How to be a global insights leader

Ryan Barry:

Hi, everybody. Welcome to this episode of Inside Insights Podcast powered by Zappi. My name is Ryan and I'm joined as always by Patricia Montesdeoca, who's joining us from the snowy London suburbs and Kelsey Sullivan, our producer. Hi ladies.

Patricia Montesdeoca:

Hi guys.

Ryan:

And it was just sunny an hour ago.

Patricia:

It was. I was out there getting some rays. It was great.

Ryan:

Oh, that's funny-

Patricia:

In the comfort of my sister's house. So you have a different background.

Ryan:

I love it. So I was half paying attention when you were telling Kelsey that it was snowing. And so I thought it was snowing in Columbia, which would've been even more weird.

Patricia:

Oh God. That would've been scary. Very, very scary.

Ryan:

Very scary. I'm a lover of snow, as you know, but I'm ready for spring and summer. I'm done. I want Mexican beer in the sun. I want to barbecue. I want to go swimming.

Patricia:

Micheladas.

Ryan:

Ooh. Michelada is an interesting thing because each country has a slightly different derivation of michelada. I personally like the way Mexico does it. Julio, big proponent of the Columbian michelada, but in Mexico, it's like a little bit more Worcestershire spice, I think. It seems like the Columbia version, a little more tomato centric. I like both of them. They're very refreshing.

Patricia:

So I have to say, as I have always maintained with respect to alcohol, with all due respect, I am an equal opportunity drinker. Except for beer and things with gluten, since my limit is two, because I get at sleepy and boring and I really don't need much alcohol to dance on the table anyway.

Ryan:

I hear you.

Patricia:

I like to enjoy whatever it is. And I can think of really fun and delicious things to do with just about everything so I can rattle it off and I can love it all. And so I'm an equal opportunity. I'm good. Diversity works for me.

Ryan:

I like that about you. I like that about you. I'm probably a little more selective with my booze, but yeah, I guess if I think about it, I do like a lot of it. Usually catch me with a beer in my hand. That's usually what you got with me. Kelsey, what's your drink of choice?

Kelsey Sullivan:

That's a great question. I feel like, very seasonal.

Ryan:

You're a seasonal drinker.

Kelsey:

I'm a seasonal drinker. It's like, whatever feels right at that time of year, like a Corona and lime on the beach in the summer is lovely. And that's kind of what I'm looking forward to with the warmer weather, but I'm also equal opportunity when it comes to alcohol.

Ryan:

I like that. But yeah, I'm feeling the beach vibes too. So it's been a long winter here in New England. I'm actually going to South Africa tomorrow, as you two know, and it's the end of summer there. So I've had this earmarked for a while for a variety of reasons. I'm very, very excited to go, but I was expecting summer weather and it's going to rain. So yeah. So I'm still going to go surfing and hike Table Mountain and Lion's Head and go to a winery and do as many touristy things as I can. I'll just have my rain coat on. Whatever, it's all good. It's all good. 

All right. So I’m excited about this conversation. Christian Niederauer is a wonderful man, somebody who I've gotten to know across two different companies. What I love about Christian is he's extremely grounded in the academic roots of market research.

He's passionate about the industry evolving, but he's extremely pragmatic. I don't say this about many guests. He's an incredible business partner. I've done business with him for many, many years. He shoots straight. There's a lot of talk about partners versus vendors. Christian knows how to be a partner, not just when he is negotiating payment terms. He's one of the best in the business. And he's going to share a lot about what he's driving within Colgate-Palmolive, which I know is your Alma mater, Patricia. 

I really want to get into the conversation because I think Christian offers a wonderful perspective of where the industries come from, but also where it's going. So let's do it.

Patricia:

Let's do this, let's do this.

Ryan:

I’m really excited. Today I have a pleasure to talk to somebody who I collaborate with closely, Christian Niederauer, who is the Global Head of Insights at Colgate. Christian, you don't know this story, and I wanted to tell you this on the podcast in front of a bunch of people. I'll never forget the first day I met you, but you didn't know I met you. You interacted with a colleague of mine, we were a 10 person or 12 person company at the time and my colleague called me and said, "You have to meet this guy, Christian." I said, "Okay, well tell me more." And he said, "He articulated our vision better than we did." So that person was on Andre Ketzel who now works at EyeSee. But I remember how vibrant he was because at the time when we were starting Zappi, of course you were at Reckitt which was then Reckitt Benckiser. And not many people were ready to disrupt this industry, the level it needed to be disrupted, but you were one of them. So I appreciate you and thank you for joining Inside Insights today, sir.

Christian Niederauer:

Thank you for having me and what a nice story. I didn't know. Fun fact, I just talked to Andre this morning, but of course now he is with a different company, he wants to reach out to me and discuss things.

Ryan:

I love it. Love it. Well, that's good. I'm glad to hear he's doing well. So I want to dive in, we have a lot to talk about. And I think for our listeners, my preamble story was to give you some context to my perception of Christian, but also the evidence I've seen of him as an insights leader. But Christian's somebody who is going to be able to give us a lot of context as somebody who's been in a region for many, many years, is now transitioning into a global role, has worked in a lot of different businesses. And so I think I'd like to start with just some of the learnings you've had throughout your journey that have led you to, I know a job that you've wanted and I believe are well equipped for, which is now running Global Insights for Colgate. So take us through some of the key learnings you've had along your career journey so far.

Christian:

Yeah, a very good question. I mean, knowing you helps a lot, I guess. It even gets you on a podcast, but-

Ryan:

Your first one apparently.

Christian:

Exactly. My first one. Yeah, hopefully a good one. Let's see about that. But, jokes aside, I think you definitely need some luck for any kind of journey, but the key thing that always helped me is that you need to have, and I have, a lot of curiosity. So it's really, in insights if you don't like to talk to people or you don't like your category that you're working in, it's super hard to do a great job. So you really need to be open and so on for these types of things.

What also had me personally a lot was having these different experiences and point of views, because I started my career in academic research first, then did a bit of strategy consultancy, then went into B2B, and then only 12, 13 years ago went into FMCG. So I didn't have that linear FMCG career or so on or started an agency. But that really helped me a lot. And also then within FMCG, like you said, I had local roles, global roles, regional roles, and also with a lot of iterations, not like you're going from local to regional, to global, but I also went back within the previous company. Now this company started regional again, went to global and God knows what's coming next.

So I think that's also quite important to have these different kinds of perspectives. And I think along that you also have to always be eager to learn something new and therefore let go of something else, because at some point you're really good at something, but if you then cling to it, then you are not learning new stuff and then you also can't broaden your horizon and you are also not open for new challenges.

So I think it's really about letting go. And not only since the Frozen movie, that's kind of my mantra. So, yeah, let it go is also quite important. And that also means that sometimes maybe a sideways move can also help you really to accelerate because sometimes it's a project that you work on where you learn something new, sometimes it's taking a similar role in a different company, but you see something different. I think that's also super important overall.

