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S3 E021 Chris Boeckerman on Lean Innovation & Productive Failure

Jan 15, 2023

Bio 

Chris Boeckerman is currently Vice President of Research & Development for Fabric & Home Care. Prior to this she was R&D Vice President for P&G Ventures, the company’s internal startup studio that partners with entrepreneurs and startups to create new brands and businesses in spaces where the company doesn’t play today.  

Known as a “change agent” during her 30-year career with Procter & Gamble, Chris co-founded P&G’s Lean Innovation movement, known as GrowthWorks, and has specialised in developing dynamic teams worldwide to strengthen the company’s innovation capabilities.  Her impressive P&G career also includes more than 20 years in the company’s Global Fabric Care business, working to create breakthrough innovations with iconic brands such as Tide, Ariel, Downy, Gain and Bounce.   

 Chris holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Cincinnati.  She has been honoured as a YWCA Rising Star, is an active leader in the Girls in STEM program for P&G and across Cincinnati and serves on the Advisory Board for the Greater Cincinnati STEM Collaborative.   

 Chris resides in Cincinnati, Ohio with her family.  

 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-boeckerman-06577110/    

 

Interview Highlights 

Timestamp 

02:12 - Growing up in Cincinnati, Ohio 

07:07 - Studying engineering in a cooperative education setting 

12:25 - R&D Vice President at P&G Ventures 

19:38 - Productive failure 

37:00 - Co-founding GrowthWorks 

44:30 - No one size fits all 

53:22 - Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful , committed citizens can change the world; indeed it's the only thing that ever has 

 

Books/ Resources Mentioned

 

Episode Transcript 

Ula Ojiaku (Intro): Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I’m Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. 

Ula Ojiaku (Guest Intro): My guest today is Chris Boeckerman. She is the Vice-President of Research and Development with the startup studio for Procter & Gamble that partners with entrepreneurs and startups to create new brands and businesses in spaces where the company doesn’t play today. Known as a change agent during her 29 year career with Procter & Gamble, Chris co-founded P & G’s lean innovation movement known as GrowthWorks and has specialised in developing dynamic teams worldwide to strengthen the company’s innovation capabilities. In this episode, Chris talks about herself and gives us a glimpse into the influences that shaped her into who she is today and how she got into Procter & Gamble and developed her career, as well as her experience setting up GrowthWorks within Procter & Gamble. It was a very insightful conversation. I definitely will be listening to this episode again, because there were lots of gems and I know you will find it useful as well. So thank you again for tuning in and for watching. Without further ado, my conversation with Chris. Enjoy. 

Ula Ojiaku 

So Chris, thank you so much for making the time to join us on the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. It is a great honour to have you here.  

Chris Boeckerman 

Oh, thank you. Thank you for asking me. It's a wonderful honour to be here.  

Ula Ojiaku 

Awesome. Now let's get to know you, Chris. Can you tell us about yourself, your background? 

Chris Boeckerman 

Sure. My name is Chris Boeckerman. I work at Procter & Gamble. I've been here almost 30 years, which is exciting, but going back to the beginning, so I'm actually born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, and I've never left. And it's kind of funny, when you're born in Cincinnati, many times you don't leave. I've been prepping my parents from the day I got my job at P & G that I would leave and I just, I never. I never left. So it's very fun, but yeah, so I'm born and raised. My family is still here, and yeah, I love it.  

Ula Ojiaku 

Wow. So you, based on what you said, it seemed like you had expectations growing up that you would leave. So what was it about, you know, the whole set up that made you end up not leaving Cincinnati? 

Chris Boeckerman 

I don't know that I ever thought I would leave because, like Cincinnati is a great place and a lot of people I know don't leave, but when I got my job at Proctor & Gamble, which is a multinational company, I expected that I might have to, but really no, I, went to grade school in Cincinnati and then high school. And then I ended up going into chemical engineering at the University of Cincinnati. And I co-oped and ended up, you know, getting this great job at P & G. So that's just kind of how it all happened, which is why I ended up staying in Cincinnati. It's a great place. It's a wonderful place to raise a family. I'm married. My husband works full time, at a company called Turner Construction. And, I have two children, my oldest child is 21 and he's at the University of Dayton doing mechanical engineering. And then my daughter is 17 and she's at a local high school here in Cincinnati. So, and my family and my husband's family, we met at the University of Cincinnati. So I think a lot of those things kind of keep you in a place.  

