THRIVING IN AN ACCELERATING DIGITAL AGE

How do you innovate and disrupt in businesses that are successful?

 

Faccio: Culture is one of the key elements, especially for us at Purina. You want to make innovation something that is built into your culture because you can’t continue growing in the marketplace without it. 

You need a culture that allows people to fail because innovation is a risk. You need to make sure that your team will embrace that and know they can try things. And when things don't work, they're not being blamed for that. You'll be learning, and you can fail forward, fail fast and take these learnings to other parts of your business. Sometimes the best learnings come from failure.

Purina is very consumer centric, and we always want to understand what consumers want and what they are doing. We have a team that looks for trends in the marketplace and tries to scout those trends so we can act on them. And we have a team that is empowered to take those learnings and create test and learn projects based on a trend we’ve noticed to get insights that can help us make bigger decisions later. 

We also have a very large R&D group to help us bring new and meaningful innovation to our business through a scientific lens, and this is a foundational part of our culture. Our goal is to understand the needs of our consumers and their pets and meet those needs with our products and services.

 

Fults: You hit some great points. On building the culture, what's interesting to see in companies – whether it's us or our clients – is that when people at the very line level understand what the company's value is and connect to that, so many ideas start to come up. When people feel intrinsically tied to the thing that matters and see how it connects to the larger vision, new ideas happen very small and then escalate really fast.

In St. Louis, we have so many successful companies, and that’s the best time to take the risk. But that's also the immediate place where fear is because you don't want to disrupt what's happening. And I think it's a hard shift to say we're going to take the risks because now we're in a situation where if they fail, it's not detrimental. 

 

Fail forward can get lost in jargon, and it sounds great when you say it, but then we get into, ‘Oh God, don't actually do that.’ But it's the right answer.

I like the idea of experiment models. When people embrace a scientific method of trying it, we know if it's going to fail or succeed and we're going to do it fast. That builds a safety net for people so that when they are successful, they can start jumping into it and taking those small jumps fast. 

 

We have an experimental model built inside of what we do to test out what we can or can't take to market. What are new ideas and solutions? One of the things we define very specifically is that failure is also success because it tells us to stop chasing something that's not real or redefine what we're doing. That pivot's been a huge factor for us to innovate.

 

What drives leaders to innovate and disrupt?

 

Faccio: I would say this is the job of all leaders if you want to have a sustainable business that will continue to grow. I have worked since I graduated college in the same company that is more than 100 years old. For you to be able to continue delivering the growth that we do and remain the market leaders, you need to innovate. Leaders who understand that are the ones who are successful.

Are you looking ahead? When you're successful, you may feel you don’t need to disrupt anything, but the role of leaders is to be looking not only at the short term, but also five or 10 -years down the road. Asking tough questions like, what could put you out of business, and should you be working on that front? This type of thinking will help the team understand the burning platforms they need to bring to market for an innovation.

 

When you're talking about failing forward, is it important for the leader to create a culture top down so you feel it's okay to make a mistake and learn from it?

 

Faccio: Yes, because otherwise, they could be fearful that the leader will not back them up. Of course, we always say don’t make the same mistake more than once.

 

Fults: We say that all the time; don’t fail two times in a row because that means we didn't learn.

 

Sparks: It reminds me of this concept of failing. Companies would say, ‘Hey, it's unacceptable to make mistakes because it costs us money and results.’ But you can just make a slight shift and say it's unacceptable to not learn from mistakes. If you build that into your culture, it can create different behaviors in the entire organization. 

This culture change can be extremely powerful. For example, many hospitals hold morbidity and mortality conferences (M & Ms). These conferences allow health care professionals to talk openly about mistakes that were made when caring for patients. A key principle for these conferences is they are non-punitive and focus purely on the goal of improved patient care. The learnings from these conferences result in changes in behavior across the entire facility.

To use another example from a completely different industry, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has an important take on this. He said he needed more content that doesn’t work when he released it on Netflix because he thinks of all the content as opportunities to find new audiences and grow. If you only put things out that work, you may be missing those things that just go viral and build audience. If you have some failures, it is a signal that you're trying new things, you're pushing boundaries a little bit and not being so risk averse. 

