Industry sign banking minnesota presentation fast
- [Narrator] The power of
food, to feed a growing body, to nourish a curious mind,
to satisfy a sweet craving, to create a new connection, to bring families and people together. At General Mills we serve the world by making food people love, but that's not the only way we serve. We serve by harnessing the
power of food for good. We believe that all
children should be nourished and ready to learn at school. We believe that perfectly
good food should go to feed hungry people, not landfills. We believe in sustainable agriculture for healthy soil and planet. We believe in protecting and
increasing bee population. We believe in nurturing
the small-holder farmers who grow our ingredients. We believe in caring for the communities where our employees live and work. That's the power of food. This is the power of General Mills. - [Jeff] Alright, fantastic. - [Moderator] Great. So Jeff, do you want to
make some opening remarks before we get started on our conversation. Would you like to say
something about what Mills is up too or? - Yeah, let me say a couple
words and then I'd like to spend the majority of
the time talking about questions and answers,
things that are on your mind and maybe some people from the audience, but first of it's a
thrill for me to be here especially knowing that it's
the 100th year anniversary of the Carlson School
and one of the things that's most interesting
I think is I've met a lot of people today that
I've known for a long time from a lot of different
parts of the community. And one of the things
that I think you all know is that, you know, how interesting it is the relationship between
business and government, the community, and the
University of Minnesota and it's so special, but I think it's easy to take it for granted
and I spend a lot of time with CEOs from around the
country and around the world. I can tell you they don't
have gatherings like this. And, you know, and the
reason I just mention it, I know you know it, but
I think it's up for us to preserve it. And that doesn't mean that
everyone has to agree with everything all the time,
but I think we're all better when we work together. And that's how General
Mills got its start, I mean, it started on the
banks of the Mississippi River with Cadwallader Washburn
in 1866 and, you know, they had an accident at
the flour mill in 1878 and not only did he make
good on the flour mill, but also set up an orphanage for the children of the families
who were devastated by that and I think from 1878
on we've been practicing social responsibility,
corporate social responsibility, and it's the kind of values that he shared that I think have carried on, you know, into the third century
here in the Twin Cities. And so, you know, from that
beginning General Mills is now a company of 40,000
employees around the world making food people love. We created the Nerf ball
many, many years ago. Helped create the black
box for airline recorders and actually did some work on submarines, but now we just serve the world by making food people love
and I'm honored to be here. And I'm especially pleased
that you mentioned my wife, Lisa, could join us, Carlson School, very proud Carlson School grad
as well as some colleagues from General Mills and a lot of people who've made a difference in my career who are sitting out in front here, so thrilled to have
them, have them join us. - Thank you Jeff and, you know, food has been changing over the, you know, the way people consume
food, the kinds of food that are being talked about et cetera, how is, why is it one of the
most dynamic industries today and how has it changed
over the last few years and how has General Mills
maintained its leadership position in that whole space? - Well I think the food
industry is kind of dynamic, you know, and food, the
food industry and dynamic really didn't got together for a number, for a number of years,
but over the last decade that's really changed and it's changed a lot of dimensions. One is just how food is marketed. And if you think about
General Mills has three of the top five websites in the country for food preparation so, bettycrocker.com, and pillsbury.com, and tablespoon.com. We certainly didn't have that 25 years ago because nobody did, but
we have tens of millions of households that we
serve through that website. So how we market food
has changed, in fact, I mean when I was coming
up through the organization we'd put together a plan for a year and we would run some TV and some coupons in the newspaper and now
Millennials they don't even, they don't get newspapers
and most of them don't know how to turn on the TV they're watching other kinds of screens. And so for us we market in
a completely different way. I'll give you a couple examples of that. In addition to the websites
