Transformation – How HUL Makes CEOs out of

College Kids

Foreword:

HUL’s training hotbed is an imposing multi-storey building on the Worli sea face.
The structure has a large foyer, and black marble steps that lead up to a glass
door. On entering the building you are at once struck by the messages on the
walls. One large painting spurs you on to achieve perfection. Another poster
implies that learning is a life long journey. Outside of the walls, the entrance is
bare, save for a sofa in one corner and a solitary desk nestled below the
staircase with a phone on it. Surprisingly there is no one seated behind the desk
to greet visitors.

On the 8th of July, 2001, I found myself at the entrance of this building, tired and
drenched by a monsoon shower, contemplating the artworks on the wall. In the
absence of any directions I looked around the room for guidance. On the desk
lay a folder with a list of the names of the participants for the ‘BLT
Familiarization Program’. I heaved a sigh of relief when I saw my name at the
bottom of the list.

I made my way up the steps I to locate my room for the night. At the top of the
staircase are sofa and a television. There is an animated crowd of boys and girls
watching a riveting Wimbledon final. As Ivanisevic and Rafter match each other
stroke for stroke, the tension in the room in palpable. I make my way to my
room to deposit my suitcase and return to catch the end of the match with the
rest of the gang. I have just commenced a critical journey that HLL has recently
rechristened the Business Leadership Trainee Program. It is a journey that will
take me to no less than 32 different cities across the length and breadth of the
country as I ramp up from a corporate green horn to a sales manager
responsible for 200 Cr of top line sales in 12 short months. It is a corporate
boot-camp like no other.

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 Ten years and a bit onward, I look back on the ground I have travelled in awe. As
I consider the experiences that have impacted my development as a leader, I
can truly endorse the often controversial statement – “Leaders are not born,
leaders are made”. I’m driven to share my experiences of the last ten years at
this wonderful ‘school for CEO’s’ called Hindustan Lever Ltd simply because I
believe innovative training methods and leadership development models should
find application on a much larger scale.

As India progressively grows in stature in the global economy, there is an ever

widening gap between the demand for leaders and the supply of them. This
book then is an attempt to democratize the knowledge built in the organization
over many decades, so that more businesses can put leadership development at
the top of their agenda and start to use the ample science that is available today
to bear dramatic results.

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 Table of Contents:

Part 1: The How

- Selecting to Win
- Spotting Talent Early
- Training for Leadership – The BLT Program
- Leveraging the Organization’s Expertise
- The Tools of Leadership – LDT / 70-20-10 / DAP / 360 / MBTI

Part 2: What’s Actually Happening?

Deliberate practice

- Performance-enhancing Design
- Repeatability
- Continuous Feedback
- Mentally Rigorous
- Tedious

10,000 hours

- Sales Management
- Brand Management

Part 3: The Experience

- The HUL model of Leadership

- Living the Model

o as a BLT
o as a sales manager
o as a brand manager

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 Selecting to Win

The search for the 50 odd participants in this unique training program begins
many months before the commencement date when talent spotters first start
visiting the campuses of the leading colleges, and management and engineering
schools in India. Managers routinely take time off from their day jobs to make
trips to these hot beds of talent to answer questions and make presentations
about the organization. The intention is to give the students as much
information as they possibly need to make an informed decision as they begin
to think about their careers.

About 2-3 months before the final term at B School, companies begin to
descend on campuses making Pre Placement Talks. The approaches to woo
students are many. While all the presentations are slick, the presenters vary
from the ridiculous to the sublime. In the past, companies conducted internship
interviews straight after their Pre Placement Talk, but that has since given way
to a more systematic “Placement Week”. The HUL talks have almost always
been constructed around the notion that “Real Business is Pure Adrenalin”. The
speaker alludes to their first hand experiences. The focus is on delivering some
real value to the organization through experiences that enrich you. She will
emphasize that careers over here offer flexibility across a number of ‘lanes’ and
different business categories. She will often mention the two most valuable
assets in the organization as people and brands.

For many years, the process of selection of the people has been important
enough for two directors of the company to fly down to these 20 odd campuses
to conduct final interviews. Before a candidate gets to that stage, she must have
successfully navigated a stringent short-listing process based on a custom
questionnaire that includes questions like:

What are your long term and short term career goals?

What has influenced your thinking while evaluating your career option?

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 There are other questions that require her to draw on experiences in her
academic, social or working life up to this point.

Describe a challenging and difficult project which you have undertaken. What
did you do? Explain your reasons for the same and what was the outcome?