 

Hopper: I like to summarize the culture failing in a safe environment into the phrase of “Fail Forward”. Then, build upon “fail forward” with “Progress over Perfection” and “Freedom within a Framework:. It feels a little safer for people and I rally around it to make people get into the uncomfortable space whether they're presenting to me or anyone else. I just want to see that you're improving because if we keep waiting, but that keeps that safe environment that you're talking about from the leader, then you don’t progress. So we can have a progressive view on the Fail Forward concept.

 

How do you challenge existing business models? 

 

Faccio: For us, insight and creativity are the foundation. I mentioned how we challenge disruption and we’re trying to understand how we can evolve the value for our consumers. We are in the pet nutrition business, through selling pet food, but understanding what else we could deliver to pet owners to help them to care for their pets is what opens up our digital capabilities. Asking ourselves how we can evolve from just producing pet food to bringing digital products to market that go beyond food. 

If we can go beyond our core business and create an ecosystem that can link different products and services combined with our existing pet expertise in areas like pet behavior, we would help pet owners better understand and care for their pets’ health. For example, at the moment we are testing connected devices for pets health, and also microbiome research. A willingness to try new things and test new business models is critical to finding our next big opportunities. 

 

Hopper: We positively challenge existing business models by intrinsically instilling a hyper-focus on the customer. We spend time in our stores even though we have transitioned from a retailer to a wholesaler, and are now in a B2B2C model, that the end consumer shopper is still very much our valued customer at the end of the day. Our Technology organization partnered with the Retail Operations organization and initiated monthly tours where technology resources go into the store. Looking through a continuous improvement lens we are enhancing the program to ensure we have intentional focused learning during the tour. As an example, one month the focus may be on inventory, from how we do inventory, what tools do we use, to how do we receive it? The next month may be focused on the checkout experience, from how does the point of sale from a cashier’s perspective work for example, how do you check someone out to how do you greet a customer? Then when we're back in the office, it connects the strategy to tactical actions to the why behind it; bringing real-life meaning to our everyday. 

 

Fults: We also like to ask really audacious goal questions to really make people think. One example is how would we work with every business in St. Louis and then what's preventing us from getting there? And those start to become the points where we should really focus on the next thing. But I'm sure I drive my team crazy.

It helps us introduce the capacity and freedom to think without worrying and getting rid of constraints. How would we make a trillion dollars? And think about everything we would have to do to get there. Why can't we do it tomorrow? Everything we identify as an obstacle is now a new strategy to overcome the barrier.

It takes intentionality to ask audacious questions. Everybody has great thoughts but often feel like now is not the time. 

 

Faccio: We do a similar thing. If you go on my LinkedIn page or my office, the sentence that I use is Dream Big. And I drive my team crazy, especially with what we call a big, hairy, audacious goal (BHAG). For example, one of our leaders set a BHAG one time to get our cat litter division to be a billion-dollar business, and this would be tripling the growth rate that they had at the time.But then they'd need to go back and say, okay, what is missing here for me to get that? Do our consumers have any unmet needs? And the team came up, for example, with a lightweight litter that we now produce, called Tidy Cats Lightweight Litter.

What I like about this exercise is that it takes the team out of their comfort zone and makes them think differently. Normally, what we realize is that our brain goes in increments of things. So if you're growing 2%, maybe we can push and grow, let’s say 3.5% - 4%. But if you challenge the team that you need to triple the business, it is scary and uncomfortable. But then they start identifying the gaps that could bring that growth and then you bring back your consumer centricity and ask what you need to deliver on that? And innovation comes from them. 

This is something we do quite often, as we believe you grow when you embrace and seek the uncomfortable, and the results can be amazing.

 

How do you win the hearts and minds of leaders without a crisis for change?

 

Faccio: It is true, especially if you're a successful big company, you may like to stay on the safer side, and you need to challenge people a little bit to get out of their comfort zone. Scenario planning is one way to get the team thinking about necessary changes. For example, we did an exercise a couple of months ago and asked our leadership team what if the Business Journal wrote a headline saying that Purina is bankrupt and going out of business? 

We gave them 10 minutes to tell me what did we miss that made this happen? And because you have a cross-functional team at the table – sales, marketing, IT- everybody will come with things they think were critical to this hypothetical failure, some based on actions or decisions we could make, and some based on inaction on opportunities. Several of these areas then become our burning platforms. It helps them understand how decisions we make contribute to the success or failure of the business and is a good reminder that change is always necessary for growth. 