we have we just launched a new product which is fantastic, Cinnamon Toast Crunch Churros
and it's just hit the market. There's some people
nodding in the front row and they were smiling as they were nodding so that pleases me. But, and we, we put out this information to a set of bloggers and
in the first three days we had 250 million impressions. - Pooooffff. - And so you, I mean that kind of coverage wasn't something you
could do as a marketer so it's kind of a golden age of marketing. So how we market to people
is, and the dialog we have with consumers has changed,
how people eat has changed. I think the biggest change
over the last 25 years is a growth in snacking. It used to be that snacking represented a small minority of
consumer eating occasions, now it's actually the majority. And also the definition
of health is changing. Some people say, well, we're
eating healthier than ever, I'm not sure about that, but
I can definitely tell you we're eating differently than
ever and not only snacking, but a lot of natural and organic. General Mills is the second largest natural and organic
producer in the country with brands like Annie's
and Cascadian Farm, Muir Glen, Larabar, and now
we're the leading purveyor of natural dog food in
the U.S. with Blue Buffalo and some people said,
you know, how can a food, you know you're a food
company, how did you get into the pet food business? Well, for most of you who
have pets, I mean pets are just furry members of the
family and as it turns out a lot of the trends in pet
food are the exact same trends in human food. And so the way people eat
have changed and I think as we look over the next five years the thing that's gonna change
more than anything else is how food is delivered
and the use of technology in doing that. And we have a strong e-commerce presence with grocers around
the, around the country and around the world. The leading market really for food and e-commerce is Korea with
China not too far behind and the U.S. actually lags. You know, we're used to
being the first of things and food and e-commerce
were actually one of the, of the developed markets
we're one of the slowest so there's a lot changing. And for us it's a matter of, you know, it's a matter of making sure
we keep up with that change and whether it's buying
natural and organic companies, or changing the way we market, or getting into the pet food business, we've done a lot over the last few years to catch up with that change. And I think as we think
about change one of the keys is as you, and Bruce Atwater, who is a former CEO of General Mills, was doing a talk in 1982 and, you know, he said there's always a tension between what you keep the
same and what you change. And I think that's true
of General Mills now more than ever and for us
the thing that can't change is our values which is one of the reasons I wanted to show that
video because in a world that is so dynamic whether
it's economically dynamic, or politically dynamic,
our food values change, and technology changing, I feel like you have to have something
that tethers you to the, tethers you to the ground
and for General Mills it's always been our values
and it's one of the things I'm probably most proud of. And one recent industry
analyst said, you know what, what's different about General
Mills and other companies, you know, was the cost structure. I said, you know, with all
due respect you have no idea. It's not that at all, it's
the values that we have and it's the culture that we put forth and it's the people that
we have at the company, that's what sets General
Mills apart and this youngster just didn't have it quite, quite right. - Well, I mean, I think
that speaks very much to, you know, how do you create and sustain that kind of corporate culture? How do you create a culture
of say conscious inclusion in your company, how do you
maintain that, these values, and, you know, to what
extent are these values somehow related to, you
know, to us as a state? I mean, are you kind of,
in some ways, I mean, has the evolution of these values, are they Minnesota values in any way or is it a, what do you feel about that? - Well I mean there are
a number of questions to unpack there. I mean, I guess, I guess I
would start by saying for me the values of the company
are, you know, are unchanging, are unwavering, and so we talk about doing the right thing all the time. It's not doing the right thing
when it's convenient for you, it's doing the right thing all the time. We talk about winning as a
team, it's not, you know, winning it as a team, if you can't, but if you can't just go
on by yourself, I mean, it's winning as a team and
business is a team sport. And, you know, I think the values, I think they are Minnesota values, I think they're U.S.
