Why Standing Still Is Moving Backwards with Norberto Chaclin

(upbeat music) - Hi and welcome back to three lessons from breakthrough leaders with me, Santa Raiabchuk, CEO of Breakthrough Global. And I'm here again with Dr. Bartseil. - Hello everyone. - And this podcast is all about giving you insider tips and the know-how from the world for most leaders and creative talents. Decidding their knowledge and experience into three lessons which we guarantee will help you and your companies to unleash your potential. - Today we are joined by Roberto Chacquillin. Roberto is EVP and Chief Orin D officer at Mondalees International, leading global innovation for iconic brands like Oreo, Ritz, Cadbury, Milka and Toblerone. He's held key Orin D leadership roles across the company, driving major product innovation. Before Mondalees, he spent 18 years at PepsiCo in senior positions across FritoLay, global beverages and joint ventures. Ultimately heading Orin D for PepsiCo North America beverages and the Pepsi Star Books partnership. Lesson one, lean into new experiences. - Roberto, look we are absolutely thrilled to welcome you to the Breakthrough podcast today. So we've had the pleasure of working together before we work together with your R&D team at Mondalees and Bart is meeting you today for the first time. So a big welcome from us. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. - It's great to meet you. Likewise, thanks for having me. - So the kind of prompt that got me to reach out to you about this was really some other podcast material that I'd seen where you were talking about AI and leadership and some other pieces. I'd love to kickstart with a little bit maybe going back from there and a little bit about your career and where you've come from to get to where you are today. Would you mind showing some of that with us? - Yeah, of course. I would say my career is a combination of steps that I probably didn't plan at all. You know, I studied chemical engineering with the intent of being an oil and gas 'cause that's what my father did. He didn't like it much and never went into that industry. So it was really by lack of something else that I ended up with an internship at Pepsi and free to lay in the US. You know, he had to do something. So those are the people that gave me an internship. So I took it with zero expectations about that industry at all. Actually, you're not new nothing about it, to be honest. But it was an eye-opening experience. You know, you can apply your skill sets to things that people actually buy and consume as opposed to working on chemicals and other manufactured things that consumers actually don't really know what they are. It was a lot more fun to work in a consumer products industry. So that was completely eye-opening to me. Not at all, something I expected. But that's how it started. I was always on a mission to get an MBA. So I thought it would be a temporary gig at Pepsi until I quit and get my MBA. I ended up doing the MBA part-time for various reasons, financial and others, with every intention of being in finance and banking. But as I was doing the MBA, I realized all the case studies were about the sorts of things that I worked on. We did case studies on Doritos and other consumer products. I was like, "Ah, I actually work in this industry "that all of these business case studies are about." You know, I'm lucky that I get to work and study the same thing. So sort of an appreciation or love for the category and the business in the industry formed. By the time I finished the MBA, I never went into banking and finance. I actually went into strategy, within Pepsi and worked on strategy, R&D, product innovation, got more into the front end of innovation over time. And that's what I've done ever since. I was speaking with a multi-time kind of client of ours. And he was talking, I was talking to that inspirational leadership, actually. And I was saying, "When have been the times "when you've worked in organizations and transformations "that they've really worked?" He said, "Well, it was when I had an inspirational leader. "It was beginning of my career at Pepsi. "And I had a leader who just let me fail." You know, I knew I was never gonna get his word with Pollock, but I knew I was never gonna get in trouble if things went wrong. And I was just trusted and empowered. And I was coached and nurtured. And so we just achieved incredible things. And I hear a lot of stuff like that, actually, from Pepsi from a few years ago. So it's interesting that was the start of your journey. It was a bold culture, if you will. Like, there is a bit of risk taking, which was fun. I didn't know any different, to be honest. I spent the first significant part of my career there, so you don't know any different. It's a tough environment, but if you compare it to others, it allowed you to experiment quite a bit. We've done some crazy things. And I had the money and the budget and the time to think and do them. So which was quite exciting. - Noberto, could you tell us a little bit about the mentors you've had over your career, or people that have really shaped who you are now? - Yeah. The one thing I can say is, I've often been assigned mentors. And I never found that that really worked. I couldn't even tell you who those were anymore. (laughing) It's when I self-identified mentors, it's when they worked better. I would say the most significant one was probably my father, who was a businessman himself. It was my motivation to study engineering, even though I went to do something completely different. He never understood why I went into the food industry. He never understood what I did and why that was technically so difficult. He was an oil and gas person. But he still had advice. A really simple advice, usually. His