Portfolio management requires you to make choices across multiple dimensions and gives you an opportunity to develop strong decision-making skills. For example, how do you manage investments (your big, profitable brands of today vs. the innovative, future-focused brands of tomorrow) to create the most value, while ensuring positive societal impact and remaining a trusted partner with key stakeholders.
As CFO in MW Canada, I led the refresh of our 5 year strategy. Through this, I looked at the business as multiple different portfolios – portfolio of customers, portfolio of products/strategic cells, portfolio of dollars to invest across the P&L (trade, A&P, Overheads) etc. Each of these requires different choices, and at the same time each of these portfolios overlaps with each other.
The impact from choices can take time to really have an impact, you have to stay decisive and firm even if results are not clear early on.
You will never have all of the data! Getting 90% of what you need will be enough to make decisions.
Do not underestimate how important it is to bring the whole organization with you as you make choices – you need associates to really understand and believe in the direction being set, as they will bring it to life.
Breaking down silo operating and taking a total business approach; the way that we have historically done things should not drive the way we do things tomorrow.
It’s easy to make choices about where to invest, what is much harder is deciding where to disinvest and really actioning that.
Not every decision delivers obvious returns, e.g. sustainability choices. You have to balance financial and non-financial impacts.
I take a much more holistic view compared to how I did previously, using both financial and non-financial data to support, as well as partnering with associates from across multiple functions.
Every dollar we spend is an investment, be it on trade, advertising, overheads, merchandising etc. and must deliver a return. Whilst some of these appear ‘fixed’ in nature, taking a longer term view we can challenge ourselves on reallocating these dollars.
Working as Strategic Finance Director for Chocolate, supporting the regional PMR, making decisions on innovation portfolio, strategic resource allocations across Brand media support
It is important to be clear on the objectives for the business and hence the portfolio and align these with the stakeholders. Confront the reality of the portfolio of today, look at long term trends, but also future head and tailwinds. Select the critical criteria to assess, appreciating any limiting resources, risk, investment – human, financial. Throughout the journey it is critical to engage and co-create with the business stakeholders to maximise the effectiveness and sustainability of the decisions.
Managing the many stakeholder perspectives with a clear compelling narrative to align on the choices. Stopping activities, or moving investments from brands can face some resistance, but ultimately the clarity really helps to drive performance and focus.
It is important to step back and assess our resource choices, we cannot do everything everywhere, we have to be focused and clear on our choices with rationale. In turn bringing clear decision making and a clear role for parts of the portfolio can be engaging and liberating for our associates. This has helped me to apply this approach to other roles I have held including looking at a supply networks through a differentiated lens to be more choiceful on investment and resource allocation.
The Breadth layer is about having a variety of experiences. It’s about becoming more comfortable with the way we do business whether in a new country or in a new segment. Experience in this layer empowers Associates to make credible and informed decisions and create value for the business.
Experiences expand your business acumen; they help you understand how Mars works as an organization. In this layer you can demonstrate your ability to make strategic choices and create value in a variety of situations and scenarios. Successful experience in this may demonstrate that you can manage better business outcomes.
The People layer gives you experience in people management, a critical capability for managers and leaders across the organization. If you wish to manage large scale teams, significant experience will be required as part of this people layer.
Gaining experience across Finance pillars will help Associates gain perspective, business understanding and be more credible when making decisions. You build functional skills by gaining experiences in at least two of the three job families within the Finance function (i.e. Innovative Business Partnering, Smart Financial Operations, Enhanced Specialized Services) as well as some experience in the Digital space.
The Breadth layer is about having a variety of experiences. It is about becoming more comfortable with the way we do business whether in a new country or in a new segment. Gaining this experience empowers Associates to take more credible and informed decisions and understand where the value comes from. Some of these experiences can be checked off simply by working in project teams that are cross-segment, cross-country, or within different types of business models (i.e. Mature vs Emerging markets, CPG vs Retail, DTC or Services business, Shared services business).
