“The Vulnerable Leader”

Marc Pritchard is the CMO of Procter & Gamble -- the largest advertiser in the world. Over 4 billion people buy P&G brands which means the choices the company makes have staggering human, as well as business, implications.

Marc’s leadership journey has brought him to a position of enormous influence. As you’ll hear, that journey has been marked by his willingness to look at himself honestly. To listen to other people’s observations about his leadership, and to consistently raise his own expectations of himself.

Takeaway

Be useful to others so you can amplify your impact through others.

"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT

Episode 105: "The Vulnerable Leader" - Marc Pritchard

Hi. I’m Charles Day. And this is ‘Fearless Creative Leadership’ . Conversations with the world’s most original and inspiring business leaders about what makes them successful - from the pragmatic to the personal.

Along the way, I hope to help you maximize your own leadership impact and your ability to unlock the most powerful business forces in the world - creativity and innovation.

Each week, you’ll hear from a leader who is disrupting the status quo.

Today’s guest is Marc Pritchard.

Marc is the CMO of Procter & Gamble -- the largest advertiser in the world. Over 4 billion people buy P&G brands which means the choices the company makes have staggering human, as well as business, implications.

This episode is called, “The Vulnerable Leader”.

“I had to think long and hard as to whether that was really worth it. And I decided it was worth it because leaders can express their vulnerabilities to make it okay to create conversation, create emotional safety, then that's going to ultimately create the kind of environment that we want.”

After Marc and I had finished our interview he asked me why I’d started Fearless. My answer surprised him and so I thought I’d share it with you.

I explained that in my work, I’ve learned that exceptional leaders share three traits.

They’re very clear about the difference they want to make. They recognize and use their strengths - and they’re not afraid of their weaknesses.

Which makes them more focused, more confident and more honest.

But, even the most exceptional leaders take many years to reach this level of self-awareness.

And, as I explained to Marc, my purpose in my work is to help leaders get there earlier in their careers. So they have more time to maximize their impact. And more time to make a bigger difference.

This podcast allows me to help listeners understand that fear is part of everyone’s leadership journey. Even the most accomplished and acclaimed.

You might suffer from imposter syndrome or self-doubt. You might have fallen into the habit of focusing on your weaknesses or ignoring your strengths. You might not want to be at the center of attention, and step back at times when you should step forward.

You might, as in Marc’s case, have developed a personal narrative that is incomplete.

If you experience any of these, you are not alone.

What separates the unforgettable leaders from the forgettable ones is their willingness to be open to new possibilities about themselves. And their ability to use those insights to raise their own expectations of what they’re capable of.

Marc’s willingness to look at himself honestly is the foundation on which his leadership is built. His vulnerability to admit what he has seen has allowed him to unlock the talents of others. And has helped him raise his own expectations for himself.

This podcast is also raising its own expectations of itself. And over the weeks and months ahead, my hope is that these conversations and the insights they provide will help you realize what you are capable of. And help you become that leader sooner.

Here’s Marc Pritchard.

Charles:

Marc, welcome to Fearless. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Marc Pritchard:

No, it's a privilege to be here.

Charles:

When did creativity first show up in your life? When are you first conscious that creativity was a thing?

Marc Pritchard:

When I was a kid. I loved to draw and make things. So there's something about-

Charles:

What kind of things?

Marc Pritchard:

This is bizarre, I haven't talked about this in about 50 years. I used to actually make toothpick houses.

Charles:

Did you really?

Marc Pritchard:

And toothpick structures. And would just build things that way; loved building things all the time. And it was just part of... from the very early days, just a creative outlet for me.

Charles:

Was creativity part of your education?

Marc Pritchard:

Not really, I think that I got a very standard education. When I got into college at Indiana University, I went into business and finance. I didn't really go into the business.... I was interested though, in journalism. In fact, I loved to write and wrote a lot of stories when I was younger. I loved to creatively pour out my thinking in writing.

When I decided to go to college, my dad asked me, “What do you want to major in?” I said, “I think journalism.” Daddy said, “Mmm, nope. You're not going to make any money in journalism. You need to go into business.” So I went into business, but over time gravitated toward the creative part of business, which ended up... I started off in finance at P&G, and it was fantastic because it's a great disciplined way of thinking. There's a lot greater creativity in finance than people might realize because it's all about strategy, it's about winning. It's not just about numbers. Then moved into the marketing world where I could apply the discipline and thinking that comes from that discipline, in finance, to then the creative side of things.