And what helped me there was also when you come into a new role, I think a lot of people then think, okay, now I'm here, how can I get to the next role? And then they look at org charts and so on. But what I learned in FMCG is: the org chart that you currently see is usually not the org chart that is there in two or three years.

So very often that the roads that you get into are not even there yet. So therefore it's quite important that when you are in a specific job, let the job grow with you. As you experience new things, as you try to expand, just let your current job expand too because that's the one thing that you have more under control than other things. Because you never know if you get promoted, if you get moved, and so on, if your job gets cut and so on. But what you can do is take your current role and just tell everyone what you want to do with it.

Ryan:

Yeah. It's a really good point. And I think some listeners may make fun of what I'm about to say because we both sit at relatively high levels in our org of charts. But I think there's something there that you say that really resonates with me about it being more of a learning journey than climbing a ladder. I really hope that society changes so that when our kids are doing podcasts or whatever they're doing, then that it is about learning, because I'm speaking personally, I can relate to you, nothing in my career has been about more power or authority. It's been, there's some opportunity for me to learn and help the business and so therefore I will. And I think that desire to learn is something that we need to bring more into people. Your point about a horizontal move to get a different vantage point, not many people would do that, right? Because it's not linear, but things aren't linear anymore are they?

And so you talk about unlearning things. It strikes me that more than even, what we'll talk about now, which is your new job relative to your old job, academic research is oftentimes very well funded. You have the ability for very big sample sizes. You can do things at a pace which gives you more ability to do it, right? B2B is tough, right? You don't have the respondents, you have to cut some corners. So how did you get over that, right? Starting in academia, you're taught things, I would argue as close to perfect as possible.

Christian:

Yeah, exactly.

Ryan:

And then B2B, from the B2B people I work with, you have to be more scrappy, way more scrappy than an FMCG person would've been.

Christian:

Yup, yup.

Ryan:

How did you work through that?

Christian:

The biggest challenge coming into FMCG was really the speed because I thought I did already a lot of projects before, but then I think in the first six months I did more than I did in five years before. And also then, you don't have the time in our industry to really digest learnings to the full level and so on. You have to look at it, draw quick conclusions, not superficial conclusions, but you really have to get it right away and then recommend an action from it. And that I think was massively different to academic research and also B2B where you just have more time to do things. And in B2B, I started there, there was the insights department was one person that was me, when I left was a bit more. Usually marketing is also not the most important function, as you know, it's very sales and technical driven.

Ryan:

Sales, yeah.

Christian:

I still remember that we still had our small office of cubicles there and then there was a new starter, I think started in R&D, and then our general manager was walking around and then you heard that they stopped at every office and talked really a long time, okay, this is supply chain, they're doing that stuff, and so on. And then we were already prepared when they came around to our office, then they just walked by and said, "And that's marketing and something like insights." And they walked on. And that was it. I was like, okay. And I think that was also when in my mind it started lingering that, maybe that's not the right industry, if you really are passionate about insights.

Ryan:

Yeah, it's true. Because it's sales or engineering. That's the driver of it. So there's a correlation, not a causation that I've noticed. People who run insights teams that have had some degree of consultancy or agency experience tend to come with degrees of pragmatism, again, sweeping generalization. I'm just going off my own qualitative insights. It's not that I've seen people who aren't pragmatic. But what did you learn in that consulting stint that you still carry with you today in your day to day?

Christian:

Basically distilling a lot of different data sources into one synthesis and then also drawing conclusions and recommending actions because I think that's a bit of the downside of a lot of us in insights, including myself from time to time, that we really look at all that data, first of all, is that analysis paralysis where you really okay, and there's one more data source, let me add that to it and so on. And then you just say, okay, here it is, these are the results. but you don't really think it further and say, okay, what does that mean for the business? So how does that translate into action? How can you really impact the business? Because in the end, we are not here, yes we say, and we are here to drive people's centricity and so on, but in the end we all want to help the companies to grow. So you want to help your company to grow. I want to help my company to grow. And therefore sell more products or sell better services and address people's needs. And then that's what we have to do. And therefore everything that we research has to end up in an action and a conclusion from us.

Ryan:

I like that. That's really helpful. Okay. So before we talk about you in a global role, what are some of the challenges and pitfalls you've noticed of global capabilities type teams, centers of excellence, global heads of insights? 

Christian:

What you usually have is that ivory tower mentality that you say, okay, now I'm in a global role, I can make the calls, I can do a lot of top down things and so on and I'm not really responsible for driving the business. And therefore you work on stuff and you deliver solutions for issues that weren't there. So you're doing something similar that a lot of companies did in the past with strong R&D teams. They had a great technical solution for something, but nobody really asked for it. And that's what sometimes happens when you are in global roles that you just say, okay, now I can make the calls and then you just do stuff, implement stuff, recommend stuff, but nobody really was asking for it. And therefore it's also not really needed in the end. Alot of top down best practice implementations are exactly like this, where it's okay, now I define the best practice, now everyone has to do it.

Ryan:

Yeah. It's like a solution looking for a problem. Right?

Christian:

Exactly. Which you often have and other things, also mindset wise. When you think it's much easier in a global role to just be participating or facilitating and so on, instead of really owning and leading stuff, because you can get away with it, but that minimizes your impact and also is not helping you in the long run. And therefore also I think that's the reason why a lot of global teams, not only insights, but also marketing, sales and so on have sometimes that bad reputation and not that much trust in businesses.

Ryan:

Yeah. It makes sense. I mean, even as far as if you're going to prescribe a global solution, but you've not been in the market, you're prescribing.

Christian:

Yeah. That's also super difficult. Yeah.

Ryan:

It's tough. All right. So, now I'm going to put you on spot and ask you a question. So since I've known you, since I've worked with you, you've been a highly functioning regional insights leader, at least I think, I don't think you've been in a global role yet, what are some of the things that you're going to take with you? Now I know you're a few months into your gig, but what are some of the things you're going to take with you and what is your process of getting into this new chair, doing what the global business needs you to do while avoiding some of those pitfalls you just articulated?

Christian:

I'm actually quite lucky because in difference to what you just mentioned, I think it's the third time I moved into a global role.

Ryan:

Got it.

Christian:

I have done local ones then global ones then regional ones. Again, Colgate's my first global role because I started in regional role and therefore I already know what I'm getting into and I already have my ideas. But I still remember when I first came into a global role a couple of years ago from a more local and then regional role. And then I really struggled with the fact of being a bit more detached from the markets and actual business decisions, because it's not like whatever you do ends up immediately in a product packaging or in a launch, it’s much more long term.

