Management

Since 2009, WIN has shown tremendous growth, expanding from 13 chapters to 56, with a membership of several thousand BNY Mellon employees, plus many other women and men who support its activities. Chapters offer training and skills development programs for employees, and a formal one-year mentoring program

“The Women’s Initiatives Network (WIN) is a good example of how employees work with the company to promote diversity. The group builds professional networks through mentoring, skills training, leadership development programs and education. WIN’s beginnings were modest, starting with a dozen senior women execs who became active members of the Women’s Bond Club of New York, the oldest women’s affinity group on Wall Street. The twelve original members met monthly and went on to develop WIN as a forum to bring financially-oriented women together (2).”

Disclaimer -     

Servane Mouazan, CEO Ogunte and Coach for High Impact Social Entrepreneurs

Successful social innovators   

Everyday I come across outstanding individuals with sheer passion to change their community and who contribute in skills, connections, strategic and technical knowledge, to making a positive social or environmental impact. Some of these individuals do this through enterprise, others through campaigning.

    

Maija Van Langendonck, Director  Cargill Global Diversity & Inclusion

    

An interview of Massimo Michaud, Director at Kinetica

• Reticence of many women to advocate for themselves - Women have a tendency to be more interested in the work they do than in the career they can make. In some ways women are more consistent with their own needs, and consistency is a trait of leadership. Women seem to be more motivated by their job content than the opportunity to climb to the upper level. I have seen men taking whatever job in order to have the opportunity to move up on the company ladder. Women often had refused the job. 

• Lack of self-confidence - A gender disadvantage for women is – generally speaking – poor self-confidence; women are much more cautious in taking a position, they wonder whether they are right or wrong, they consider the point of views of colleagues. Men are or appear more self-confident, more convinced about their opinions and, if they change their mind, they try not to show it: this allows men to have the advantage in their career.

• Lack of support/solidarity of women towards other female colleagues - I have noticed, to a certain extent, lack of solidarity amongst women, lack of support. Actually, in such a situation I would have expected that the few women in managerial positions would have supported the other women strongly, but I have remarked more solidarity towards men than women.

• Women don’t make their expectations explicit – I would say that it is part of the female behaviour that women prefer that their boss and other people try to understand what they want, men make their expectations clear. I think that this attitude is linked to the fact that women have a very strong ability to observe what’s happening in the environment around them and they perceive more, so they assume that men can observe and perceive as well.

• Lack social capital – Women network as actively as men in their company, but for many reasons take less advantage of social opportunities for networking.In some companies it is critical to socialize with your upper management level and in others with the second upper level, so far I have seen very few ladies building their second upper level social capital.

It is important to highlight that women are bearing the family load and they try to run both work and family in the best way, so they sacrifice the social side.

Last but not least some social environments are like rugby team clubs, are they easy enough for a woman to cope with it or are women attracted by these environment at all?

• Women’s need for perfectionism penalizes them – Perfectionism is a personality trait and not gender related. I guess this stereotype comes from the fact that successful female executives/managers are basically technically very competent, and experts tend to be perfectionists. 

• Women are not visionary - In my experience I often remarked that women, when they have a vision, they are more cautious than men in externalizing it. I want here to break the prejudice that women do not have enough vision, they are visionary but they tend to speak up less and they have a different way to express themselves and persuade others, a more subtle approach. Additionally, cultural implications have to be taken into account, the behaviour expectations with which women are confronted in some cultures.

• Identifies and defines a new direction --> vision

• Goes towards this new direction --> action

• Is able to convince/influence people to follow him/her --> followership

    

An interview of Karen Hodgson, Director CERAN Brussels

    

Pascaline Dubois, VP Customer Experience & Operational Excellence, Consumer Business Unit at Belgacom

PWI – “Customer experience” has become a very commonly used terminology in recent years, but it is not that easy to find a clear, commonly-held definition. Pascaline, how would you define “Customer experience” at Belgacom?