 

Hopper: Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. And then communicate again. In our current hybrid work environments, it is hard to over-communicate. Ensure all levels, internal and external, are well-informed, well-engaged and understand the why behind the ask. At Save A Lot, we start the week with an operating review or where we are currently focused on continuous improvement opportunites, and then we end the week with a Go To Market discussion focused on go-forward. We repeat the cadence each week, it is critically important to the company and customers that we are aligned on our priorities and actioning accordingly. 

 An example of creative communication is our “Merch Minute.” Our Chief Merchandising Officer publishes a quick educational video titled “Merch Minute” focused on communicating hot topics to forge a shared, transparent, and trusted relationship. We, in technology, are following merchandising’s lead and are prepping to publish “Tech Tips," a quick 30-90 second video on a tech hot topic. The way in which we are consuming information and processing it is changing and we have to change with it, or be left behind. 

 

Sparks: We have used many different avenues, and I think that’s helpful. I host Lunch with Mark sessions with my entire organization on a regular cadence where I'll have 10 people and we'll just have lunch together. We order DoorDash and they all sit in their own rooms. These meetings provide some of the best feedback I've received out of all the forums we use. We already have town halls and team meetings, but we just don't get the same response from those as we do from a small group.

 

Faccio: Access to leadership is important. Our PR team does an outstanding job in using different avenues. We used to have a quarterly town hall meeting, in person, but now we use a lot of videos. We have Workplace for the company, which is like an internal Facebook. Our CEO and other leaders regularly create short videos for our associates for different areas of the company or different parts of the new business models I was talking about. We talk about progress, mix it up a little bit and try different things. During the pandemic, I hosted a weekly meeting with my entire team to create an environment where they felt okay to ask questions.

Going back to the hearts and minds, people normally do not embrace change because they don't understand why it is important. We know sometimes we have to do a better job of distilling information to the level that everybody from a finance to a factory person can understand why we are doing certain things, why we're changing what we're doing, and what is their role in helping us achieve our goals.

 

Fults: I have learned that we need to be explicit about how we connect in a hybrid environment. We found that we need to be purposeful of each communication medium and intentional about connecting to each other. We work as teams and sometimes we just need to talk to each other. It doesn’t always have to be about business, it’s important to connect and understand each other. 

For example, we meet quarterly about recognition of accomplishments and we purposefully exclude discussion of financials. We really want to focus on our people. It's interesting; the hybrid world has forced us to take account of the personal aspect of business. In a world where we lost the ability to see each other every day, we now have to go above and beyond to ensure personal connection happens. 

 

Hopper: The best thing I do is have a one-on-one with every employee in my organization. Some individuals will tell me that they have never sat down with a CIO before and no one has ever taken the time to listen to them. I get the best on-the-ground ideas, actionable tasks. It’s real talk. And then when we see each other in the hallway, they're willing to speak and come and talk about ideas, concerns or perhaps it’s simply life in general and we are able to connect in a real human way. Simply because we removed the wall of hierarchy.

 

How has accountability and alignment changed for leaders and teams in partnership across the organization?

 

Hopper: From a trend perspective, it continues to be much more customer centric. We set up an advisory council two years ago led by our CEO across each sector of our customers. We meet on a regular monthly cadence and the conversation is focused on alignment of business and strategy for Save A Lot and our Retail Partners, visibility into key initiatives, shared experiences and innovation and finally opportunities for strategic growth. It has truly been one of the most impactful approaches to bring us together as a team of one to win together. We strive to create a safe environment where our Retail Partners feel comfortable sharing their concerns and more importantly trust that we will action. One of my go to simple feedback points is, “if I don’t know about it, I can’t do anything about it, so you have to tell me so we can all benefit".

Recently, our Save A Lot Retailer Advisory Council (SRAC) had a lot of questions about technology being a gray area. They didn’t understand what was coming or have a clear understanding of our strategic technology roadmap, our vision. So we took that feedback and actioned it. We now have a SRAC Technology Deep Dive with our SRAC members and their technology staff led by our Director of Retail Technology. This is the time where we really dig in to technology with a rich, engaged dialogue. We're in the early days of a significantly large initiative upgrading our point of sale and retail back office applications across the network. As you can imagine this is materially impactful to the Retail Partners so we want to ensure they are well-informed and every question they have, regardless of how big or small is answered. We are diligent about sending out thorough recaps so we all walk away from the conversation hearing and understanding the same. Truly a customer centric approach. 

