Replay de la Matinale des Leaders Éclairés - Véronique Penchienati Bosetta - DGA de Danone

Yes, that's right. I joined in 1999.

That's a great question. At Danone, we have what you might call a bit of a head start: our economic, environmental, and societal project is truly written into our DNA. It's been there for a very long time, which makes it easier to deploy because it's deeply rooted in who we are. For those who know Danone a little, it all started with Antoine Riboud, when the events of May 1968 prompted him to reflect on the place of people within the company and the role of the company itself. That's the Marseille speech of 1972 — the dual economic and social project, with an environmental dimension. The idea that responsibility doesn't stop at our factory and office doors but extends far beyond. It was quite innovative for its time, but it's truly in the group's DNA and has been constantly updated over the years.

This led Danone to become the first company of its size to both subscribe to B Corp standards and become a mission-driven company — and I'll come back to that. So we went through several phases: the dual economic and social project led by Antoine Riboud, then a phase really focused on health and its impact on people's well-being, with a complete portfolio review led by Franck, who transformed the product portfolio toward healthy food for the largest number. That was the group's mission at that time. Then Emmanuel continued with the One Planet. One Health vision — the virtuous circle between our health mission and lasting impact on the planet — which triggered the entire B Corp certification process, mission-driven company status, and so on. Now Antoine de Saint-Affrique is building on all these roots with what we call the Danone Impact Journey, which brings together the three pillars — health, environment, and people — in service of both business and society. So it's truly anchored. It's not greenwashing. It's our roots. It's one of the reasons for Danone's attractiveness. It's why I joined Danone, and why I'm still here 23 years later.

I'll give you an example because it's quite telling. When we launched B Corp certification in 2015 — just some quick context on what B Corp is: it's a certification that validates a company's ability to measure its entire social and environmental impact, including that of its partners. It's quite demanding, requiring significant effort from teams, and it must be redone every three years. Each legal entity must go through it, so for us it's a massive undertaking. We launched it with the goal of having 100% of our activities B Corp certified by 2030. But we didn't create a roadmap dictating which country should go first — we left it to the initiative of subsidiary CEOs and local teams. The enthusiasm it generated was so great that by 2020, 50% of all our subsidiaries were already B Corp certified. Today we're at 70%, so we've moved our commitment forward — we won't wait until 2030, we'll reach 100% by 2025. This shows that on their own, our employees, teams, and subsidiaries move forward — whether in Europe, the United States, China, Egypt, Brazil — all of them. Why? Because it's an element of internal engagement, proof of our reason for being, proof of our pride and coherence with our mission. It's also an important external commitment. It matters for our teams internally and for recruitment. And it puts us on a path of continuous improvement — it raises the bar, it creates a kind of healthy emulation that's really at the heart of what we do.

Regarding culture and how we deploy it: the mission is there, the DNA is there. But I think an important point is that we have a framework — our mission, our values: HOPE — Humanism, Openness, Proximity, Enthusiasm. We have this dual project, this mission-driven company status. But after that, it's bottom-up. We don't impose and deploy top-down from Paris. We set a framework, a mission, and then we let each country take it forward. That's what we did with B Corp, and that's what we do with the Danone Impact Journey too — we set standards and high-level KPIs, but each country works according to its own context, its ecosystem, its health challenges, its environmental issues, and determines which levers to activate first. In one country it might be regenerative agriculture and supporting dairy farmers in Morocco; in another it's plastics, water, and so on. It's really taken locally, and for us that's truly important — there's a framework, and then we let the countries and subsidiaries really make it their own with all their teams, to have a real impact at the local ecosystem level.

Is everything easy? No, of course not. That's why we have very important systems for listening to our employees extremely regularly, to track their engagement level, their understanding and buy-in to the culture and values. Are we doing things well? Are we doing them fast enough? Are there areas where they want us to move faster? We do this at least once a year — during COVID we did it practically every month to see how things were going. This constant listening to our employees allows us to adjust. We also deploy strong training programs across Danone — not just business-as-usual skills training, but much broader programs covering our values, category knowledge, environmental challenges. And we have specific programs like leadership development for women — the EVE program — and the OCTAVE program, which is a multigenerational leadership program. All of these are real accelerators for deploying Danone's culture everywhere.

Very concrete. These values — the way they're embodied is through how we work. We have our mission, we have these values, and then we also need to translate them into what we call 'behaving' standards, because otherwise it can feel disconnected. Values are the North Star — they show us where we're heading and the way we want to have an impact everywhere, and they're completely coherent with our dual project. But we also need more concrete behavioral standards that we can explain, train on, and deploy. We're actually doing that right now. We're rolling out a whole new behavioral framework — a set of concrete behaviors we want to deploy across the teams. We've started rolling this out.