Ms. Dubois – I would say that customer experience is not really a definition, but it’s a way of living. Three years ago we decided at Belgacom to put the customer at the centre of our strategy by launching a long term transformation program which covers several company processes (from billing, IVR, etc.), but also focuses on culture change and on building engagement in all the employees.
In 2011 we ran a large project called “Live my life”, which provided 1.000 Belgacom employees (including our top management) with the opportunity to spend a day with a technician, an operator, a salesperson or in a shop in order to experience the job of the front-end colleagues and above all the needs of the customer. I am proud to state that “Live my life” had an extraordinarily positive feedback from the people involved.


PWI – How do you measure customer satisfaction at Belgacom?

Ms. Dubois – We have surveys at several levels (after customer interaction with our call centers, after sales in the shop). Some of these surveys are performed immediately after the interaction and some after a few days and they include questions to measure the customer perception. We also make street surveys that address the feeling/perception of the competitors’ customers, so we get a broader picture.
Of course, to measure customer satisfaction we have specific Key Performance Indicators, which we can split into two main categories:

• The external KPIs – called Care -that measure customer satisfaction after contact or support by our personnel
• The operational KPIs – called Ease - that measure the internal process efficiency and that help us identify what we need to improve to achieve the external KPI targets.

PWI – As emotions are a big part of an experience, how do you address them?

Ms. Dubois – We made a project in which we analysed the worst complaints with the technique of a storyboard on the wall, where we detailed the different steps and highlighted the process (with the relevant issues) and the customers’ emotions at each step. For some colleagues having evidence of the customers’ emotions/feelings was really like “opening their eyes”. As a consequence of this analysis, we were able to put together a significant training program to create awareness within the process manager community and help them understand the impact of our service process steps on the customer perception. We also implemented another project, called “Simple & Friendly” to increase the awareness of how to behave and how to show their empathy to the customer. We printed out and distributed to all our call centres and shops a charter, listing behavior rules to follow with the customer. Awareness for front-end employees means for example: communicating to the customer that they understood the issue and their worry, that they will try to find a solution and that they will follow up with the customers.

PWI – Which are the more difficult customer needs to satisfy - the conscious or unconscious needs?

Ms. Dubois – Actually the needs of customers are quite basic/simple, normal and logical; they want to be served, to get prompt answers/solutions to their problems and to be treated nicely. Our challenge is to propose easy solutions despite the complexity of telecom technology and the impact of external circumstances. For example, the weather conditions of last year’s summer have caused severe outages and delay in our repair & installation operations.
Another example is the pack including fix and mobile products: it is great for the customer to have access to internet everywhere but complex to manage “behind the scenes”.
We are constantly working on our internal processes and on the integration of our legacy systems to mitigate these risks and to improve our services.
In 2012 we want to provide customers with an improved service in our shops, which will better meet their expectations and make it simpler for them.


PWI – By listening to your customers you can learn about their requirements. How do you manage the “unsaid”, often even more important requests?

	Ms. Dubois – I have to admit that so far we did not focus much on the “unsaid” because we concentrated our efforts into the “said”. We began last year with the program “Simple & Friendly” to improve the atmosphere of active listening and emotional bonding with the customer that allows us to hear their unsaid requirements, but it is a work in progress.

PWI – Could you tell me more about your function and operational excellence at Belgacom?

Ms. Dubois – The focus for 2012 will be on the theme “first time right”. This campaign is meant to decrease errors and therefore reduce the calls to the customer services for complaints. This implies reviewing all our behind the scenes processes end-to-end and trying to simplify them as much as possible. We have set new ambitious targets for improvement in our processes, to become “simpler” (internal efficiency) and to improve the interaction with the customer (Friendly areas).

Short Biography

Pascaline Dubois holds a Master’s degree as a Commercial Engineer (Catholic University of Leuven) as well as a teaching certificate. She has over 30 years of diverse business experience mainly in the audit, finance, general management and customer experience areas.  She started her career at Goodyear as an Information System Analyst in the European IT center. Two years later, she joined the De Smet Group where she held various functions from Financial Analyst to Managing Director of an affiliate company. Pascaline Dubois joined Belgacom in 1993. During the past 18 years at Belgacom, she has held various top management functions. First as General Audit Manager and three years later as Associate Member to the Executive Committee. Subsequently she became Group Controller of Finance in 1998 and in 2000 she became Director of the Directory Information Services department. In September 2009 she was appointed as the Vice President of the Customer Experience & Operational Excellence area for the residential market.