Ula Ojiaku 

I can imagine. Well, whilst I didn't grow up in the town I studied, I also graduated with an engineering degree, but it's an electronic engineering degree and I met my husband in the university as well. But that’s about, you know, the parallel, I’ve moved a lot, I’ve kind of lived everywhere else in the world. 

Chris Boeckerman 

Well, what I'm happy about is, I’m so happy that I work at P & G, because P & G has introduced the world to me. And so I've been able to travel all over the place and then it sparked that interest in my husband and my family being able to travel. So we definitely, because of P & G we now know it, but I've just never lived anywhere else, that’s all. 

Ula Ojiaku 

And there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, you travelled when you wanted to. And I can only imagine, because that's not been my experience having family and friends, you know, it makes things easier as a full time working mother, a family person. 

Chris Boeckerman 

Yes, yes. I don't know how you do it otherwise. So I bow to you, to all my friends. It's difficult, but we all figure it out.  

Ula Ojiaku 

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. That's great. So, what do you do, Chris? When you're not working, what would you say you do to recharge yourself? 

Chris Boeckerman 

Well, I am, as you've already found out, I'm very family oriented. And so, we are a family of SciFi lovers. And so we like movies and shows and things like that. We just celebrated my husband's 50th birthday at Disney at Galaxy's Edge.  

Ula Ojiaku 

Wow. Happy birthday to him.  

Chris Boeckerman 

I know, it was great. We both turned 50 this year, so it's a big year. But that was fun. We were able to get my son back from college and my daughter, and we were able to spend a fun long weekend there. We love rollercoasters and so we've organised family vacations around rollercoasters and getting to rollercoasters all over the world. And we all love to golf. And so that's something I picked up later. My husband's a wonderful golfer. And so now we really enjoy that as the kids have gotten older, I can spend more time golfing along with my full-time career, but yeah, so it's a lot of fun. I just really like to be outdoors. I think that's the common theme. I love to read, I love to do, but I love to do it outdoors. So that's my favourite.  

Ula Ojiaku 

Yeah, that sounds very interesting. The first and the only time I tried golf, I was so horrible at it. I think I gave myself an advisory, you know, just to do it not in public. 

Chris Boeckerman 

It's not for everybody, it’s not for everybody.  

Ula Ojiaku 

Yeah. Okay. I also got the, when you're talking about yourself, that you studied chemical engineering at the University of Cincinnati. What made you choose that discipline, that line of study?  

Chris Boeckerman 

Yeah, and that's kind of a funny, it's kind of a funny story. So, my parents didn't get to go to college, but I've known since I can remember that I was going to college. So, they worked their whole life, I’m blue collar raised. The one thing I can tell you is I work hard. That's what, you know, my parents really instilled that in me. And so I really liked chemistry in school, and I was pretty good at maths. And so my counselor was like, oh, chemical engineering. My grandpa was actually a chemical engineer. So it was a familiar term, even though I think it's hard to just understand what engineering is by talking to people. But I did some shadowing and I thought, okay, engineering sounds good. And University of Cincinnati was close by, but they invented cooperative education. So, this kind of go to school, go to work. It helps pay for your school, and what I didn't even realise at the time is I'm a very practical person. And so University of Cincinnati was the best for me because I didn't always love the theory. I could learn it, I got the theory, but I'm an applied learner is what I've learned since then. And so by having a co-op job, I could take the theory, apply it, and then I loved it. And so I got the chance to co-op six quarters at P & G in all different parts of the company. So I got to see how, I got to see the company, the company got to see me. It's really how we hire now is through interns and co-ops. But back then, it was just perfect for me. So I'm so glad I made the choice. Like I said, when your parents don't go to college, I don't think you even realise there's that many opportunities, what all the colleges are. But I just got really lucky and then obviously had to work hard because engineering is extremely difficult, and like I said, I think if I wouldn't have had co-op, I may not have stayed in chemical engineering, but because I had the experience of what I could do with it, I made it through. 