From a leadership perspective, I'm absolutely present and engaged, however, I take a back seat and jump in for color commentary or clarification when I need to. If there's a topic in another area of the business, we invite others to join us, we like to have a creative, laid-back environment where everyone feels comfortable to speak up and ask questions. Whatever is top of mind for our Retail Partners is what we need to ensure we focus on. It allows us time with our customers to dig in and better understand the day-to-day, in addition to visiting our stores, distribution centers and understanding what their key needs are.

 

Sparks: That's a great point. Aligning incentives is how I think about that. Oftentimes, companies try to figure out their business results and then turn that into their R&D plans and their marketing plans and their IT plans and so on, then do that work for a year and hopefully it fits together when they review at the end of the year. What we've strived to do is actually integrate our business goals into all of our technology and IT portfolio so while we're actually doing the work, we always have an eye for our true business objectives and what we’re trying to provide for our customers.

We use objectives and key results (OKRs) as the common way to track our goals as an IT organization. The top level is our business goals. So it's our customer goals, our R&D goals or our product supply goals that represent the top level. And then everything under that serves those top level goals and it gives license for everybody to say, are we really getting closer to the customer here? Are we really moving the needle on satisfaction? Are we really letting our sales team spend more time with customers? And if the answer is no, then we'll reiterate our goals and objectives at the technology level. That's what I think about with alignment; it’s aligning incentives across the company and not treating the functions as separate work that gets done in a vacuum.

 

Hopper: I think about driving successful outcomes from a common shared goal perspective. Anytime we can collectively align and agree to our common shared goal we are going to be successful together and win together. We start with our priorities at the company level which are very customer-cetnric– retail partner profitability, driving revenue and enhance the model. Then, it’s an easy conversation to validate that we are serving our customers.

 

How are you defining value, outcomes and outputs?

 

Sparks: This is near and dear to my heart. If we start at the top level and think about business results, they're simple. You could say we want to increase sales and reduce costs. Maybe we want to have sustainability improvements, but that's kind of it for business results. Those are easy but too high level. You may say, let's have the sales or marketing team tell the tech team exactly what they should do to increase sales. That's an option, but it's not your best option because you're reducing the problem-solving ability that you can get from your engineers and technical people—you’re missing out on the art of the possible and reducing their engagement by not bringing them into the fold and letting them have a voice.

This is where outcomes really come in. By definition, an outcome is a change in behavior that drives a result. For example, you may know that getting your sales team in front of customers more will drive increased sales, the business result, Well, that's a great outcome: “Increase the amount of time the sales team spends with customers”.

So we can define the outcomes that matter for us as a company to drive business results and then enroll our teams into the process for producing ideas, failing fast and finding the optimal solutions. You do need output, and that’s what ends up happening at the end of the day.

We use a simple concept called even overs, which are just a way to say, pick this really good thing even over another good thing. One of the even overs we use for our ways of working is to say we want to focus on outcomes even over output. That allows us to make sure we're always asking what we are trying to accomplish from an outcome perspective.

The great thing is if you put it in that order, you get the best output. It's the best way to get the best output because you're thinking about outcomes, you're failing fast, then you're finding optimal solutions. And so that's how we think about outcomes and output in relationship to our company results for the work that we do and how we think about our portfolio. 

 

Faccio: The value is easy to define. I think the easiest one for us is continuing to provide value for our retail customers and our consumers and how to bring the right product at the right place, the right time. And then when you look at outputs and outcomes, I would say outputs is the what - the products and physical things you're doing; but the outcome is the why you're doing that? And in our case, we’re trying to add more value to pet owners. The outcome for them would be to have a better relationship with their pet or to better understand the health of their pet so they can manage that.

 

How does your approach to customer value, influence or drive how your organization operates?

 

Sparks: We talked about the fear that can come in and keep you from disrupting anything. What we've tried to do is change the mindset a little bit and say disruption's not something that happens to us, it's something that we participate in because it's what our customers demand. Look at what customers are telling you they want. In crop science, for example, we're a leader in agriculture and that means that our customers expect us to actually be drivers of innovation and disruption.