Pascaline Dubois VP Customer Experience & Operational Excellence Consumer Business Unit pascaline.dubois@belgacom.be Koning Albert II laan, 27 B 1030 Brussels T +32 2 202 21 64

Disclaimer - Any views and opinions presented in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Belgacom, nor do they constitute a legally binding agreement.

    

Alessandro Musumeci, Direttore Centrale Sistemi Informativi (DCSI) at Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane (Italian Railways)

Alessandro, you mentioned to me that in your career you had the opportunity to cooperate with clever female bosses and peers, who taught you a lot. Could you please give me some examples?

Mr. Musumeci – True, Alessandra!  During my career I had the chance to work with some exceptional female bosses, who taught me ethics and management. Here are some brief personal stories:
a)    In 1979 I started working as a math’s teacher in a school close to Rome; I was a student who was 23/24 years old, completing my universitiy studies to become a mechanical engineer. I had no clue about the work environment, but I was lucky to be coached by the school dean, a competent female professor called Gina Geissa, who inspired in me the importance of closely guiding young students along their curricula and who taught me how to work hard and fine tune my skills in order to gain the respect from my older and more experienced colleagues.

b)    In 1982 I joined SOGEI (Società Generale d'Informatica), an Italian IT company and I was assigned to the team of Maria Carolina Ottaviani, a female manager and a mother of four children. She was a role model for me, showing me how to balance work and life wisely, and gain excellent results too. Ms. Ottaviani, with her example, motivated a number of young, newly-hired people in her company and taught them the attitude of never giving up, but looking at their professional future with confidence.

c)     In 1989 I was recruited in a managerial position - at Accenture – by the company partner Cristina Molinari (at that time one of the very few female partners in Accenture). From Ms. Molinari I learned the rules of a big multinational company, she introduced me to the sales experience, she believed in my potential because I had no previous sales background. Ms. Molinari pointed me to the appropriate training in Europe and in the USA; she coached me so well that I can candidly affirm that I owe her my professional achievements which lead me to become an executive able to cleverly plan, manage suppliers and negotiate.

d)    In 2002 I was hired as IT Director at the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research by the lady Minister Letizia Moratti. She showed trust in my competencies by assigning to me the management of a crucial outsourcing bid valued at more than 300 Million Euros, which I lead successfully.
Ms. Moratti later became the Mayor of Milan and in 2006 she asked me to move and work for her as IT Director for the Milan Municipality. I can tell you, Alessandra, that Ms. Moratti was absolutely passionate about her mission and her work (to which she dedicated from 12 to 16 hours a day), she was for me a real role model of competency, determination, ethics and honesty.

Alessandra, to be totally frank, in my professional life I met female managers/executives who were on average professionally better than their male colleagues and who were more open to sharing their knowledge with others than the male executives/managers were.
I am not sure I would have been able to reach my current position, if I hadn’t met these invaluable ladies in my professional career.

Which are the skills/qualities of managerial women that are unique compared to men's ones?

Mr. Musumeci – In the professional women I have come across during my career I have always appreciated their determination and dedication to achieve their goals, from the big picture to small details, not leaving anything to chance!  I could notice this determination in female managerial colleagues because, in order to be recognized, they continuously need to demonstrate their competencies and their professionalism.
I learned a lot from these lady managers, they showed me that success is not due to chance, but thanks to our abilities, efforts and professional honesty in our work.

On the contrary, based on your experience, which are the unique skills/qualities that a man manager can teach to professional women?

Mr. Musumeci – Unfortunately the fact that women continuously need to demonstrate their competencies and give the best of themselves could become for women an element of risk; as a metaphor it is like somebody always driving a sport car at its maximum potential, with the possible consequence of ruining its engine. This constant tension to prove themselves might bring women to make some mistakes.

Male managers are generally more relaxed in their role, because the labour market is still dominated by men; successful women are considered as “real gems”. Additionally, men are better able to balance family, work and personal interests, while women often cannot always control their tension and might become aggressive.
Male managers are more oriented to team building than female managers and succeed in keeping teams united, sometimes even with a strong arm; it might be an innate attitude in men or it can be developed through several experiences of camaraderie (football, military service, etc.), while women sometimes lack team spirit and might tend to be very competitive towards other women … sometimes without any effort to hide it!

