Supply Chain Stories - Episode 4: Maria Pia De Caro, Pernod Ricard

Thank you very much, Sam. It's a pleasure being here with you. I really appreciate you taking the time. Um, I guess as a starting point, could you just tell me a little bit about yourself and your career journey so far? So in, probably the easiest way to describe myself is that I'm an engineer. I always say that I'm an engineer because I find that engineers like to solve problems. I'm married, I have a border collie whose name is Wonka, because I run the largest chocolate factory in the UK. I have a son who is 21 studying engineering. And I had this amazing career throughout operations for 30 years. As I said, started as a process engineer, being in a number of roles in engineering, innovation, manufacturing at P&G, redesigned supply networks, then moved to Mondelez, done chocolate for a few years, which is an absolute dream job. And then I started to run end-to-end supply chains for Unilever based in Rotterdam, Nomad Foods based in the UK, and now indeed in the magic of Pernod Ricard, creating magic moments of conviviality for everyone that wants to have a drink.

This is a wonderful question because it allows me to tell a story that is very important to me. We are talking 30 years ago, I was a very young and very immature process engineer that was convinced that the world was what it was and I had to just accept it. And then a woman from the US in P&G, Maran Gail, she's not anymore with us, decided that she would become my mentor. So she flew over to my factory in Italy and she offered to mentor me for 30 minutes every month, and she did it for 20 years. And she only asked me one thing in return: she said that she wanted me to mentor other people like she was doing to me. And when she passed away in 2019, that promise became a real mission in life. Now something that you need to know, Sam, is that I will never have a doubt either she was very good at choosing us or she mentored because we all made wonderful careers, or she actually instilled the magic in us and she made us who we are. So this is how important mentoring is to me.

I would say there were two types of advices she was giving me. One that was very important to me at the time was that she was making herself accessible to me, so I was allowed to ask the non-usual questions. She was giving me glimpses of what it meant to be a very senior manager when I was a very junior manager myself. The other thing that she was telling me was career advices that I actually teach to others. It's actually one of the courses I really like to give. One is that the only person who's interested in your career is yourself, which sounds very crude but once you accept it, it actually helps a lot. Another advice she was giving me that was very important is that what is important at different times in your life is different. When we are young, we are actually very flexible, very mobile. There are moments when our parents need care or our children are young where we have other needs. Actually my 50s, I recognized it back in time with ourself we are more interested in living a legacy. So in a way we have a lot more flexibility that we actually had previously in our careers. So understanding what is important and when is really relevant. And another thing that she helped me understand is that to make a career you need to have a compass. So you need to orient your compass towards your passion and then you need to say how you want to get there. You can go there fast, you can go there slowly, you can choose for a technical career, you can choose to grow fast, but without that compass you will never grow. So the typical mistakes she taught me people make is that either they find the job in which they are very good and they keep repeating the assignment always in bigger roles but they say 'I like to do operations' and I'm a department manager, an operations manager, a plant manager, a plant manager of three factories. Guess what, by then people only see you as a plant manager, so you are stuck in there for life. The other typical thing that we are prone to do is we start hopping because we are not sure. So for example, in my case early in my career I liked engineering, I liked manufacturing, I liked innovation, I liked supply network design. I was... and then people were saying 'But Maria, what do you want to do?' So people didn't know anymore what I was standing for. So I would say those are amongst, I just gave you three examples but she actually gave me about 10 pearls that I teach to others on how to develop my career or other people's careers.

You can only know if you ask. So something that I hear still today frequently, and I must say is more from women than from men but it's broad, so I ask people 'What do you want to become?' and they say 'I don't know, I want to do my best.' Fine, yes. What do I do with that information? It doesn't really help me. So one way to know is to ask. How do you ask? Through mentors, through associations, through being just ingenious. I was talking to a young manager in my organization a few days ago, last week, and I asked her who was the boss. So she knew the boss. Good on her. She knew the COO. But then I asked her who was at the level below. Now she's a British junior manager, but she didn't know. And I said 'But then how can you operate in an organization if you don't know who is doing what and what happens in every function?' So being ingenious, being interested, creating your network is actually a very strong vehicle. We don't need to do all the jobs but we can actually get close to what is important to us. And then it's practicing, because sometimes we don't know what we are good at. I didn't know I was a good engineer until I became an engineer. I didn't know I would enjoy manufacturing until I tried it. So it's a bit of instinct, a bit of resourcefulness, and a lot of mentoring and coaching.

I could give you the typical answers that are in fashion nowadays: you need to do AI, you need to look at total integration. Yes, of course these skills are important, so we need to remain relevant in the world of today. So the more we are in tune with the new technologies and the new trends, that helps. I find that in today's context, a skill that is often underrated is the ability to design. So sometimes we go into roles and we become good executors of the tasks, but I think understanding how things really work – this is a bit my connection to being an engineer – is very important. The more we understand how things work, how in this case the supply chain is connected end to end, from materials down to customers and even sometimes the end of life to consumers, it is really helpful. And more and more in companies that did not always do investments in supply chain, this ability to design is in great demand and we don't find it as much. Now you don't need to be a person with gray hair to have the ability to design. I find that is something that we can develop and nurture throughout our entire career. Of course when we are more junior we will design on a smaller scale; when we are more senior we will have seen more we will be able to design on a bigger scale. But understanding, asking questions, being interested in more than just the little task that we are responsible for is a critical skill.