advice was very, very simple. It was never complex concepts. It was, you know, change is always here and it's good. Don't go against a grain of change because you'll just be left behind, just stuff like that. He always had very simple ways of saying, you're overthinking this. You're just a young guy and a big company. Get on with it. These people know what they're doing. Learn, learn. And then you'll see, one day you'll get to make these decisions or things like the higher up you get, the more lonely it is, but don't worry about it. You're not gonna keep everybody as a friend. If you're a good leader, everybody isn't gonna be your friend. That comes times when you have to make difficult decisions. And some people won't like that. And you know what? Either you want to be a leader or you don't want to be a leader. But if you're not able to make tough decisions, you're not gonna be a leader. That sort of stuff came from him. So that was probably the primary one. Then I would say I have many mentors that were junior to me. I found actually the more interesting mentors are usually people on my team or not even on my team that were not at the same seniority, but they had good insight in the business or they asked good questions. Or sometimes there were people that asked me to be a mentor and I found that the relationship was mutual and I got as much out of it as dated. So I think being humble that the mentor doesn't have to be the CEO or the senior vice president. The mentor could be someone from a totally different place but they just have a good insight and they have a good way to look at you and say, huh, I think this might be the way you should think about it. And I've found often people that are not in my exact world to be much more effective mentors. They could be friends who frankly, probably I would never work with. They're totally different and not at all of the same mindset or technical education that I am. So I probably would never be with them in a work environment. But if I think about it intellectually, they're giving me the best advice. On that point, what advice would you give because we've got a whole range of people listening to this podcast. And I'm particularly interested in people who are at the start of their career. So what advice could you give to them? We're really to shape a career that they will enjoy and be the best they can. Yeah. Simple question. Good. My, because I have many people coming to me as well for advice on career or should I take an MBA and all that kind of stuff. I think you need to do what you think is fun. And a moment it is no longer fun. You need to do something different because doing something that's not fun, you're never going to be good at. And that's why I'm still in this industry. If you do it well and you enjoy it, I think you will do better. It comes to you. It comes to you. People ask me all the time about getting an MBA. You got an MBA. She was getting, I got an MBA because I decided when I was in high school that that's what I wanted to get. I read books about business people and what does it mean to be successful? And MBA was the thing. But that's also a long time ago. So it's not getting the MBA is the advice. It's getting an additional degree and something different is the advice. Today, maybe you want to get some masters in AI. Maybe you want to be a culinary guy or something. If I had to choose today, if I had to go get a second degree today, I could tell you what it would be. I'd go to culinary school. That's what I find interesting. I probably wouldn't get an MBA. But there's a different context. What matters is you studied something, you got some experience, go broaden your mind by doing something totally different and then see where it takes you. As long as it is something you find interesting. I would also tell people often, I attended every class of my MBA, partially because I paid for it myself and I found it interesting. When I got my engineering degree, five, six years prior, I skipped every class I could afford to skip because I didn't, it didn't interest me. I didn't pay for it. My parents were paying for the education. I was there. I was interested in being in college. I wasn't interested in the subject. I was studying. When you, when you do something that you find interesting and actually you're paying, you're investing in doing it, you do much better at it. So do what you love, do what's interesting and be very much in tune at the moment. It's not really what you want to do. Don't be afraid to just not do it because it's not going to be good for anybody. And pay for yourself. Yep. Amazing. That's great advice. Thank you. Thank you. The Bertha was very lucky that early in his career he was exposed to a completely different industry that he wasn't planning to go into and actually he discovered that that was a whole new world for him and it really interested and excited him and it's what he was passionate about. So I think that his advice to go to where your interests are is really, really fantastic because when you work on something that you're interested in, you're passionate about it, you're inspired by it. You're more likely to enjoy it. And as a result, your productivity is much more likely to be higher and therefore you'll do a better job at it and it will become a virtuous cycle. So ask yourself where you are in your life right now in your career. Are you enjoying it? Are you thriving? Is it something that really interests you? And if not, it might be worth having a look at how you can cause correct and maybe try something completely different. Lesson two. Lead innovation for innovation. So being in the food industry, being in the snacking industry, we've seen there is very exciting disruption going on around innovation in this space at the moment. And