Charles:

Did you always want to lead? Did you want to be a leader?

Marc Pritchard:

Yeah, I think that was just a little bit part of my DNA. In my upbringing, for whatever reason, my dad, maybe because I was the first born, and mom expected me to be a leader and expecting me to take care of my brother and sister. And naturally imbued in me an expectation of living up to my potential, and part of that, of being a leader.

In sports and in school, I always did some form of leadership. I was the quarterback of the football team. This is when I was very younger in a little league, because as I got older, I was not big enough to play football. But I was the sixth grade class president, and I was the senior class president in high school. And so always engaged in lean leadership activity.

Charles:

What do you think drew people to you from a leadership standpoint, even back then? I mean, that sounds like a pretty instinctive, natural presentation for you.

Marc Pritchard:

Yeah, I think part of that was that I was always more focused on helping other people and engaging other people and being useful to other people. And I never really was part of the cliques. I always kind of gravitated among everyone as opposed to being part of one specific group. I just, naturally, treated every human being with respect and dignity. And so I think people saw that.

I've said this many times before, in my view, the purpose of my life is to be useful. And I ask for the strength every day to be useful to others. In whatever engagement I have, I try to think about that. And that's been probably one of the most... I don't think I was as conscious of that when I was younger, but I became more conscious of that, particularly in this role. And I think that's been a very helpful flip. Because the more you think of others, the less you think of yourself, the better things are then, because people then want to work with you. You can unleash so much more.

One of the greatest pieces of advice I was ever given was, “You need to amplify your effectiveness through others.” Yes, you may be able to do that better than others, but that is limiting. You need to amplify your effectiveness. I literally gave that advice to somebody yesterday.

Charles:

Where did you get that advice from?

Marc Pritchard:

I got that advice from Dan Edelstein, who was one of my most cherished friends, who unfortunately passed away over a decade ago. But as I was running, that time, the cosmetics business, he and I were working together on really trying to turn that business around. And he said, “You need to do this. And it'll make you better. People will naturally gravitate toward you, and they see you as a nice guy. And that's a good thing. But what you need to do is you need to flip that, and rather than do it yourself, you need to unleash others to do that; to do more work. And that will absolutely amplify your effectiveness and everybody will be better off.”

Charles:

Yeah, it's very powerful, actually. I find that when I'm struggling, if I say to myself, “Just have the most impact you can have today. Just help other people as much as you can today.” It's amazing, to your point, how much that just lifts you out of yourself, doesn't it? It gives you a different energy.

Marc Pritchard:

It really pays it forward too.

Charles:

It really does.

Marc Pritchard:

It lifts all boats. There's something that I just feel very strongly about, especially within our own company business model. We're the market leaders, so our business strategy is ‘innovate and be creative in order to build the market'. And when you do that, all boats rise. When all boats rise, then competition is less likely to attack you with price cuts and promotion cuts.

If everybody's trying to innovate and make the lives of the consumers better that we serve, then the market grows and everybody has some level of growth. And the better outcome is the people that you serve. The same thing comes in life and in leadership, is that when you're focused on, what can we do to be useful? What can I do to be useful to you in order to increase the impact, not only with you, but with everyone else? All boats rise. That's where innovation and creativity flourishes.

Charles:

Absolutely right. You said, paraphrasing to get this quote right, but you said you look for the strength everyday to have as big an impact. What does that look like? What is that about for you? Is that a spiritual process? Is that looking internally?

Marc Pritchard:

That in and of itself is a spiritual process. And I firmly believe in every individual looking at what is the god of their understanding. And again, there's a lot of paths up the mountain. And so, that really is what that's about; is that it's asking for the strength to be useful, and drawing from that energy.

Charles:

So that ambition, from a leadership standpoint, to make as big a difference as possible is palpable, and it's powerful. What gets in the way of that day-to-day? What do you have to overcome on a day-to-day basis?