values, but I would tell you the value that General Mills has is the same across the
world and we've recently won awards in India and in
China for our corporate values and that probably makes me
as proud as anything else and so they are consistent
around the world. In terms of how they evolve over time, it's interesting, I think
the values of the company remain the same, but the
key with culture, I think, just like brands themselves,
their not static, I mean, Cheerios is not the
same as it was 50 years ago even though it's still a leading brand and the same would be true of cultures and so you have to update
cultures for the time. And I'll give you a couple of examples. And, you know, in 1966
General Mills brought it's first female board
director on and Bruce Atwater was the one who did that. And then, you know,
Steve Sanger came along and he did a lot of things for
diversity at General Mills, but one thing he's really known for is, and he's here today, so I'm
talking to the guy who did it, but, is really about,
about bringing women along in the organization. And we had our first female
Vice-President in 1972 and the diversity, the gender diversity really picked up over Steve's leadership and he contributed to that. And then, you know, Ken Powell
did a lot with diversity too, especially the LBGT network
and championing in gay marriage which was very controversial at the time, but from an inclusion perspective, and from our values perspective exactly the right thing to do. And Ken did a lot of things,
but he's known for that. You know, and I think about
that because it's been, you know, that's three decades, and four decades in the making, these things don't happen
overnight and so I feel a tremendous sense of responsibility to carry on that tradition as
a CEO of General Mills now. And for me it's really more
about inclusion and, you know, if diversity is about
who's sitting at the table, and we're a very diverse company now, then inclusion is about,
do they have a voice and can they bring their
best game everyday. And we're a more global company now and if you have an
inclusive culture I think that actually begets diversity
because to the extent people can feel they can
bring their best game whether they're male or
female, black or white, or Chinese or French or
American or Brazilian, so they feel like they can
bring and their thoughts will be included and their
opinions really matter, I think that's gonna
beget even more diversity. And so even though that
value has stayed the same as a company over several
generations of leaders I think we've all kind
of moved the ball forward and I think that's one
of my responsibilities as the current CEO. - So tell us a little bit maybe about your leadership journey, you know, and you've been with
General Mills for now, as I mentioned almost 25
years and how has that journey and the different roles that you've helped shaped the leader that you are today? - Well it's been a journey,
it's been, you know, it's been kind of a wandering path. People ask me about career paths, as if it's kind of straight, at least for me it's been
kind of a wandering one and I think it is for a lot
of people coming up today. In terms of the, the
leadership journey I guess there are two big influences,
that's one of the reasons I'm pleased to have some
of my mentors here today, because if you ask anybody
from General Mills, you know, why do they
come and why do you stay? They're gonna tell you, they're
gonna tell ya three things, but they're gonna tell ya in this order. The first is the people, I
came because of the people and then they're gonna
mention something about values and if they're in marketing they're gonna mention
something about the brands. And the, but it always, it
always starts with the people and I think for me my leadership journey begins with learning from
those around me and so. Ian Friendly is here and Christi
Strauss, and Bob Waldron, people who are, I worked
for at General Mills. Bob was my first, my first boss and I knew we were gonna get along well before, I hadn't started with the company yet, I showed up in July and he gave me a call and he said, we're having a team meeting out on Lake Minnetonka and
you wanna come out for a beer? And I was, I do like beer
and so I was happy to do that (laughing) and it turns that Bob does
too, but more importantly, you know, what it said was,
you know, he cared about me and assimilating me into the team. And one of the, you know,
a lot of research has shown the difference between good
leaders and great leaders is, do you care about your people. Everyone cares if you get the job done and holding people accountable
is certainly important, but what distinguishes good from great is, do you care about the people themselves and certainly Bob showed
that from the very beginning. And, you know, whether
it was Christi Strauss who really taught me about
authenticity, I mean, really an authentic leader
and I learned a lot from her at CPW or Ian Friendly with creativity and the ability to use
other people's talents. You know, Ian and I probably
have some different talents, but we always worked really well together and always very complimentary. And I always respected the
fact that he could take the things that I did well and use those and the things he didn't he'd make up for in some other way and I
would hope that I learned some of that stuff as a leader. So I learned a lot from the people, but then there's also a lot
to be gained from experiences and from different experiences
and for me probably the best leadership moment