Describe a situation where you have needed to involve others to achieve a task
or deal with conflict among team members. What did you do? Explain your
reasons for the same and what was the outcome?

Describe a situation / project where you have been able to bring tangible
benefit to the end customer / consumer by adopting an innovative approach.
What did you do? Explain your reasons for the same and what was the
outcome?

To go along with the application form, is a test* that one must complete in 50
minutes. The 50 questions consist of a barrage of puzzlers that require ability to
reason logically. There are some questions around data interpretation, reading
comprehension and mathematical ability. Built into the test is the need to
prioritize time in order to maximize your score as it is close to impossible to get
through all the 50 questions in the allotted time. A sample of the famed ‘The
HLL Recruitment test” is in the appendix.

The first round consists of a group discussion on a simple one-page case with a
few data points. There isn’t quite enough information to say anything with
certainty and participants must make assumptions and logical deductions in
order to move the group to a consensus around the answers to a set of
questions posted at the end of the case. The proceedings are observed by two
managers, one from the talent function, while the other is a line manager. They
have a detailed list of leadership competencies and are watching for
contributions from the participants that illustrate each competency. A positive
illustration of the competency results in a ‘+’ while a negative display is marked
‘-‘. This close observation proceeds for the entire duration of the discussion and
when the observers have enough information about the candidates the
discussion is brought to a close. The cases are collected from the participants

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 and they are thanked for their interest in the HUL recruitment process. For
some, the dream of working at one on India’s most revered leadership
development engines will end here.

Both observers will then sit down to tally their observations and arrive at a
consensus on which candidates they should put through to the preliminary
interview stage. Specific behaviors and statements will be recalled to illustrate
the rationale for selection or rejection. In the event that either of the observers
disagrees, the candidate isn’t selected.

Within an hour of the completion of the first stage of the process, a shortlist is
up on the notice board. The shortlist is met with elation, disappointment and in
some cases abject shock. Every selection process comes fraught with some error
and recruiter bias, no matter how well you hard wire it. Placement committees
will do their best to push the case of a candidate who really wants to work for
this organization. The company representative will try and push in a few CVs
that didn’t make the original shortlist. Whether these candidates will get an
interview is often a function of time available to the recruiters, the number of
people the company is planning to recruit and the performance of the people
originally shortlisted.

In the past, an interview panel consisted of 3 managers, two with functional

experience and the third from the talent function. More recently, panels have
been trimmed to two managers with functional experience. These recruiters
have been through a certification course and have been cleared by a director to
recruit. In many cases these recruiters have been recruiting for over 3 years.
Care is taken to ensure there is at least one experienced recruiter on each
panel. That way, knowledge and some of the more subtle cues that one picks up
only with experience will be passed down.

While historically interviewing successfully with the organization meant

demonstrating intellectual acumen coupled with aggression, more recently the
interviewing style has become more hospitable. Candidates are given time to
settle in, discuss their hobbies, talk about their childhood and get comfortable

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 before the business aspect of the interview begins. Questions vary from panel
to panel, but what they are really looking to do is to probe three of four areas in
great depth. A simple question around how you can segment the market for cell
phones in India, if answered well, will invite deeper probes around how you
might estimate the size of each sub-segment, which segment might be growing
the fastest and why, which part of the country might have the largest
population of a given segment, what communication strategy one might adopt
for a particular segment etc.

One subject probed in depth will then yield to another often unconnected
subject area. For instance, what design modifications would you make to a
bottle of jam intended to be used exclusively by a blind person? This could
generate additional questions regarding modifications to the supply chain: what
you might do to make a retail environment more convenient for a blind
shopper? Or then what communication strategy you would deploy to reach this
niche in the most cost efficient manner?

Still other questions will follow in a bid to ensure that the candidate is not just
intellectually sound, but creative and versatile in their thinking. Candidates who
use a lot of jargon will find themselves having to explain the concept of an IP
address under the assumption that the panelists are their great grandparents.
Other favorites that come up to be explained in layman’s terms are email,
virtual reality, micro wave ovens etc.

Almost every candidate will be forced to negotiate a gray area where the
intrinsic value system will be put to test. “You absolutely have to make it to a
meeting, but you don’t have a ticket. The Ticket Examiner can be placated with
a facilitating payment. What do you do?”. “You have noticed that your friend
has carried a cheat sheet into the examination hall and is using it during the
examination. What will you do?”. “A colleague of you has claimed personal
travel expenses from the organization. You know that reporting of this kind of
graft will lead to the termination of his services. What will you do?” It is in the
negotiation of these murky waters where judgment can often get blurred that

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 one must demonstrate the character to operate in consistency within the spirit
of the Code of Business Principles that binds every Unilever manager.