AI is adding another layer to it. So there's incredible work being done on how this is going to change innovation, improve, make it faster, make it better, get you able to get to an endpoint in a much quicker and more efficient way, but so much more as well. How are you starting to implement that? I expect you have them for some time now. That's a fascinating topic. First of all, you have to be careful that you don't get carried away with AI because then AI will probably not help you. But data and data interpretation helps you in many steps along the way. AI can help me come up with a much better consumer product concept because it can pull facts from all over the place and say, you know what the best thing to do is a red circular cookie that does x, y and z because you know, whatever information is available would suggest that that is the most amazing compelling thing. That's one source of AI. The other one is to say, I have so much information on how I go to market and where my product sell and who buys those products and at what time of the day, et cetera, actually optimizing what I offer, where and when. That's another use of AI. So there's so many, if I look at my innovation process, how I go to market and the dozens of steps that I go through for any one product to get to the market, there are so many intersections in that process where AI can help me for totally different reasons. The challenge is what's the low hanging fruit? Where is the data the most robust and am I most able to benefit from AI so that I don't boil the ocean, but I actually focus on the areas where it can help me the most. That's my way of thinking, let's not get carried away. I actually personally think it's about using the information we already have about how we go to market and how we can optimize my portfolio. That's probably the biggest benefit I can have. But there's also slightly further out opportunities of, you know, does AI help me better understand whether a product is good enough? Do I always need to test the product with hundreds of consumers or can I use, you know, a historical database as an other fact to help me define, yes, with a certain degree of confidence, this is likely going to be a great product. So there's many opportunities. I think we're only at the start of this journey, how AI can help us get much better and much faster at what we do. And how are you leading your teams through that? Because this is a period of exponential change. You're talking about not as early boiling the ocean, but there's, you know, where do you start almost when you're leading your teams with that? That's the difficult part because probably the least qualified person to work on AI because I'm really not an expert in the field. And I think most of us probably aren't and the people that are 20 years younger than us. So it is quite challenging and it starts with recognizing that fact. We are leading for a change that we are probably not the most first in. So it's not my expertise that's going to drive the change. It's going to be my ability to manage the team that's going to drive to change. Because on AI itself, I'm not going to contribute anything meaningful, tech-wise. There's people that know what they're doing and I'm not one of them. My expertise of change management and setting a vision and pushing the team towards a certain direction, that's the skill I need to apply. So I try to focus not on the what but where we're going because the what and the how, there's other people that need to fill that in. But if I can focus on framing a vision, I use the term often with my team is I want to talk about outcome. I want to be outcome oriented because I know what I want to achieve. How to get there, especially when we do things like AI, I'm not going to be the person to know that. But let's define where we want to be. Now what has to be true to get there? So I push the conversation to outcome oriented. And then who do we need to help us get there? I think in an example like AI what becomes really crucial is that you don't operate hierarchical because the people that actually will bring the most know how when it comes to AI are probably various levels more junior. They're bringing the latest thinking and the more breakthrough mindset. So how do you create an ecosystem where your team and your leaders are comfortable bringing in people with a lot less time experience, but a lot deeper technical expertise to actually drive the change. So it's a management problem more than it is a tech problem. The tech will solve, but it's how we manage the team is the challenge. And that's one of the questions I was going to ask you sort of mainly answered it, but I was very interested because we've had conversations with other leaders in other functions. And because you're so involved in innovation, I was wondering what is some of the critical differences for leading a team to become the most innovative? Actually that is really challenging because to be innovative you have to be a bit free spirited. But to operate in a large company that's under constant pressure whether it's business pressures or other external pressures, you have to focus and prioritize. Learning and prioritizing can really kill creativity. So it's trying to make the two come together is the real challenge. And I spend a lot of time thinking through organizational design to get that done because my business and my team around the world has to deliver thousands of things on a yearly basis, little things that we do as a machine. It could be productivity projects, ingredient substitutions, regulatory compliance, all kinds of stuff that consumers don't see nor are they interesting to consumers whatsoever. But that's the bulk of what happens. And that's a machine that's working and you need to