One of the first behaviors is 'Danone First,' and that's important today. In a system where there's collaboration across countries, functions, categories — how do we make sure we put Danone first? What does 'Danone First' mean? It means putting the consumer and the patient first. I'll give you a concrete example, especially in specialized nutrition. During COVID, our products were needed in hospitals, and suddenly there were no more silos — no more 'it's not my job, it's yours.' There were just united, solidary teams whose only objective was to serve consumers and patients. It unleashed incredible energy. That's what we need to recapture all the time, not just in crisis — not staying in our matrix systems, but always thinking about our impact on society, on consumers, on patients. A second behavior is what we call 'We Lead, We Unleash People' — tied to everything I've described about releasing the energy and creativity in our teams. Another extremely important behavior is being responsible — each person is responsible, contributing their small piece to the group's overall mission every day. So we have values, and we activate and deploy behaviors, and we evaluate people on them in a very straightforward way. Because what matters is not only the 'what' — the objectives — but especially the 'how': how do we do business while developing our teams, having an impact on our ecosystem, and helping people grow?

Openness is also about collaboration with our partners. Proximity is both closeness to consumers, patients — being at the heart of things, which ties back to Danone First — and proximity to our teams. Managerial closeness is extremely important and has always been very strong at Danone. We have a culture of transparency, of candor, of proximity. What we value is putting problems on the table, solving them, not hiding anything. We learn as much from failures as from successes. And Humanism is really everything tied to the values, the DNA, and all the rest.

Well, first of all, when we worked on defining our behaviors, we did it with all the countries. It's not a project that comes from headquarters and is imposed everywhere — that doesn't work. When we redefined these behaviors that we're now deploying, we really co-built them with the countries. We brought in subsidiary CEOs, HR directors, and people from across the organization to have a multicultural representation, which is extremely important. We aimed for a common foundation, and then the specifics of what it means day to day can be adapted locally. But the behaviors themselves are the same everywhere, because we co-created them. That's a very important point — when you do things that are too top-down, designed here and that won't resonate in Indonesia, China, or the United States, it doesn't work. So we really started this approach by gathering all the feedback and cultural sensitivities, understanding what countries need, so we have a foundation we can deploy everywhere internationally. What you're describing is interesting — not only was it bottom-up, but you also broke down functional silos. You didn't just take top managers; you went really deep to find the roots of the organization.

Most of the time, when I...

I was in China last week. I'm often in the countries, and of course we visit distributors, we see consumers, etc. But what I enjoy most each time is going to see the young people, because they bring freshness and transparency. That's where we get the most interesting insights. That's really important for me. It's the principle of inclusion and richness — to go out and seek that. And you embody this through bottom-up approaches, because one might think it's much more top-down. Sometimes people tell me, 'Wait, we're going to do bottom-up, it'll take longer, it requires more resources.' But I try to convince by saying the result is much, much better. There's no comparison between pushing elements down versus bringing them up. That was the old world. Today, we need to think bottom-up and demonstrate that it works, even if it seems to take more time and involve more people. It's about having something that is deeply rooted locally, rooted in the reality of our teams, and that is rich.

I would say it's not risky, it's courageous. But how do we do it? Yes, it is courageous. Because it's both a constraint and full of opportunities, and we experience that all the time. But I think this is what we want to be at Danone — that's why we did it and why we continue to do it. There are constraints because at some point we have to be accountable. We have a mission committee that challenges us on many subjects and pushes us to go further. And alongside that, of course, we have a board of directors and we're a publicly listed company, so we have to deliver every quarter, etc. But for me, this is really our North Star, and it's what always allows us to go one step further on social issues, on societal matters, on environmental issues, and on health as well. It sets the bar very high. There are moments when we have to manage some contradictions, but that's our job, all of us. But I see it more as an incredible opportunity. It pushed us to launch really interesting projects for the future. We launched a project called 'Future Skills' — how we protect our most vulnerable employees facing all the upheavals we're going through: the acceleration of digital transitions, climate transitions, jobs that will change. It's a program of reconversion toward future jobs that we offer our employees based on voluntariness, with training that can last two years, a reconversion that can lead to finding a job at Danone or even elsewhere. So being a mission-driven company pushes us to go further on certain dimensions. I see it as an opportunity all the time — with constraints and challenges, but for me, it's the North Star that always reminds us that we must have a social and environmental impact in addition to generating profits. And this duality, I think, is the duality of today.

Yes, we hope it will continue.