If a candidate stands up to the panel’s scrutiny, answers all the deep probes
successfully and both interviewers have enough information to make a decision,
the candidate is then given a chance to ask the panelists a question if they so
desire. More often than not, the candidate is surprised by this sudden shift in
power and politely declines. Others are able to keep their composure and ask a
question that suggests they have researched the company well and are already
beginning to form a considered view about the policies and practices. A well
constructed question to close the interview always disposes the interviewers
favorably to the candidate as they finally thank her for interviewing with the
organization.

Once the candidate has left the room, the panelists are left to discuss their
observations. Great care is taken to avoid judgmental feedback; the focus is on
the quality of answers, number of options generated, criteria enlisted before
arriving at the course of action and creativity in overcoming the obstacle.
Sometimes notes taken in the course of the interview are referred to. If the
decision is a unanimous ‘Yes’, there is no trouble at all, but when the verdict is
split the evidence-based discussion must continue till one of the panelists
revises their position. If the stalemate persists, the candidate will not be sent
forward.

The final hurdle is an interview with two executive directors of the company.
The structure of these interviews is a closely guarded secret that only those who
have experienced it are privy to. Should you make it through this final hurdle,
you get to be a part of the famous Business Leadership Training program!

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 Spotting Talent Early

With the competition for talent from India’s Ivy League Schools only getting
more intense with every passing year, the summer internship has taken on a
new importance. This 8 week internship gives both the candidate and the
organization a great chance to assess fitment and make a judgment that is likely
to be far more accurate than one based on a forty five minute interview.

For many years now, the rigor and detailing that goes into the construction of
this 8 week internship distinguishes the “BLT prep” program from assignments
that other recruiters offer during the placement weeks.

The Summer Internship Program is designed to give prospective employees a

company overview, in-depth functional exposure and live projects. In order to
ensure that every trainee gets an assignment of quality and importance to the
organization, project proposals are invited from all the managers across
functions. More than a hundred of these will come in from the Indian offices as
well as other Unilever units across the globe. Of these only the most well
articulated and critical ones will be assigned a summer intern. It is mandatory
that every project brief is signed off by the Leadership Team at the company
and is directly linked to the Business Scorecard of the company. There is an
external as well as an internal orientation to the culture of the organization by
frequent interaction with multiple stakeholders, be it the end customer or
supporting agencies.

Some of the most impactful projects have been seeded in the work of these
bright interns and this is evident from the success of Project Shakti, the launch
of Lifebuoy Liquid Hand Wash, the Bru Vending Machines and the Swirls parlors.
Most of the work done by an intern will be in the market in 3-6 months from the
time the internship is complete. With a view to provide a global working
experience, a significant number of interns now spend these 8 weeks overseas
at another Unilever unit, and in 2010, one in every two interns got an
opportunity to work on an international project.

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 In order that the candidate gets a close look at the area of intended
specialization’ a choice of functions is offered across Sales & Marketing, Human
Resources, IT, Finance and Supply Chain. By allowing for choice at this stage, a
candidate will be able to evaluate their suitability for the roles available in that
function.

The program is carefully crafted and creates an environment where the

candidate can observe how the business works at close quarters and gain a
perspective on the complexities and challenges of working in an organization
that is constantly changing. The 8 week long roller coaster ride makes for a
fabulous learning experience coupled with the excitement of working on live
projects. Imagine the thrill when after BLT Prep you head back to campus and
tell the tale of having helped to plan and execute the commercial that is
currently playing on the television!

A support structure designed to have you win

For many prospective employees, this is their first working experience, and at
HUL a lot of effort goes into making it an enjoyable one. The trainees are
welcomed with banners and a 2 day induction program during which many
senior managers will come address them. Almost all of them will draw on their
experience when they were summer interns and impart a few words of wisdom
to help the new interns make the most of their stint here. During this time, each
intern will also become acquainted with the elaborate support structure that
the organization puts in place to guide them through this new experience called
‘the corporate world’.

Each trainee will be assigned a Tutor, a Mentor and a Buddy. While the tutor is
essentially the joint owner of project the trainee is assigned to be working on
and gives day to day guidance on project delivery, the mentor discusses
performance at regular intervals and shares her perspective on development
and career options. She uses her functional experience to provide the trainee
with developmental inputs and helps to assess the trainee’s fit with the

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 organization’s culture. She calls on anecdotes from her career to help the
trainee see the bigger picture and gives occasional advice for the project.