for me was when the time I spent at Cereal Partners
Worldwide in Europe. I went there as a Vice-President in 2003, I worked for Ken Powell
and then Ian and Christi. And I was 36 years old,
I had never managed and I was Vice-President
for this, you know, two billion dollar
business and I kinda knew what I was doing, but not fully. And it was, the office,
this joint venture, the Cereal Partners joint
venture has people from Nestle and people from General
Mills and people hired in for the joint venture. We had more then 30
nationalities represented in this office of a hundred
people and the very first time I got my team together I
gave a baseball analogy and it went absolutely nowhere. (laughing) And then the next time
I talked about soccer, or as they call it, football,
and it was fabulous, but I, in that environment I learned a lot about the value of
inclusiveness and diversity. Because when you have people
from three different countries and 30 different nationalities, you know, there's an American view of diversity, but then there's a
broader view of diversity which gets into style
and country of origin and cultural norms and what you learn is that you can really make magic happen. If you can get people with a
lot of different backgrounds kind of going in the
same general direction, for me that was a real
turning point in my career and a great leadership experience. - Well I can see why you
are the leader that you are. I mean, you've given credit
to just about everyone sitting in this room except for yourself so that's, that's quite amazing really. You know, it's, often
leadership path, you know, gets honed when you have
to make tough decisions. Have there been any
particularly tough decisions that you've had to sort of deal with and how have you, what was
the process you went through into making the decision and how, how did you figure out afterwards whether it was the right decision or not? - Well the, and you know when you have a dynamic environment like we
have in the food business now, I mean, the definition
of insanity would be to do the same thing over and over again and expect something
different and so when you have a dynamic environment you
have to be dynamic yourself as an organization. And you know one of the things that was the toughest for us, and
certainly for me personally, was that, you know, we
have reduced the size of our workforce by more than
10% over the last five years. And we had to, we really
had to do it as a matter of survival as a company and
had to continue to adapt. And I was reflecting because there were, many, many years ago General
Mills laid of a third of its workforce and then
had the best two decades they've ever had as a
company after that, and, because they were willing to change. And it was hard because General Mills is kinda like I family,
I mean it's been around for a long, long time
and I think that's one of the things that is the,
one of the greatest assets of General Mills, but
when it comes to change it's one of the hardest things, try to change family dynamics, there's very few things harder then that. And as we were downsizing
our organization, I mean these are people I'd worked with for a long, long time and so you try to do those
things with great care and respect and I think we
have, but it's hard to do. And for me, you know, how did I, you know, how do you get through that? For me, we have 40,000 employees, but we let 10% go, but
there's 90% still there and they're 90% counting
on me to do the right thing for the organization and make sure it's a viable concern going on. And so, you know, whenever
I had to deliver bad news to people who were really good employees, really talented people,
you know, I would think of the 35,000, if I
don't make those choices they're not gonna like
the outcome very much and then I reflect back on
General Mills decades ago that let, you know, a
third of its workforce go and then had, you know,
a lot of good years because they were willing to change. I mean General Mills is not
a company that's been around 150 years because it can't change, it's been around 150 years
because it's willing to change and keeping the values the
same, but willing to change. So that was, that was
probably the toughest. And then, you know, in
my first year as CEO in the third quarter we
missed our earnings target and we called it down for the quarter and we called it down for
the year and I had gotten a lot of advice for people,
former CEOs and others about, you know, like what do
I do the first year as CEO, and had all these great
ideas and they said, that's fantastic, why don't
you just hit your numbers, I mean, why don't you, that'd be great if you could deliver share
holders what you said and we didn't. And not only that is we were
expecting a better result then we had, we had just
bought Blue Buffalo, which was gonna be a great
business for General Mills, very excited about that. And then we had, not only did we miss our third quarter results,
but we had to take down our numbers for the year and
so that was really tough. And the, when you have
an experience like that, you know, as I told our
team, we're either gonna get a lot better or we're
gonna get a lot worse, there's no staying the same
and it's really up for us now to decide which of those it's gonna be. And, you know, for the
three quarters after that we exceeded earnings
targets from the street and I'm very proud of
that because, I mean, it showed the resiliency of the team and how seriously they took