keep that machine very, very, very focused. It's hard in that environment to have a lot of creativity because it's just project management. So do you then create a separate entity that does nothing but breakthrough thinking you can? And I've been through that kind of scenario. They tend to be a bit isolated and then it's just free spirited thinking in an isolation until the day that you end up cutting it. So that doesn't work either. So you have to try to find the blend where we do what we need to do. We pick a few spaces where we really think innovation is going to be a game changer. And in those spaces, we're going to dedicate some people to really come up with creative solution. I think what's often missing when it comes to innovation is it's one part creativity and inspiration and it's one part strategy and a two have to go together. If you don't start with what am I innovating for? What's the reason why I need innovation in my particular business in my particular context? Is it because there is a trend that I want to go after? Is it because I am challenged in a certain market segment that I have to unlock? Is it because my category is declining? It could be many reasons, but if I don't start with what's the reason why I think innovation uniquely is going to drive growth because I can also put more marketing behind my core. I could drop the price. I could lots of things to get growth. Why do I think innovation uniquely will drive growth? If I understand that reason and I could be multiple in different scenarios could be different reasons, but I have to understand the reason why I think innovation will drive growth. Then you got the strategy bit done, then you can be creative and say how can we design an innovation that will achieve that objective and then we get creative. Then you go sort of let's expand to the ideas and contract it to some solutions. It starts with being really strategic about why I need innovation, uniquely innovation, What do I need it to? accomplish and then you unleash the creativity within that framework. At least that's the approach that I take. That's excellent. Excellent. So I wanted to just dig in a little bit more there because I was really interested in what you were saying about that creativity piece. You have to spend so much of your time on the strategic piece being at the level that you're at now. But how do you get into flow? What's the way that you can actually create that space to be creative for one of a horrible phrase think outside the box. But all of those sorts of things, is there some personal techniques that you particularly use? I'm always fascinated in this because there's some universality to those things and then people sometimes have really specific things to them that just work that maybe somebody else could could give a go to. So I think it depends on the industry you're in. I can't speak for if I was in a. Yeah. I don't make detergent or other consumer products. But in the context of the business that I'm in, I happen to be interested in food, culinary traditions and cultures. I also think that that is a unique combination with the industry that I'm in. And I think if you enjoy what you do, you're going to be more successful at it. And I noticed that in my organization, so the R&D team would in Mon Delise, a good majority of people share the similar kind of passions. So while we do the technical work, we also have an immense interest in cultures and food. And that all goes hand in hand. Because the fun is when you're talking to consumers or you're meeting with the team and you're looking at their ideas or you're sampling things that they may go nowhere, right? But they put you in the mindset of what is possible. If you want to be an R&D organization in a creative category like food, snacking, beverages, things people use and consume themselves, I think you have to have an inherent interest in people and in cultures. And if you bring those two things together, I can't help but get excited when I'm with the team looking at different prototypes. It just goes, it's just natural. The trick is how do you do that? Stop step away and say, okay, what have we talked about here? Actually is going to deliver something strategic. That's the trick. But to me, it's not difficult to get excited about creative product ideas. Yeah, and actually it's got nothing to do with our business in many ways. But you don't do very well at breakthrough. If you're not obsessed with food and culture, culture makes sense. But food, we even have our own food Slack channel because we're so food mad. And it does. I think there's something just inherently wonderful about how it brings people together. And you relax and you get creative and all of these great things. So yeah, I can completely empathize without an event. It's a passion of ours as well. And as I say, it almost then becomes part of your culture. Yeah. And it's actually something that I've I've pushed with my team the last couple of years because it's a mindset we have to what does it mean to be an R&D in a food company? To me, it's like we are ultimately accountable for all of the products that we have in the market. Not for selling them or making them, but for what they are. So I use the word curator. If the world was a museum, we're the curator of the portfolio. We designed the portfolio. We specified the ingredients, the flavors, and we own what that product is. The manufacturing department owns making that to quality. The sales department owns selling it. But what is it? That's what my team owns. So we're the designers, the curators of our snack portfolio globally. If you have that mindset, you automatically become a steward of what that portfolio needs to be. Right? So then you get into that passionate mindset of I will feel very