Should the stature of the mentor and tutor startle the trainee there is always a
Buddy to can count on. He is a young alumnus from the trainee’s institute who
still has a vivid recollection of his early days in the organization. He has a non-
evaluative role and eases you into a new environment. Importantly, the buddy is
a support system that the intern can always count on and serves as a sounding
board at every step of the summer journey.

Making every moment of the 8 weeks count

8 weeks is a very short time. It is time aplenty for things to go wrong though,
and everyone is cognizant of this. A summer internship at Unilever is serious
business and at no point is an intern treated any differently than an actual
employee. To ensure that value is created, both for the organization and the
trainee, a detailed agenda is charted out complete with timelines for appraisals,
feedback sessions and contacts with tutors and mentors. To ensure that
progress is tracked at a more granular level, the 8 week period is broken in to
four chunks.

Weeks one through three are consumed in an orientation. There is a business

and functional overview through interactive sessions with senior managers.
Trainees get to understand how the various functions work together to create
the company that is Unilever. This time is also used to discuss the project
charter with the tutor. This discussion is used to get clarity on the project, key
deliverables and milestones with timelines. Learning through many batches of
trainees suggests that clarity on the first day sets them up for success and
accelerates learning tremendously. In this time the trainee details the approach
they intend to adopt and get some feedback from the tutor and start getting

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 down to doing the work. Before the trainee knows it, he is deeply engrossed in
your project.

In the fourth week it is time to do a quick mid-point check. This is a formal

interaction with your tutor as well as your mentor. This process ensures you do
a status check with regard to your deliverables, and get any further direction
you may require to deliver a great assignment. The aim is to assess your
progress mid-way, and give you ample time to take a course correction if
required. At the heart of the process is the desire to set every intern up to win.
It is also a great time to bounce off first impressions of the organization and its
culture with the mentor. The trainee gets a different perspective on the project
and can discuss any questions or doubts without any fear of evaluation or
assessment. Seasoned mentors also do a fine job of talking prospective
employees through their fit with the culture of the organization, as well as give
them an idea of how their career may pan out should they decide to join the
organization at the end of their course.

In the next three weeks it is time to push for closure as the deadline
approaches. The tutor will encourage the trainee to start putting a draft
presentation together as the sixth week begins so that one gets a sense of
everything coming together while still having the time to research any gaps that
might become apparent once it is put together. It is also the time the trainee
builds back some of the feedback and perspective from the tutor and mentor
respectively. At this time the trainee might reach out to the mentor for an
unofficial view on the project and get the counsel of the buddy too. These three
weeks typically fly by and a trainee is often found burning the midnight oil.

A story is told about a determined young trainee at the old Hindustan Lever
Office at Backbay Reclamation. In the last week of his internship he was
assigned a small sub project that wasn’t part of the original brief. As he
approached the deadline for the Friday morning presentation to the Category
Head, he realized he needed another four to six hours of work on the final
presentation. The problem was that it was 8:00 PM on Thursday when this
realization dawned on him. He decided to catch some sleep first so he headed

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 off to the guest house only to wake up at 2:00 AM on Friday and head back to
office to complete his unfinished business. As he made his way into the office,
he couldn’t figure out the switches for the mains. In the darkness he made his
way to the Category Head’s cabin and finally found some lights. Without as
much as thinking, he sat down at the desk and began working furiously blissfully
unaware of the action that was unfolding elsewhere.

A vigilant guard had noticed that the lights had come on in the building and
decided to do a quick round of the premises. After confirming the presence of
an ‘intruder’ on the floor he contacted his superior. Contact was made with the
Administration Manager, who in turn called the Category Head and informed
him that his cabin had been broken into and that some form of corporate
espionage was underway. The Category Head suggested that the confrontation
be done immediately and the suspect apprehended.

Imagine the trainee’s bewilderment when at 4:30 in the morning, all the lights
came on and 12 guards marched purposefully onto the desolate floor to arrest
him! He at once professed his innocence, flashed his identity card excused
himself and got back to work. He had caused enough commotion; his
presentation was his last hope.

When his bleary eyed Category Head sat through his presentation and
congratulated him on a job well done, he added the words – “Your commitment
is exemplary, and I must acknowledge you for it, even if it resulted in my
household being awakened at an unearthly hour”. The trainee landed a Pre-
Placement offer from the company.

