Build a startup, but as Intrepreneur (ep19)
INTRO:
When you’re leading your team through digital transformation, it’s all too easy to get it wrong, but there are some examples of how you can get it right, or to be precise, being positioned to get it right. One of these examples is building startups in the huge companies rather than departments.
On this subject we talked with Jelena Medojevic, Head of Digital SEE in Philip Morris.
Jelena is an experienced senior manager responsible for creating, leading and measuring the implementation of digital marketing strategy, from strategic development, consumer and digital brand experience to revenue and profit growth of the E-commerce channels.
N: We are going to talk about Intrepreneurship and building startups inside the larger international organization, such as Phillip Morris is. You’re leading the digital department that is not a department, basically it’s a startup at its best. How did this happen in the first place?
Jelena: Well, Philip Morris has embarked on a transformational journey itself. So the company is changing as we speak with a range of heat-not-burn products and the new technologies that we’re bringing into the market. So this innovation that we are bringing also means we need to innovate in the way we talk to our consumers, and this is where digital comes in. So the role of digital as such is really to be an innovator, but also to you’re working from a place of a startup, it’s a completely new term in this place to company is Phillip Morris and it’s really something completely new. So this is why we really look at ourselves as kind of innovators and a bit of a startup like thinking, because our role is, not just to talk to our consumers via digital, educate them, but also to educate the whole company, we are the ones who need to lead, lead the path towards the transformation and really enable PMI as such to reach the consumers with the right messages about the new technology on the market.
N: So since you’re operating as a startup, as we already established, can you share with me your internal organization and in addition to that, how are you influencing bureaucracy from within?
Jelena: Yeah, so, well, digital, as I said, is really something new for Philip Morris as such, and we have been. We brought a lot of people from the outside who were there to change a bit, the culture and the way we do things. Digital is all about being real time, reaching the consumers at the right time with the right message, and in order to do this you have to be agile. So you have to fight kind of this bureaucracy and the old ways of getting things done. So, we have been set up as a really independent team and when you are working in a corporation like this, you have to understand that, how we think, and how we operate is always looked upon like we are bringing something new to the table. And I see our role really as educators of the whole company bringing them closer to digital, but also enabling, enabling our consumers to learn more through digital.
So when it comes to fighting bureaucracy, I wouldn’t say it’s about fighting because there are also good things about being a part of a startup in a big organization, but it’s more about actively changing the way things are done every day. So this is not something that happens overnight every day through what we do. It takes a lot of energy sometimes, and people sometimes can get frustrated with it, but it’s important that we actively work together to change the old mindset. You know, this is how we do things and it works so far, so let’s not deal with that right now. So really, I see my team as innovators in this field, as well. So not just about bringing the digital know-how, but also getting the whole company to be more agile, if I can say.
N: You mentioned agile a couple of times since it’s important for the startups, and I will come to that later, but first, since you told me that you brought new people to the team, I would like to ask you how are you empowering them to be more entrepreneurial? To be more startup minded, because they are working in the huge corporation, but you’re expecting from them to have a startup mind.
Jelena: Well, for me, it’s really about transparency and empowerment. So it’s about being able to communicate very openly with the team to really share all the impediments that we are facing together. To make sure we’re all on the same level of understanding what is happening, but it’s also about empowering them to do the things they were brought to do. Because, as I said, digital is really something new for us as a company, and these people are here for a reason they’re here. This team is here to really move the needle, shift things forward. And the only way we can succeed is if we take the whole company with us, we cannot, this is a ,you know, we can not operate like we’re a startup and not pay too much attention about what’s happening around us. So from my perspective it’s really about making sure that my team can perform and enabling them to be heard, to have their voice heard, to test, to try to learn and fail sometimes, but really being able to communicate to the rest of the organization why this is so important and where it is leading us. So this is how I see my role. And as I said, I think really the crucial things are really open communication and empowerment.
N:And you told me about the failing sometimes, and that’s a part of the startup life, but it’s not a part of the corporation culture, corporate culture. How you’re dealing with that to share the message that failing is all right?
Jelena: Well, I think we’ve done a really good job in this, and it is not just my team, but really the company, as such has, incorporated this kind of fast forward thinking. We’ve learned that, instead of launching big and maybe failing big, it’s really great to be able to test things so more and more, we are choosing smaller consumer bases, doing a lot of experiments. And then based on that extrapolating results and thinking how we actually scale it up. So I would say this mindset is already there, but of course, digital always goes one step further. We are pushing the boundaries a little bit and maybe bringing them, some of the colleagues into some place where they don’t feel too comfortable, which is okay. I think is just one way to learn and grow, because if you don’t try you don’t succeed and you’ll have to fail at some point and sometimes, but we are doing it in a way that it’s not a full-scale, but rather going doing it smartly within smaller numbers, and really just checking the hypothesis as we go. So I would say this really is working out very well for us so far.
N: You partly answered my next question regarding the innovation itself. So I want to know how you guys innovate. Can you share with me your innovation process itself?
Jelena: For us, as I said, we have this advantage of being a startup within a company. And I would say it’s a bit of an advantage that we are free, to brainstorm and think of whatever we want to do. Because being part of a bigger organization has its advantages, and as I said, it has certain disadvantages, but it’s never a perfect situation obviously. We are perceived as someone who can bring this innovation forward. As I said, we have a very innovative technology in place developed for many years in the arranger product based on this technology. So it’s only natural that digital is the channel to spread the story about it. So it is actually very much expected that we come with all this “Oh, now here, here are the digital guys, you know, they’re going to come up with something completely different” , and we get this very often up. Okay. So let us hear what you have to say now. So I would say we have an open ear in the organization to bring forward, on the table ideas. Okay, of course not all of them pass. And this is completely normal, but looking from the innovation perspective I’m very happy that we have this support and kind of a green light. Just bring it, put it on the table and then let’s see how we can roll it forward. In the light of this, we have just launched like a first ever PMI market, an ICOs virtual store, like a new consumer concept. Which is focused on reaching our consumers in the digital sphere and really educating them and providing all the needed information about our range of heat-not-burn products and the technology behind it. So I’m really proud to see Serbia being one of the first markets in BMI globally to launch this concept.
