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well good morning everybody or good evening wherever you may be I'm Mike you
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see in my monthly hero the Wharton School welcome to our series on the impact of the epidemic and all that else
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is going on on leadership especially in the private sector but not limited to it
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we have a special guest today we're going to be speaking with the chief executive of Amway Melin Pat and we're
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going to engage in a dialogue maybe for 50 minutes on my part with them and then
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we'll open it up to your questions the agenda here is to think about leadership
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when it really matters and we have a person who has been leading a company when it really does matter as chief
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executive of Amway Melin pant has been responsible for an enterprise that brings them between eight and nine
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billion dollars a year or selling all over the worlds in more than a hundred countries some 16,000 employees and
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about a million people who work with the company in selling its many products so
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with that little mu welcome you to the program thank you Mike it's a it's a
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pleasure and a privilege to be with you and having this discussion well great to
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have you here and I'm going to begin a little bit more personally and then we'll bring it into the the current
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challenges that you have been facing with the the shutdown the the events in the wake of the well several movements
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including black lives that matter but let me begin the line' with a more personal question just to get us going
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on your own career i know you grew up in the foothills of the himalayas in india
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you work for Unilever the great consumer products a company that sells all over the world you worked as a chief
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executive president for pizza hut at Yum Brands and just a question to get us going what brought you in thinking very
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personally here to an interest in managing a private sector company whether it's Unilever or Amway now
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well Mike um no thanks thanks for that question and as I as I reflect on all the journey frankly this was this was
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not part of any plan you know as you said I grew up in the foothills of the Himalayas and as we were going up on
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hindsight we didn't feel it at that time or on hindsight we had modest material
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means we didn't have a conditioning at home I remember we got a television when
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I was in my early teens my parents you know namaste they encouraged us to do the right thing
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you know study hard work hard and and life felt kind of figured itself out and that was the approach in I went through
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my my schooling and my education in India I was quite fortunate to be able to join Unilever in India which was
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almost like my second MBA because I joined unity when I went through his training program Mike which you are well
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familiar with across functions and categories including spending eight weeks living in a village in India as a
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part of the training program without water running water electricity just gonna understand the heart and soul of
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India after you all that I thought I'll get a role in in in perhaps strategy or
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marketing or one of the brands like you know dodgeball or or fun silk or or axe or or one of the you know consumer
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brands but you know I I moved to a business unit that made leather shoes or exports now don't ask me why you really
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were India anglo-dutch multinational big shoes for exports but I went to that business unit I said okay no problem you
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know I've never been outside of India perhaps I'll get a chance to go and meet
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customers in London or New York City and I still remember my journal my just said
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no young man you've got to start with a cold face which is processing and buying
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of leather I spent the first two years of my career after my graduate might even graduate studies in
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tanneries and this is tanneries in India good ears back that fall smell is still
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in my in my nostrils but you know I have a great great career in Unilever and and
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then I was fortunate to to have a chance to join young the last 1012 years my family arrived you've lived in over
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three continents and five countries if you were living in German South Africa and in 2007-2008 we moved to Delhi from
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Delhi we moved to Bangkok from Bangkok to Shanghai a fish and I to Dallas and now we live in Grand Rapids Michigan so
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it's been quite a journey and not something that I would have imagined that I would have a chance to live
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through now learn the question about that journey you began as you said living in a village it's a very famous
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feature of being part of the Unilever where you spend time with your ultimate customers village India in the case of
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what was then called Hindustan lever in India as you went from that person young
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at the time as you began the responsibilities you now bear for everything from finance and accounting
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and operations and human resources and working with your owners what worthy or what was I'll make it singular the most
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formative experience along the way that gave you the capacity to serve is what we sometimes in a kind of boring phrase
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referred to as a general manager where you really have to think about everything woman well I don't think
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there was one particular moment I think I would I would point out a couple of learnings Mike if that's okay well I
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think just oh just a training in Unilever India and the way the career was was kind of planned and and the
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opportunities opened up was by its nature very broad it was across functions and then of course there were
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opportunities to work both in customer management and and and and and general management sales general management on