Your career, Alessandro, had a creative evolution; this makes me think it has been based on transferrable skills: which ones? Could you highlight the key milestones of your career?

Mr. Musumeci – In my career I have always been careful to expand my professional horizons and enlarge my competency base at any potential opportunity, avoiding being assigned constantly to the same type of role (some companies try to do this when somebody performs so fantastically in a specific position).
In 1986, for instance, my boss – who, outside his job, was the editor of an IT review – offered me the opportunity to write some articles; I accepted this offer and in a few months I became a regular writer in this journal. This journalistic role opened many doors for me, both in the company I joined in the meantime and with clients and professional associations.
Another example is my involvement in the university: while I worked in Accenture it was proposed I give some lectures at the university (of course for free), in a few years this cooperation became a four year contract for teaching IT at the engineering faculty. It has also been thanks to this experience as a university lecturer that the Minister of Education & Research chose me to work for her, as I said before.

I could mention other “chances”, born as little things which developed into concrete opportunities, but the key message I want to share with you, Alessandra, is that money has never been my prime focus; money comes and goes, while your competencies and your professional/social network are your “true capital” in which to invest your energy. Financial satisfactions will come as a consequence of the network you have built and the skills you have accumulated.

Short Biography

Born in Rome in 1956, Alessandro Musumeci graduated in mechanical engineering in 1980 at Rome University. He has developed his career in Italian and international companies (SOGEI, Informatica & Telecomunicazioni, Gruppo COS, Gemini and Andersen Consulting), mostly in the banking and government sectors (Banco di S.Spirito, Ministery of Justice and University of Naples). In 2002 he became IT Director at the Italian Ministry of Education & Research, in 2006 he joined the Milan Province Administration as IT Director and was also in charge of the technological design/development of the Expo that will take place in Milan in 2015. Since 2008 he has being covering the role of IT Director at Ferrovie dello Stato (Italian Railways). Outside his job Alessandro has played a number of other roles: •    2006- 2010 President of the Italian Federation of IT Executives (FIDA Inform), which includes 1.000 IT Directors •    Lecturer at the University of Rome for the Engineering faculty, at the University of "Tor Vergata" and at the University of Cagliari for the Information Technology faculty •    Currently he is part-time professor at the University of Salerno for the Organisation Development curriculum •    Journalist since 1991, he has published over 400 articles about information technology in the main specialized magazines •    Director since 2002 of the magazine “Idee e Traguardi” (ideas and targets) •    Author of the book "E-Government e Scuola" (e-government and education) in 2003 •    Member of a number of committees  and boards (AIPA-ASSINFORM-ANASIN,Consorzio Nettuno and GARR, Italian UNESCO, Forum of Information Society at EU Commission) •    Contributed to the preparation of the law Moratti/Stanca for e-learning universities.

Alessandro Musumeci Direttore Centrale Sistemi Informativi (DCSI) Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane S.p.A. Piazza della Croce Rossa 1 00161 ROMA - Italy Tel. +39 06 44106774 Personal fax: +39 06 45590701 Mobile: +39 329 4205201 Email: a.musumeci@fsitaliane.it

Disclaimer - Any views and opinions presented in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane S.P.A., nor do they constitute a legally binding agreement.

    

Sonia Busselen

Knowing that the skills we have are adequate for the job is one of the requirements for being in the flow, as a state of consciousness where we are so absorbed by what we are doing that we don’t even notice the passage of time – hours feel like minutes.

For flow to occur, we need to have a balance between our skills and the high challenges we are tasked with. When the challenge is high, yet the skill set for the challenge is low, we are in a state of anxiety. If this condition persists for prolonged periods of time, without relief, we enter a cycle of stress which could lead to burnout.

Another form of stress that we are often reminded about is the stress caused by “technology overload” – excessive e-mail, cell phones, text messaging, Blackberries, all of which end up creating a loss of focus and affecting productivity. Our modern angst of not being able to get it all done leads us to a multitasking frenzy. A Time Magazine article explores the issue of multitasking and concludes that frantic multitasking actually deludes us into thinking that we are getting a lot done, while in reality we end up getting less done and the work quality suffers.