Project largely completed, the last week is spent ensuring the final review and
appraisal is done in as comprehensive a fashion as possible. This is a formal
interaction to assess the project outcomes and evaluate trainee behavior
against the Unilever Standards of Leadership. The tutor will give the trainee
instances over the last 8 weeks where he has demonstrated a particular
behavior and also highlight behaviors that weren’t in the interest of moving the
team forward.

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 It is also at this time that the trainee shares the work with a larger gathering of
senior managers, who will challenge some of the assumptions and conclusions.
This is often a very engaging discussion because it requires the trainee to think
on their feet given the diverse nature of questions that the leadership team
generally asks.

The summer internship experience will end with a ‘Summer Summit’. This
workshop will reunite all the interns for a two day 'Functional Focus' workshop
where they will get the opportunity to interact with some of the finest minds at
the company and learn about some of the business practices. The action packed
eight weeks will be brought to a close with a party that goes on till the wee
hours of the morning.

Twenty four hours later, the trainees will be informed about the evaluation of
their performance. On the average 70% of the interns will have landed a Pre-
Placement Interview. These interns will then be interviewed by a panel of senior
manager, often on the same day, in a process akin to the one used for final
recruitments on campuses.

In this era of hyper-competition for talent, students will return to their schools
to discover whether they have landed a Pre-Placement offer or not. A Hindustan
Lever PPO, as the terminology goes, means a lot back on campus. To have a job
with one of the most sought-after marketing employers even before you get
cracking in the fourth semester is a luxury only a handful of trainees experience
on each campus. In more recent times, as much as 50% of the intake in to the
BLT program comes via this route.

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 Training for Leadership – The BLT Program

The management trainee program has run largely unchanged in structure for
over 25 years in HUL. The only notable change was the rechristening that
happened in 2001. From being the MT (management trainee) program it
became the BLT (business leadership trainee) program. The organization’s
conviction in the quality of this program is reflected in their willingness to hire
undergraduates and put them in roles at par with post graduates after an
extended period of training. Following their 24-month training program, young
graduates who joined the organization straight out of undergraduate schools
like St. Stephen’s and Lady Shri Ram were stepping into jobs that people 2-3
years their senior were doing, and performing at par with them. That’s probably
why the BLT program is often referred to as a ‘Practical MBA’.

A closer look at the structure of the program reveals a calendar that is broken
down into a number of stints that are modular and are broadly divided into core
/ cross-functional and international assignments. The normal duration of the
program for a MBA recruit is 15 months. The program consists of certain core
stints, cross functional stints, a 4 week long CSR stint and even a 6 week long
international stint.

While the core stint is aligned to your functional area of specialization in order
to give you a comprehensive exposure of your function, the cross-functional
stints help you understand how each functional area links up with the
company's overall plans and thus help you understand Business Leadership in
the truest sense. The international stint shapes you for Global Leadership,
whereas the rural stint enables you to connect with a part of India that most
marketers have read about but never experienced.

Learning paths are different from function to function. Someone looking to build
a career in the sales and marketing function will have a journey that is distinct
from someone building a career in the talent management function.

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 A trainee in the Sales and Marketing function will start this adventure with a 19
week sales stint. That will be followed by a 6 weeks in Customer Marketing, 13
weeks in brand Management, one week in a factory, four weeks in a village in
Rural India and a six week assignment in a Unielver Company overseas. The
training culminates is a 13 week period of sub-charge post which a trainee
appears for a confirmation interview.

A trainee in the Talent function will start her journey with ten weeks in a
Factory. After that will come four weeks in sales, three weeks in a branch, three
weeks in a regional HR role, six weeks in a Business HR role, two week working
with the Service Delivery Team, four weeks on Central Employee Relations, four
weeks in a village in rural India, six weeks as part of the Leadership
Development Team and a six week assignment in a Unilever company overseas.
Again, the training will end with a 13 week period of sub-charge post which the
trainee will attend a confirmation interview.

The BLT Program takes in between 40-60 trainees every year, split across two
batches. While the first batch comes in during May, the second batch embarks
on this journey in July. The journey begins for batch after batch in Gulilta, HUL’s
equivalent of GE’s Crotonville. This multi-storey building on the Worli seaface
has marked the first day of service for many generations of employees. The
program’s kick-off is done by no less than the CEO of the company.