When we take that lens, we get to say we're not victims in this; we actually get to help shape it and now we have a responsibility to try these new things. We created a concept of new business models and separated those out to have some breathing room. They can try things even with customers and see what works and then scale them more. And things that don't work, get rid of them. That's how it's shifted for us. We've thought about it differently and so it's changed the way we think as a company. We don’t have to protect everything we do, our customers demand us to shape the future of agriculture.

 

Faccio: It would be a similar approach for us. It makes a huge difference if you look at the value to your consumers versus what you do because sometimes you can get lost. We are a pet food company that sells products and wants to grow. If your measures are things like revenue, we have shareholders that are expecting growth and profit, and this is critical to all companies. But if these are the only measures you have for the business, you probably will not be sustainable over time.

One of the things we are very proud of is that Purina is one of the most consumer-centric companies. The foundation is really understanding consumer segmentation because not every pet owner is the same.

If I ask around the table which people have pets, I am sure which one of you would have different behaviors and how you care for your pet. So which products should we be delivering to pet owners? If you think about our mission, which is to enrich the lives of pets and their people, adding value goes beyond food, and we have expertise to create more than food, which is worth pursuing. Looking at our people in a new way, as pet experts, has created a lot of new opportunities for us to add value to consumers and their relationships with their pets. 

Also, consumers are changing, and what they're expecting from companies is different today, especially the younger generation. They want to better understand the mission of the companies before becoming customers. Sharing values with consumers is critical, and areas like sustainability and making a positive societal impact are hugely important. Ensuring our core values reflect those of pet owners creates common ground. And it starts with understanding our consumers first. 

 

Hopper: There's a great design thinking exercise called Jobs to Be Done. Yours is not really about selling pet food? Caring for your pet is the job to be done. 

The example we typically use in a collaboration session is that you're preparing for your toddler's birthday party. One parent is getting everything ready, but the kids are chaotic and the pets are crazy, so the other parent takes the kids and pets to the park. The outsider's view is one parent is having fun with the kids and pets, but what the parent is really doing is allowing the other one to prepare for the party. It's what's actually being done tactically, but the overall job that's getting it done.

 

Faccio: It is very interesting and helps you to understand the white spaces in the marketplace. Of course, we know a lot about pet food. We know how consumers buy and other needs, but when you look at what you're expecting as a pet owner, what do you need and, most importantly, what are you not getting? 

Not all unmet needs will be something that we want to act on because it's not on our core capabilities and mission. But we can find areas where we can help pet owners, especially areas linked to pet health and nutrition. 

 

Fults: We see a thread, especially with you three as leaders and your organizations, of a heavy customer centricity focus and hearing a common thread also of driving more of that into the hearts and minds and everyday activity of every employee. As you drive more customer centricity, do you see an evolution in the way your teams work together? 

 

Hopper: A key success factor we use to measure how we are driving customer value is how efficiently we can function internally and that sometimes comes with small wins. One that happened recently, I will share. My executive counterpart who leads our Distribution Operations recently asked if I was comfortable with him skipping me and going directly to our Distribution Operations Product Owner as he felt it was a more productive path. He was concerned with offending me through what could be perceived as leaving me out. But my reaction was quite the opposite, I nearly jumped for joy as this was a huge win for our organization and our customers. Because what he doesn’t know is the immense amount of time I spend in the background engaging, connecting, understanding, coaching and developing our product owners. We are well-connected in a trusted, safe, intellectually curious environment setting them up to own and drive their product areas. We have matured through a results-driven, outcome-based, trusted environment. We’re not doing the hierarchical thing. We’re doing the right thing. 

We're working together. We see the value of the person’s constributions, not their title, we simply can just work together which leads to winning together. And the lines between business and technology are beginning to resolve so we can truly be the team of one. We’re starting to see the resistance between hierarchy disappear, which is phenomenal. That's when we become a high-functioning group. Shifting to a culture of trust takes time, slowly but surely, we are getting there.

 

Sparks: To your point, Saint, there can be simple reasons for silos to be created; each business function has specific results they are accountable to achieve. This can drive a situation where the business functions create the goals and may even go a little further and tell you exactly what needs to be done to achieve them. As we discussed earlier, this can miss out on realizing the full value of all your technical experts. But even beyond this problem, it can create silos among the business functions. But, in my experience, business leaders would actually prefer it if you came to them to share where the industry trends are on technology, maybe what some peer groups or other tech companies are doing. We try to think about combining the conversation about business strategy and the art of the possible and that often turns into the most interesting projects we do with our business functions. I think they're hungry for that. 