Marc Pritchard:

Well, I think the nature of business and humanity is you have to really just cut through and get really, really clear on what is the problem to be solved? What is the job to be done? And then with that, get clarity on then what is the brief as to how we're going to accomplish that? And that's it. There's so much noise in the system.

Something we do in our company is... we're very focused on this. Part of this comes from the portfolio products we have where we've really made a choice. These are daily use products that solve problems for people every day. And they are problems like hair problems and skin problems and oral care and grooming and all that kind of problem, but they're problems, and they're meaningful to people. So our job is to figure out what are the problems and how do we solve them. And we do that.

The application of that to everything then can be very useful. Because then you can figure out, “Okay, well, what is the problem to be solved?” And I just came from a meeting where we were talking about the future of data, and privacy and databases, and how we're going to market in a new world based on what we're trying to do, which is to reinvent brand-building through mass reach with one-to-one precision.

What we got down to is, “What is the consumer problem that we're trying to solve to make their lives better from a benefit standpoint? Not, “How much data can we acquire?” “What can we do to figure out how we can make their lives better?” And then that's what we then need to ask them, “What is the information that is necessary to get there?” It was just a complete flip in terms of what you do.

And that's what tends to happen, in terms of why is it hard? Why is it hard? Because we just instinctively think about, “What do I want? What do we want? What does our company want, what does our brand want?” We've got to think about, “No, no, what about the people we're serving? What do they want?” We do that, that helps.

Charles:

Jeff Bezos, famously... maybe apocryphally, I don't know, was said to have put an empty chair in every room to represent the consumer, to remind the audience that that's the person to... exactly the point you're making. That that's the person we need to be thinking about. To your point, people get distracted by all the internal stuff. But are there other ways to help the group remember it's not about us, and in fact, it's about them?

Marc Pritchard:

Yeah, that's why the role of the leader is very, very important; building a culture of service, building a culture of serving whoever your consumer or customer may be. The leader has to constantly remind people, “This is what this is about.” One of the things that we have talked about is reinventing advertising. And that leads to a lot of, “Okay, well, what does that look like?” I mean, we've said it before. We can imagine a world without ads as we know them today. Well, why? Because too many people say ads are annoying, and they're annoying because they're not useful, or they're not interesting. Or they don't tell me why whatever you're offering is better. Or it's just interruptive, or I can see the same ad over and over again.

Looking at it from that perspective has helped people flip around and say, “Okay, well, now I understand what we're trying to accomplish. And that then unleashes a totally new set of solutions that make things better. Tide has come up with some amazing ways of engaging people. It's a Tide ad, the Tide Stain and the Superbowl, the Bradshaw Stain. Now the Sunday Night Football which is... “Laundry night is not on Sundays.” It's everything. It's just really, really entertaining ways of keeping that brand in front, totally reinventing the way advertising looks like. But it comes out is that these are ads people look forward to.

Charles:

Yeah. And adds to the quality of their life, in fact. I want to just quote you correctly. You said at one point, “I want to use whatever influence I have to promote equality and make the world a better place.” When did you first realize that you had real influence? I mean, that's a moment for a lot of leaders. A lot of people get promoted into leadership roles and don't really fully understand the degree of influence they have. When did you first start to realize, “Oh, I have influence”?

Marc Pritchard:

The most profound moment for me was... one of the most profound moments, was actually more than 20 years ago when I was with my family at a spiritual ranch in Colorado. I was running CoverGirl at the time. We had just created “Easy, Breezy, Beautiful CoverGirl”. And the leader came to me at the end of that and said, “I hope you realize the influence that you can have. I hope you realize the impact that you can have, because business will someday be the greatest force for good in the future. So it won't be government, it won't be clergy, it'll be business. If you choose to do so, you can do a lot of good.”

That was literally a blinding moment of clarity. Because we had created the “Easy, Breezy, Beautiful CoverGirl” campaign. But the spokespeople in that were too young, too thin, and too white. I looked at my then under 10-year-old daughters, I thought, ”Ooh, we have an influence.” Advertising has a major influence on how people perceive themselves.

We are the world's largest advertiser. We reach 5 billion people on a planet every day. These images that we have, have a huge impact on how people perceive themselves.