For many, this is the first experience in the corporate world and with everyone
looking to err on the side of caution, 50% of the batch is impeccably attired in
suits and ties for their first interaction with the chairman. The chairman arrives
briskly and proceeds to take off his coat and loosen his tie. The CEO is quick to
create at relaxed atmosphere in the room and asks, “Why are you all wearing
suits and ties? In this company only the CEO and the car drivers wear ties!”

In the first few seconds, an important message has been imparted to the eager
listeners. This organization is about rolling your sleeves up, getting out in the
plants and markets and getting the job done. The CEO dwells on his experiences
with trainees, and charge them with the responsibility of asking as many

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 questions as they possibly canover the next 15 months. He insists that the job
isn’t done till one asked the question ‘Why?’ at least 5 times!

In the course of the two days a number of speakers from different functions
come in and address the new kids on the block. Notably, a bunch of graduates
who has just completed the program and assumed full time managerial
responsibility also comes along and shares their experiences. These two days
mark a particularly busy time for the program manager, who over the course of
the next 15 months becomes a foster mother for these young trainees spread
out across the length of the country.

After the onboarding, the trainees bid each other farewell and head out to their
first stint. More often that not, it is a core stint, and the challenge from day one
is substantial. Noel M Tichy, who for many years ran General Electric’s
management development center at the behest of Jack Welch, has an
interesting way of explaining performance. He uses three concentric circles. The
inner circle is labled “Comfort Zone”, the middle one is “Learning Zone” and the
outer one “Panic Zone”. He characterises the middle one as the zone where
performance requires skills and abilities that are just outside of one’s reach. He
argues that we never make progress when we are in the comfort zone, because
we merely reapeat activities that we can easily do already. In the panic zone,
the size of the task is so substantial that we can’t even begin to imagine how to
get off the starting blocks. Over the next 15 months a trainee will find himself in
the middle zone for a majority of the time, having to constantly acquire new
skills and abilities to make it from one crisis to the next.

The design of each stint is well thought through. It reflects an understanding of

the criticality of apprenticeship in the transfer of key skills in a short time. In
each core stint, the initial part of the stint is spent in ‘shadowing’ an expert in
the field. This is no different from an apprenticeship that in the past has
produced masters like Leonardo & Michelangelo. While both are celebrated as
master craftsmen, little is known about the arduous journey that both of them
undertook before they gained acclaim. da Vinci studied under Verrocchio,
Verrocchio had previously studied under Donatello, and Donatello had

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 previously studied under Ghiberti. Michelangelo studied under Ghirlandaio,
Ghirlandaio had previously studied under Baldovinetti. To these artists,
apprenticeship meant learning the craft from the grass root level, and working
your way up slowly. Learning wasn’t imparted through any formal education or
lecturing, but through the act of doing. In some cases it began with sweeping
the floor of the workshop and progressed to mixing paint and then to preparing
a canvas.

In a sales stint, a trainee begins as a front line sales man. He shadows a

salesman as he makes 30 to 40 calls, walking from outlet to outlet in a dusty bye
lane in a small town. For the first 2 weeks, he observes the sales call; he begins
to understand selling strategies, the nature of a trader and the competitive
context in which the company operates. By the third week he steps up and
delivers a beat’s target for the day. Once he successfully completes this
challenge he is then ready to rise to the next level of supervision. As a shadow
Territory Sales Officer (TSO), he works with the TSO, observing his actions,
listing his responsibilities. He uses this time to begin to appreciate the language
of sales, the manner of planning, the unique nature of each retail channel, and
starts to get an understanding of how the TSO manages his team. Two weeks
later, he takes independent charge of a territory and manages it for the next 4
to 6 weeks. A similar cycle continues as a trainee works himself up the sales
hierarchy shadowing a Sales Officer (SO) and then an Area Sales Manager
(ASM). In the last 2 weeks of his sales stint, he gets a glimpse of the area sales
manager job, the job that he will step into when his entire training is complete.

Atul Gawande in his book, The Checklist Manifesto makes a compelling case for
the use of checklists across a number of disciplines. From the cockpit of a Being
747 to the Emergency Wards in hospitals, checklists have been proven to raise
the performance of pilots and medical practitioners. He defines two kinds of
checklists that are most prevalent: DO-CONFIRM & READ-DO. With a DO-
CONFIRM checklist the trainee goes through each day in the training program
depending predominantly on their experiences and memory. They then have a
review or a contact with a tutor or coach where the jointly run through the

Stephen Remedios (9004089965) Page 18

 checklist and confirm that everything that was supposed to be done was done.
With a READ-DO checklist, a trainee knows in no uncertain terms all the tasks
they have to get through. A diligent trainee often carries a copy of the checklist
to check items off as and when they complete them. For each of these
checklists, great care has been taken to pick the type that makes the most sense
for the situation and learning outcome that is desired. Checklists of both kinds
are put to ample use in the training program. A review with a tutor more often
than not begins with a checklist. The tutor quickly runs through the list pausing
to ask a question every now and then to make sure that the task has been
completed.

