Word: lafley
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...long-suffering Red Sox fan with a vast baseball-card collection (including every complete Topps set from 1952 to the present and a prized Fleer Ted Williams card), Lafley swims, bikes and works out several times a week. In recent years, he has spent downtime learning to play the guitar along with the younger of his two sons, who is in high school. Even as a member of a fraternity at Hamilton, Lafley was known as a consummate consensus builder. Around P&G, he is admired for being unusually approachable and a great listener. Unlike Jager, who alienated...
Though he has firmly held opinions--and is crisply decisive once he makes up his mind--Lafley isn't afraid to give everyone a fair hearing. At a board meeting, he took the unusual step of having separate teams come in and vehemently make their case for and against the idea of outsourcing many of P&G's back-office operations, a controversial proposal that the once rigidly controlled organization is seriously considering. "Boards typically don't see that level of debate. They're usually hidden by the CEOs," says director Scott Cook, a former P&G brand manager...
...Lafley has urged employees as well as board members to make more frequent store visits. He wants the company to work more closely with powerful retailers like Wal-Mart and CVS to reach consumers at what he calls the "first moment of truth" in the store. (There's a reason so many snazzy new graphics and displays are showing up in the aisles.) He has sold off underperforming products that don't fit the new mix, like Jif peanut butter and Crisco shortening...
...what all of Jager's bluster could not: a transformation of the insular, arrogant culture that plagued P&G for decades. Once firm in the belief it needed to go it alone on everything, P&G is much more open to partnering with and learning from outsiders. One of Lafley's chief lieutenants, global-marketing officer James Stengel, occasionally meets with his peers at a range of other companies, from Kraft and Nestle to Toyota and Gucci, to keep abreast of new marketing trends--something that would not have happened at Procter just a few years...
...focus on line extensions, Lafley knows that P&G can live off its existing brands for only so long without developing a new blockbuster product, the kind it hasn't had since the Always feminine pad debuted in 1983. The Swiffer electrostatic mop and ThermaCare heat wraps have been only modest successes. And despite the early encouraging reception for Actonel--and the prospect of promising future treatments for diabetes and female sexual dysfunction--the relatively small, billion-dollar pharmaceutical division is still a major question mark. As Duke University business professor Kevin Schulman argues, consumer products and drugs "have very...