Influencing across a matrix is leading through influence, not status. One way to gain this experience is to drive a significant change or cross functional team initiative where you must leverage your influencing skills to lead and motivate others.
Two years’ experience as Finance lead of a Mars Wrigley integration project in China.
Beauty of this experience is, it is a unique opportunity for me to gain broader perspectives, practice influencing a cross functional team, and integrate all previous knowledge and resources to achieve results.
One of most challenging situations is to organize business resources who have to balance the sense of urgency for project delivery, and their daily operational tasks. I put my main focuses on motivating team, engaging stakeholders, asking the right questions and project management. Navigating the way together with the highly capable and engaged Chinese associates made it a pleasant and rewarding experience.
Development from this experience crafted my path to my current role in the global team, which also relies a lot on influencing and collaboration under new context. Those convertible competencies built from other prior experiences in Petcare segment and regional and local roles, also benefit now in a way and shaped me of today.
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).