We went back and changed. And we made a number of changes. We've actually focused much more on inner beauty versus outer beauty; or both inner and outer. We brought in Queen Latifah over time. The team after me brought in Ellen DeGeneres, Janelle Monae; just completely changed that. And it made a big difference. I think it did change the standards of beauty and what beauty meant, and at least had an impact on that.

Then fast forwarding to this role. We're actually at Cannes, and we watched as another company garnered a number of awards on something related to beauty. We said, “We need to do something about this.” It was the Always team. I give them a lot of credit for this. The team then said, “We're going to come back here and we're going to change the world.” They came back a year later with “LikeAGirl”, which has literally flipped the perception of the meaning of “like a girl”. From 19% of people thought LikeAGirl was a positive expression before that work, now 76% of people. It changed the meaning of “like a girl”. That was a big one.

That's another big blinding mode of clarity. Okay, now, having the privilege of this position as a chief marketing officer at P&G, and the privilege of access to these amazing brands and people, that's something that we can use for good. And so we made a decision and started publicly declaring, we are going to use our voice in advertising as a force for good, and a force for growth in gender equality. And that then led to in interracial equality and in LGBTQ inclusion, and then in people with different abilities, and then in religion and age, and so forth. The accurate portrayal of all humanity.

Over time, what will happen, and if you just unpack that for a moment, what these images do is they embed images into your mind that then form bias. Because that's what you think is normal. So if we can change that and then work with others, we can literally change how people perceive each other. And that's a real force for good.

Charles:

Yeah. And a staggering responsibility, actually.

Marc Pritchard:

It really is. It's not just an opportunity. It's a big responsibility. And the application, we talk about Force For Good, Force For Growth. And it's really, really important because if you're just a force for good, you're a philanthropy, that limited impact potentially. If you're a force for good and a force for growth, it becomes sustainable.

Charles:

And you have to have both.

Marc Pritchard:

So you have to have both. And that's why we... always, the things we choose to do, we focus these things on, “Is it good for business, too? Because if it's good for business, then it will be sustainable.” So, what I mean sustainable, is that it'll be long lasting. And so that's part of… I view as my job, is being discerning about when does it make sense to do those things?

Charles:

And to your point, when you focus from a leadership standpoint, on driving significance, it inevitably creates more success on a personal basis as well, doesn't it?

Marc Pritchard:

Yeah. I mean, it certainly provides more personal satisfaction. There's multiple studies about people who are helping others, and how it just means so much more to their own lives. That's the way I prefer to look at it, it's just that, “Is it providing me meaning?” Because at the end of the day, I think we all need to recognize that, our time will come, and so would you just take a look at, “Well, was that worth it?”

Our current CEO, my boss, David Taylor, he told me about this book called “Halftime”. What it essentially is, is halfway through your life, you need to think about what do you do the next half? And what it was... it's titled “From Success to Significance”. And there comes a time when people can look at whatever success they might've achieved and then think about, “Okay, what's next?”

That was a great recommendation because I read it over the holidays, at that time. I said, “Okay, now it's becoming clearer that these experiences have then led to the ability to use skills, experiences and capability to be able to make an impact and improve gender equality, improve equality in general, improve sustainability. Because of the impact of the breadth of our brands and our companies and the privilege of being in this position.

Charles:

How did it change your perception of yourself? How did it change your perception of what you needed to do from a leadership standpoint?

Marc Pritchard:

The thing about when I talk about the privilege of this position is, the privilege of this position is I get to represent, in many cases, what other people are doing, and help shine the light on those things. And that's what really jazzes me, is when I can get up and come into this office or go to a market, and be able to start meetings of, “Put me to work. How can I help you? What can I do?”

I was here last night till eight o'clock, working with our team from SK-II on their plans for 2020. And it was all about, “What can we do to work together?” Then we just riffed off all sorts of different things. That was really engaging, really, really fun. And there are things that I get the opportunity to work on, like our P&G Olympics campaign, “The Proud Sponsor of Moms.” That's something... The Talk, The Look, now a lot of content partnerships. So those are things that I get to work on with my team. But again, that's other people doing majority of the work.

The leader's job, I really believe is to think about... There was Frank Blake who's one of our board members, former CEO of Home Depot, talked to us that leaders need to be thinking about themselves as an inverted pyramid. You're down here at the bottom, you are serving everyone else. You need to recognize that that position is a weight-bearing position.