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one side and and brand marketing on the other cetera took me in good stead in my initial
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foundationally us but they were then other other instances where one learnt it I guess all the job my first role as
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managing director of a country was with yum in Thailand and I I moved there it was a reasonable-sized business we had
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10,000 employees in Thailand and and the business had been it been struggling and
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I went there of course with this there's a determination to turn around the business and and to put all the
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strategies in place and and and and you to build something that would last beyond me but my biggest learning from
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my my time in Thailand and and my time as the managing director my first role was not so much on on strategy on an
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intellect was actually on leading with heart and and that's one stand especially working in Thailand
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everything is about the heart the Thais have a word for it or joy and it's all
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joy and and my unity were training though it was fantastic having fully prepared me for this aspect of leading a
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large business with a lot set of employees and and since then I've personally been on journey to lead with
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love and humility instead of pride and fear which is which is so human to do thank you in times of
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Olinda a famous book in my field is leading from the heart same point we got a lead
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with the head of course but we don't forget the heart I've got a question
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then about your transition from serving as president of Pizza Hut over to Amway and again a private enterprise or
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private company a business enterprise but in some respects the two could not be more different in how they operated
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what was your biggest learning terrain as you came into my something you didn't know about that you really
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had to master and she became chief executive a fam way which is not so long ago at this point bike you know quite
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quite frankly till two years back or so I I I didn't even know I could even you
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know point out to Grand Rapids and on the map where we now live with a family so yes this was this was a very this was
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already new for us how they as I came into Amway I was very very clear that my first hundred days were all about listen
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and long ninety percent of our revenues are outside of United States in Japan Korea China which is a largest market
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Taiwan Thailand Malaysia India Europe Russia Latin American of course here in the US I spend an immense amount of time
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being out in the Lord and meeting our entrepreneurs who are really the soul and the heart of a business and my my
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main learning while I learned from everyone I even came to a program that you and Peter had organized
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just before I formally took over the CNO CEO again at the part of my listen and learn but my biggest learnings and the
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most valuable earnings were from the entrepreneurs or my business owners and I still remember this was within my
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first hundred days in March last year and I was in Tokyo and one of our entrepreneurs makiko's on he insisted
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she wanted to meet me and and and you know the kind of the carriage she gave me as she said we'd all cook together it
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will cook and cook and you know Indian meal with basmati rice and Thunder eat chicken and choke you I said alright
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let's do it and she then shared with me how she is building a business going
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forward around the cooking a healthy cooking community on Instagram and she had hit 30,000 followers on Instagram
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and I looked at I said oh my god this is the future an entrepreneurial spirit which
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is the core of Amway along with us being a social idea around relationships not put together in the online world this is
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the future and this is social commerce that's where we put together our what is
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now our ten-year plan which we can do an apparently health family owned company which is our journey to unleash
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entrepreneurship with social commerce but that idea Amen listening to an entrepreneur until
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kill that's great bill in about two minutes we're going to open it up but
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like people viewing this to send their questions than now we'll go through a
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few of those as they come in here's my final question to you the last now almost three months have been quite
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extraordinary in everybody's lives whether it's Thailand or China or the US
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of A with Corona via the corona virus the black lives matter movement v2 is in the background as well and just a final
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question to you as you have managed through the last couple of months what has been different from the way you
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would have led the company prior to about March 15th well I guess in some ways everything has been different but
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here's what we realized early on January 23rd to be to be to be exact because
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that's when you know from a China team we knew you know there was a pandemic
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and the long terms were coming we we prioritized the safety of or colleagues or anything else if you've got 16,000
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police across the world we've got organic farms you know thousands of acres 6,000 acres of
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organic farms in three countries have you got manufacturing locations in Guangzhou Madurai Buena Park near La and
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here in in Ada Michigan and we said the most important thing is you're going to do everything to keep
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each other safe once we have that in place every other challenge that came out really it you know supply chain or
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figuring out how to work from home and and all the other stuff you know it kind of started itself out my biggest
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learning through the last now almost five months and all three months working from home has been that during this