And therefore that sometimes can in particular, like you mentioned, for somebody who is really pragmatic and wants to see the actions coming out of my recommendations and my insights can be difficult because I know my stuff, I can do projects and get my hands dirty. But in a global role, you quickly realize that this is no longer a key success factor. It's still important, but it's no longer the one thing that makes you successful. And that's difficult. And what you really, therefore have to do is you have to think more holistically. So meaning you have to find a way how you can help and connect with different business units with different functions, beyond your usual marketing and sales peers, and also with different geographies.

So you have to really broaden your scope and therefore also make that switch in your mind more often because you're talking to a specific person with a very concrete problem in China, then the next minute you're talking to someone in the US who has a completely opposite point of view. And what you have to therefore do without falling into that ivory tower trap that I just said, best practice, you have to think about scalability because scalability becomes a key priority. In global roles that's one of the most important things in addition to providing a vision, but even a vision is helping you to scale things because it provides that common denominator. 

And I think it's Pepsi who has that local insights, global tools. I think that sums it up quite well. I think yes, insights are very much local or sometimes regional, but tools sometimes can be global or approached as one.

Ryan:

Can be. Yeah. And I think we talk about Pepsi, there's obviously a similar challenge with Colgate, if not more. I've been to some of the smallest countries in the world and you see a Colgate building. Everybody's brushing their teeth.

Christian:

Exactly.

Ryan:

It's a real thing. And so it's interesting, like one of the things that was in my subconscious while you were talking is one of the things that you're getting comfortable with is playing the long game because a lot of your stakeholders are partners, and the regions have a more pressing issue. And then identifying, and I don't mean to put words in your mouth on this part, but it strikes me, Christian, that you have to find the balance of staying really close to the needs of the local teams without seeking consensus because there's no way you could make everybody happy, I guess is my point. So how do you balance those trade offs with scale in mind?

Christian:

I think it's also with a lot of discussions and really also building that trust with the teams. The good thing for me is in both my companies that I made that switch from a local or regional to global role, I've been first in the regional role, which is then helping because everyone knows, okay, he's one of us, or he knows the other side.

Ryan:

Very true.

Christian:

If you come into a global role, I think from the outside, it's a bit more difficult because then you always have to fight that perception of, okay, now coming in, wants to change stuff, but doesn't really know the business. So I think that's helping. And with that, I think for everything also for your career, just build a strong network. You need to talk to people and need to understand their needs because only if they feel that they're heard, then you can really help them and then you can build that trust.

I usually refer to, I don't know if you know that TV show from Amazon, New Amsterdam, where you have Max Goodwin becoming-

Ryan:

I've seen it.

Christian:

He's appointed the new medical director. The first thing that he does is basically he goes to every department, just asking, okay, how can I help you? And that's completely opposite to what they had before, because before there was always the medical director who was the admin who basically said, that's your budget for this year, or that's what you have to do. And then he just went there and said, okay, how can I help you? That's the one thing I'm focusing on. But that's at least my approach also for a global role, that you just start with, first, listen to what people's problems are in markets, in divisions, in regions and so on, to then understand, is there a common denominator across different areas? How can you then help them with scale in mind?

Ryan:

Yeah, I like the common denominator point. And there's something interesting that you say, because it segues to the next thing I wanted to talk to you about. So you essentially got your street cred because you were the director of European Insights and so there's a lot of respect, he's one of us. But also what you said there, and I know this from experience with you, you had relationships well outside of your remit six months ago. And I put this in contrast because, I won't put the company on the spot, but I went to a global insights meeting once with a big FMCG company and I was the only vendor that was there. And so it was really interesting. The head of insights had me come to watch and observe and basically give them some blunt feedback because you know me, I'm quite blunt.

I remember sitting at a lunch table with four people who had director titles, who worked in the same category in different parts of the world. You're not going to believe this. They had never met.

Christian:

Crazy.

Ryan:

They had never met. Now, this is five years ago, before Zoom and Teams was as prevalent as it is now, but it strikes me what a missed opportunity that is. And so this segues to the next thing I want to talk to you about. You, as a regional insights executive, got a lot of shit done. You made moves both at Reckitt, at Colgate. I've seen it firsthand. What advice do you have for regional teams to point one, make stuff happen for themselves even though they're busy with pressing issues, but point two, to better leverage their global teams to go to work for them?

Christian:

I think it both goes very well together because if you want to free up yourself for things and get time to get things done, you have to therefore let go of other things and delegate upwards or sideways or whatever. So I think the key thing for me is always, you need to have a strong relationship with global teams. Like I said before, when I was in the regional role, I was always trying, seeking conversations with global and saying, okay, look, this is a problem, something that I think needs to be addressed, I just don't have the time or the resources for it. Is that something that you can take care of? How can you help there? And therefore I also have that overall, that divide and conquer mentality that we can't all do everything together.

And therefore it's just like, okay, what are things that you can do? What are things that I can do? And then how can we trust each other that the other side will deliver, also what is needed for your purpose and what you had in mind? Because otherwise if you say, okay, can you work on it? And you're still working secretly also on the same topic, it's not helping you to free up time. Therefore, that's one key thing that's always super important for me. Try to find things that are important enough to be addressed, but you can't do, but maybe could be centralized, speaking about regional and global.

And then also build that rapport and that trust that you trust each other, that you are really delivering on what is needed. And yes, if you delegate it to somebody else or you let somebody else take care, it might not be a hundred percent of what you need, but if it's something around 80, also good, in particular when you don't have to spend much time thinking about it.

Ryan:

I like this and to give Colgate a lot of credit, I do think it's something Colgate does really well, of we all see this problem. Region A doesn't have the head space to handle it, region C does let's feed into their brief, give them the space to execute, and if it works, well, then we can all play. I've seen this first hand in Colgate and different regions taking lead on different things. And eventually they become a mainstream capability, which is one of the things that you have to grapple with and you do it very well is, you don't have necessarily power to top down mandate things. 

And so the influence is really, really important. I'm of the opinion that most things should be done by influence because the people close to the problems should be able to solve them. But insights is an interesting tension, Christian, because the person who's working on that pressing issue in China probably doesn't have the bandwidth to zoom out 3000 feet and say, all right, what does the business at scale really need? That's why that relationship so important.

Christian:

Exactly. But it's also not their job. That's the key thing.

Ryan:

Good point.

Christian:

And that's why you have global teams to do exactly that, but instead of doing it from their of global point of view, you start from bottom up and then consolidate and then find the best solution for everyone.

Ryan:

Yeah. That makes perfect sense. All right. So you're in this role, is it five months now?

Christian:

Not even. I officially started 1st of December.

Ryan:

Okay. Not even. Okay.

Christian:

Two and a half.

Ryan:

What are the things on are horizons that you're excited about? Could be areas of learning, anything? But what are the things that give you a lot of excitement and passion these days?