Ula Ojiaku 

Well done you and it's people like you, that paved the way for people like us women to get more into engineering as well. So the co-op, was it the University of Cincinnati, did the university help you with getting the job with P & G as part of the studies? 

Chris Boeckerman 

Yeah, it's integrated into a five-year program at the University of Cincinnati. And so you have to co-op to graduate and therefore they have a very structured way of introducing you to many companies, and so they have great relationships with local companies, with national companies. And so, because you know you have to, it's just part of the curriculum, and so they work hard to make sure you get a job. You work hard to make sure you get a job, and then you graduate with experience. So, yeah, I encourage anybody who's going into engineering, even if it's not integrated, like it was at UC, to do internships over the summer. It’s a very popular thing to do here in the US so like my son did internships, most of the colleges have support here to be able to do an internship or they have co-op abroad, learning abroad. Any of that I think is amazing.  

Ula Ojiaku 

Yes, it helps with the balance, you know, to know what reality is and what the theory is of this discipline. Okay. And how did you, you said you made it through, so how was it for you as a student?  

Chris Boeckerman 

I am the person that you should send anybody to who struggled, because I struggled. You know, in high school I was a straight A student, and I memorised everything. I, like I said before, I know how to work hard. I worked hard, grades were very important to me, but it was more of a memorisation thing in high school. I understood the problem solving up to that point, but then I got into university, and yeah, it was just a whole other ball game. One of the things that I think I just learned about engineering is, in the real world, you never have enough time. You never have enough money to do what you want to do. Well, engineering preps you for that because you walk into a test and there's not enough time to finish the test. You're never going to get the right answer. Right. And it's hard to go through that, but I think it creates this grit and tenacity of like, I just have to keep going now.  And that is, I mean, that's kind of what I learned when I got into the workforce, is that engineers are problem solvers and that experience, that difficult experience through school just preps you for real life. And you know, when you feel like you can't keep going, you're like, I am, let's just, you know, this is the way it is. There's not enough time. There's not enough money. We’ve got to keep moving. 

Ula Ojiaku 

Exactly, let’s make the most of the situation. So, you were co-opting with P & G, they loved you and they said they wouldn't let you go. And here you are. So how did you get to your current position as the Vice President? You’re now for R & D right? 

