Geoff Skingsley (00:01):
The company in its ethos has got this idea of always trying to stay ahead of the curve. So the transformation I'm going to talk about is, is one that moved the company into being completely digital front and centre in the 2020s. Everybody assumes digital is a natural state of affairs, but if you roll back eight, 10 years, digital was still in its infancy, at least outside, just pure marketing. And the transformation that took place inside L'Oreal started in about 2013. And the idea was to move the entire organisation to be digitally ready and digital first, uh, which was really faster than I think most people certainly in Europe were going at that stage.

Andrew White (00:52):
Take us right back to the beginning. How did this start?

Geoff Skingsley (00:55):
Well, I think, I think what happened is up until the moment when this transformation changed scale, it was really just something that was in the marketing teams of the brands. And what really changed is the CEO basically realised that the speed at which things were going certainly in other categories, other sectors that were liable to hit our sector sooner or later. And he decided we just had to have a completely different scale of ambition and scale of transformation, take it out of the realm of just the marketing experts and bring it front and centre into the whole company. And so he led from the top and he made sure that he'd has his executive committee, um, leading with him. I was on the executive committee at the time. Um, and so that's really why I'm able to talk about it because I saw it happen. He basically shook us up one day and said, guys, I don't think you realise what is down the road. And we need to therefore prepare ourselves for how our industry could transform. And we'd like to be at the leading edge of that.

Andrew White (01:54):
What do you do concretely to take an organisation down that road and, um, and make that happen?

Geoff Skingsley (02:01):
Most organisations can do incremental change. They can, they can keep sort of, you know, fine tuning at the margins to make it better and better. And I think the CEO said, no, this needs to be something that's not incremental at all. This is a transformation. Um, and he did two things that I think were designed to be very public visible illustrations, that this is not a business as usual thing. The first one was he appointed straight into the executive committee, a, an individual who's an expert in digital everything. Um, and you, as in a lot of well established successful companies, most members of the executive committee have been in the organisation 20 years. They've got a huge amount of experience and here he, he plucks somebody out of somewhere else, uh, a digital expert straight in at the level of the very top, um, part of the organisation.

Geoff Skingsley (02:51):
So that was highly symbolic, not only for the other members of the executive committee, but for the rest of the organisation as well. And that was his first statement to say, this is something different. This is something that has to start right at the top. And then afterwards percolate through the organisation. The next thing, a few months after this appointment, he took the entire executive committee for one week to Silicon valley. Uh, we are a, we are a European based organisation and he said, okay, empty your diaries guys. One week in Silicon valley, you are going to meet the disruptors. You are going to meet the people who in other categories, in other areas have changed their industry. You will bathe in disruption and you will see firsthand what they did, how they did it, why they did it because, you know, either we will be part of whatever disruption will take place in our industry, or we will be disrupted. And I think he wanted to make us get us ahead of the queue. So we spent a, a week being saturated with all the experiences of Silicon valley of the people who they're all household names, but at the time they were at the leading edge in their own industries. Um, and it was a way of taking us to, to realise what's happened elsewhere, what might happen in our industry and how we can anticipate it and, and be part of it.

Adam Canwell (04:10):
If you were talking to another leader who was about to embark on a significant transformation programme, what would be the lesson you'd most want to impart on them?

Geoff Skingsley (04:22):
Well, I, I do think that there has to be a couple of things that show that this is not business as usual. Um, I mean, I mentioned the examples with L'Oreal, um, other organisations might have their own ones, but I think if the top team is going to understand that this is about a transformation, then the method used to sort of kickstart it, I think, needs to be not the normal mode of operation. Um, and it, you know, it does bring the challenge that you've got to keep the wheels turning on the current business. But I think, you know, you, you need to do some things that symbolically and very sort of, you know, unmistakably say, what we are about to ask you to do is not business as usual. It's a step change, it's something different. And then there's no doubt in my mind that getting the buy in of the top team, the really comprehensive conviction of the top team, um, was important because as you encounter various forms of resistance or maybe inertia in other parts of the organisation, you can be sure that the top team are going to be in there to sort it out.

Geoff Skingsley (05:27):
The top team who by and large were executives in their late forties through to late fifties, had to get into a mindset that said, I individually will have to learn from people 20 years younger than me who are digital natives and who just know what's happening, cause they're at the leading age of how it's happening in society. And so you have to slightly invert, at least in this area, you have to invert the idea that the senior people have the expertise and they impart the expertise downwards to saying the senior people need to acquire a new expertise and it's imparted upwards from more junior people. Um, and so that was a learning journey that we all had to go through, which once it was achieved was very positive for the organisation. But again, it was a bit of a shift. Um, and it was saying, you know, okay, just because you've worked here for 25 years and you've done a good job, doesn't mean to say, you don't need to be continually learning.

Geoff Skingsley (06:20):
And sometimes you might have to learn from somebody who's 25 years younger than you in order to be able to do your job better next year sort of thing. And equally, I think you don't want to overdramatize it so much that people can't do their day job. I mean, again, we were a successful machine. We had to keep the machine turning. Um, so we had to say, nobody is belittling what you are currently doing. We're just saying, think about how you're gonna have to do it in the future. And it will look quite different from how you're doing it. Now,

Andrew White (06:52):
You know, we talk about success, begetting success, or transformation, begetting transformation that if you can do this, it leaves a legacy beyond the programme. Um, and it sounds it's very much was on the positive side. It was kind of, it, it builds our confidence, built our insight, um, that we can operate in this, in, in this new world that we're moving into.

Geoff Skingsley (07:12):
Yes, but I, you know, I, it, wasn't simple moving a big organisation, speedily to a new place. There were leaders in laggards and you just had to make sure that the laggards understood by looking around them that come on guys, you know, that we're gonna get left behind here. So, um, you know, I, I wouldn't want to try and make out, it was utterly smooth you, but you just had to make sure that, that you maintained the positive spirit and you just used the people who were getting there quickly to inspire the others who maybe were not quite as quick. I mean, I would put myself in the camp of those that wasn't one of the leaders. I mean, there were people around me, I was thinking, crikey, you know, he's really moving fast and you, and that sort of galvanised you to say, we've, you know, we've gotta keep going, keep the pace up. When we set out on this journey, we didn't have a blowing platform. If we hadn't set out, when we did then five years later, it may well have been a burning platform. So this sense of anticipation, which started in this example with the CEO, but which very quickly percolated through the organisation is what stopped it potentially becoming a burning platform. So the earlier you spot the threat or the opportunity, however you want to phrase it, then the better equipped you will be to sort of take it on.