Newell Rubbermaid Reveals Bold New Model/Leadership
Newell Rubbermaid revealed a new organization model and a strengthened leadership team, including top outside appointments to its executive team, to accelerate implementation of its Growth Game Planstrategy.
“We have made excellent progress over the last year delivering results while also driving change,” says Michael Polk, Newell Rubbermaid’s president and CEO. “Our market shares are increasing in most categories around the world, and our margins are improving. These achievements give us confidence that we can now accelerate actions designed to unlock the upside of our Growth Game Plan. I see more potential in our business today than I imagined upon joining the company 15 months ago.”
Polk called the structural and leadership changes “bold steps that are critical to unlocking our full growth potential.” He adds, “By increasing the pace of our transformation we will more quickly realize the Growth Game Plan ambition of becoming a bigger, faster-growing, more-global, more-profitable Newell Rubbermaid.”
Newell Rubbermaid will reorganize the company around the first two pillars of its Growth Game Plan--Brand and Category Development (Making our Brands Really Matter) and Best in Class Execution and Delivery (Building an Execution Powerhouse).
The new Development Organization will be accountable for building big brand ideas, high-impact disruptive innovation and a true point of difference. All of the company’s marketing, insight, design, research and development, and corporate development talent will be part of the new Development organization.
The new Delivery Organization will be accountable for P&L management and delivering the maximum commercial value from the growth ideas built by the Development Organization. All of the company’s general management, supply chain, customer and channel development talent will be part of the new Delivery organization, including the company’s business segments, which will retain responsibility for the P&L.
At the same time as strengthening development and delivery capabilities, Newell Rubbermaid will create much flatter structures, giving bigger roles to key leaders and driving simplification throughout the organization in order to focus on growth. The company will start by delayering the top structures, eliminating the two operating Groups (Consumer and Professional) while further consolidating the Global Business Units (GBUs) from nine GBUs to six Business Segments.
These six Business Segments will be part of the Delivery organization:
• Tools: Irwin and Lenox tools and Dymo industrial
• Commercial Products: Rubbermaid Commercial Products and Rubbermaid Healthcare
• Writing: Sharpie, Paper Mate, Expo, Prismacolor, Parker and Waterman
• Baby & Parenting: Graco, Aprica and Teutonia
• Home Solutions: Rubbermaid, Calphalon, Levolor, Kirsch and Goody
• Specialty: Bulldog, Ashland, Shur-Line, Dymo office, Endicia and Mimio
In the context of the company’s new organization, the company is making a series of new leadership appointments to strengthen the Newell Executive Team, namely:
Mark Tarchetti, the former head of Global Corporate Strategy at Unilever, will join the company in January as chief development officer and lead the new Development Organization. He will report to President and CEO Polk.
William A. Burke III, currently group president, Newell Professional, has been appointed COO and will lead the new Delivery Organization. He will continue to report to President and CEO Polk.
Bolstering the Development and Delivery organizations are the following significant new additions to the Newell Executive Leadership Team:
Joe Cavaliere will join the company as global chief customer officer, reporting to Burke. Cavaliere has 28 years of experience in Customer Development and brings an outstanding track record of delivering growth, developing strategic customer partnerships that create value across the entire enterprise, and building world-class customer development capabilities. He is currently the head of Customer Development for Unilever in North America and before that was one of the top leaders in Customer Development at Kraft Foods.
Richard Davies will join the company as chief marketing & insights officer, reporting to Tarchetti. Originally from New Zealand, Davies most recently headed Unilever’s Global Insights function of more than 700 people in more than 50 countries. He brings over 30 years of marketing, insights and brand strategy experience and will report to Davies.
Chuck Jones, recently appointed chief design and research & development officer, will continue as a member of the Newell Executive Leadership team, reporting to Tarchetti. Jones joined Newell Rubbermaid last month, bringing a global reputation for building design and R&D teams that deliver high-impact innovations. He has played key leadership roles in companies including Whirlpool, Masco, Xerox and Herman Miller.
The Development and Delivery organizations will be supported by strong and lean functional leadership teams in Finance and Information Systems, Human Resources and Legal:
Doug Martin, appointed chief financial officer of Newell Rubbermaid last month, will coordinate all of the company’s cost and cash initiatives to unlock the trapped capacity for growth. Martin, who has 25 years of experience at Newell Rubbermaid in virtually every aspect of corporate and operating finance, will continue to report to Polk. Martin will add responsibility for Information Technology with this reorganization.
Gordon Steele, chief information officer, will report to Martin and will continue to be a member of the Executive Leadership Team. Steele joined Newell Rubbermaid from Nike in 2005 and has led the development of the company’s information technology strategy and the deployment of SAP across North America and EMEA. With over 80 percent of the company’s revenue now utilizing a common SAP platform, Steele will work with Martin to leverage this new cost visibility to drive out unproductive complexity and costs. All of the company’s IT talent will report to Steele.