Christian:

I mean, for me personally, it's really about learning about all the different business units and geographies that we have because when you're in Europe, okay, you think about Europe first. You know about the US market, you know about the China market and so on, but I never got into the really nitty gritty detail of what's driving the personal care business in Latin America, for example. Also, all the other business units that we have with Hill's, our pet nutrition business, with premium skin care, so just getting to know all these different areas is super exciting to me because it also gives you more context because it helps to then balance that focus and priority. Because then sometimes you think, okay, there was a big problem in France or in the UK, maybe it's big for a specific region, but in the grand scheme of things there are even more important things that might also be connected. And therefore, that's what I am really excited about.

The other thing, I'm excited about to do for the company is, and that might sound a bit outdated, but really further drive people centricity Because we have been talking about that a lot over the last couple of years, the whole industry. It's one of the key things. I think it was even part of the insights 2020 work from Kantar at that time.

Ryan:

That's right.

Christian:

But I think when you ask people around and we just recently did also internal pulse story that we did, that's the one thing where people think we can still do a better job, just being more connected to the actual markets and really understand what people say and what they actually need. And yeah, I think that's one of the key things.

That's also my passion, the transformation from data to insights to action because Insights function, as the name already says, and we're so much focused on the middle part on insights getting the right insights, but never really got their hands dirty into, where's the data coming from? Can I use other data streams and so on. So really thinking about the sources and then also thinking further ahead. What is the action that's coming out of it? So really broadening that from insights in the middle to also the data and action part because in the end it only matters if there's a specific action and it's based on the right data at the very beginning because if not, then the insights in the middle is just useless.

Ryan:

Yeah. It's a good point and your category, specifically the oral care personal care category because I'm a dog owner. I think everybody should be a pet owner, but not everybody is. Anyways, the point is you have to look universally at people, right? Yes, they brush their teeth, but they have a beer and they're probably also health conscious and go out to dinner. We, obviously you and I know this, we've been playing with pulling social data and innovation testing data together there to see those connection points.

Christian:

Could be running a project there. Yeah.

Ryan:

Yeah, that was pretty cool. I think there's more you can do there to put different adjacencies together. And I was at the Insights Association, which is the US governing body’s CEO summit last week, or two weeks ago, and one of the things that a lot of us were talking about was we, the vendor community, needs to do a better job of connecting our data together because our customers don't just go to Zappi or Black Swan or Streetbees or whoever it is, so I think there's a real opportunity there.

But your answer is something I want to unpack a bit. So insights in this service of growth has a lot of cross-functional partnerships so sales, marketing, innovations is who I want to drill into the most. I think when I started working at Zappi eight years ago, it was all about, we need to get data in people's hands faster. And then I quickly started to feel a dissonance of, I just don't want a score card. I want to make my idea better. I want to know how to bring it to market. I want to know how to optimize. So this notion of validating assumptions, but inspiring creativity is a phrase that I've like locked in my head and the truth is it's a true north for my staff and I. We're going to that. But what are the types of things you're seeing your stakeholders want in terms of consumer understanding and data and what are the asks that you're seeing again and again and again that we need more of, and what are some of the things that we need less of?

Christian:

Yeah. A key ask is, and if I knew what really innovation teams need to do a better job, I think I wouldn't be sitting here. I would be counting money somewhere in one of my many houses. But the key thing is really, nobody really wants validation, but they all want learning. And that's the key thing because in the past, in particular, when we talk about innovation it was all about geared towards the specific concept test or idea screening and so on, to then have the ultimate yes or no decision. But if it was a no, also for creative testing to be fair, you hardly knew why it's not working and then you basically started from scratch. So instead of that, I think that the key, and don't get me wrong as we're also working a lot with you on the idea screening and the concept validation and so on, there's a role for that in the process because you have to narrow down the funnel because otherwise you’re parallel pathing 20 different projects because you don't really know what's the right one to focus on and that's not helping you to make better bets.

But overall, we have to just do a better job in helping everyone to make better calls by understanding the categories, understanding the usage experience without that black box of, okay, now there's that holistic product idea and now it's a yes or it's a no. So we need to then know also the why overall. And I think a key way to do that is, and that's something I stole from you, and that's at least I remember the first time I've seen you in a webcast, I think, is that silo to system part where it's really, if you have all these validation research parts where it's one study here and a talk question it's answered, but it has no connection with all the other data, like you just mentioned, even with different vendors and so on, or partners, then it's just one data point and you don't really learn from it.

Therefore, you need that system, that everything is a bit more harmonized that feeds into one system and therefore creates that corporate learning. With that vision, in the future, maybe insights departments and hopefully the Insights department at Colgate can answer questions even before they are asked. It's just like, okay, here's what you should know or what you wanted to know, we already have the answer and you haven't asked for it. That's what we have to do. And then on the way, like a lot of things, you have to provide tools that help people to focus, narrowing down ideas, getting iterative feedback. I think also an overused term over the last 20 years. But it's still very important because if you don't get constant feedback from consumers, from people, you might be on the completely wrong track, like in golf. If you're hitting your driver and you have two degrees to the right, it ends up somewhere in the woods, but it's only two degrees.

Christian:

So if you were to adjust it a bit earlier in the process, just this very small part, you don't have to spend an hour searching for your ball somewhere. 

Ryan:

Are you watching me play golf? Are you watching my golf game?

Christian:

No, I haven't yet, but Frank told me a lot of stories though.

Ryan:

That's fair.

Christian:

So it's really about that, get as much people feedback as possible as early in the process. And I think that's what really also can help innovation teams to get that inspiration, creativity and so on. So really, first you should really start very broad, open up the space because if you think too narrow in your category and so on, you are already lost. So try to uncover real pain points. Things that are not used consistently are ratings and reviews, for example, social listening. They're also super nice nuggets, consumer affairs data. I'm also responsible for consumer affairs. That's the most unbiased usage experience feedback that we get. Yes, sometimes people are angry when they call us. I mean, at Colgate, not that often, but at other companies I guess. And then you can really hear what they don't like or sometimes also what they like, and that can really help you to then understand, okay, they can inform your next marketing campaign, they can inform your product launch.

So these are things that can really help to inspire people. And then also expose them to a lot of new thinking. I mean, sometimes the best insights come from an adjacent category or from one person telling an interesting story. I still remember a lot of times when I was sitting in focus groups when you still were behind the mirror and you had tons of data already about something that said, it's a good idea. And somebody said something, I don't think it's a good idea because of... And I think, yeah, exactly. We shouldn't do that because it doesn't make much sense when you think about it that way. And I think this inspiration, you can only get by talking to people, have that people centricity, getting out there and getting feedback in sometimes a very open ended way. So also that big data is quite important. People are still looking for big sample sizes and so on, but also in-depth interviews are super important by just talking through and getting a better understanding of the journey of the specific experience and so on.

Ryan:

It's interesting because I think the from/to on validation is almost like you want to bring it downstream, at least that's my opinion, and it sounds like you're saying the same thing. Think big, then whittle, then learn. And then it's an open book test at the end and I think there's a lot of merit to that. And then to your point about sometimes there's value in unscalable data or qualitative data.