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pandemic the best of em way has been unleashed Mike you know this may this may be this was surprised it surely
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surprised me we did an employee engagement survey bang in the middle of the pandemic almost 10,000 of our
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employees responded a you know we usually never get a response that high from an employee engagement survey and
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ninety-one percent of our colleagues across the world said they were highly engaged for that way and ninety four
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percent said they were proud of working in our way your numbers that we've never
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had in the past so this pandemic has been an opportunity you go through the decades of culture that's been built in
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our way you know decades of nurturing of our purpose helping people live better healthier life all that has come to the
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fore during these times and and that's been my most fascinating learning and
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you know our challenge and my personal challenge is how does one now kind of sustain this as we move to beyond
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pandemic which which we will do it cross the wall and the number of markets have
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already moved on to the new normal yeah well then this has been great I'm gonna
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bring in now Steve googly me who is the editor for knowledge of work through the
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platform we are on here and Steve Melinda is going to offer a couple questions from those who are alive with
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us right now so deep get us going I'm a Lind we have a number of good questions
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from our audience and we'll try to get through as many of them as we can well the first one is a follow-up from
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what you were just talking thing about you talk about the tremendous opportunity that that the
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crisis has given giving you and the company what would you say is the biggest challenge you face during this
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crisis and sort of how do you work to overcome that your the biggest challenge we face in addition to keeping our all
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our colleagues things as being was essentially a supply chain challenge of of making sure that you know you are our
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core portfolio Steve is he doing nutrition and health and hygiene you know long-term immunity long-term
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products and these the demand for some of these products is fight and to ensure that you know I cross the world you know
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managing supply disruptions city lockdowns changing regulations you know obviously keeping our manufacturing
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locations open that was that was the other big challenge and I think the third challenge for all of us was just a
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personal challenge how do we sustain our our our mental stamina two weeks of uncertainty around friends and families
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and communities you know what personal habits do each of us inculcate so that we can we can get
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through this in a way in which you know it gives us an opportunity to be better and is able to support our our own
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families and our own friends and our own communities you know one of the things we realized very early in the in the in
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the pandemic here in West Michigan is I got a call from the CEO of one of the largest hospital networks here thank Mel
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and do you all make hand sanitizers this was middle of March I said no we don't
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and then I checked with my team and they said yeah we don't but you know what
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maybe we can figure it out and in five days from that call we had made and sanitizers got all the approvals and
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then shipped it to to hospital networks across ER across the West Michigan and you know
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it's not something that we may or may not do it for commercial but it's it's
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instances like that of our teams coming together to solve problems during this crisis which is being a true
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blessing okay what changes a little more nuts and bolts what changes in business
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approach are your reps in the field asking for from Amway as a result of the pandemic are there are they asking for
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different ways to engage with customers for example that's correct our one million entrepreneurs across the
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world they've committed to two new ways of doing business essentially their mantra is that online is the new offline
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so they're building their business on social we have partnerships with social
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networks we have a partnership with $0.10 on the v-- chat platform in China so we've activated that for our for our
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angry business owners entrepreneurs to reach customers and do social selling to customers we've just done a similar
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partnership with Kakao KakaoTalk in in Korea so we are partnering with social platforms to offer our entrepreneurs the
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ability to connect with customers and of course we are investing in our own own abilities to have our easy frictionless
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shopping for abs and their customers right right and speaking I mean you do have a very distributed workforce how do
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you you talk about leading from the heart how does how does a company with such a distributed workforce sort of
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reinforced corporate values all the way down the chain what are they what are the challenges there and how do you go
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about doing that I think that still remains a challenge Steve we've I think what we've jumped into is the reservoir
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of of a culture and goodwill that has been built over the years you know we have a family family company and our
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values and and in some sense of course is not something that's been written by
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you know executives of consultants and put some piece of it's something that's been a part of the
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one of the business for 60 years I think that's come up come in good stead for us
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and he's kind of harness that and and empowered people the other thing what's
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happened is his management it's got democratized through this process you know every person on on a Microsoft team
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the resume call has an equal voice and in some sense because controlling compliance is more difficult to do than