And you need to think about how you work with others to be a force multiplier. Find those that are force multipliers. Find those that have energy, that people want to be around so they can do it. That's the job of the leader. That was just a fabulous way to think about that.

Charles:

Such a good description. It's so true. Leaders have to play a lot of roles, some of which we're drawn to, some of which we try to avoid. You famously came out and acknowledged your Mexican American heritage last year. What made you decide that you wanted to do that? What made you decide that was the moment to do that?

Marc Pritchard:

A big part of that was the work that I've been doing with our entire company around diversity and inclusion; starting with gender equality, then moving on to the executive sponsor of the African Ancestry Leadership Network. And we needed to do some work in order to make P&G a better place for black employees and P&G brands a better choice for black consumers. Having worked on that, I was actually giving a talk to the Hispanic Leadership Network, showed some great work... I don't know if you've ever seen it, it's called Tide Labels.

Charles:

Yeah, it's fantastic.

Marc Pritchard:

Amazing work, where labels are stains and they were describing the labels that Latinos are given and how negative they can be and how they wash them away with Tide, which was brilliant. And as I was reflecting on that work, I realized, “Oh my gosh, I have not really been embracing my Mexican heritage since I've been working.

I started off, young in Colorado. My dad was kind of an activist, and he worked with the migrant workers. And he was very, very focused on that. Then I moved to Arkansas and there was a high degree of racial integration because of forced busing. So I witnessed a lot of prejudice.

Then when I got in, and even early on in my work career, I did some work on diversity, but I never really... I really suppressed my Mexican heritage. I look back on that now and realize, “Ah, it's because I was afraid of being labeled. I was afraid of the bias. I had the privilege of being viewed as white, and even a name Pritchard that was Caucasian.

Charles:

It's English, right?

Marc Pritchard:

It's English. And even though my dad's father's real name was Gonzales. But it was at that time as we were working on what we call “Stepping Up” - it was our stepping up to be able to make sure that we could make this a better place for black employees, black consumers - that I thought, “I need to own this, because if I can come out and talk about this and my insights associated with this and why I suppressed that heritage, then that's going to create some emotional safety for people.” I did it here inside in P&G at one of our Stepping Up events. I did it at AdColor, I did it at the ANA Multicultural. And every time I did, it was very emotional.

Charles:

I can imagine it was.

Marc Pritchard:

And because it was really admitting something very personal and being very personally vulnerable to do that. But then I realized... Because I had to think long and hard as to whether that was really worth it. And I decided it was worth it, because leaders can express their vulnerabilities to make it okay to create conversation, create emotional safety, then that's going to ultimately create the kind of environment that we want. So that's why I did that. I think it's paid off, because we're having a lot more very, very open conversations than we've ever had.

Charles:

What would have happened if you'd done it earlier?

Marc Pritchard:

You know, I think the timing was actually right when I think about it. I'm not sure it would have landed as well before.

Charles:

Because of who you are now in the industry?

Marc Pritchard:

Well, I'm thinking more about the context of where we were in our journey. And because there was... by the time I had done that, going back to this story about the work we had done. When I was in cosmetics running that business in Baltimore, it was fairly racially diverse. And we did a lot of good efforts on diversity. I came to become the African Ancestry Leadership Network executive sponsor. We did some good work and made some progress. And then I drifted away from really paying attention to it, thinking we had it.

But then there were some brave leaders here who said, “No, we got a problem. We got to make some improvements here.” And I realized that I hadn't been doing my part. And so I recommitted myself to doing things and then worked and literally, to this day, have a meeting every two weeks with the team to figure out what are we going to do next and try to get there. And we've made progress. We've started to increase our representation. We've actually increased our business among African Americans. So we've grown our share for six consecutive quarters. We're starting to do... We've done The Talk, we've done The Look, we've acquired Bevel, we've launched My Black Is Beautiful. We've done a lot of different things.

By the time I was...There was at least a track record of, “Okay, this is really authentic.” If I had done it earlier, I think it would have been more hollow. Which I know, that's interesting, but it didn't have enough substance to it. I think The Talk, when we did The Talk, that probably added a lot. The reason why is because The Talk... which for those who haven't seen it, it's a spot where black moms are talking to their kids about the prejudice and bigotry that they're going to face to prepare them. And so let's talk about The Talk. So we don't have to keep talking about it.