So an interesting fact, we started putting an open ended, unstructured text field on our lead forms. Now, if I pull our Datorama instance up and show you all of our attribution data, you'll see search and website and this page and this page. But when I ask people, why are you coming? Well, I saw the podcast or I met with Christian from Colgate and he said... Some of these insights are not scalable, but they're worth going to get, because it's the reason why we're going to keep doing the podcast, as an example, right?

But one of the things, and I'd love your opinion on this, I feel like with new product development, we've made more progress on bringing learning downstream. And I still see the same quote from 2008 from Nielsen, 95% of new products fail, what have you. I'd love an updated data point. But it does feel to me like there's a rise of early and often iteration there and perhaps the execution is where things fall down. And I'm not saying this about Colgate, so this is more of an observation of the world. I still see a struggle with this mindset in marketing development, creative development. And the reason I say this to you is it's still a Friday, we're going to air Monday, I heard you can test fast conversation versus is this territory even worth pursuing? Why do you think that is?

Christian:

I think it's just reassurance and sometimes also as internal currency because very often people have a strong belief that this is working, but they also know I have to sell it to my superior. I have to sell it to a market. I have to sell it to an execution team and so on. And therefore we just educated, and that's also partly our fault as an insights function, we educated the business, there's a currency, there's a specific action standard, there's a specific score. If it's below that, don't even think about it. And I think that's what we have to get away from otherwise that will never change. Because then you will always have, even if you know it's a great idea, you all have bought into, but then you still will test it and then you trust what's there, or not even trust, because I think I've seen numerous times that then test results are ignored if they are better than expected then people say, yeah, but it might not be, we might have oversold it. It was too big of a concept too well executed. If it doesn't score well, then people say, yeah, but they don't know our strategy and they're not ready for it. Anyway, we are launching it in three years.

Ryan:

Well it is interesting because it is a lens in a decision and the people creating innovations, to your point, should have a much broader purview of the trends of the world, people's needs. And so it reads like maybe it's just an awareness issue that you can use insights tools downstream early to help you make the late stage stuff better.

But part of my hypothesis is there's just a lot of chefs in the advertising kitchen, right? You got people trying to sell the work, people trying to produce the work, people trying to place the work and it may be a bit more political. I don't know, but it's going to be an interesting thing to watch because personalization and placement and advertising is here, right? I personally, I'm unplugged and so I have connected TV and the ads I see are really relevant for me, right? And I can see right through the ones that aren't. And so it's quite an interesting thing.

I have two more topics for you and then I'll leave you alone because you've been very generous with your time. I want to talk about what inspires you, but I want to start with something that we're both part of. I've never actually talked about this publicly. You might have talked about it more than I have, but about four years ago we formed this community called the Insights Alliance, a group of like-minded people, we meet once a month, we share ideas, perspectives, we've built some cool methods together, some tools. And I personally get a lot of inspiration from that group. I'd love for you to reflect on what the power of community is, because that's essentially what we've created with the Insights Alliance, and how has that inspired you? And I guess while you're reflecting on that, Christian, what are some other places you go to inspire your thinking, to get big ideas, to validate your own assumptions?

Christian:

I think you said it all. I think that the whole Insights Alliance thing is really about inspiration and it starts already with, you very often hear that you're not alone with a challenge because sometimes you think, okay, we have that big challenge, I don't know how to crack it, everyone else knows it, I'm the last one to figure it out. Then you talk to all these great companies that we have as peers in there and then you see exactly the same challenges. They also have no clue or they have ideas, but they're not sure if these are the right ones. So it gives you some reassurance to just bounce ideas off each other and so on and really discuss these things. So getting that network, because then you also talk offline and you sense check things. You ask people, have you used this? Have you tried that? What do you think about that trend? And that's really helping you in your day to day business.

The network aspect is really super important, but not just for the sake of talking to people, but also with one goal, because I mean the Insights Alliance, we always had the idea of driving silo to system, but also developing better tools. And you know there's a tangible outcome all the time and that's also helping because otherwise I think people, at some point might lose interest, but as you know, there's also really something that you really get out of it that's super important.

Ryan:

Yeah. And it's an interesting thing and for those of you on the consumer side, thinking about this, so from my perspective, it's what you said in the last question. It's a built-in, not scalable way to get close to customers. I think the world's going towards. But then there's this connection point of, what are we both building towards? And so it's good.

And I'm part of a few entrepreneur communities and executive communities, and sometimes it's just nice, to your point… oh right, I'm not alone in this. And there's a validation in that of itself. Or, one of the things that keeps me awake right now is, how do we balance a company that is really built on human connection in a world that might require us to be more hybrid than we want. And so I was at this event a few weeks ago and just to hear that nobody's figured it out yet? I slept better that night. I'm like, all right. I'm just trying stuff.

Christian:

Exactly. That doesn't help you at all because there's still no solution, but at least you know, okay, nobody has the solution. So you're not late to the game. It's just something you might…

Ryan:

Exactly. Little ideas, right? So you and I are both close with Tony Costella and Tony did this thing, which he does three days a week open hour with his team. No schedule, no agenda, you either rock up or you don't. And little ideas like that are useful, right? Because oh, I could try that in some manifestation of my own environment and we'll see what happens.

Christian:

That's good. I like that. I will steal that. And he didn't do that when I was reporting to him at some point. Maybe he didn't want to hear my opinions…

Ryan:

So where else do you go though, to get inspired? And I won't share the specifics, but I got an email from Christian on Friday with an article and some ideas, and I've then spent the last couple days thinking about it, chatting with it. So you're out there getting ideas, but what are some of the other sources for you?

Christian:

Similar. Just talking to friends, to peers, former colleagues and so on. I try to attend as many conferences as possible. That's what I really liked about COVID. You could attend basically every conference, because sometimes you are in Europe and there's a conference in Asia, okay, difficult because travel budgets are not that big. So now you could basically, it's maybe during your night or very early in the morning, but you can still do it. That's what I really liked. So just listening to podcasts, to webinars and to be fair, 90% of the time, okay, I've been there, done that or nothing new, but these 10%, like I said before in focus groups, where you really get that spark, that then triggers an idea or action is really important. And then, like I said, I'm sending out stuff to people who I think, okay, yeah, he could be interested or they could be interested in it, just sending it out and then see if something comes from it.

And I'm also doing that inside the business because very often people say, okay, these are my peers, I will connect with them. I just randomly send people stuff where, I think you should have read that, maybe you haven't, so therefore have a look. And that's usually, or very often leading to the best conversations and really the great ideas or projects because of a new connection that wasn't there before. You always talk to your project teams, your immediate peers and you almost know what they think because you're reading the same stuff. So therefore I'm also quite thankful when somebody working in a completely different industry or different department sends me stuff and asks me, okay, I think that could be relevant for you, if not, just ignore it. But that very often is adding a new perspective where we started earlier that I think a big part of my journey was always getting a lot of different perspectives and that's helping in that regard. 

