Speak For Smiles - Harish Manwani

Reproduced from a memorable Interview of Mr. Harish Manwani - Non Executive Chairman - Hindustan Unilever Limited, conducted by Ms. Shireen Bhan, CNBC TV18 for “Speak For Smiles”, a series of interactions with eminent personalities of India Inc. at Welingkar Institute of Management Development & Research in Mumbai. The guests choose to donate the proceeds of the function to their chosen cause for charity via Toofles Foundation.

Some of the insights shared by Mr. Harish Manwani during his initial interaction with Ms. Shireen Bhan – The statements would be in first person as delivered by him:

Q – Why marketing as a focus since you graduated?

A – Imperfection to the science of marketing is very exciting. Marketing is an externally oriented function. You cannot be taught marketing, you have to behave marketing. It deals with the connect with people and that’s what excites me the most.

Q – Lessons in marketing?

A – Last Mile Execution. What we learn in B Schools help us reach the last mile of the task, but beyond that, how we execute and finish the task is something which has tremendous learning. The last mile is the most difficult to finish, but it has the most learning. Most of my learning has been reverse engineered from what I learnt in the last mile.

Q – 3 most pivotal moments in your life?

A – First was when I became a father. It gave me a balance in life. It made me a more empathetic & kind manager.

Second was the time when I was promoted as the Senior Branch Manager. HUL for the first time hosted an All India Sales Conference. It was a big occasion, farewell to one of our chairman. All the branches had a target of closing out 100 thousand tones in sales. All the branches met that target except for mine. We had the option of last minute hushing up and meeting the target before we went for the conference, but I decided against it. There was a sense of disappointment in our people, but also a tremendous sense of pride, that we walked the talk. We were true to ourselves. It is very important for us to be true to ourselves and lead the way.

Third was when I left India to work overseas. I realised that we in India, sometimes, tend to become too inward looking. We need to be more open, understand different cultures, and learn different trends to understand what ticks.  

Q – According to you, what went wrong during the global recession?

A – To understand this, we must first understand the fundamental purpose of business. The fundamental purpose of business is to meet stakeholder needs. Leaders have off late been focusing only on the hardware of business, whereas the software of business is more important. The most important asset of an organization is its reputation. The objective should be not only to achieve growth at any cost, but delivering sustainable responsible growth. We must understand that life is not about quarters, it is about creating a legacy. Today, I sign my own report card!!

Q – Nowadays we see youngsters switching jobs every 3-5 years for career progression, you have been with the same company for more than 3 decades, what is your view on this current trend?

A – We must learn to evaluate our careers not on the basis of the jobs but on the basis of the roles we perform. I have had the opportunity of performing multiple roles within one organization. We must learn to understand the challenges. Now the times have changed. Today, I’m not going to reward you for your loyalty to the organisation. 30 years with an organisation and not having contributed enough is not tolerable anymore. I will reward you for commitment. Energy of our people, so today no-one is looking for loyalty, but we are looking for commitment. Same company can offer you varied challenges and that’s exciting. We must learn to evaluate our careers in terms of challenges. If you don’t feel challenged in the company, its not worth staying on.

Q – What is your source of intrinsic motivation?

A – Challenges around people give me a kick. The idea of surrounding yourself with people who are bigger than you is tremendous. Challenge around people by raising the game. There are two kinds of people – who create the vision. One who tom – tom it, show it in their annual reports and forget about it. The other actually live and behave their vision. Management by objective is now gone, we have to manage by vision. And vision should not be a target; it is a change in behaviours.

Q – Recently you have said that HUL is rejuvenating itself, does that mean that there was a sense of complacency that had crept in earlier?

A – All great endeavors and enterprises have to be rejuvenated, reinvent themselves. Market leadership is important but what is more important is thought leadership. Thought leadership means, people listen to what you have to say. We are on a deep pursuit to be thought leaders in all the categories we operate in. Great organizations are about doing something better, continued incremental growth. 700 million people use our brands daily. “Doing well by doing good” is our mantra. Just in the last quarter the amount of innovation coming from the HUL stable is phenomenal. We relaunched Rin, Lifebuoy, we have reduced cycle time, product to market time across the board. Our objective is to make our brands relevant to our consumers.

Q – As per report released by AC Nielsen your market shares have been falling across categories to your competitors like P&G, ITC etc what’s your take on that?

A – We (HUL) are market leaders in most of the categories we operate in. Most important thing in India for us is not market share, it is market development. We want to expand the market. Eg: Our current market share is 55%, even if we increase it by 1-2% its nothing great, but if we are able to expand the market by say 5% that’s the real win! Our biggest competition is non – consumption. We want people to consume.

Q – You have aimed at trebling your growth in 2 years, is this realistic?

A – It is certainly realistic and I’m confident it will be achieved, we are on course. We wanted to set ourselves the compelling growth path. Get people energized and working towards a goal. Create distribution capabilities, create energy, create behaviours and technologies. Today HUL owns some great proprietary technologies which will help us reach our consumers better. Eg: Wal Mart uses technologies which enable them to track the flow of their goods in each and every store across the board, we are doing something similar. There are exciting times full of opportunity ahead of us.

You always have a choice; you either look into the rearview mirror, or look ahead through the wind shield. We initiated programs like operation “Bushfire” as it would energize all our employees to connect with the consumers.

Q –What are your views on Innovation?

A – We need innovation, but bigger and bolder innovation. Its about juicing the innovation. Getting the most out of our innovations. For Eg: Lifebuoy is not just soap. It saves more lives than an entire portfolio of pharmaceuticals. 50% children get saved from diseases just due to handwashing. For us, every brand is a business by itself. It stands for something.

Q – Do you plan to get into some new categories like biscuits?

A - We have existing categories which have huge opportunities. The level of opportunity within our current portfolio is massive. For Eg: we haven’t yet scratched the surface in our foods & tea categories. The tea consumers the world over are now moving to tea bags. We understand that India is different, but sooner or later, this is bound to happen here as well. We must think local and act global. We must think of the local problems which our consumers are facing and then make all the efforts of making a global quality solution available to our consumer.