it and we have earnings here in a couple weeks so I can't tell you if it's gonna be four or
not, but for the first three it went really well and we're
a better organization now than we were in the
third quarter a year ago, we're not perfect, but we're a lot better. And I'm really proud of the team for that, but that was, that was a little rough because imagine, you know
imagine taking a class and getting a D, but have
everybody in the world know it and then, you know, and
people for the first time, you know, in a long time they questioned your credibility as an organization and so you have to fight
through that and we have. Have we done it the right way I don't know time will be the final judge of that, but I feel pretty good about how, how we've handled it so far. - So finally, how much has Minnesota mattered to General Mills? I mean, you began on the
banks of the Mississippi River as you mentioned more than 150 years ago, the state started in
operating, is about as old, and, you know, it's your
home to now 100 brands, you know, 4,000 employees
in the Twin Cities, and how have General Mills
and the state of Minnesota have you, sort of how have you, how have they helped shape one another? - Well first of all they,
I mean they definitely have helped shape one another. You know the values that Minnesota has, the values of humility, I mean,
one of the greatest things about General Mills is it's not a culture that really puts up with
people who aren't humble. I mean it's, it's nice
people and smart people, but as a culture we're humble,
and sometimes too much so. Sometimes we need to
talk about all the things we're doing and that's one of the reasons I played the video, sometimes
we're not out there enough, but the sense of community that we have and tying in with and
working well with others, playing nicely with
others, I think it's one of our greatest corporate attributes. In fact when I was, when I
was talking to some directors about getting the CEO job,
directors at General Mills from the board, they said what's your, one of 'em said, asked,
what's your biggest competitor advantage and
I said, we're not jerks, and he laughed and he said,
is that really one 'em, and I said, it is. And I said because in the next 10 years it's all gonna be about partnership, you don't get anything done by yourself and who wants to work with a jerk? And we all know 'em and
we all know companies that have that reputation, but, you know, the reason we're able to partner so well with people like the
University of Minnesota, or the state government, or Grow North, or The Nature Conservancy,
is because we believe in win-wins and we believe
in winning as a team. It's the reason why we
started a venture fund called, 301 Inc. and we invest in minority firms. And the reason why we've
done well with these firms is because people wanna work
with us because we truly try to help them and they help us back. And a lot of times it feels like companies and organizations try to figure out how to cut up the pie rather
than trying to make it bigger and you make the pie bigger
there's enough for everybody. And I think that's one
of the things that sets General Mills apart and
that's a value I think of living here in the Twin Cities. I would also say there's
nothing that gets done in General Mills that doesn't have a, that hasn't been touched
by someone who's graduated from the University of
Minnesota and it is fantastic to have an institution of this caliber in our backyard. I'm the son of two college
professors so I think I know of what I, of what I speak and we have so many grads from the University of Minnesota. I did not know we were
one of the first ones to give a gift, but I can
tell you that the school, whether it's the Carlson
School or may other schools and the University of Minnesota
have given back so much to General Mills and I think
it's a great relationship. And I think we give back
something too and I think it works well for you all
and it works well for us. - [Moderator] Great, thank you so much. You know our provost
is here, Karen Hanson, and I just wanted to mention that, and seeing you are here so
it's great to have you here and on that note for the
University of Minnesota. I think at this point we'll
open it up to the audience. I'm sure many of you
have questions and I know there are folks out there with mikes and, so please put your hand up if
you have a question to ask. - [Male] Good afternoon. - [Jeff] Good afternoon. - Is this working?
- It is. - [Male] You talk a lot about change maybe you can share with us some of the change-management practices that you kind of put in place and lead to get the other 35,000
employees on the same sheet as you try to drive the
organization forward? - So the question, I'll
repeat it just in case somebody didn't hear it. The question is about change
and change-management practices and how do we get everybody
on the same, the same page. You know one of the
things I've learned about, I've learned a couple things about change that are important and
one is when people say they want change, what they really mean is they want everybody else to change and they wanna keep
doing what they're doing. (laughing) And the fact that you're all laughing you've seen this yourselves. The other thing I would say
is with change, is I mean, perfection is the enemy of change. And whenever you're
gonna change, you know, you have to be objective with yourselves because when you start
to change you're not gonna get everything right and the key is not to get everything right, the key is if something goes wrong