Ryan:

Well, you're naturally curious and you're naturally a learner, right? So you say a lot that probably wouldn't come natural to somebody, but I went on this tangent a week ago. We societally beat the curiosity out of people. And so on a sample size of one, I refuse to let “because I said so” be an answer in this household. So what that means is I, as you know, I have little kids and so a lot of times I'll go deep down the “why” rabbit hole, why does that happen? Why does that happen? Why? And I'm like, I made this commitment to myself so I'm not beating the curiosity out of these kids. I'm just going to keep answering it, but sometimes it's quite a journey.

Christian:

It is a journey. Exactly. Yeah. But, again, I think kids sometimes really ask questions when I think, yeah, I haven't really thought about it, but that's a very good question.

Ryan:

Yes. And if you think about some of the questions they ask too, they unearth societal shortcuts that we use that we... Actually I don't understand that well enough to explain it to a six year old. So, hold on, buddy, let me go look it up. It's really funny.

All right. I got a bonus question. Colgate, one of the biggest companies in the world, one of the biggest insights functions in the world, one of the biggest impacts as a marketer in the world, hiring a lot of people. Top three attributes you want in the insights leaders of tomorrow's Colgate function.

Christian:

Top three is difficult. But I think, let's do it. 

Ryan:

You can do one more if you want.

Christian:

No, no, no. Number one is definitely what we just talked about. Curiosity. I want people that are curious and are passionate also about insights. So like I mentioned earlier, I think every interaction, whatever it is, is an opportunity to learn. So when I do groceries, I see that also as store checks, and my wife usually hates me because when I do groceries I'm responsible for that. And then coming back after two hours, she said, what did you do? You just had to buy a bottle of milk and whatever. I said, yeah, but then I went down that aisle, I looked at the claims, looked at the ingredients, all that stuff. There was a new packaging, new display, I really liked it. So take every opportunity when you're traveling, there are new stores, just check it out, what's in there.

Another thing is then ad breaks. Everyone hates ad breaks. I love to learn them because there are mostly competitive ads.

Ryan:

Me too.

Christian:

So you get a lot of inspiration. You look at it, say, okay, that's really bad. We should never do something like this or sometimes say, okay, they had a great idea, why didn't we come up with that? So that's really about curiosity that's super important.

Another thing is, we are really looking for courageous or brave people that love to speak up or are not afraid to speak up because, depending on where you are, you're dealing with people being five, 10 grades higher than you, super senior, 25 years with the business, you coming in as a newcomer, maybe as a very junior person, but in the end, if you don't speak up, then maybe that person makes the wrong decisions. We really want people that are not hiding behind data because it's one thing to just say, yeah, but the number says something different. It's really also that storytelling and that's what being that voice, that loud voice in a boardroom or whatever, just saying, okay, no, I don't think that's the right conclusion or something that we shouldn't do. And I think that's super important and not always the first thing that insights people have in mind when they think about developing their skillset because that's often like, yeah, but that's not really my role. But that's what we are looking for.

Ryan:

I love it. 

Christian:

Other than that. Yeah. Yeah. Just-

Ryan:

Do you have one more? Because I was just realizing I've now made you late for your next meeting and I'm guilty of-

Christian:

Oh yeah. Last one is business acumen. I think that that's back to where I said transforming data to insights to action. It doesn't stop with the insight. You also have to think: what's relevant for the business and how can you translate it, because otherwise it's just another data point and then we can also be outsourced. Why do we need an internal insights team if they're just reporting data or just reporting facts? So you really need to balance it already with the lens from the business. You see something that's what people want, but you also know the strategy of the company and what capabilities that we have. So therefore you have to bring these two things together and then give a recommendation that takes both things into account. And therefore, I think that's for me really, yeah, I think HR would call it business acumen and a capabilities matrix and so on, but that's also quite important for me.

Ryan:

Yeah, it's huge. It's huge. And I think as an industry, we need to do a better our job of taking the people who've been here for 20 years and up-skilling them to give them their voice, but also to understand macroeconomics, financial trends, supply chain, not everybody has given that...

Christian:

Exactly. Yeah. I understand the P&L. If you're coming into a company, you really need to read the financial statement first, listen to earnings calls and so on, really understand what's driving the business because in the end that's what your CEO worries about most first. So you need to understand that. And that's what a lot of people also are interested in. Like I said earlier, we are all here to help the company to grow and then understand what does growth mean? Is it top line? Is it bottom line? Is it earnings per share? What is really it? Because then you can understand how it can better fuel that system and help the business to make better decisions to drive that growth.

Ryan:

If you do nothing else after this interview, go read the P&L and listen to the earnings call. I'm serious. The amount of people that have gotten to really senior areas of their career and can't read a P&L is high, right? And then folks, as you're intimidated and reading it and realizing, oh crap, I'm one of those people Ryan just said, ask somebody in finance to explain it to you. You'll be exponentially better at your job.

Christian:

Exactly. And they are super happy to do that for you.

Ryan:

They will. They will.

Christian:

Because a lot of people, they never get that question. They only talk to people they already know and if you ask them, okay, can you explain that to me? They are sometimes super happy and you uncover new things that you haven't thought about.

Ryan:

But I love that, connect your insight to the strategy. And if you understand the CEO's thing, a lot of other stuff will make sense. Christian, thank you. It's good to see you. Have a wonderful evening. Everybody, I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I had having it.

First podcast. You think you'll do another one?

Christian:

First podcast. Exactly. Yeah, I think if you have me again, I would definitely join you.

Ryan:

I love it.

Christian:

I'm going to start my own one now.

Ryan:

Yeah, there you go. And you can have me as a guest. Thank you, Christian.

Patricia:

I love him. I love the fact that he came into Colgate. Colgate's the type of company that has to bring people in tiny, young, early in career, first, second job out of master's degree and build them, make them. It's the best postgraduates, the best PhD, the best master's degree you could ever have. Right? And they pay you while you're doing it. So it's a fantastic company. You know how much I love Colgate and Hill’s. Christian came in and he did something that not everybody was able to do. Right? He came in at a high level. He didn't come in little. He came in at a high level and he's just so no nonsense. He knows his stuff so well, that he was accepted. 

You just heard why he was so successful because he knows exactly what he is doing. He likes the building of the trust and I'll summarize in a moment, but this is who it is. And it's not just culture. It's just who Christian is. This is what you get. This is what I know. This is what I like. This is who I am. Next. Right? Who are you? I can just see him saying it. And who are you? And what do you want? And how can I help you? Do do do. I love it. I love that. And that's what's made him successful in everything. He's had a beautiful career in different companies and I think it's something that's exciting. I think it's absolutely exciting. Right?

