advisor only for a year.
So my knowledge is not as intimate as the one uh in PNG, is PNG's drive to execution, right?
Um again, A.
G.
Laffley once said, look, the only strategy, he was very good at strategy, but the only strategy the consumer ever sees is the execution, right?
And and so the hard-hitting execution, what is the value the customer or the client in P in BCG's case gets?
And how substantial is that, and how quickly does that translate to value solved for that client, right?
And how integrated is the proposal as opposed to being only a part of a partial solution in one of the areas that uh BCG is excellent at, that very hard drive to let's get the execution perfect and let's be hundred percent hands on as opposed to nurturing the dialogue, which is important, right?
That I think is an element that uh BCG, on the other hand, could borrow or learn uh from Brock and Gamble.
Okay.
So very interesting learning, and like you, I know PNG very well.
I would also act completely resonates with me.
Yeah, the we know better also resonates with my perception.
I think it often took us a long time to get going.
Once we got going, we were unstoppable, and sometimes the pendulum swung just a bit too far.
One thing I would credit PNG though for is I never felt punished when I made mistakes.
Yeah, to the extent that I even gently and politely accused my best and longest ever boss David Taylor for never criticizing me in the three years I was reporting to him, right?
Maybe inappropriate of mine, but I still think I would have grown even faster had I received some criticism.
So in that sense, I do certainly agree.
And interesting, also understandable for a top notch management consulting company, that maybe it continues the dialogue a bit longer than the sheer business result would command.
Yeah, so get a bit more to execution.
Interesting and valuable learning.
I would like to build on this and link it to another element that, in my perception, defines the business Martin.
And the line under your emails says it brilliantly.
Innovation, einfach.
Innovation translates the same into English.
Einfach is simple and machen is doing.
Which in a way is almost a red thread through our conversation up until here.
Um because I think one of your superpowers, Martin, is to make complex things simple and the simple things executable.
Yeah, that's how I perceive you.
But let's talk about PNG, let's talk about innovation, and let's talk about growing multi-billion dollar brands as you have done.
How did you approach game-changing innovation in PNG?
Yeah, game-changing innovation.
It's a it's a very good question in today's world because you have so many companies that are hungry for innovation that have run out of other ways of growing and uh approaching consultancies, they're asking me, they're asking everyone, how does one innovate?
And many are looking there for a silver bullet and saying, Well, we are doing our flavors and pack sizes and other small things, we're doing a lot of the small stuff, we're being very busy, but we don't get breakthrough innovation.
And and so, where does that come from?
And the answer is there is no silver bullet.
Very rarely is there one that happens to be uh a genius uh from the technical side says here is something that's never been done before, or uh some leader has a great business model idea and they will it, they push it through.
But that's very, very rare.
What is really needed is a strategy and an ecosystem, right?
In the PG times, A.
G.
Lafley, I think, was outstanding in that.
Um, I took a lot of notes in all my conversations with him.
He also ended up, as you know, writing um a book about it, the game changer, in which he has many of the innovation principles and saying innovation requires, first of all, a strategy.
Strategy means you need a leadership commitment to it.
You need to be clear why do I even innovate?
It's the most important question.
Companies in CPG, right, that aspire to be thought leaders, market leaders and growing categories, they need to innovate because that's the only way to grow categories.
Without that, uh, private labels will dominate.
Um, without that, you will not keep your edge and you will not have a competitive uh sustainable advantage.
And so, without that, um, the brands for which you typically charge more, right, uh, will cease to have a reason to exist.
Um, so answer the why do we even innovate?
Then the how much does innovation contribute in a very basic almost business model sense, right?
If I want to grow a billion every year, do I want half a billion from innovation?
Um that's a demanding goal, but then you have something quantifiable that directly ties to total shareholder return, and that you can break down into specific elements.
I see many companies who don't have that clarity and don't have that connection.
So now you have a strategy, you need to put some structure in place where you say, I'm charging people with innovation, I'm putting up the right innovation metrics, I'm giving them the capability, as we talked, to run many experiments, the capability to fail, stand up after failure, weed out uh the key lessons learned and translate that into propositions.
Um, what I'm describing here, if you follow the visual, is a funnel, right, of idea screening, idea vetting, seeing our ideas scoring on desirability.
Are they really top notch for a consumer from purchase intent and a value rating?
Are they solving problems that no other products or brands have solved before?
Are they feasible?
Are they ever going to run on that company's lines, work in that company's model?
And are they viable from a business point of view, right?
Can you make money with that?
Do you have a good gross margin in percentage or in a dollar per unit so that you can grow your business and you can be accretive.