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intellectual empowering those especially what in the markets and those who are closest to around their business owners
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and to do the right thing we have three cultural principles Steve lift yourself love to learn and lead from the heart
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and and while these cultural principles were always good on a piece of paper in some sense during this pandemic you know
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they've shown and people have got an opportunity to walk the talk on it right
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right just just to wrap things up because you have time for one more question what is the single most
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important leadership quality that you think is needed in this time and maybe in the near future well I'm not sure if
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there is one single quality but something that I've always you know Steve close to is is a you know I'm very
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fond of reading Bill Gates you know twice in her kind of recommendation of books and this was maybe six or seven
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years back he had a recommendation on Carol Dweck's mindset of growth mindset
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and and it's something that you know I personally believe for me I'm a work in
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progress I continue to learn every day and I've got to remind myself to be in a
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growth mindset and not to be in a fixed mindset and that's something which you
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know our founders and I'm very rich and Jay were pioneers and and in number itself you know we encourage everyone to
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have a founders growth mindset I say that perhaps is the most important quality that I personally value and the
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other one is is lead from the heart for all of us you times especially during kinds of stress
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and and kind of conflict that are taking place now we can't go into pride or fear
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and I think we've got to remind ourselves and take help from each other to continue to be on a journey to lead
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with love and humility ah thank you so much for coming yeah Steve thank you M'Lynn thank you I'm gonna remind our
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viewers and listeners to tune in a week from now we're going to have Sidney Finkelstein who's on the faculty of the
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Tuck School the business school at Dartmouth he's the author listen to this title everybody of why smart executives
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fail I think we all want to learn something about that he's obviously thought a lot about the
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current circumstance as well and Melinda gave you the heads up before we got going here that we practice a
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after-action review here at the end I'm gonna offer a couple points I've been
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taking notes that came from our discussion that I think well without question transcend the discussion and I
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hope will prove useful for people who've been viewing and listening to this particular cast here and then if you
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wouldn't mind we'll close with a couple of your own final takeaway points if I
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can put it that way so here are my three that will turn to you then then we'll
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hear from you and then thank you for being with us number one you just said it a few
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minutes ago but don't forget to lead with the heart along with the head but we're dealing with people not otama tons
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or robots they have art and it's vital for leading at any level maybe especially from the very top number two
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I like the phrase listen and learn we learned so much if we're in touch with
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the entrepreneurs or work with us from the cups of customers who buy from us and it's amazing if you've got a good
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ear which you can acquire and bring in number three relevant to especially the last several months on employee safety
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is everything and if we do that well they will never forget that their loyalty will be there for years to come
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then what would you add a couple final points and then we're gonna close my youth you've summarized it so well I
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would just just just add a couple of ones I'm reminded of a one of your books
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that I read before I took on this role which is why why long-term strategy is is the best short-term strategy and I
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think during times like this if you just got to remind ourselves of that of that
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mantra Mike which you had you're very well captured in a book that you wrote I
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think the next other thing which I'll just just just mention is that I I personally consider myself to continue
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to be working progress and otherwise growing up in India into my teenage years my father used to encourage me you
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listen to BBC radio to learn English which is not my first language or to read the morning newspaper which used to
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be the Times of India and I frankly then to either of them well but that stayed with me in my back of my hair and and
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today you know I read five to seven on newspapers online you know every day I I can't get through to my weekend without
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reading the the Friday's issue of The Economist actually Thursday evening in
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the US and you know I read as many books as I can and you know I'm little my wife
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believes that makes me a very boring person but I just love to learn and and this conversation today has been another
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opportunity for me to do that so thank you Mike and and thank you Steve all right bill and thank you very much you
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really appreciate your taking the time to join us today as is an increasingly widespread custom
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even though we're not in the same room together I'm going to ask everybody
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we've got a lot of people live with this and then others will look back at this
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once we put it out there in an asynchronous way I'd like everybody to join me you're going to see me and not
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everybody else but I can hear the applause the Melinda thank you very much for joining us and we do all right there
00:26:39
Thank You chef thank you bye but join us in one week we'll be back thank you very much
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you