Ryan:

He is exciting. So Christian, I hope that you're listening to this interview. Although if you're anything like me, you don't like to listen to the interviews. In fact, I listened to my recent interview and I was just telling the ladies, I said something a little bit obnoxious. So for those of you who caught that, I'm sorry. But Christian's also a big NBA fan. So I'm hoping to get him over to the United States for the NBA playoffs, which are coming up. I'm good at making business excuses to have fun. So I'm hoping that he takes me up on that. So, we covered a lot though, right? So what were some of your themes?

Patricia:

We did. So I have seven themes and some bonus content I promised you guys, this season-

Ryan:

Always got the bonus goodies, Patricia.

Patricia:

Oh yeah, man. Well, you do these amazing interviews and our guests just keep delivering. So it makes my life easier. So I've got seven topics and then my bonus, all right?

Ryan:

I like it.

Patricia:

Here we go. Here we go. And with Christian, true to his personality, it's all about the learning. He's sharing. Oh, look. It stopped snowing. If it starts being sunny again, you'll see. I'm not changing anything back there. It's not a video. So it's all about learning, things he's learned. And he has no qualms sharing. Let's start with number one. You asked him, "what's your journey learnings?" You ask all of our guests and he started right away. You need to have luck. I love the fact that he doesn't take it all himself.

He does believe in the external as in, whatever. Luck, curiosity, you need to like to talk to people. You need to like the category you're working on. He made me laugh. He made me laugh because we forget that.

Ryan:

Yeah.

Patricia:

I interviewed for a beer company once, long time ago, right? Before actually Zappi, and I said, "I can't, I can't because I don't drink beer. I don't even know what it tastes like. I don't understand the experience. I'd love to, but I can't." Any other alcohol but I can't. Right. The second thing he talked about is having a non-linear career. I've had a very linear career and I love my career and I'm so pleased, but he talked about the pros and cons of his non-linear global, local, regional, global, again, local again.

So he said that having that learning helped his mind go back and forth, back and forth, which is something you'll hear in the last learning about what's going to help him towards the future because he's going to be able to switch it on and off. Right. Then the third thing, and you'll hear this repeated again, and you heard it with him and you're going to hear it from the key takeaways that I'm sharing is letting go. He said that this is way before Frozen. This is not about Frozen. This is about let go, let go of your ego, let go of your title. Let go of your perceived notions. It's not about any of that. Just go with the flow. He didn't use the “go with the flow” because he's German, I don't think that would come out of his mouth, but he did say, "Let it go."

Just kind of go with what you're doing. Right? And that specifically, he talked about let your current job grow with you. Don't worry about the next job so much. You don't know if you're going to get promoted. You don't know if your next job even exists on the org chart yet. He said it probably doesn't, but you do know you're in a job now and you can be successful in that job now. So worry about the now. Take care of the now, the tomorrow will take care of itself, if you work on the now. I really liked that a lot. So those are the learnings that he's had on his journey. And so for somebody to be able to take a career like his, and say, "These are my top three learnings," I was like, already, my brain is already blown.

Ryan:

Yeah. It's incredible.

Patricia:

Then you went on to ask him about the comparison between academia and FMCG.And I thought that's going to be interesting. And I wonder what he is going to say. And he said, "Things are so much faster in the industry now." Right? Academia is slow and steady. The sample sizes are bigger, right? It's like you have time to digest the learnings and fast moving consumer goods. It's boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Right? You barely have time to digest. I used to always say, you've heard me say this before, when I was sitting in his type chair, where I always used to say, "I can't wait for the money to run out so I can analyze my data better." Right? But it's always, you don't have time to take the time.

You have to design your study in a way that it gives you what you want, so you can pick it up and then just go. Draw quick conclusions. Right? Sometimes they're a little superficial, but if that's what the customer needs, you're going to hear a little bit more about that later. Right? He also talked about that in B2B, and the work that he's doing now, like he was before, the insights department was one person. That's it. Now they're larger teams, right? Where he's working now. And in the past, marketing was not the most important function. He talked about sales. You talked about technology, et cetera, et cetera. But marketing was not what it is in the fast moving world. Marketing is king in these new companies. So he's like, adjusting to who was at the top of the pecking order was something that he learned. And I hadn't thought of it that way. I really liked that. 

Then you asked him what he learned from consulting, which I perked up my ears since I'm consulting now. He said four things. Distilling a lot of data sources into one synthesis, I love that part. So I was glad that he said that. Two, drawing conclusions and recommending actions. It's not just about what it says. It's about what you're going to do with it. Translating results into action that really impact the results. So, if number one is distilling the data, number two is drawing conclusions and recommending actions. Number three, making sure those actions have an impact on the business. And number four, making sure that everything you do, everything you research, everything you talk about, everything you help and you give, ends up in an action and a conclusion. That's your value. That's what it is. And I'm like, I think I'm going to have that tattooed on the inside of my eyelids. I hope that hasn't hurt.

Ryan:

That would hurt. You better be careful homegirl.

Patricia:

Not doing that. I'm working on my second tattoo, but that's not going to be it. I want paw prints here. Anyway-

Ryan:

I love it.

Patricia:

Moving right along. Number four, what did you learn from your stakeholders? What have your stakeholders taught you? And he is like, "oh, this is a good one. Nobody really wants validation. But they all want learning." Learning is hard. Learning is subjective. What is learning to you, if you think about it? Now, he says, "in order for us to deliver that, us being insight professionals, we have to understand their categories." Remember he said, "You had to like your category"... Look, I told you, look at this.

Ryan:

There you go. Sun's back.

Patricia:

Right? Remember I told you that one of the things he learned from his career is you have to like your category? He comes back again here. In order to help our stakeholders get what they want, which is learning, we have to know about their category. We have to know about their experience. We have to know about what they really need and want, so that we can help them get learning, not just data, right? We, as researchers, as insights professionals, we have to provide tools to help narrow the options for our stakeholders, for our people who work with us and ask our help. Because many times we have too many ideas and they don't know where to focus. We have to provide the tools and the methodologies to do that. Right? I think you talked about both of you think big, then whittle, then learn.

I don't know which of the two of you said that, but I love that thing. Think big, whittle, then learn. It was perfect. He had a great... I don't play golf, but I totally understood his reference about in golf, you have to make sure that you get it right at the beginning, because if you're only just two degrees off and you hit that ball, your ball's going to end up somewhere different and you're going to spend an hour looking for it. Right? And then you guys made fun because you thought he was talking about your golf game. He wasn't.

Ryan:

I go golf and hang out with my friends in the woods. Let's be honest here.

Patricia:

Hey man, I use the golf course to go walking. I don't know if you saw the birding channel. Do you see the geese on the birding channel?

Ryan:

I did see that. I don't miss... For those of you who have no idea what we're talking about. We have a group of bird enthusiasts at Zappi. I happen to be one of them. I love birds. And we have a Slack channel called Never Not Birding, which was founded by the great Charles Flanagan on our marketing team. It's a wonderful, wonderful Slack channel.