Unless you put these elements in place and make it systematic, right?
You're not going to increase your batting average.
But when you have them in place, you need to do one simple thing, and that is raise the bar.
Say the minimum I want, depending on the category you're in, is 20 million dollars or 100 million dollar ideas, and they need to be accretive.
You can raise the bar when you have a systematic approach to innovation.
And then it's a question of putting the talent in and staying consistent, right?
Um, acknowledging capability gaps where you have them, upskilling people or bringing in new talent where needed, and you will improve your batting average, and you will come up with transformative innovations that have lasting impact, like a tight pods or dawn power wash, um, to just to give you a couple of examples.
Yeah.
Yeah, very structured and very clear on how to get game changing innovation going in the first place.
Now, again, linked to this, there is another question.
Let me start maybe with an observation or a hypothesis.
My hypothesis or thesis is based on my observation, most companies I can see become innovative reactively, almost as their last resort to survive.
Only few choose to be innovative without having to.
I think Google is innovative by design and choice, while most other companies, in my perception, only start innovating when they have to.
Again, if I live once more, I'd like to talk to Steve Jobs again.
I had the pleasure of working with him for for some time, but I never had the opportunity to ask whether starting Apple and starting the iPhone was more driven by fueled and dreaming and inspired vision of a better future, or more out of necessity.
But that's something you're an innovation expert.
I'd like to pick your brain on this.
How do you perceive it?
How many companies become innovative by choice, and how many become innovative by sheer necessity to survive?
Yeah, I don't have good statistics on that.
But my BCG friends will.
They have really really good benchmarking stats on everything.
I think is at least half the companies that I've seen in the CPG world, not by choice, but by necessity.
And I think you called it a last resort, because now guess what?
They've run out of white space geographically or channel white space, and uh they can't take pricing anymore, neither directly nor indirectly, because consumers are rightly revolting and saying enough is enough, and so there's no more volume growth.
And now they go and say, hey, what about some innovation?
We used to be good at that.
Turns out they have forgotten.
And those that have forgotten is because it's not in the company DNA.
The other group where it is in the company DNA, the first distinction I'd make, they're truly mission-driven.
Of course, it's also in the business model, as I hinted at before, where they're saying so and so percentage of my sales needs to come from innovation.
But mission makes a huge difference.
They're typically following a formula that says, I'm of course, I'm in the business of selling stuff, but they have a deeper meaning behind them.
And the people working for them say, I want to go after something, a mission, right?
And it doesn't have to be world peace, right?
But it's always something that is a way to improve consumers' life or to make tech availability to everybody.
And I can tell you how day and night differences can result from a mission.
I mean, back in 1999, 2000, the home care business in procuring gamble, right, wasn't even called home care.
It was a collection of some surface care business.
So things like uh Mr.
Clean, Mr.
Proper, Via Cal, etc.
So there was some surface cleaning, and then there was some dish, right?
Dawn in the US or Ferry in Europe, both in the machine and hand dish.
And when you ask people about what is the mission, what is this business about?
They say, well, the common denominator, there are hard surfaces that need to be cleaned, whether it's dishes or countertops.
Not a very inspiring mission.
When we redefined the mission, and this was the first time there was a true exciting mission to recreate homes that people love to live in.
Suddenly there was potential because you're talking about the entire home, you're talking about creation, you're talking about love to live in that home, and you're talking about life, right?
What makes my home a good home?
That it feels good, that it's hygienic, that it's safe, that it smells good.
And that unleashed, right, a whole firework over the next decades of innovation that created the ability for new to the world brands like Fabrizio, new to the world categories like Swiffer.
Because there was no quick cleaning, there was no fabric refreshing before.
And it has innovation written into your agenda, into the mission.
And so the RD people are excited, the commercial people are excited, everybody wants to innovate.
And so there's almost a pressure to innovate because people will be bubbling with ideas.
And you will find similar examples, right?
Um, if there's companies that say, I want to be the first one to um make life after 50, right, better in healthcare, right?
Because everybody's only looking at the young and sexy consumers, right?
Then you're driven by a mission and you will come up with a stream of innovation that is meaningful as opposed to, oh, I'm missing 100 million dollars and I need to fill the gap.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Gap-filling innovation.
Yeah, I love it.
Yeah, thank you so much.
Let's leave the topic of innovation and let's enter another field of success in life, success in business and leadership, even though you may well argue they are linked to innovation and the next one.
But I think the next one applies also in many other fields outside innovation.
And the question is inspired by a book I recently read.
It's called The 5X CEO.