how fast are you gonna be able to identify it and how fast are you able to pivot. In a world that's dynamic
the ability to pivot is a lot more important
than the ability to right, to get it the first time. So I would say in terms, so
that would be the first thing I would say in terms of
change is that getting everybody on the same
page it takes a while and everybody is on a
different change curve and you have to realize everyone's on a different change curve. The second I, you know,
I think but what things can aid in that? The more you can push
the change down through the organization the better off and so it starts at the top with
clarity and I pride myself on being clear, I'm not sure I always am, but I pride myself on it
and trying to keep things relatively simple because
as something goes through an organization it's
only gonna get less clear and it's, it's only
gonna get more complex. So if you start out, if you
start out with clear and simple by the time you get all the way through you're probably gonna have
less clear and complex and so from a change-management
point I would say I would start with, with that. And then the key is the
middle of the organization, it always is the middle
of the organization. Because the people at the
top of the organization they see enough of
what's coming to change, the people at the bottom
they've just started and so they don't have as much invested, it's always the middle
and the change occurs, if it's gonna go well it's gonna be in the middle of the organization, if it doesn't go well it's not gonna be in the middle of the organization. And so one of the things that I do is, a couple of times a week,
I meet with directors in our company, I have lunch
with all of our directors and vice-presidents at least
once a year, in a group. And it's Q&A and for me
it's a way to connect with the people who, you know, who I think are the ones who really
drive change and to hear, to get their feedback
directly on what's going well and what's not going well. And it's all supported
by a great HR Department, our head of HR is here and they do, they kind of help lead
us through that journey, but it's a team effort. And what I would say is you're
going on a change journey it's just not gonna be
perfect and you have to, you have to start with that mindset. - [Moderator] Any questions
on that side, okay? - So the question really
is, she said she liked what I had to say about, about inclusion. Thank you, I'll take that. About inclusion and the difference between diversity and inclusion
and how do you develop a more inclusive culture? Yeah for me, I mean, diversity is about who sits at the table and
inclusion really is about do they have a say and you
have to marry those two things. It's not as discreet as that, but that's at least how I frame it up initially and having an inclusive
culture is, it's a lot of work and I don't think you switch
the light on from one day to inclusive and another day not. And especially let's, I
mean I'm not gonna get into a big political
speech here believe me, but, but I mean our political environment doesn't exactly help with
that, but I think that for me that's why, that's why
inclusiveness at General Mills is such a competitive advantage
because if there's a lot of, if there's a lot of divergence
in the outside world, but General Mills is a place you can come and feel as if your views are
respected, that helps a lot. One of the things that,
that we certainly do is we do a lot of, we do
a lot of internal training on leadership behaviors and
leadership expectations. And the way we've done,
we've always been, I think, really thoughtful about
how we develop our people. We're doing it in different ways now then we ever have before. We did a global campaign, we called it, Engaging Leaders, which we rolled out to, to more than 5,000 employees
in a month globally and so we've got a set of
engaging leader behaviors. We also talk about, the how you do things in addition to the what. It's not good enough to have good results if you're the leader the
expectation is that you lead well in addition to getting the results, so the how is as important as the what, that's the thing I, I guess a second. And, you know, another thing we've done which I thinks been really
interesting and helpful is we've fostered a series called, Courageous Conversations, and it really is about the conversation
itself because too many times we get into these opposite
corners whether it's liberal or conservative and
Democrat or Republican, or I believe this and you believe that and people talk at each
other and not to each other and so we have this series
called, Courageous Conversations. I'll give you a couple of examples. One we had one gentleman
who's African-American and we had somebody from the police force, who by the way happened to
be a son of another employee, and we had a Courageous
Conversation about, about race and law and how
that works in this country and the objective is just
to have a conversation, there's no pre-intended outcome, only to hear the other side. And, you know, we had one
on LBGT in the workforce, we had one on mental
health in the workforce, and so what we try to do is create a forum for conversation where there
doesn't have to be an ending. And one of the things we found I think it, it helps with a more inclusive environment because then everyone's opinions are, everyone's opinions are heard. I would also I guess
finally if you're gonna be a leader in an organization I mean you have to role model that. And if you're not gonna
role model that, I mean, who is gonna role model,