This mix of apprenticeship coupled with a rapidly advancing level of complexity

in the learning zone creates a context ripe for deliberate learning. It is this
context that we will discuss in a later chapter that accelerates the development
of leadership ability.

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 A READ-DO CHECKLIST FOR THE BRAND MANAGEMENT TRAINING STINT

Learning Objectives for First Four Weeks Status

Familiarization with Business Commercials

Logistics

Brand margin, Profitability, Product costing

Purchasing, Buying and Vendor Development

Costs in a Business

Consumer Understanding

Market Research Agency Orientation

Workshop on Market Research Tools and Techniques

Data collection and Analysis

Media management & Brand Communication

Media Strategy Understanding with Mindshare

Public Relations Strategy with Agency on Record

Advertising Development Historical Reel with Agency

Writing Briefs for Research, Ad agency, Development

Art Production Process

Agency Remuneration and Appraisal Processes

Brand Equity Management

Brand Positioning Statement and Developing Brand Identity

Profitability and Financials Related to Brand Management

Monitoring Performance of Brand through Dynamic Tracking

Brand Innovation

Innovation Process Management

Packaging Development Process

Launch Planning and Implementation

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 A DO-CONFIRM CHECKLIST FOR THE SALES MANAGEMENT TRAINING STINT

Task Status

In Market

Work a Wholesale Beat

Work a Key Account Beat

Work a Indirect Coverage Beat (IDC)

Work a Modern Trade Beat

Shopper Understanding

Spend a Day at a Wholesale Counter

Spend a Day at a Rural Kirana Store

Spend a Day at a Family Grocer

Monitoring and Controlling

Do a Detailed Promotion Analysis for Five Products

Calculate the ROI for 3 Distributors

Review the Area organization and Beat Plans

Conduct Two Salesman Meetings

Do an Audit of the Damage / Shortage Claims

Do a Physical & Book Stock Reconciliation

Perform a Cycle Closure and Make Claim Recommendations

Make an Expense Statement for The Cycle

Do a Review of the Infrastructure at the Distributor

Role Comprehension

Write a Note on the Role of the Territory Sales Officer

Write a Note on the Role of the Activation Executive

Write a Note on the Role of the Area Sales Manager

Stephen Remedios (9004089965) Page 21

 Masons, when they start upon a building,
Are careful to test out the scaffolding;

Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,

Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.

And yet all this comes down when the job’s done
Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be

Old bridges breaking between you and me

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall

Confident that we have built our wall.

by Seamus Heaney (Ireland)

Recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1995

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 Leveraging the organization’s expertise
The nature of the training program requires that a trainee operate at the end of
the “Learning Zone”. Every now and then, a trainee will cross the boundary and
find herself in the “Panic Zone”. This is a part of life in the BLT program and well
defined scaffolding is built around the trainee to ensure that these experiences
help her grow in places where she might have been weak to begin with. There
are a number of people on the periphery of the trainee at all times to offer
assistance as is relevant for that situation.

The tutor is usually the person responsible for the skill based learning and
typically has about 5 years of experience in the company. More often than not,
a tutor would himself have been through the training program and is able to
empathize with the trainee. Since the tutor is responsible for skill training for a
particular stint, a trainee will end up having a number of tutors as she goes
through the program. The tutor assigns the trainee challenging projects that
encompass learning objectives, in addition to on-the-job training. Significantly,
each tutor must do a comprehensive evaluation and provide evidence based
feedback to the trainee at the end of each stint. Projects must be evaluated for
quality of analysis and content; in some cases the recommendations will be
implemented immediately. In the course of the next 15 months, five to six
different managers will do similar in-depth evaluations and feedback sessions
with the trainee, thus helping the trainee build a robust and grounded
assessment of her abilities.

Outside of the stint specific support in the form of a tutor, there are a number
of other formal learning relationships that are established at the start of the
training program. These relationships are rigidly defined for the duration of the
training period but often blossom into lifelong relationships.

Each trainee is assigned a buddy - usually a senior from the same institute but a
couple of year’s senior in the company. This is a non-evaluative role; it ensures

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 that the trainee eases into his new environment and provides the support that
he can count on.