strongly about the shape of a chocolate tablet or the taste profile or if the taste profile isn't what it's supposed to be to be a Cadbury, then I'm going to have an opinion about it. Like form a sense of ownership over the real specificity of what does it mean to be a Cadbury tablet, a milk a tablet, an Oreo cookie. That's the mindset I try to instill in the team so that we really own our portfolio. So what I like about this is the way Noverto across his career has really identified all the different packets that go into innovation in a global company like this. And some of those activities are hidden from the consumer. But they're very important to actually create the products and innovation that you need to sell. Another key distinction for him was that part of the innovation group needs to be working like a machine. And another part of it needs to be creative. But both of them need to start with strategy and without come. And it's very like how we say in the program that there are two key mindset that are required for innovation or anything else for that matter. There's the magical thinking mindset which is about creating possibilities about anything as possible where you can range and look at new things and look at the future. But if that's all you do, then nothing is actually delivered. So that machine part of his innovation is actually to deliver that. And though you need a heroic mindset, you need to be able to cut through barriers. You need to be able to deliver on time. You need to be very effective at what you're doing. So as a leader, are you and your team using these two mindsets, the magical mindset for creating possibilities? And the heroic mindset for then delivering those possibilities as new realities. We call this the breakthrough mindset. Lesson three, without a vision, you'll be left behind. So we've talked a bit about the strategy piece. We've talked about the creativity piece. In conversations we've had previously in a Berto, you've been really, really passionate about vision. And you mentioned it a little bit earlier in our conversation. Why is vision so important to you? We're here because we want to go somewhere. We want to achieve something. It could be something really simple or it could be something grandiose. It doesn't really matter. But you know, I wake up in the morning with, you know, what, what am I going to do? Where do I want to be? Maybe it's the vacation I'm looking forward to in a couple of weeks or it doesn't matter what it is. But there's always something you're aspiring to or you're working for. And that's a reason to be better and to get better and to go forward. So that's just inherently how I think about vision. If I want to run a business, I have to set an objective. I happen to believe that it's okay to set objectives that are far bigger than I can achieve. That's true. Because it puts you on a path. And at least I know I will get somewhere along the way. If I set a very conservative objective, I'm very likely to achieve it and not be excited about it. I read a set of a very bold objective or a vision of where I'm going to go. I have no idea how we will get there. But I'm 100% confident. I will land somewhere on that path and I will feel good about it. That's why I think it's important to set a vision. So you kind of know where you're going. How you get there, the path you choose can be all over the place. And maybe you end up in a different place. But at least it'll be inspired by the direction you set. And there are a lot of curveballs and there have been a lot of curveballs, particularly over the last five years. So we mentioned disruption earlier. I think sometimes our clients can get very nervous about setting a very concrete kind of vision. And sometimes we have to make the distinction with them between targets and aspirations. Right? Okay, the targets maybe what you have in stone, but the aspirations where you should be going towards. And you don't have to tell anybody else about aspiration, but make sure it's big and exciting as you say. But it does make some people nervous because you get the kind of conversations now. Or we just don't know where we're going to be in a year's time. We just don't know where we're going to be in two years time. How can we possibly set something that's maybe three or five years out when there's so many different things happening. And I'm interested in your perspective on that. Yeah. But first of all, if I knew where we were going to be in one year or in three years, I could make a lot more money doing something different. So, so you know, that's the whole point of the game, right? You don't know. You don't know. Right. And I also think that that's why I have a job. So it's interesting. But you know, especially in an R&D, I've made the mistake of framing this the wrong way before with people. Like I get excited when things are difficult. Of course, that's not great for the business. But for an R&D person, this is the kind of time that I really matter. You know, the tougher the changes are to our products to cost to regulation, the harder my team has to work to come up with solutions. But more important, we are to the ecosystem. So it's an odd way to think about it. But you know, we are here because the business isn't constant change and gets constant curveballs. Not only do I have to innovate, I also have to change things about my current portfolio, just to stay in market and stay viable. That's why we have these jobs. So I think it's part of the journey. Life wouldn't be exciting if it was predictable. That's That's what makes it more exciting is the wrong word because sometimes business is stuff, but more rewarding. Maybe that's the better word. You're working hard to find solutions. Sometimes business performance is great, sometimes it's