Roberto Consonni – Micro CV

Roberto spent 27 years with Unilever, the global consumer products giant.  With a turnover of nearly €40bn, Unilever’s 400 market-defining brands cover a wide range of areas from health and beauty to food and hygiene.  Each day, 150 million people buy a Unilever product.

During his time with Unilever, Roberto held a variety of senior positions, culminating in five years with a twin role: general manager for Unilever’s operations in Italy and European general manager for the ‘household cleaner’ category.

Roberto subsequently spent more than five years running Lavazza, Italy’s leading coffee company that sells top-quality espresso products for consumption at-home or on-the-move.  The company has a turnover of €800m.

You revitalised the ‘household cleaner’ division in Unilever Europe.  What was your approach?
Roberto:  It was a big division that was generating good profits, so it wasn’t a rescue situation.  However, when I took up leadership, growth in the division had been static.  I knew it could become a ‘star’ with some new investment and fresh thinking, but there were a number of challenges we needed to overcome.  Several of the barriers were internal.  For example, to compete successfully for investment funds against other huge divisions, like food, ‘household cleaners’ needed a much higher profile within Unilever.  In addition, the seventeen European countries each had their own identity and issues, and were each used to doing things their own way – so change wasn’t going to be simple.

What were the specific steps you took?
Roberto: There were two strands really: the technical side and the ‘hearts and minds’ side.  We brought in new product and marketing expertise to help us develop our brands and come up with pan-European strategies that could work across Europe.  For example, we would take a single household cleaner and evolve it into a complete range of cleaning products, for ‘kitchen’, ‘bathroom’ and so on.  At the same time, I had to win the internal debate.  This meant persuading Unilever to focus resources on the division.  It also meant building connections between the country management teams and influencing them to raise ‘household cleaners’ up the agenda.  Gradually we realigned the business to create a pan-European platform that could roll out the new products in a coordinated way.  We still needed to be responsive to local variations – such as the consumer preference for carpets or hard wood flooring – but the strategy paid off, with sales growth far exceeding targets.

How did your leadership roles compare at Unilever and Lavazza?
Roberto: Clearly, they’re two very different organisations.  Unilever is a huge multinational, with a strong focus on technical competence, whereas Lavazza is an Italian international company where the founding family remains a huge influence.  In leadership terms, the skills were significantly different but in some ways, the practical challenges were quite similar.  When I joined Lavazza, each country operated quite autonomously with its own product portfolio, pricing strategy and so on.  My core objective was to build a single international brand, so I centralised key activities in Turin and repositioned the countries as commercial arms.  I also made a large investment in training.  The hardest part was obtaining basic information but once we’d put in place common IS, we had the data we needed to build a common brand position across Europe.  At the same time, we put a lot of effort into evolving under-developed areas of the market, such as bars, restaurants and vending machines.

What are the essentials of a strong brand?
Roberto: To me there are three aspects.  Firstly, there’s the quality of the product.  Not only does it have to be good, it has to be absolutely consistent.  Before I moved Lavazza coffee into vending machines, I had to be satisfied that the product would meet the same high standards as any other method of delivery.  The second aspect of a strong brand is the perception people hold – every time you touch the consumer, whether it’s through a sale or advertising, you have to communicate your brand with passion.  Thirdly, you have to give great service, which involves a continuous dialogue with the consumer.  Always remember that the brand doesn’t own the consumer – the brand is the servant of the consumer.  If you listen to the views of the consumers, respond to the issues they’re raising and keep up with their changing preferences, you’ll have all the information you need to sell good products at a profit.

How do you maintain the right balance between the strategic and the operational?
Roberto: I have a lot of time for the Stanford philosophy that says ‘strategy is execution’.  It’s important to have dreams but you also have to make them happen.  That means feeding your strategic thinking with vision and goals but also looking at your plans through intensely practical eyes.  To me, it isn’t a case of ‘either/or’ – saying ‘either I can do this or I can do that at the same time’.  Instead I see it as a case of ‘and/and’ – saying ‘I can do this and I can do that’.  Often the demands of leadership look paradoxical and appear to lead you in two different directions at once.  It’s my belief that you sometimes have to challenge yourself to do things that don’t fit together easily – and I find that people can always do a lot more than they think they can.

Roberto Consonni – Micro CV

Roberto spent 27 years with Unilever, the global consumer products giant.  With a turnover of nearly €40bn, Unilever’s 400 market-defining brands cover a wide range of areas from health and beauty to food and hygiene.  Each day, 150 million people buy a Unilever product.

During his time with Unilever, Roberto held a variety of senior positions, culminating in five years with a twin role: general manager for Unilever’s operations in Italy and European general manager for the ‘household cleaner’ category.

Roberto subsequently spent more than five years running Lavazza, Italy’s leading coffee company that sells top-quality espresso products for consumption at-home or on-the-move.  The company has a turnover of €800m.