I would say it's very important to know yourself. I might come across as an extrovert, so I mean we having this interview, I'm surely sounding confident, but in reality I'm in a war – I'm in panic. I'm an introvert. I hate public speaking. Now I've learned. So I am actually happy to coach other people through podcast because I actually find it a safe environment. So if you're an introvert, you can use tools like I like LinkedIn because again it allows me to connect to a large number of people and to learn and do research without having to meet them in person. And I've also learned to connect in associations, forums, bigger or smaller, again fit for your personality. And then the internal networking is finding the peers and the allies to talk to. And in Pernod Ricard we say 'make a new friend every day'. I mean if you're an introvert, going for lunch with someone you don't know is probably doable. If you're an extrovert, you can organize a happy hour and meet a larger number of people and talk. I also like research, so I'm also doing a lot of research on things like I don't know, Gartner for supply chain is a good research institute but there are many others. So doing research is also something that can help us build that network. How a boss can be a resource as well, they know one thing or two.

Let me share one of the tools that Maran taught me back in time. So she was saying there are four things that matter. So she was saying plot your career over a period of time, 3, 6, 9 years – you can plot it for longer or less, but typically 9 years is good. And then think what you need. You need to have skills – the things you know. So again this is research applied in your job, getting good results. The strengths – what is a strength? It's something that is not based on what you know but on who you are. For example, I have an ability to design, this is probably why I like it. So I would cultivate that because it makes me special, it makes me unique. I could have very strong empathy, this might help in certain jobs. I could have analytical skills, etc. So the skills, the strengths, the third one is the relationships. If nobody knows me, say I want to go from engineering to manufacturing, but if nobody knows me in manufacturing, how am I going to do it? So build the connection. So if you are in engineering, try to be on a project that is starting up in a factory where there could be roles for you. Go and visit the office of the plant manager, speak to them, understand if they have opportunities, make your interest known, make yourself desirable. And the last is work-life balance, because she was saying there are different things that you might need in your life. So you might want to be completely flexible and go to Asia one day, or you might want to be close to home the next day because you have needs. So she was saying if you understand these four things – the skills, the strengths, the networking, and the work-life balance – you have probably a good chance to progress in the direction you want to go.

Immensely. If I have an advice for anyone, it is that. And you and I were talking about Singapore and Asia earlier. I don't think I would be the person I am if I didn't have these experiences. I feel it's really enriching. People sometimes say that it's a sacrifice because you need to take the family abroad. To be honest, it was also enriching for the family. Now it requires a mindset and it's easier if you start young, I guess. The more mature we become, sometimes the more mental blocks we put on ourselves. But I wouldn't change my career for anything in the world. I love the British humor, I love the Dutch directness. I replaced an Italian husband with a Belgian one after having been in Belgium. I really like the French. I fell in love with Asia. Those experiences really forged who I am.

I like to say that this my diversity evolution. So when I joined in my first job, I didn't have a clue of what diversity and inclusion meant. It was one of those concepts that were very abstract at the time for an Italian woman who studied engineering. I really didn't have any cognition of that. And then Maran started to open my eyes to gender diversity. She was coming from the US, they were much more advanced. Then when I went to Asia, I actually started to understand cultural diversity. And then once you start seeing different types of diversities, your brain never stops. You keep on learning, learning, and then you discover style and age, and now mental abilities and stuff. And the more you learn, the more you come to appreciate that the more diversity you have on your team, the better your results. And it's not rhetoric, it's true. So then you start going and going and going and learning, but that you can only experience if you see diversity around you.

Correct. It's starting from relationships in Asia, it's all about relationships. You don't talk business the first time, you talk relationship. Now what I've realized is that it actually guess what? It also works in Europe. It makes it a lot more personal to ask people how they are and how they feel and about their family before you discuss a project. So it just enriches us. I think it makes us better human beings, not perfect – we are always fallible, we make millions of mistakes – but I think it makes us more complete.

Find the real job. Do the real stuff. Don't think about – sometimes again stereotyping – when I speak to some of the younger kids, they tell me that they want to progress and they want to do and they want to change. But the best things I've learned, I've learned by doing. It's sometimes the boring tasks, because if you understand how difficult the job is, as you grow throughout your career you will remain focused that your job is to actually make the life of your people better. That is you serving them, and not them serving you. And work is an inverted pyramid. But that you can only do if you know how hard it is to do the basic tasks. So don't be impatient of making a fast career. Sometimes it's better to go slow to go fast.

Trust yourself and your instincts. When I left Unilever, there was still a large corporate job but I had still a few bosses above me, and I jumped into a chief supply chain officer, and Pernod Ricard is a similar type of job. I didn't know if I was fit for that type of job because again we know a lot but we never know it all. Supply chain operations is so large. And I think it's the result of the investment that we have made throughout careers. So if you think you're ready, it's actually worth testing ourselves in those roles because we can give a lot. I mean it's the point of senior leaders: leaders that like myself are very interested in living a legacy. So if we feel we are ready, I think it's our obligation, it's our duty to do it. And if you fail, again who cares? We can do something else.

One of the things I really like both being an exec that interacts with the board and both being an independent board director is the interaction with the board and with the market. So understanding the market dynamic, I think, was really, at least for me, one of my final steps of education. Because sometimes when you are a management, you don't really understand what is driving the decision. And once you see the entire machine, it becomes a lot easier to understand. And it also becomes, at least for me, a lot easier to explain and motivate the people on doing what is right. So that is definitely one reason why I would definitely recommend to do board experiences or C-class jobs.

It was a pleasure. Enjoy the day. Thank you.