N: You mentioned that earlier agility and how it’s important, and of course we are speaking again from a startup perspective.But, I want to hear your opinion regarding agility in large corporations. How hard is it and is it achievable at all?
Jelena: It’s very hard but it is achievable. I mean I really had quite a bit of experience with agile transformations up to now, and what I can tell you is that there’s no one model that fits all. I think I have several takeaways that I can share, but basically every change, every transformation starts from top down. It’s very crucial to get, first of all, the understanding and then the backup of the top management in any kind of agile transformation as such. This is, I think, the first step you can never be led bottom up. It simply does not work. The other thing is that the companies very often try to overnight become agile. You know, like we have this structured today and from tomorrow, it’s going to work like this. This does not work. Of course. What I’ve seen so far is that if you really try to take on the whole organization and really do this big shift, it does not work, or it will take a really, a lot of time until it does work. It’s always better to start small and then go big. So maybe just like with anything when it comes to innovation. Right? Prove the value based on a smaller sample and then scale it up. So this is how I see agility as well. The right approach really would be to start, with a certain project, a smaller team that can actually really work and deliver on their agile..
N: And prove that is doable. Right?
Jelena: Exactly prove that is doable because this is how you also get the buy-in from the rest of the organization. You have to understand that when you try to transform a big organization, you always have certain streams that will never be agile enough. I don’t know, accounting procurement. There are certain things that just have to be done and there’s no way around it. and when you are in a big organization, there’s certainly no way around it. As a startup you can even play because you build agility into the organization from the very beginning, right. But when you try to do it in a very mature organization, it does not work. So you have to be also aware that you have to find a model somewhere in between so that you have to adjust actually agile methodology for your own needs and then scale it up and run it throughout the organization.
N: While we are still on the subject of agility, you have had a big experience before Phillip Morris in a Telco industry, you work in one huge international corporation that is working in a Telco industry. What are the differences between agility in the different industries? Maybe in this example that you’re working now and where you’ve worked before?
Jelena: Well, it’s not around the industry. It’s about the readiness of the organization to shift towards agile and how they see it’s feasible for them. As I said, there’s no one model that can fit, all of the organization. And what is really the key is bringing on the right talent people that can drive the change and drive the education because agility is about doing things differently. It’s not about doing new things that will come as a by-product, but it’s about doing things differently. So it really requires a mindset shift, in the organization. And then I saw a lot of different approaches from trying to do it, to shift the whole organization from trying to do it in a smaller team and educate maybe a smaller group of people that can then show the value of working in an agile setting, to the entire organization. So where I see the differences, not just between my organizations, but the overall is really high, so we decide to tackle it and how to approach it. But in the end the results should be the same realizing how you can implement and adapt agile methodology to work in your own company. I think I mentioned it, no company is the same and our starting points are different.
When you are a startup it’s much easier obviously, but the key is really for it organization to do a really good sanity check. Where are we and what we are trying to do, because certain things are working as is. I said, waterfall can be a very effective methodology for certain things, and you should not be replaced and agile should not be just plugged into everything we really need to see. Where does it add value? Digital certainly is one of the areas where you have to be very agile because we are the ones that can react to consumer needs, changes in the market, the fastest, and we really need to be agile. Also our agencies need to be agile, execution needs to be agile. That’s it. But some other areas of the company can work perfectly fine in the waterfall method. This is the learning that I can really share here is that be careful when you assess your readiness. First of all, how much education do you really need to shift the organization towards agile don’t underestimate it because it’s really a huge factor. People are used to getting things done in a certain way. And it does take really quite a long time to educate them and change their behavior and ensure you really have the right talent to do so. It’s really about the people who are bringing the change. So this is where you need to be careful to really onboard the right talent, to lead such a transformation.
N:I always like to finish with the future questions, and I think we probed enough your internal startup. So I want to ask you a broader question. I want to hear from you, what is your vision? What will internal startups bring in the future for organization? What challenges and what wins can be expected from the internal startups?
Jelena: Well you cannot fight in today’s marketplace without being an innovator in one way or the other. And the only way to innovate is really to have this kind of a startup culture, old ways of doing things are simply not bringing results anymore. So I really see that in the future being organizations, we will more and more rely on startups. Whether that is creating a small startup within the company putting dedicated resources to work on a certain product or a line of products in a startup way, or partnering. Looking for small companies that can bring the technology and the product needed to plug it into the big system, or working for example on boosting entrepreneurship, a spirit within its own company. Like a lot of companies are doing it, challenges entrepreneurship challenges, innovation challenges, etc. We’re looking for the people within the company who have great ideas that can be then brought forward. So I think there are going to be a lot of models for sure, but it’s going to become more and more prominent. Going forward we can not expect that the innovation will come from how we do things or how we used to do it in the past, and we looked at, also from the cost perspective. Many organizations are looking to partner up with startups who have an MVP product that they can then shape towards their own needs rather than develop everything in-house from scratch. So, I think this also really goes with agility as well, because startups are the ones who can react much faster to whatever the market is bringing, whatever the consumer needs are. And this is where the big corporations are gonna rely more and more and partner more and more with the outsiders to deliver the value to their own consumers.
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