The advice I would give anybody is take that role, especially if you're in an IT organization that supports cross functions, and pick up insights across functions. Your product supply lead doesn't always see what's happening in R&D, but you do because you support both and they want you to tell them, “Here’s what I'm noticing.” Stepping into that role is really valuable and creates synergies in a good way about how you can use technology to change business thinking but also create brand new things that wouldn't have happened before.

 

Faccio: Ours is not dissimilar. We talked before about communication becoming a critical element. In a company of our size, it's so easy to be siloed because you specialize in what you do. Seven or eight years ago, our leadership team wanted to make sure it was breaking those silos because we know a big company may move slower. We launched Project Agility to help the company become more agile.

We created several different initiatives all centered around sharing information more consistently across teams and in a way that focuses on shared priorities. We ultimately want our teams to have the information they need to make decisions quickly. 

 

What have you changed or sustained in order to drive more value to your customers?

 

Faccio: Going back to the jobs to be done, there's so many things we could do, but we have to focus on which ones are the right ones for our company and our mission to best serve our customers and consumers. 

We have long-term strategies that we build and cascade to each department, and every year we provide key short-term priorities to focus on that contribute to each strategy. This provides direction and allows the team to also know what to not focus on. 

 

Hopper: If you think about outcomes over output, it's listening to your customer and prioritizing their needs. And from a strategy holistic perspective, we all agree. But then tactically putting that into play, we literally surveyed all of our B2B customers, our licensees, our retail partners, and asked what functions they need us to do from a field support perspective; list and prioritize them. What does that drive and how can that help you be successful? We were all super overwhelmed and busy, but were we providing the value to the customer that they needed and we were able to refine it?

 

How are you connecting your organization across common demarcation lines of business and it?

 

Hopper: When we went into 2023 budget planning, we intentionally sat with each executive leader and their leadership team to ensure alignment on capital initiatives and operating expenses specific to their business objectives. We built the budget together. I have heard from others that IT and the business don’t collaboratively build their budget together. For me, that's just table stakes. That's how you do it. How do you build a budget and a plan and the initiatives and priorities for a function without getting together?

Mark mentioned having a shared common goal, so we did that together for each business goal and built the budget together. When we go to the board for approval, and we're all sitting around the table, the greatest thing is when I don't have to speak for my initiatives to request approval, it's the business partner touting the value of the technology. That’s winning together.

 

Fults: You've all talked through the principles of how to pull people together and you've illustrated that it can be done in simple, small ways, whether that's having leaders from different groups explain what their business unit does and how they interact or strategize together. And it's been interesting to hear different examples of you as leaders saying, let's do this one thing together first and every one of those foundational pieces adds into the larger perspective.

 

Faccio: We’ve evolved our ways of working the past few years where we work together more cross-functionally. We work as a team at the leadership level, and then all the teams in the organization see this and emulate it. Success for us is when anyone from different areas can talk about the business and priorities for an area that they don’t necessarily manage or directly contribute to. This shows that they understand the pieces of the puzzle and how the work they do and others do contributes to the bigger picture. 

 

Hopper: Building a culture of “us” is really hard but we’re not backing down, we're doing this within our leadership team. It's not MY IT team and YOUR supply chain team and YOUR operations, it's OUR marketing team, OUR IT team, OUR operations. And when we start thinking about it through the lens of “us”,, it changes our mindset of where we align and where we prioritize. It's hard though, certainly not for the faint of heart.

 

Faccio: One leader in our organization would call us out whenever we said I and correct us to say “we.” 

 

How can companies get closer to customers with teams traditionally not close to the front line?

 

Hopper: It's a grassroots effort. Our store tours were the result of one of us reaching out to a regional director to ask how to set up a store tour. If you sign up, you can go and every single employee is encouraged to do so. It’s not limited to only leadership. There's no mandate to participate in a store tour. We do it because it’s the right thing to do and it ensures we all drive the mission of Save A Lot. We're primarily in rural and urban communities bringing fresh, quality food to them. When you visit stores and see it's bright, clean, and serving our customers that is inspiring and a mission I want to be a part of. Knowing the why behind what we do, drives excellence.