Chris Boeckerman 

Right, it's R & D Vice President in a part of the company called P & G Ventures, which I can explain. So I'll try to take 30 years and give you the shortened version of it. So I started with Procter & Gamble and I worked 20 years actually in the part of the business called fabric care, so Tide, Gain, Ariel, Lenor… like I could talk to you about laundry all day long. So I worked there for 20 years. I worked upstream, downstream, consumer facing, technical facing, internal, external. Like, if you're going to stay somewhere for 20 years, you better do it all, and it was a wonderful, great experience. I've always lived in Cincinnati, but I've had teams all over the world, and so, you know, getting to know the cultures and how people work and the diversity, it's just, it's been amazing. You know, even the different brands and the different countries was great. And so I did that for 20 years, loved it, but I had this wonderful boss who said, hey, it's time to go try something else. And so I went into corporate R & D, and I wasn't sure about it because I come from the business and I have a P & L and I know what I'm delivering to the company, but I really trusted her. And she said, this is where you should go. And the minute I met with the leader of that organisation, he convinced me because he said, hey, my goal is that we are tailwinds for the business units. So, we're not off on the side, but we have the time to look internally and externally at all the best practices. And then we become tailwinds for our businesses who don't have time to do that because they're running the business. And I just loved that vision. And you know, P & G, our mission, our purpose at P and G is to improve the lives of consumers every day. I always say I love my job. I don't love it every day, but I do really love my job. I think if anybody tells you, they love it every day, they're just lying, but I really do love my job. And I think it's because my personal mission in life is to nurture and inspire the people in my work, my community, my family, and P & G’s mission and purpose to improve the lives of consumers comes together in a great place. And that role in particular, in corporate R & D, it all really came together because, you know, I did feel like it was a mission. So when I got into that organisation, it was when, I like to say Dollar Shave Club had happened to us. So it was something where we stand for irresistibly superior products, and that is what our business model was made of. And this was a new, digital business model and it was new to the world and we were trying to figure it out. And so right as I got into this role, the Chief Technical Officer, Kathy Fish, and the Chief Brand Officer kind of came to me and my boss and said, you know, the world is changing really fast and we need to make sure that we are sustainable in this changing environment. So can you go find out what's happening and figure out, you know, how to make sure that we survive, right. How to make sure that we can live in this changing world.  And so I was like, wow, that is like a very clear work plan. And I have no idea how to do that, right. It was very big, the company is big, it's a hundred thousand people, and you know, but I did what I do and I just went and started talking to everybody. And as I was talking to everybody, there were two very clear themes that came out. One was fear of failure, and the second one was that commercial and technical were working in silos. We weren't really a connected team, and so we just kind of looked around and said, what other industry or what other space is tackling these two issues in this dynamic world? And it was the startup Ecosystem. And so we just went to school. I mean, I, the number of podcasts I looked into, like everything I had to learn. We are lucky enough to be a big company. We were able to get to the likes of like David Kidder from Bionic and Ian Berkowitz and Eric Ries. And I could give you the five names of the people that I would go to, but we were lucky enough to get those experts to come in and counsel us, which, that's one of the things I'm so proud of us to do is we didn't pretend we knew how to do it. Yeah. And that's one of the advice I would give everybody is don't pretend, go seek external help, always, because they're always going to give you a different perspective. But anyway, we just kind of, that's how we got into lean innovation, that's how we got into, hey, there is a different way in which we can, you know, learn quickly, learn fast, fail fast. We kind of learned nobody wants to fail, but if you can fail fast and early, then it's, it feels much more like learning. How fascinating, why did that happen? If you fail later and expensive, that's bad. And so, you know, we were, we had to get to school on it. We had to learn how to do it. And then the organisation I was able to create really was a small organisation that was meant to enable the business unit. So we created a framework that was agile and could kind of meet the business units where they were and helped them to understand this is the framework that you can apply to wherever you're at in this journey, because we were all at a different place in the journey, but we enabled startups inside the company is the easiest way for me to talk about that.  And then I did that and now I got the great opportunity, about two years ago, to come into a part of the company called P & G Ventures, which had actually, they were the first part of the company to kind of work like a startup, and they worked internally and externally to start up, what are the next businesses going to be? So we have 10 existing business units. Their job was, how do you develop the next business unit, which, talk about a high hurdle. Right. But, so I basically got to take the five years of kind of learning and enabling the business units, and I got to apply it to one of the toughest problems, which is how do you create a new business unit in an already very big and successful company?  

Ula Ojiaku 

That sounds exciting. And the journey so far, it sounds really impressive and exciting. So, given that P & G, you know, already is renowned for, you know, research, the extensive research and development, would you say that you already had that culture where it's okay to fail because not everything in the research would, you know, go on to be commercialised and end up on the shelf, or did you have to also change people's mindsets towards failure to know that if you fail fast it's okay. You know, was there any, from a leadership perspective, did you need to change anything in terms of people's perception?  