MOM 1: Remember you can do anything they can. Difference is you gotta work 2x as hard and be 2x as smart.
MOM 2: Come straight home after practice. You got you ID? Case they stop you.

We got attacked.

So we took a lot of heat, and we had to grind through that heat and we faced it, and we doubled down. We doubled down on PR and we even doubled down on putting national advertising out there. We did an episode on The Talk with Black-ish. So we really went after it. And I think that people appreciated that, “Okay, you all are walking the talk.”

Charles:

In a position like yours, there's a lot of things that you could be afraid of. You could be afraid of that kind of public response. You could be afraid of, “What happens if I come out into the world and admit this is who I am.” What's your relationship with fear? How do you look at fear today?”

Marc Pritchard:

Well, the thing that I'm most afraid of is anything to do with my family, because that's what's really the most important thing in my life. That's where fear comes in for me; losing anyone in my family or any of that kind of thing. Something bad happening to people in my family, that's it. Because everything else, it pales in comparison to what's most important. So that's important to keep grounded in, from a personal standpoint.

When it comes to business, and things that we do, I of course, get nervous and anxious and fearful of engaging because usually it comes down to, “How am I going to be judged?” Once again, I told another little prayer to give at one point, which is, before every speech, “May the words that I say be useful to my audience and guide my thoughts and actions.” So flips it around. Get out of yourself.

When it comes to taking big swings from a business standpoint, that's where that kind of fear of failure can come on. So a lot of what I try to do is, knowledge that it's there, figure out how to deal with it. It's one of the reasons why we've changed the way we innovate. We actually innovate through lean innovation now.

We innovate like startups. So we innovate like a startup with the benefit of 182 years of knowledge and capability. I do that with my partner, Kathy Fish, and I, who is the chief R&D and Technology & Innovation officer. We studied Silicon Valley and startups on how they operate. And what that does is, it allows you to then identify the consumer problem to be solved, take a lot of swings, fail a lot, but learn. And that then de-risks that aspect of that. Then whenever there's a situation, like maybe a creative situation we face, and I start to feel that anxiousness or fear, I just try to acknowledge it and figure out, “Okay, what's the source of that?” And then go take it on.

When we first did the “Proud Sponsor of Moms” work, the “Thank You Mom” work, that's the first time P&G had ever done any advertising as P&G and was working with the team at Wieden+Kennedy when we did that. It's like, “Whoo, this had to be perfect.” It had to be really, really, really emotionally engaging, because it's the first time we're putting our name on that. We worked through that, just trying to identify, “Okay, what is this? How are we going to make sure that this is going to be able to grip people as much as possible in order to be able to move forward?”

Charles:

I want to talk about creativity for a couple of minutes. How do you define creativity in a business environment? What is creativity to you?

Marc Pritchard:

It's very much connected with innovation. Because what it is, it's creating connections that didn't exist before in order to produce something that is amazing. And that's the essence of it. And that's why I love it so much, is because it's something new. It's usually something new though, that is the connection of multiple things that hadn't come together in some way.

Charles:

What's its role in business today, do you think?

Marc Pritchard:

It's essential. Creativity and innovation go hand-in-hand in business. Our strategy as a company is, if you have products where performance drive brand choice, you better make sure you're superior in the product, the package, the communication, the retail execution, and the value of the consumer and then bring that all together into a really an irresistible experience. And that involves creativity and innovation, finding new connections.

Now, as we reinvent advertising, we're re-imagining creativity by merging the ad world with other creative genres; with music, comedy, entertainment, for film, technology. And it's producing a whole range of new connections. I don't know if you've seen some of the SK-II work. The SK-II work is BareSkin chat, masterclasses. We've worked with Naomi Watanabi, who is a Japan comic; James Corden, who is an amazing genius; Tang Wei, who is a China film actress; and even John Legend, who's obviously everything. And they created some of the most creative work you'll ever see.