To understand our customers, we simply need to go into the stores and listen. A young couple with their toddler in the shopping cart was picking up treats when one of the partners said you have to put those back because we only have $12 for groceries this week. That's the real-world, right? It brings to reality why we're doing what we're doing. You have to have belief and faith in our mission, something inside you that's driving you to serve the greater good. 

 

Terms like “Discovery” have become a ubiquitous term with an array of meaning, but true innovation disrupts your day to day activities. How are you injecting innovation into your teams?

 

Fults: One theme is just constantly building a new muscle memory or habit base to inject it every day. We try to ask leaders if they are “on mission” or “in maintenance” mode to really look at what we're doing. We often get confused that running on a treadmill is the same thing as running a race and being busy is the same thing as successful. We want to be intentional about asking ourselves that question so that we don't get confused with just filling our time with activity and that we're actually doing something different. Whatever that answer is ends up as a new problem to solve or a new thing to go after; taking that time to do that regularly and focusing on it matters.

 

Hopper: We have internal quarterly business reviews (QBRs) for each domain within technology. We cover off the usual with a bit of a twist. I begin each QBR asking basic business questions such as our company priorities, core values, mission, how many stores, how many Retail Partners, how many DCs, average basket size, average tender breakout, etc. Data points that technologists may not always think about in their day-to-day but that are important when we are solutioning. Then, I end each conversation by asking how we can significantly drive profitability, revenue or enhance our model, which are the three priorities for our company. It’s an open-ended question to drive creative ideas. It brings out what's on top of mind for each individual, I then ask, what should I ask that I didn't ask. It’s amazing to hear these great ideas coming forward from them.

 

Sparks: At Bayer Crop Science we’ve created a culture shift around leveraging Discovery for our entire digital portfolio, but we have had to guard against overloading this word and getting lost. The simplest way to do this is to remind yourself, and your teams, what is really meant by Discovery. We simply mean “finding the best solutions in the fastest and most cost-effective way.” This reminder can stop you from spinning forever in “discovery,” instead orienting you toward value, speed, and innovation. In discovery, we tackle 4 risks, this comes straight from Marty Cagan, founder of Silicon Valley Product Group, in his incredible book Inspired. The 4 risks are Value, Usability, Feasibility and Business Fit. So, for any outcome you want to drive, any problem you want to solve, how can you tackle these risks as quickly as possible?

We’ve created a playbook that embeds Discovery as an integrated part of our way of working when it comes to delivering our digital portfolio and now, we share common language across the organization, which also drives efficiency. We’re not perfect in our execution, but we embrace a continuous improvement mindset.

Another example of embedding innovation into our teams is we have an event that we call “Innovation Aftermath.” We use this as a day of celebrating innovation across our entire organization. We will schedule a day, invite leaders from across our division, and allow teams and individuals to present the work they’ve been driving. This can be directly related to their day-to-day projects, or it could be a problem they’ve seen in the organization they decided to tackle. This empowers our teams to be curious and engages our entire organization.

 

Faccio: We encourage our teams to have external connections as well. It can be as simple as talking to people from other industries or participating in conversations like the one we are having today. We have a lot to learn from others outside of our walls.

 

What discovery research or other methods are you using to drive innovation with your teams?

 

Hopper: I encourage all of our employees to get out, engage with the community, have conversations, read the headlines, listen to podcasts, educate yourself, bring those ideas to work, challenge one another. It’s a self-accountability approach.

 

Fults: We've been trying to merge people's personal passions and values, things that we want to explore and find ways to intersect that with business. So even as recently as last night, we asked the team for five problems they’re hearing from clients that this new technology could solve. Let's have a hackathon afternoon and play with it. It gets people new stuff to play around with and explore. Today we are reconvening to find out how it went, what they think and if we can use it. Watching the team interact on use cases helps find those catalyst moments to combine people's interests, and even when you can't connect it to a business goal, there are often answers around it that show up that are just as valuable.

 

Faccio: I like the idea of understanding the people and their passions. My one-on-ones with them is my best time because they can ask me any questions. But my intention is to understand what their passions are, if they are in the right place with their career and what they like. The team also sees that we are open and curious in allowing them to pursue new opportunities. 