role model that, so.? - [Man] You know I sit at a
little desk once in awhile and on the computer the
other day I read about April 26, 2019, Walmart
is gonna discontinue the Disability Employment
Program that they have, their greeter program. And I'm not gonna compare
Walmart and General Mills 'cause I know there's no comparison, but what I wanna find out is
what does General Motors do for disability employment and
secondly I'd like to find out what kind of volunteer programs you have such as let's say the Salvation
Army for your employees there are at General
Mills, community programs? - Yeah I mean if, if you're gonna be, if you're gonna be an, so
the question really is about, the beginning of it I didn't quite hear, but it was about the
Disabilities Act and Walmart and something was going on
there, and then you kind of transitioned into, you
know, how does General Mills think about disability
and inclusion that way in the workforce? The first thing I would
say is look, if you want an inclusive environment you can't like be selectively inclusive, I mean, you know, inclusive means inclusive
and so whether you come from a military background,
or LGBT, or whether you have a disability whether it's
a physical disability or a learning disability, you know, we work to include all
people to give their best in our organization. And we have programs, we
have programs internally with internships from
high schools where we have disadvantaged kids who
some in and they learn the value of work and
I'm really proud of what, I'm really proud of that work. We have some people with
some mental disabilities who are employed at
General Mills doing tasks that really fits what they do and they get a lot of satisfaction out of it. There's one lady who comes and
delivers the mail every day and she always stops by my
office to say, hi, always, and she is just so excited
that she gets to say hi to the CEO and I say hi back
and we have a conversation for awhile and so whether
it's physical disabilities or mental disabilities or people come from different points of
view, if you're gonna have an inclusive culture you
kind of have to mean it, you have to mean it all the way. And of the ways we promoted
that recently is that, General Mills has always prided itself on being a leader in benefits
and we got a little behind and to, you know,
Jacqueline Williams-Roll, who's the head of HR,
to her immense credit and her team, we kind of
flipped the script on that and one of the things we
have done is we've increased our parental leave, not only for women, but also for men, it's a parental leave, it's not a leave for
women it's parental leave and, you know, time for
families to bond and so we've, I mean I think we've taken
a leadership role over that. And that's really important
because you wanna make sure that whether it's men with young children, or women with young children, that we, yeah we want them to give
their best to General Mills, but they're not gonna give their best if they're worried about
what's going on at home and so, you know, we've done a lot. We've done a lot in our
benefits area to make sure that we're matching the
benefits to the times as well. - [Moderator] More questions? - [Woman] Thank you,
I'm a long time investor in General Mills stock so
I'm one of those people who watches it. I guess having watched what's happened now with Kraft Heinz and the
takeover by, what is it, 3G or whatever, are there risks
to General Mills right now and how are you dealing with
these private-equity firms or if they're eyeing you and how are you reacting to that today? - Yeah, so the question
about Kraft Heinz and, this is where I gotta be careful, but the, (laughing) and it's a really good,
it's a really good question and I'm gonna answer it as best I can keeping in mind that I can
only answer as best I can. But the question was about Kraft Heinz and what happened with Kraft
Heinz and just a little context for those of you in the
room who don't watch food stocks every day, I do watch it, I want you to know I
watch our stock every day, but Kraft Heinz had an
earning announcement about a week or so ago and,
you know, they took down earnings for the year
after they had revised it for the third quarter
and just the whole thing didn't go very, didn't
go very well for them. And then, you know, the
question is how does it relate back to General Mills? I think, you know it's something that I've been talking about
and we talked about it at our investor presentation in February and been talking about
it since I've become CEO and it really is about, is
about making sure that yes, we make more money, but
we have to grow to do it so it's about sustainable growth And the problem that they've
had is they haven't had sustainable growth because their sales are less than they were four years ago, their profit is the same,
and their debt is higher and you can only do that for so long. And so I have, the technical
term I've called for this, is staying in the middle of the boat, and so now I have some,
actually some analysts, starting to repeat back this
stay in the middle of the boat and you can get too far
to one side of the boat if you're just cutting
costs, you can get too far to the other side of the
boat in the food business if you say, you know I'm
just gonna grow sales and it doesn't really matter
how much money I make, you can do that for
awhile, but not very long and so the key is to do
a little bit of both. And I'm recalling a conversation I had, and he does not remember