Also don’t forget the stress coming from “cognitive overload”. Leaders are particularly vulnerable to cognitive overload as they are typically required to consider a lot more information than the rest of us. Interestingly, in an article by Dr Howard Gardner, The Synthesizing Leader, (which appeared in The HBR List: Breakthrough Ideas for 2006), we learn that the single most important trait of future leaders in the developed world, is the ability to synthesise information. It also involves asking questions such as “Does this information form a coherent story?” and “Do these trends make sense?” In our data-rich world, selecting which pieces of information are worthy of our ever shrinking attention span is a key competency for reducing stress and, ultimately, being more effective as a leader.

Besides learning how to effectively synthesise information, what can we do to help ourselves, our colleagues and employees to minimise stress? Here are some strategies to consider:

1. Actively develop leaders’ leadership skills
   Companies must make sure that their (new) leaders have the appropriate tools needed for their people management responsibilities – this is a key requirement to helping them succeed and minimise stress. This includes mentoring, providing a relevant leadership skills assessment to uncover strengths and areas for development, assisting in the creation of a learning action plan and providing leadership training and/or coaching. It also means providing ongoing support and feedback.
2. Manage leaders’ performance pro-actively and avoid under-employing people
   Create conditions that allow all your team to be in “the flow” while they achieve results. In addition to ensuring that individuals have the skills adequate for the job, this also entails setting and communicating clear goals and expectations and providing immediate feedback on how well a person is performing – helping employees understand the effect of their efforts. This means not waiting until the annual review to have a discussion of the employees’ performance and confronting them with a laundry list of “improvements”. Moreover it is worth mentioning that keeping individuals in positions where their skills far exceeds the challenge is also stressful, and ends up taking its toll.
3. Reduce stress through commitment, control and challenge
   Not everyone, of course, is subject to stress: Some individuals have very strong resilience and not only are they better able to cope with stress but they also thrive on it. While everyone else is stuck on the problems, they focus on solutions and have a one track mind: Moving forward. They don’t waste time worrying about what they cannot change and focus only on their area of control.
   The personality traits of ‘stress hardy’ people, are:

·       Commitment, being committed to something that is meaningful, for example work, community, family; staying engaged and involved in ongoing events, even in the most trying of circumstances, rather than feeling isolated;

·       Control, believing in our ability, through our efforts, to turn events to our advantage rather than adopting a passive and powerless victim mode;

·       Challenge, viewing change, whether positive or negative, as an opportunity to learn, rather than as a threat.

We can all benefit from these pointers in times of stress.

4. Create a “Stop Doing” List
   A concept, borrowed from Jim Collins’ ‘Good to Great’ that is useful in minimising stress and achieving clarity of focus is creating a “Stop Doing List”. Those who built companies that went from good to great “displayed a remarkable discipline to unplug all sorts of extraneous junk”. We all have “To Do Lists” but how many of us have created a list to isolate and halt pursuits that don’t serve us well any longer? What are your energy drainers? Are these among some of the offenders that may cause you stress: internalising others’ criticism, fragmented boundaries, power struggles, unprotected personal time, useless networking, continuous one-way favours? What can you eliminate to make room for what energises you and bring you closer to achieving your goals?
5. Focus on strengths
   Focusing on your core business – that which you do best – is the most efficient way to bring about long-term growth and profit. By refocusing on what you do best, it will also be easier to spot inefficiencies that drain your business. The concept transcends business, though: If we don’t narrow down our activities to a fundamental core from which we can grow, a strategy becomes much harder to develop.
6. Avoid fighting battles you don’t need to win
   Pick your battles wisely. How often have we heard this? Yet, in the heat of the moment, do we stop for a second and think: Is this truly worth fighting for? That is, for example, entering into a contest of wills with a person who has no apparent authority but who has great influence. This individual is very adept at working behind the scenes and you can easily find yourself unwittingly on thin ice, wasting your valuable, non-renewable energy. How much stress we could eliminate if we were guided by such a philosophy - if we decided to devote each day only to that which is worthy of our attention, our personal achievements and our organisation’s achievements?
7. Focus on priorities
   Minimising stress also means looking at our life through a holistic lens: addressing our needs in each area, whether it is physical, emotional, intellectual, psychological or social. What are some daily practices that you can introduce to create reserves in each of these important areas of your life? Reserves help us when we feel depleted from the day’s stress factors. If you need inspiration in this area, consider reading Dr John C. Maxwell, Today Matters: 12 Daily Practices to Guarantee Tomorrow’s Success. Maxwell provides 12 practical guidelines such as practicing and developing good thinking to gain an advantage, practicing commitment to gain tenacity, pursuing growth to give us potential and developing priorities to give us focus. The book is a reminder that “we choose our life by how we spend time” – people who achieve their potential act on their priorities every day.
8. Consider promotion outside of management
   Finally, it is worth mentioning that that there is another form of less advertised stress: that of the unwelcome promotion. Not everyone enjoys leading others. We can derive an inspiration from 3M, a company which provides their technical people with parallel dual career paths, known as the “dual ladder” system. This means that individuals can still progress in their careers in terms of compensation and other manifestations of advancement without having to enter the management ranks.