Sometimes you see a person in the wrong area of the organization. Maybe they came to Purina because it’s a big organization, but their passion is something other than what they’re currently doing, and you can help them if you’re aware of it.

The more you do that, the more you have a culture that contributes to innovation.

 

Hopper: During my one-on-ones, I ask each person, what's your passion? Are you happy doing what you're doing? Do you wake up in the morning excited about your day? Let's make sure you're happy, and if you're not, let's figure it out and get you a new challenge. Some people like to stay challenged, some people focus on work-life balance, others are driven by their passion to serve. And we all get that, we simply have to create a safe environment where everyone feels comfortable openly sharing.

— Bonita Tillman

 

 

 

 

Are you interested in learning how you can accelerate your digital efforts? Let's chat. 

Meet the panelist: 

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Saint Fults, General Manager, Slalom

 

Saint Fults is the General Manager of Slalom St. Louis. Slalom is a purpose-led, business and technology consulting company with over 40 markets globally and over 13K consultants. Saint’s background includes over 20 years of experience in driving transformational outcomes for key stakeholders and clients. He has directed and managed new product launches, major system integrations and business re-engineering programs for both private and public sectors. Saint is passionate about creating a better tomorrow for Slalom employees and advocating for the underrepresented in the community. He has supported Mission St. Louis for over 10 years, which focuses on ending poverty. Currently, he’s a partner with job training and workforce development programs to help underserved find meaningful, long-term employment. 

Saint’s past positions include executive leadership roles with the State of Missouri, WWT and Slalom. His background with business, product management and agile delivery methodologies gives him a unique perspective on how to rapidly bring digital products to life. 

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Andrea Faccio, Chief Growth Officer, Nestlé Purina

 

Andrea Faccio provides unified leadership across the organization to help transform business strategies into actions that drive powerful growth. She began her career in 1996 as a Commercial Trainee at Nestlé Brazil and has since served in many key roles across the company and the globe as a dedicated steward of iconic brands and one of the architects of our company’s success.

Prior to her current role, Faccio served as Chief Marketing Officer, Vice President of Purina’s litter division and Vice President of Marketing for Purina Latin America and the Caribbean. She continues to serve as a judge for Purina’s annual Pet Care Innovation Prize program, which provides support and mentorship to emerging entrepreneurs in the pet space. 

Faccio is a native of Brazil and has held positions across the Nestlé organization for more than 27 years, which has included key roles in Brazil, Switzerland, Australia and, most recently, posts with the U.S. pet care business. 

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Mark Sparks, VP, Head of Digital Product & Engineering, Bayer Crop Science

 

Mark Sparks serves as Vice President, Global Head of Product Platforms for Bayer Crop Science IT. In his role, Mark oversees the development, acquisition and implementation of technologies that deliver business outcomes and speed innovation across the company's Research & Development, Product Supply and Commercial Operations functions.

Mark and his team collaborate closely with the data assets, decision science, digital transformation and business function teams to ensure that all technologies connect to and further the strategic priorities of Bayer Crop Science. This includes the delivery of common platforms and products to advance data capture and analysis, prescribe and automate workflows, surface data science insights and create new digital offerings for customers.

At Bayer, Mark has served in various software engineering and digital product leadership roles including leading the creation and launch of a global IoT platform that delivers insights to improve data from the field to researchers and specialists in real-time across R&D, Product Supply and Market Development.

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Jennifer Hopper, Chief Information & Digital Officer, Save A Lot

 

Jennifer Hopper is a proven technology leader with more than 20 years of experience in the industry. Jennifer leverages her experience to understand current climate and headwinds, create a compelling forward-looking vision, identify the critical aspects of business and technology strategies, optimize business processes, and empower teams to deliver results. Jennifer has had the opportunity to build new teams as well as develop and mentor existing team members, in an effort to lead global change initiatives across multiple business domains and drive market-specific transformation through locally relevant programs.

 As Save A Lot’s Chief Information & Digital Officer, Jennifer focuses on leveraging technology to drive Retail Partner profitability and company revenue while maintaining a keen focus on the customer experience. Prior to joining Save A Lot, Jennifer spent seven years at Mastercard, most recently as Senior Vice President of Technology, where her experience with Mastercard Labs honed her design-thinking approach and empathy for finding and listening to the customer’s voice. 

 

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