The role of the buddy is based on the insight that new recruits are hesitant to
demonstrate vulnerability in the early part of their career and that they are
likely to be most comfortable confiding in someone closer to them in age and
with a similar education background. By sharing his or her experiences, a buddy
helps a trainee understand the challenges of the program and the rationale
behind some of the perceived ‘impossible’ elements of the training.

A trainee is also assigned a coach and a mentor. While a coach is typically a

manager who has had a number of years of experience with the organization, a
mentor is among the most senior managers in the company. The coach is a
trainee’s single window contact and will periodically review progress in each
stint and ensure development on a continuum. He is the owner of the trainee’s
leadership journey in that sense. The mentor uses his ample experience of the
function the trainee is specializing in to help the trainee understand and imbibe
the culture of the organization.

While the learning objectives and training calendar require frequent and time
bound contacts with the tutor, meetings with the buddy, coach and mentor are
left to the trainee to schedule as per mutual convenience. The initial meeting is
facilitated centrally, but once that is done, the responsibility lies with both the
people in the relationship to make it work for the benefit of the trainee.

A significant responsibility lies with the tutor, and the organization takes no
chances with this role. Every year, when young managers become eligible to
tutor fresh recruits they will be invited to Gulita for a two day Tutor’s Workshop.

The workshop is designed to showcase feedback from trainees who have had
great experiences as well as those with the not-so-great experiences. First time
tutors are taken through modules that include: giving powerful evidence based
feedback, the GROW model of coaching and a presentation on the myths of
coaching.

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 The presentation titled ‘The myths of tutoring’ makes a powerful shift in the
way young managers see their role as tutors. The presenter first shows a series
of statements and asks the audience whether they agree with each statement
or not. Statements that he will flash include:

“We coach primarily to help others”

“Coaching focuses attention on the trainee”

“Good coaching means providing timely feedback”

“Coaching is a substantial investment in time”

“Coaching is a work thing”

Many first time tutors promptly stick their hands up in agreement when these
statements flicker on the screen. Over the next few hours the presenter
systematically demolishes these ‘myths’, frequently calling on his experiences as
a coach and tutor. He illustrates the tangible benefits of being a great tutor in
terms of having more time, building a stronger organization, and creating a
following within the company. He concludes that coaching, far from being a
philanthropic act, is purely selfish. He narrates a tale of a demanding trainee he
once had that pushed him to discover an element of his personality that no one
else had brought to his notice, and how that element was coming in the way of
him being fully effective. He emphasizes how coaching helps you get to know
yourself better, become more aware of your blocks. He gives the rapt audience
an example of the most effective coaching he got when he was a trainee in the
form of a 2 minute chat over the phone with his tutor.

He narrates the story of being stuck in a small town in central MP called

Ambikapur, unable to find a new distributor after having interviewed more than
a dozen prospective applicants. In the course of a frantic call to his coach, a
question will open up a host of new approaches and a solution to the problem:
“Is there is way you can meet your target despite not having a distributor in
Ambikarpur?” that will immediately lead him to consider adjacent towns that
had well settled distributors with ample financial muscle.

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 He concludes with a passionate claim that coaching is a life skill, one that if built
can be adapted to your friends, wife and even your children. He ends with a
slide with pictures of himself with the generations of trainees he has tutored.
Some pictures are on the beach, one sitting atop an elephant, yet another in the
wee hours of the morning at some South Bombay club. He ends by saying that
there is no more satisfying experience, than to see someone you tutor do really
well in the company.

Most first time tutors carry this passion into their first tutoring assignment. They
have project briefs ready well before the trainee arrives. The distributors to
which trainees will be sent are briefed, as are the salesmen and field officers
who will work closely with the trainee during the shadow stints. Tutoring is
serious stuff and this is reflected throughout the organization.

At the end of each stint, an appraisal is complete only when the trainee has
given feedback on the quality of tutoring she has received. A score of 4 on 5 is
the bare acceptable minimum. Any tutor getting a score lower than this is
singled out for a counseling session with the line manager. The best tutors with
scores in excess of 4.8 on 5 will get a personal congratulatory message from the
director of the function. Training the next generation of leaders is every
manager’s responsibility and the focus begins right at the very top.

This task of training young managers is a responsibility that a manager in

Unilever shoulders very early in their career. This results in considerable skill
development in the leadership competency cluster. The repeated opportunity
to tutor and coach a young manager results in a higher awareness of self and a
deep sense of contribution to the future of the organization.

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