Can we conclude as an alternative definition of success: Do what you enjoy!

Inspiration

The hardy executive: health under stress, by Salvatore R. Maddi and Suzanne C. Kobasa, Homewood, Ill.: Dow Jones-Irwin, 1984.  Good to Great, Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don't by James C. Collins, HarperBusiness, 2001

Short Biography

Sonia Brusselen holds a Master’s degree in Archaeology and Art History from the KUL (Catholic University of Leuven) and a degree in Business Management from HUB (Hogeschool Universiteit Brussel). She is certified in Six Sigma Project Management and in Lean by the University of Michigan. She managed change processes and developed business strategies in multinational companies active in the fields of medical equipment, water treatment, international courier services, automotive, banking and consultancy. Constantly aware of the powerful human forces and processes that really influence the success of a company she specialised in the human side of management and obtained the International Certificate in Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Having started her career as Urban Archaeologist for the City of Louvain, she has gone back to her roots and is now focussing on guiding people through the world of Art and Culture in Belgium and abroad in an interactive way. She has been a member of PWI for more than five years and communicates with the press about PWI events. She writes for the OMPP (Organisation Mondiale de la Presse Périodique) and is fluent in five languages.

    

Mr.Albert RAGON CEO  DANONE Belgium (Administrateur Délégué)

The first “AXA Wo_Men@Work Award” was bestowed to Albert Ragon, General Manager of Danone Belgium.

As you might know, this award goes to managers of companies, champions in promoting a fair gender balance within their company in Belgium.

Since “equality” is on the PWI Brussels agenda, we went and talked with Mr. Ragon to know more about how Danone manages diversity and equality.



By receiving the AXA Award, Danone has been publicly recognized as a company displaying best practice in gender balance management ...

Mr. Ragon – Between the nomination and the granting of the AXA award I had to step back and reflect on the model in place at Danone, because for me what we do is managing individuals, not women or men. We do not have a “plan for women” specifically, but, indeed, at Danone 60% of senior management positions are filled by women, we have 3 ladies in our executive committee, our approach works.

The issue is not gender balance, on the contrary diversity has not to be taken as a constraint, but as an opportunity, a source of wealth.
The real problem for a company is talent: how to acquire and retain it, therefore talent management is part of the core business and a key pillar of Danone Individual Development Plan (IDP). We are talking here about 800 people, 500 in one of the biggest manufacturing sites of Danone in Rotselaar and 300 in the office in Brussels.
It is important to address people one by one, not to consider them as a group, they are not clones …If you address them one by one, you create enormous loyalty to the company and provide professional opportunities (we can source 80% of jobs from inside).

In the Individual Development Plan (IDP) we clearly separate “Potential” from “Speed of Career”, they are two different dimensions, this is the major point: at Danone potential is not equal to speed in career. 
Potential is a mix of technical skills and leadership, while with speed of career we mean that there are a number of possible career paths for employees based on their potential and several accelerating factors or constraints (for ex. travelling, sabbatical leave etc.). In other words there is flexibility for employees in how to achieve their own potential.
A lot of energy is spent in identifying each employee’s potential and we are very transparent in communicating the evaluation results, what they could reach, because people need to see their possible future in the company.
On the other side employees share with the company their medium-term ambitions and aspirations in order to shape together their career path; it is crucial to talk to each single individual, one by one, to understand what they want both professionally and in their personal life.