this, but a conversation I had with Steve Sanger when I took over the cereal business in
2007, he was the CEO, and he called me into
his office and, you know, one of the things he said
was, well first he said Big G is a very fast car try
to keep it out of the ditch and I wrote that down and you can tell I still remember it. I did keep it out of the ditch, we came close to a wall a couple times, but I did manage to keep
it out of the ditch. But the other is he said,
you know Jeff in any one year it's really easy to make more money, in any one year it's
easier to sell more stuff, and the trick is to try to
do both at the same time and I've never forgotten that. And that's kind of how I think
about what we try to do now and maybe what's different
from what some others are trying to do. Is that, you know we wanna be good to our, we have to be good to our shareholders over the longterm and the
way you do that is to, is to grow a little bit and to make a little bit more money
while you are making the world a better place to
live whether it's through your employees or whether
it's through sustainability or how you contribute to communities. And so for me the key
for us at General Mills is to try to do that. Our cash flow is better
than it was a year ago and it was better last year then it was the year before that. We've maintained our
guidance for the entire year and our cash flow is
better than what we said so we're feeling through,
for the first couple quarters of the year, we're feeling pretty good about where we've a, where we've landed and we think what we're trying to do is a little bit different
then what Kraft Heinz was trying to do and that's the key, stay in the middle of the boat. - [Moderator] We have time
for one final question. - [Woman] Thanks, thanks,
given your leadership role back in cereal partners with Nestle, can you comment on the
importance of that relationship with Nestle given its role as a giant in global food industry? - Yeah, so the question
about leadership of CPW and how that works, we have
three former CEOs of that, of that joint venture here,
so I'll answer the question, but there are a couple folks up here who could answer that later on. The, we've had a great
relationship with Nestle going back three decades. We have a joint venture
with Nestle to sell cereal outside of the United States, about two billion dollars in sales. It was started in about 1990
and it still exists today so it's almost 30 years old. So that in and of itself is quite unique and I think the reason that,
the reason that it was set up was because we were
competing effectively here with Kellogg's and cereal in the U.S., but we didn't have a way to
do that outside of the U.S. because we hadn't become
more global at the time. And Nestle was competing with Kellogg's outside of the U.S. and
by their own admissions they didn't exactly know
what they were doing in breakfast cereal although they had a great infrastructure in which to do it. And so the joint venture was founded and we brought our technical capabilities and our marketing capabilities,
understanding of cereal, and Nestle brought an
infrastructure outside of the U.S. that General Mills couldn't replicate. And so that was why the
joint venture was formed in the first place and a
lot of times joint ventures are formed because one
company has a bad business, the other one has a bad business, and they put it together and all they do is have a bigger bad business that's managed by two companies. That was not the case with CPW. It was managed because we both
saw an opportunity to grow and we both thought we had skills that we could bring to the joint venture. And I would say that's
largely what was true in 1990 is still true today, we
bring a marketing acumen and knowledge of cereal and
Nestle has the infrastructure in developing markets throughout the world that's difficult for any
other company in the world to match, more less General Mills. And so it's based on,
first we both brought something unique, we
both had a similar vision of how it would work. The joint venture was
written, it was on one paper, it was on one sheet of paper,
it took about three weeks to complete, it is not complex. And I think the other
thing is that there's a tremendous amount of respect between Nestle and General
Mills and there always has been. And we're different company
with different leaders, and by the way that doesn't
mean we always agree, but it's really important
if you're not gonna agree that you have respect for each other. And I know that I certainly
have had a lot of respect for watching Nestle operate in
markets throughout the world and I know for a fact
they have a lot of respect for General Mills and I
think, I think, you know, in addition to needing what the other has, having respect for each other,
and again, not being jerks, I think that's a key, I think that's a key to the partnership
because it'd be very easy for CEOs, or leaders of two of the biggest food companies in the
world, to think they have a monopoly on the truth
and that would actually get in the way and undermine
the whole joint venture in 29 years and it hasn't. - Well, Jeff, thank you so much. I'm going to add staying
in the middle of the boat to my row your boat, you know. (laughing). - Yeah, that's, that's
right, row from the middle. - Language, so it's
wonderful to have you here and thank you so much for, you know, for coming and thought spreading and (voice covers voice). - Yeah, thank you for the
invitation, I've enjoyed it. (clapping) Thank, thank you, yes, yes. - [Moderator] Thank you.