It's all about the key ingredient in SK-II, which is a skincare product called PITERA, which is a yeast extract that was discovered through monks making Saki with rice, whose hands were beautiful, but their faces were wrinkly. So they extracted the PITERA that's in there, which is the extract. This is a series of like 20 different vignettes, like sketches, where they're extolling the virtues of PITERA including John Legend singing a song about PITERA, creating a song out of PITERA.

JOHN LEGEND: Miracle water. PITERA. OOOOH. Beautiful.

It is brilliant creativity that has merged these two worlds, or the multiple worlds.

Charles:

The most successful organizations unlock creative thinking, original thinking from everywhere across the organization, I think these days. Nevertheless, there are still many places in which original thinking creative thinkers are seen as different somehow, and seen as special. There is unconscious, obviously, that you've talked a lot about diversity, inclusion. It's a big topic at the moment. Original thinking in some ways is its own minority. How do you create an environment in which original thinking, creativity can flourish in a business environment, where you're dealing with a bottom line reality?

Marc Pritchard:

Well, part of that does come with ensuring that we're focused on the right thing, which is solving consumer problems, making the lives of consumers better, and recognizing that a diverse and inclusive workforce is going to be the single best way to be able to create those kinds of connections. Therefore, original thinking originates from everybody. It’s not, there's some people who are really good at original thinking. Every human being is good at original thinking. And it's the job of leaders and companies to create a culture that extracts that. So our purpose, values and principles are foundational, and they lead to, as I said, what we're trying to do for consumers and the rest of the world, for that matter.

Our values are trust, integrity and ownership and leadership. And even our very first principle of the interests of the company and the individual are inseparable. So that then makes it clear that diversity of all kinds is a business imperative. And then treating each other with respect and making that part of the norm, and then trying to draw out of every individual, what's the very best that you can do to perform at your peak, and therefore for the company. That's the kind of culture that that is required.

Charles:

And what gets in the way of that?

Marc Pritchard:

Well, the normal day-to-day grind of just trying to crank things out. And the other thing is, of course, the natural inclinations of bias, that are just human. Bias is human. You can't survive without bias, because that's the way the mind operates. The mind categorizes things so you can make instant decisions, and that includes every individual that you meet, that people are making judgments and connections. So you have to unlearn that around changing that mindset in order for people to be thinking about, “No, okay, this is not going to limit this. I'm going to think about how this person or this individual, this engagement can actually grow.” But being very open and transparent about these issues, and creating the environment for dialogue and constructive dialogue. That's our job to do that.

Charles:

As you look back at your career, what surprises you most?

Marc Pritchard:

Thirty seven and a half years. When I first started at P&G, I got an undergrad at Indiana. And I thought, “I'll probably do this for a couple of years and then I'll go back and get my MBA, and go from there.” I've learned so much every single day. Every single day is just another opportunity for learning and something else that happens. Look, thirty seven and a half years is surprising.

Charles:

Any regrets?

Marc Pritchard:

Well, the only regrets would come from... if my younger self was more focused on being useful to others, it would've been a lot less stressful. That's just about maturing earlier. I wish I'd matured a little earlier. And I'm still probably not quite there yet.

Charles:

And how do you lead?

Marc Pritchard:

I lead with the intention to be useful to others. And with that leadership mentality, then that tends to draw the best out of people and the best out of myself. I love to create, I love to create with people. I love to celebrate what other people are doing and inspire them to do more. And do whatever I can to possibly help them. Being in service to others is the greatest leadership gift that someone can give.

Charles:

I usually wrap every episode with three takeaways. But I think in this case, I want to wrap with one because I think it is so powerful that I don't want to dilute the impact of it with others. What strikes me so clearly, and you've said it really articulately, is your determination to make a difference. That you get up every day, and you focus with real intention on, “How can I maximize the impact that I can have?” I think if more leaders were conscious of their ability to do that, and to your point, their responsibility to do that, businesses would move forward. And in fact, we'd have a stronger and better society.

Marc Pritchard:

Yeah. And I think that impact is by being useful to others. Because, back to the other lesson of amplifying impact through others, is done so through making a difference by being useful to others. Therefore, amplifying the impact through others is the best way to do it.

Charles:

Marc, thank you so much for this morning. It's been a fantastic conversation.

Marc Pritchard:

Thank you, Charles.