Patricia:

It's fantastic. Well, anyway, that's where I put the geese going to lunch. A couple more learnings from stakeholders. Stakeholders have a lot to teach us. Leverage free stuff. The ratings, the social listening, the consumer affairs, that it's all free and we don't use it because sometimes the best insights comes from the mouth of babes. The mouth of our consumers. It's all free. Let's leverage that. And speaking of adjacencies, sometimes we need to look at adjacent categories to get insights for our category, know where to grow next. And the last learning that he got from his stakeholders that he shared with us is combining qualitative ad hoc and big data is where you get the most rich stories. I thought, man after my own heart. Absolutely, absolutely.

Ryan:

For sure.

Patricia:

Yep. Number five. What is his learning on inspiration? Where does he go for inspiration?

Oh, you and he talked about the Insights Alliance. I love the Insights Alliance. He talked about it being inspiration for him because of shared challenges and common goals. At the end of what you were talking about, it's a group of very high end professionals who have shared challenges and common goals. So to all of those listening, if you find a group that has those two elements, that's what's going to help you and get inspired, it's going to help you share the load. It's going to help you ask questions, right? Because networking, the network aspect, that's what's going to get you inspired, right? It's super important to talk to friends, peers, coworkers. That's what gives you inspiration. Then he talked about conferences, podcasts, webinars. He said, 90% of the stuff, don't get me wrong. 90% of the stuff I've heard, I know, but it's worth that 10%, that golden nugget of 10%.

And then he blew my mind away again. He said, "and then the moment you learn that 10%, share it. Share it, share it, share it, share it with everybody you think it’s going to help, is going to need it." Because the inspiration doesn't only come from the learning, what you learn, it comes from the sharing because in the sharing, the things become more, because one plus one equals 10. So you have to share in order to complete. Going back to golf, he didn't say this, but you know how you finish the swing and that's really important in getting the ball to go where you need to go? You can tell I'm not a golfer, right? This is what I saw as the follow-up, the-

Ryan:

Follow through, yes.

Patricia:

... finishing of the swing because if you don't... Follow through, thank you. If you don't follow through by sharing what you learned, what good is that in a drawer? It's like, duh. So I really like that.

You asked him "Top 10 attributes, what he's learned about insights professionals, learning about HR, when he looks for people." He said "Top three?" And then you said "You can do four." So he did, of course, four. Number one, curiosity and the ability to be inspired. He wants people who are passionate, curious, want to know. Number two, courage, bravery, unafraid, unapologetic, people who are not hiding behind the data. Love that. Number three, be the voice. Story tell, I want to hear you. I don't want you being quiet over there. And number four, which I'm so glad you let him have a fourth because this one was golden. The business acumen to translate or transform data from data to insights to action. So that you can make decisions to better drive growth. That fourth one, I'm so glad you let him have it. That was smart.

Right? You asked him what he was going to do for the future. How he's going to apply all that learning for his future. He said he was really excited about learning all about the different units and the geographies, because he was only in one region when he got to Colgate and different ones. But now he has to take a... I can just imagine his brain being a chart matrix with all the categories and all the regions and all the different cells. And then he has to weigh which problems and which are priorities. And he's excited about that, right? He wants to further drive people centricity at Colgate. And I think that's fantastic because he wants to be more connected. And that's what he's going to focus on. He also wants to focus on transforming the data into insights and action.

He's going to put his money where his mouth is, and he's going to do that by thinking about the sources and thinking further ahead. And he wants to start tying sources together so that the tools that he's giving to his teams are tools that help learn from each other, not just one offs or not silos. And he went back to a way that you learned by saying was systems not silos. So those are his areas of focus for his new job, those four areas. Those were amazing. Weren't they?

Ryan:

They were. They really were. Christian's a man, I'm so happy that he joined us. And thank you as always, for distilling. So our next steps-

Patricia:

Before I let you go, do you want the bonus?

Ryan:

Oh, I thought... My bad Patricia, of course I want the bonus. Bonus content, baby.

Patricia:

Bonus content from Christian. I'm not going to pronounce his last name, but he doesn't say mine so it's okay.

Ryan:

Niederauer. I think I got it right.

Patricia:

Niederauer. I'm sure you did. He talked about global versus local versus regional. And so you asked him in different occasions about that. And so I pulled from the whole entire conversation and I summarized it into 10 things that he kind of taught us about global versus local. Number one, global is more detached from the markets so they're attached from actual business decisions. And you have to understand that. You have to quickly realize that being a good researcher, number two, is no longer a success factor. What is that book? Who Moved My Cheese? I think something like that. What got you here is not going to get you there. But there's a moving of the cheese. You know it, Kelsey, don't you? You're nodding. There's a moving of the cheese book. I'll find it, and we can link it to the podcast, but-

Ryan:

All right.

Patricia:

It's all about what success competencies got you to where you are, are probably not the same ones that are going to get you to the next step. So he's talking about that. And that's when he also references, let it go. So you can learn something else. Number three, global has a way of creating solutions that don't have a problem. You hopped on that one right away. And so he is like, walk away from that, right? Number four, in order to avoid that, think holistically, find out how you can help. Unify problems, so you can know different people and know their problems. And in order to do that, you have to broaden your scope. Make that switch in your mind, which is what he's looking forward to in his new job. So that everything has scalability. No matter what you're doing, is this scalable?

Who else has that? He referenced Pepsi having local insights and global tools. That was really cool. He gave them credit where credit was due. And he's like, that's what he's looking for, for himself, right? He's like, "Don't look for consensus ever, because you're never going to make everybody happy." He talked about building a strong network and establishing connections that will help build trust because most of the time, they don't trust each other, which is why local, global and regional don't get along because they don't trust the others do their job. Right? And then he wrapped it up. And the thing that I'm going to leave everybody with is learn to let go. If you want to free yourself for new things to grow, to get bigger, to get stronger, to get smarter, let go of what you already have. Teach somebody else how to do it. Delegate, empower, whatever you need to do. Upward, sideways, whatever. Ask for help, divide and conquer. But you have to trust each other to deliver because if not, you're never going to grow. So let it go guys.

Ryan:

Let it go. I don't want to watch Frozen again, but it reminds me of it. I have three kids. I've watched Frozen with zero exaggeration 300 times. I could probably recite every word of that movie. I'm not going to do that to you folks, but it's such an important lesson and I'm glad we got the bonus content because it was fire. Insert fire emoji here 🔥

So we got lot of heat coming for the rest of the season. Honestly, I'm super excited. We've got Natalia Lumpkin. We have Michelle Gansle coming up. We have Marie, who heads insights at ABInBev coming up. We have our very own founder and CEO, Steve Phillips, who's going to talk to us about why creators are the future. I'm very excited for the rest of season four. So tune in. We'll be back in a few weeks. Thanks ladies. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll talk to you soon.