I enjoyed reading it.
And it's also inspired by a conversation I had earlier this year with uh an author I highly respect.
His name is Greg McKeon, and the book is called Essentialism, the Discipline Pursuit of Less.
I think what Greg is teaching me, and if you listen, Greg, warm regards at this point, is the power of saying no.
Yeah.
Quote from 5X, CEO.
Quote, every company on the planet works on too many things.
Unquote.
And then this inspiring thought from Greg McKeon.
The quote the quote that draw drew me into the book, Martin, was Stefan, you cannot overestimate the unimportance of almost anything.
Unquote.
Yeah.
And I burst into laughter.
I felt detected, and I felt like, God, I'm I'm spending time on so many things that are not essential, and I'm working on this to improve myself, to develop myself.
But I'd like to learn from you, like the many people here on the call.
So the question is, how do you decide where to invest your time and where not?
It's a great question.
Focus is one of my uh favorite words, right?
Um, and you alluded to einfach machen, yeah.
Keep it simple is half of the meaning, and just do it is the other half.
But just do it only works if you have focus.
Everything else will drive you crazy.
And imagine if it drives you or me crazy, and let's say you're responsible and you care for an organization, right?
Then it multiplies by 10 by 20 throughout the organization.
So the more you are leader and the higher up you're in some company, the more I think you even have an obligation to focus, and even to brutal focus.
And the words brutal focus are literally the ones I've used in conversations throughout my career, and in the past year more than ever.
Companies are calling consultants, of course, they look for some frameworks, etc.
But many of them need just that brutal focus.
Now, what to focus on and how to get there is critical.
And you need to understand in my experience, you need to step back and say, What business are we in?
Which sounds so simple as a question.
What is our business model?
And therefore, in that business model, what really gives us a right to win?
And this cannot be a laundry list of things, right?
There are usually a few things that you're really good at, and that give you the competitive moat, right?
That is the distinction that sets you apart year after year.
And in many businesses, what you need to find is that zero distance to the customer or to the consumer, depending on what type of business you're in, and say, what are the drivers to the consumer, to the customer that really move the needle?
And then when you add that, you almost need to, because you've used 5x and I've used 10x in my answer, you need to see what is the multiplier that gives you the most impact, right?
At this point in time on, and it may change five years later, something else may be giving you the most impact.
And you use your own time and people's time as really the number one investment, it's more than the dollars.
If you're wasting your own time with your own bureaucracy, if you're wasting your people's time with meetings for meetings' sake, meeting reports, reviews, and all of that, it's truly just that.
It's a waste of time, right?
And you do you're distracting hundreds of people.
So, where is the business model?
Where do we have the biggest impact?
How are we closest to the customer and create that zero distance?
Those are the questions I ask for myself, and you need to do that every Monday.
I've learned in large organizations, and you need to do it every Monday, even if you have a one-man business or a one-woman business, and then you need to do it again every day, right?
It may take you only a few minutes, but that kind of brutal focus every day to me is the critical skill or characteristic uh that is needed.
Awesome.
Yeah, thank you.
Very, very helpful, and I couldn't agree more.
When I like you left the corporate career being one alone after having led 12,000 people before with the uh C suite team, I felt deliberation, but also the need to focus and do that alone now, because I was the only one in this company.
I'm glad this is has changed a bit again, but that's really telling.
It's also telling throughout this interview, Martin.
You shared who who you were as a teenager, you shared significant learning and development episodes in your PNG time when you were a young leader, and later on when you were more senior.
How do you keep developing yourself today as a leader?
Yeah, the first one is I budget the time for it.
Um, you need to make the time and carve that out.
That's truly an investment.
And I do some of that every week, right?
And it's investment in networking, and I've networked with people who have never met before, right?
The 200 or so people I've talked to over the past year, included a lot of people from very different walks of life that I'd never met before.
And I started by saying, guess what?
I'm a rookie.
Just like back in the days of Fabriz, right?
My first call to Givaudan, the perfume company, or my first call to Yankee Candle was, I know nothing about scent.
Will you work with me and teach me?
And the same mindset today is I started a couple of years ago to say, I'm a rookie at AI.
Who can teach me?
And then you're open to that.
And unless you start from that mindset, right?
You cannot develop yourself.
You cannot be so you bottom line, need to be open about it and say, I'm driven by that curiosity.
I want to keep contributing, but if I want to keep contributing, I cannot just look at the glorious past, right?
I need to be invested in the future as well and uh see what's what's happening now, and that's how you develop yourself.
Yeah, awesome.
If you look at your career so far, Martin.