less, but I know that we are doing what we need to do to make the outcome as good as possible. We can measure ourselves by are we achieving what we need to achieve to get the outcome for the business to be as good as possible. I think that's exciting. That's why we're here. Anybody who wants a predictable job, a day-to-day activity that has a lot of certainty, I would say, "My team's not the place to be." Because that's not the business we're in. If you're looking for change in creative ways to go against a lot of headwinds, but feel good where we ended up on the other side, that's the game we're in. That's how I see it. It's like having that no-star, but then the blueprints get a change a million times, isn't it? I mean, I would add to this conversation, Zana said to some people in nervous about set and a vision and so on. It's a different mindset because if you're nervous about doing that and you're reluctant to do that, then you don't have the agency you need to create the future. What you're doing is you're following somebody else's future. Whereas anybody that really does set a vision for the future is what you need to do is own the future. That comes from you deciding where you're going to be. That actually reminds me, I think I told Zana just a year today, about 20 years ago I went to an art show in Dallas and it was a bunch of posters, Frank posters, basically. One caught my eye. It's a cartoon of a guy smoking a cigarette in kind of a 1980s suit. He looks like he's out of the. It looks like it's set into 80s. He's smoking a cigarette. The tagline is, "The status quo is gaining momentum." It spoke to me. I bought it right there. It's hung in my office for years. Now it's in my home office and I still look at it every once in a while because I think it's just fascinating that there are people that do think they can just stay in the current environment. They don't realize that they look like they're two decades ago. To them, the world is great. They're status quo, but the world has long moved on and they just don't realize it. It always spoke to me and that was always my reminder of, "No, the status quo is not good. I'm not into the status quo." I love that. Thank you, Nebato. To lead in this world of uncertainty, you always need a vision. A vision will help you to shape the future. And if you start to shape the future, you own the future. And if you own the future, other people have to follow. The people who don't have a vision live in the status quo. And because the status quo never really moves, relatively, as the rest of the world moves on, you get left behind. So ask yourself, are you actively shaping and building that future, front of mind, center of mind, every day? Or is it something that you're going to get too late at? I've got some hot seat questions to wrap up our conversation about it. Are you ready? Yep. All right. What's the most exciting thing you've ever done? Oh, that's a tough one. I've done so many interesting things. Oh, that's a. Top three? Top three. To me, it's travel. I absolutely love to travel. And when I got a job that took me all over the world, and the first time I was on a plane to New Delhi, and the first thing I did when I got there was got on a five-hour bus to see the Taj Mahal. That sort of stuff. Like, who would have thought a month ago that that's what I would have been doing? And this is 25 years ago already. That sort of thing, you know, fast forward a couple of years. I was doing market immersion and low-income segments in Ethiopia. That the most exciting things I've done are probably travel related in places where I wasn't expecting to go and meeting people that I would have never expected to meet, but making really great connections and actually getting to know people in parts of the world that I didn't think I would go to. That's what gets me the most excited. Yeah, part of night two, part of night two. What inspires you in life? Maybe it's the same thing. It's people. Getting to know people and engaging with people, interacting with people. That's inspiring to me. I also have a large family. I love spending time with family. My immediate family here, but also my extended family and taking my wife and kids to go experience my family and the Netherlands, my family and the Caribbean. It's to me it's all about people. It's about people connecting and cultures connecting. The fact that I have an American-based family, but culturally, I'm Caribbean and Dutch and making sure that that connection is made and that my kids grow up feeling like they're from the Caribbean. That's really important to me. That's what's get me excited. I've finished this sentence. Success is. What you make of it. Amazing. I'm conscious that we have one minute left and knowing your role. You probably have another call to go to straight out of this one. So, Alberto, thank you so much. I really, actually really enjoyed this thing to you today. It's been really, really, really good. I've got kindred spirits, I think, with Bart and I on some of those points as well. So thank you so much. Thank you. I enjoyed your opportunities. Really fun. Thanks for the time. Enjoyed it as well. Thank you. So thanks again for joining us. Remember to hit the subscribe button and join us again for our next set of lessons. And if you've got any questions or comments, email us at [email protected] or connect with us directly on LinkedIn at Breakthrough Global. And I'm sure you loved this episode as much as we loved recording it. And we'd like you to share this episode on your social media and review and rate this podcast on the player of your choice. And thank you to our production team, Julius, Ulta, Sova and Victoria, O'Corefah at Breakthrough Global and Robin Leban at Fairly Media. And of course, thank you for listening.