You underlined leadership; in your opinion, can leadership be learned, developed?

Mr. Ragon - Sure, 50% of our training budget goes to leadership training. We need to ensure we have enough leaders for the future of this company! Today 250 out 800 employees are leading at least one person.

Leadership can be learned and developed. For that, we need a common language of leadership. Some people have real talent for that, some have more limitations; some people are very shy, some have empathy, but leadership t does not come only naturally. Things like giving feed-back, communicating efficiently, delegating to other people, active listening, are skills that you learn, not a natural behavior. We invest in our people to develop the CODE leadership: committed, open, doer, empowered/empowering.




Committed: being committed to living the Danone values each and every day; being dedicated, steadfast, engaging in an ambitious vision
 
Open: demonstrating empathy and respect on all levels; Networking, connecting outside Danone

Doer: taking responsibility and risks to show the way forward; being practical, resourceful, and responsive; doing the necessary leg-work efficiently and effectively

Empowered/Empowering: delegating to other employees, which means relying on the potential of group strength; providing regular and constructive feedback based on accurate individual assessment. Developing healthy ambition, search for opportunity to grow, for self and others.


Have you remarked differences in leadership between men and women? And in team-working?

Mr. Ragon – I do not see generally a lack of leadership in ladies compared to men. I see some men with stronger leadership, some men with weaker leadership; I see some men who are introverted and some women who are extroverts and vice-versa.  I rather think, instead, that men always try to show what they have achieved or what they are best at doing, while women tend to be more modest with what they have achieved.
Regarding leadership, the best leadership skills I have observed belong to women, who combine the childcare responsibility with working, they show high flexibility, resistance to pressure and multi-tasking ability. Female employees do not stop their career because of their leadership style, but often because they have a clash between work and family. From my experience the real pressure that forces some women to give up, to stop the battle, is the maternity period (senior managers), where some of them lose confidence they can develop their career.

Regarding team-work, I do not see a difference in teamwork between men and women at Danone.
Team work is an essential, is part of leadership, is a necessity, not “a nice to have”. So you don’t become an employee of Danone, if you don’t have this attitude. We want very talented people that work well together.
.
When you talk about managing the leadership of each individual, how do you deal with the diversity of situations?  How does this individual focus help gender balance?

Mr. Ragon – Let me give you some examples, true stories: one of our talented young sales people came to us and expressed his intention to take one-year leave to develop some social business in Africa. We let him go, he started a social business in Senegal and after one year he came back. It was clear that he had gained a lot of experience and maturity. In the short term the organization suffered from lacking this talented person, but in the end it was an advantage, because he is back stronger.

Another example: some years ago a young lady in our company was managing small customers very successfully.  She went on maternity leave for her first child and when she came back she had the opportunity to be promoted and  take a bigger customer. But in fact she decided to stay with her previous customer, not to increase her workload after coming back from her maternity leave. It was not easy to manage in the team but we accepted it. A few months later there was another opportunity and she took it.

Another example: I joined Danone Belgium in 2001 and I decided to create a new position. After a long process and a shortlist of two candidates, a woman got selected. When I called her she said she could not take the role because in the meantime she was now pregnant. But we stuck to our principle of the importance of potential and, as she was the best candidate, we chose to struggle for four months without her. Looking back at those years, this person has achieved a lot for us and made a brilliant career for herself. It can mean sacrifices in the short term, but it pays back in the medium/ long term.

As you can see through these stories, taking each individual into account and accepting not only his/her talent but also his/her constraints or wishes, enables us to leverage these talents. As women are as talented as men, they also find more opportunities to develop their careers.

In the history of Danone, Antoine Riboud described in the 1970’s the “double projet économique et social” (Dual economic and social project), leading our organization to take into account the expectations of all counterparts around our business. It has led to all the Social Responsibility initiatives in our Group. But in the area of People Management, it makes it natural to us to listen and to find career solutions that are acceptable both for the company and for each individual. And we see every day the added value it brings to our business : talent, enthusiasm, commitment. From women as well as from men.