That's a very important question. Because we are obligated to — I have an expression I like, which is 'roots and wings.' We must be deeply rooted in our roots: our mission, our values, our convictions. But at the same time, we must have wings and fly. Because what's happening right now is incredible. We physically feel the planetary boundaries: climate warming, biodiversity decline, risks to the food chain, access to water, raw materials. Post-COVID, the relationship to work, to new technologies — now there's ChatGPT, which will clearly transform existing industries, create new jobs, and make others obsolete. It's both frightening and exciting, or exciting and frightening — you can put it whichever way you want. But it demands incredible adaptability and resilience. It requires a state of curiosity and an important sense of optimism to keep moving forward. For me, being an enlightened leader today means making sure the roots are there and protecting them, while simultaneously grasping the scale of transformations and giving teams the keys to understanding and adaptation. There are certain things that leaders must develop in their teams: everything related to data and the impact of new technologies on our work, preparing for the jobs of the future — which is what the Future Skills program is about — all the impact of climate issues on our business and how we fully integrate them into how we do business. It's inclusion and diversity, flexibility, knowing how to adapt to new ways of working, to new learning — perpetual learning, constantly questioning oneself. And so I think we're all in this. That's why, for me, what's important is this duality between being grounded and having the capacity to reinvent ourselves, and helping our teams reinvent themselves everywhere, all the time. There's a quote I like from Alvin Toffler: the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read or write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. And I think we're somewhat in that situation. For me, managing Danone and being a mission-driven company means taking the pulse of the world and constantly evolving to be as close as possible to the expectations of employees, business needs, and society. It's a heavy challenge, but an exciting one, and I think every company can contribute its small part to move things forward.

Absolutely. We put it in place in both programs — in the leadership programs and in Future Skills. And that means also developing creativity, openness, developing creativity to reinvent things, to have that mental capacity to work on it.

The path is difficult. The favorable soil — we've given some elements, and you're following that path. On strategy, we have two pillars: business strategies and impact strategies. That's how we measure success. And it's integrated, deployed, and part of the culture. That's how we measure business success and evaluate our teams. As for the difficulties, it's about how sometimes we face questions constantly. We're in the midst of inflation, costs are rising — do we pass on prices or not? In some countries like Indonesia, where we're really about affordability and reaching lower-income consumers, what do we do? These are decisions we face every day — between the mission and societal impact we want to have and the results we must drive. It's not simple. We try to do our best, to deliver results but also always make the right local decisions that will impact consumers and our business while serving our mission in the medium term. It's this balance of delivering short-term results while always keeping the medium term in sight. The pitfalls to avoid — and we've done this — are sometimes making commitments that are too disconnected from the business. For environmental transformation, we must make commitments that are significant and that push us to transform, but not too many small commitments that in the end we can't fulfill because we don't have access to raw materials or the cost is ten times too high. That's a point of vigilance. We can tend to say 'okay, we'll commit to this,' but operationally it's extremely difficult. We need to set a framework with ambitious objectives — we have an objective to reduce methane by 30%. It's very important. But not too many, because otherwise we drown and can't achieve them. All these objectives must be taken up by the countries — they must be worked on concretely by local teams, not in a dissociated way. I need the countries to work both on their economic performance and quarterly results, but also on what we call the 'societal impact' together. When there are arbitration points or doubts, they should be put on the table and we decide. It's this transparency and this perpetual duality between short-term and medium-term, between business results and financial performance and impact. We're obligated to manage this, but by maintaining this balance and as leaders, by pushing and challenging teams on both aspects all the time, we force it to be fully integrated — not having objectives on one side and business on the other and trying to manage. That would be greenwashing. If objectives aren't taken up by local teams, if they're not embodied and worked on every day, and at the core of their results and performance — which must be both economic and impact-related — it doesn't work. It's not 'or,' it's 'and.' The question is how do I work the 'and,' how do teams take ownership of the 'and' with arbitrages when necessary.

Local teams are measured both on economic performance — that's obvious — and on impact. In the evaluation system, there are both dimensions, and that has always been the case and will remain. As for arbitrages, we're obligated to juggle. We do what we think is best for the short term while keeping the medium term in sight. On a country level — take the example of pricing in a country where affordability is critical — how do we manage? Do we push extremely high or not? Do we push productivity more or not? We navigate this as best we can. How do we arbitrate? It's almost case by case — I don't have a rule for arbitration. What we really encourage our teams to do is to put the issues on the table: 'You're asking me to do this because from a financial and economic standpoint, here's what you're asking. Here's the medium-term impact, here's the impact on what we call the Danone Impact Journey — the environment, packaging, decarbonization, etc. What do we do?' And we decide.

Yes, it's a compass, of course. The mission and B Corp are compasses. But what's really important is the local anchoring, the understanding. That's why empowering teams is extremely important for me, because they know better than us. It's not because I go to China twice a year that I'll know better what should be done. It's up to them to alert me, saying, 'You're asking me to do this, but I don't think it's good for the medium-term business. Let me explain why and here's what I recommend as an alternative.' That's what I expect from my teams everywhere — this short-term, medium-term management, this duality, but they live it, and then we decide.

We've been shaken up a lot, very, very shaken up, and we continue to be. But today, I think it's actually the opposite. The adversity creates a kind of internal solidarity — 'Alright, we're going to prove that what we do is good, that it delivers both short-term and medium-term results.' So we're in that mindset. Whether it was COVID or whatever, we want to regain that pride not just through our results but through our impact. It creates solidarity and cohesion that we've had for a while now, but that we shouldn't underestimate because it's important.

Thank you. Bye everyone.