Is there anything that if you ran your career again, any one thing you would do differently?
I would probably venture out even earlier, right?
Um, which means look in my PG career, every five years or so I assess myself and should I play outside or inside?
And every time there was a significant internal challenge.
In hindsight, I think I should have probably pushed for an even more entrepreneurial life earlier, right?
Um, if you imagine how much fun I'm having these days consulting private equity with startups, um, I'm about to start another company um with uh three partners that will help in the area of innovation with incubation, etc.
I should have probably had a chapter of entrepreneurialism and then maybe gone back to PNG, or maybe not, right?
Even earlier, right?
So that would be the one thing uh I would change.
Awesome.
Thank you so much for sharing this.
We are zooming towards the end already of this brilliant conversation, Martin, and we typically close off with two things.
The first one is a section called the Five Quick Questions section.
So here I'd kindly ask for indeed quick answers, and at the end I'd hand it over to you for a question or a message to the audience on the call.
So let's start with the five quick questions.
What is the best advice you have ever received?
And we alluded to that before.
It was when we said the others may have a point, right?
The enemy, the even the enemy when you think of today's world may have a point.
Um take other people's point of view.
Yeah.
What quality do you value most in leaders?
Integrity.
One word answer.
Yeah.
What is your personal go-to tool when things get stressful?
I really like to take a long walk at fresh air.
Um, my brain works even a little better in in nature.
And when you do nothing but walking and uh breathing.
Yeah.
What book, podcast or quote has impressed you recently?
Well, the Lightwolf podcasts I hear are amazing, but I'm gonna quote a book.
Thank you.
The book that has impressed me most in the last two years is a book called Humanocracy, is by uh Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini, which basically postulates the end of bureaucracy in organizations and uh the experiment of microenterprises, agile teams, etc.
I highly recommend that book.
Okay, thank you.
I'm gonna buy it and read it.
Sounds really impressive.
And if you could change one thing about the world of work tomorrow, what would it be?
Well, not surprising, it jives a little with that book.
I would fully unleash human potential and remove bureaucracy.
Remember, bureaucracy is not God given, it was invented in the 19th century in organizations.
Um, at a time when in manufacturing you had tailorism, right?
And many good things, but not everything is meant forever.
So I very much question bureaucracy and would want the world of work to move on.
Awesome.
Yeah, which interestingly is one of the things that CEOs in big corporations sometimes wish they could switch over.
And I vividly remember about two years ago, Barack Obama was here in Zurich, and I took my younger son Tom to see him.
And the one thing he was most proud of, unsurprisingly, was getting 33 million people into their first ever healthcare insurance.
And the one thing he was most frustrated about was never really getting the government bureaucracy softened up.
So it is a big challenge for many leaders.
Yeah, so maybe it's been great.
I think as a as a as a tip, just that you were mentioned this.
If you get to interview others, one CEO who I've seen embody this perfectly is Kevin Nolan of GE Appliances, right?
So the appliance company that was acquired at some point by Chinese Hair.
And he has really embodied this idea of the CEO needs to take himself less seriously, um, work with agile teams.
Uh, there's a brilliant article that is appropriately labeled Rebel CEO.
Um, I forgot the journal.
It has New Brunswick Journal or something.
Uh that is worth reading, and maybe he will show up on one of your podcasts in the future.
I think uh that could be fun.
Yeah, thank you for mentioning Kevin and his philosophy.
Definitely a lesson to share with the world.
And I'm gonna knock on his door.
Yeah, so thanks, Martin.
Thanks a lot for your time.
Thanks for sharing much more light into the human, Martin, sharing your experience, your knowledge, your tips, your perspectives on a topic that, like you say, I love the quote, double impact.
Uh, it impacts yourself and it impacts so many others, and it has those ripple effects that why probably you and me just share the desire to create a well-led world, which this podcast is all about.
And as always, in conversations like ours, I would like to offer you the opportunity, Martin, to close our call with either a task or an idea or a question to the audience, Martin.
What would you like to share or ask?
Yes, a task to the audience.
If you think of the world, um politically divisive, uh social upheaval, uh, generations uh that shift and often uh blame each other, right?
Um, have and have nots, poor and rich have drifted apart further.
In that world, I think anybody who says I am a leader, I can have impact, should first reach out, second, truly listen, and three, start working together.
That's my message.
Thank you.
A brilliant way to close this conversation.
Martin, thank you so much for your time for sharing.
It's been an honor and pleasure to have you here on the Lightwolf Podcast as a guest.
Thank you very much, Martin Hettig.
Thank you, Stefan.