Apart from the potential maternity constraint, do you envisage other barriers to women’s professional progress to the board? It cannot be only maternity … not all business women are “moms”

Mr. Ragon – You are right, actually we should talk in broader terms. In addition  to children, we must consider any other factors that can interfere with the career speed, for example a personal passion for sport or art or theatre or music, social or political engagement.

Again, I think, there are not mental barriers anymore at Danone. Today in my senior management I have 60% of women, so there is no gender problem here; however I have seen cases of ladies that struggled and were close to giving up or who left, and in many cases it was a question of maternity. And of course there are objective constraints related to maternity - e.g. in jobs that require intensive traveling - that results in a choice for employees who are mothers to take or continue that job or concentrate more on the children, but this is equally applicable to any other passion of the single individual.
The issue is when the employees feel the pressure from their company that if they do not accept a situation or a promotion which does not fit with their personal life, then their career will be over. In Danone, the separation between career paths and potential enables the resolution of situations caused by temporary personal constraints.

In Danone and, I think, in other modern companies people are open minded, there is a real growing acceptance of equality of opportunity, the question is more the way to achieve it. In my 21 years in Danone - CEO of Danone Belgium for the last 4 years - I have never seen men consciously stopping the career advancement of women.

I wonder whether there are there still men at the top of organizations that do not favor the promotion of women to the board: if you refer to a few years ago, then there were men (individually) that could see women as a change, as competition, as a problem. Probably it still exists in some places as a principle. If there is a choice,  more or less consciously, taking a man is considered as safer.


How can equality of chance be increased?

Since I have received the “AXA Wo_Men@Work Award”, I had the opportunity to think more about equality.  I had the chance to be invited by some companies to talk about gender balance issues and I was surprised that in those big companies the audience consisted nearly only of women … who confessed maternity was a real concern regarding their career.

I believe men do not realise the situation of women, men believe that there is equality of chances, but they underestimate the difficulties for women. It is not that they do not want to take measures in this direction. It is more that they do not “feel” the need.
If men talk publicly about favoring gender equality, this will move the issue forward. Therefore, the real challenge is to involve men in the gender balance agenda.
I am more aware now that it is crucial to address the topic of equality with  practical elements and not based on theories or ideals, men should talk “openly and honestly” about the gender balance. It opens new perspectives, and I re-emphasize: you need to fully embark men in the process.


Do you think that quotas will help women professionally?

It is still true that for a woman to achieve exactly the same career as a man is harder, so it is important that women and women’s organizations strongly raise the issue of equality of opportunity.
But, ... I fear that quotas will not be the answer because, if you lose  women (for example for work/life balance issues) at the age of 38-42, two or three levels below reaching the board level, then they are not there when you need them for the board. You need to have gender balance along the whole pipeline.

However, I believe quotas  can have a wake-up effect on the topic of gender equality  in the company agenda.

Probably, in Europe in 2020 40% of the members of boards will be women, I think it will happen, but this will not solve the issue of gender equality, unless it is managed at all career levels, from the beginning.


Diversity should not be only related to gender …

Yes, agreed, we have other diversities to take into account, for example the social side, the 50+ employees, employees pre-retirement… how to keep these people motivated? The population at work is older than in the past, the age of retirement is higher, there will be this major issue in our geographical area. By managing employees one by one you can sort out the diversity and gender balance issues, taking them into consideration case by case.

At Danone we take all diversity problems very seriously, we have part of our objectives/bonus based on social results (for example safety at work). We check with HR that the objectives, including the social ones, are met.

Short Biography

Albert Ragon started his career with the Danone Group in 1989, as a Marketer with Kronenbourg, and then progressed through various marketing and sales positions, before being appointed International Marketing Director Health Brands within the Dairy Products Division in 1999.  He was appointed Marketing Director of Danone Belgium in 2001.  In 2005, Albert Ragon became General Manager of Danone Ireland.  In October 2007, he returned to Belgium to become General Manager of Danone Belgium.

www.danone.be

Disclaimer - Any views and opinions presented in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Danone, nor do they constitute a legally binding agreement.