Chris Boeckerman 

Yeah, I mean, we really did, and it's still, you know, it's never perfect inside of an organisation because, you know, it is a large organisation. It was more around though, the speed of learning is what I would say is the biggest difference, was get something out there faster, to let people react. So it was almost and we do, we have a great, behavioural learning mindset now as well, but it was earlier back then. Right. And so I think what happens is, you know, you have your standard, large base qualification tests. That was, you know, the standard process that we had, and it worked well, but the world was shifting. And so it was like, if you were going to need to be more dynamic in how you evolved it, you needed, we needed to follow more of what the lean innovation process would be, which is, you create a quick and early prototype. It doesn't have to be perfect because you're only going to test it with 10 people, get it out to those 10 people and you're going to learn much more, very fast. I always joked, I had this old project or I'm in a project I did a long time ago and I had a bad package, but I knew the product was amazing. And I had this team and the packaging group did not want to place this package. Of course, we all knew it was bad and nobody wanted to look bad, right. And I was like, listen, I promise, I'm going to get the highest level person to say, he knows the package is going to fail. Well, if that's okay, will you let us place this test? Because I’ve got to find out if the juice is good, right. I’ve got to find out if the product is good, and I promise when I come back, I'm going to have even better information about what the package needs to do to be amazing. And so, you know, this was what this was way before, but it like, it just took people, you know, a little bit of time. And they needed to be reassured that it wasn't going to come back on them, right. And it's the difference, it's not the qualification test or I'm spending a million dollars, it's a small test, but you just need to make sure you're intentional about that, right. And we did, we learned a ton. We learned that the juice was magical. The product was great, and the package was bad, and this is exactly what we needed from the package. And we wrote up probably the most beautiful package brief ever. So I really think that's the difference, is you had to make sure that there weren't repercussions. You had to take the risk lower. And if you can take the risk lower, then the failure, like I said, it's more of, oh, you learned that, awesome, you learned it fast, you learned it cheap and now we know what to go do. I always used to say in the early days of GrowthWorks, because everybody's polarised by the term failure, which I totally understand, but it was like productive failure is failure that enables you to know fast, cheap, and easy what to go do next. And as long as you do that, that is productive failure. I had these great managers one time who, I was very uptight about a very large test market that was going to get delayed. It was under my charge and I felt very responsible. And as you can tell, I'm very passionate and you can read my emotions on my face. So I walked into my two leaders and they're new too, they don't know me, so I don't have a relationship with them, but they can just tell, I haven't slept for a week and, like, things are bad and, you know, and they kind of looked at me and they said, hey, Chris, is this the worst thing that's ever happened to you at work? And I was like, uh, yeah, like million dollar test market, right. And they're like, oh, okay, we're going to talk to you about that tomorrow. Today, we're going to talk to you about things that have gone wrong in our career, and what we learned from them. And I just, this was a transformative conversation that my leaders, I'm so thankful, took the time because when I found out what went wrong in their history, I was like, that's not even close to what is happening. Put things in perspective, right. They really, they were able to put things in perspective for me, and they were able to help me see you learn more from your mistakes than your successes. Don't make the same mistake twice and make your mistakes, or do your failures as early and as cheap as possible. And you know, this was 10 years before I did GrowthWorks, but that stuck with me and it turned me, it turned me from a micro-managing crazy person, which is what I was doing at that time into a learning leader is what I would say. I learned to then, when things came to me that were surprising, I always try to say, no matter what the data is, I try to say, oh, how fascinating, why do we think that happened? And it's, you know, like the results are awesome, clean, fascinating. Why do we think they're great? Like, why do we think that happened? The results are bad, fascinating, why? Why do we think that happened? And what we learned is if leaders can approach everything that way, then the team moves into a learning mindset and you learn a lot faster. It's hard to do. And I don't do it every day. If my team were here with me, they would be like, we're going to remind Chris on Monday about that. So, you know, nobody can do it all the time, but that learning mindset, which is something P & G has, you know, focused on a lot, it makes all the difference in the world of creating a culture in which people can learn fast, because everything's fascinating and you need to understand why you got good data, just as much as you need to understand why you got bad data. That's just good science.  

Ula Ojiaku 

I love that term productive failure. I think this is the first time I'm hearing. So do you get to share your failures, you know, after experiments do you get to share that with the rest of the organisation or how does that work? 

Chris Boeckerman 

Yeah, I mean we try hard. We actually try hard in P & G Ventures, because anybody who's listening, who's done any type of venture, new business building type stuff, you have to shut down more things than you keep going and it's really hard to shut a program down, and so we really try to celebrate when we stopped something as much as we celebrate when we're moving forward, because Kathy Fish had this, she would say to us, she was our past, Chief R & D officer when we were doing GrowthWorks, and she was like, it's so important to shut things down because you need to shut the good things down so that you have people to work on the great things, right. And it's, but I'd say that that's the hardest thing to do. And we just did it this week and I compliment the team and it's so exciting to see it's not all roses all the time, I'm telling you, it's not, this is very hard work.  Everybody's job is hard, but when you have a team that really does the sprint together to get to the bottom of how big is it, how big is the problem? Does P & G have a unique, proprietary gift to solve it? And, you know, they come back and the answer is, hey, we did all the due diligence and we don't think that we should pursue it. It's like, I am so excited that they had the confidence and they gave us the confidence because you just want to be confident in your decision, whether it's to go forward or to not, this world of disruptive innovation is uncertain, right? It is just uncertain. It's hard to live in uncertainty every day. But if you have clarity of, we did the due diligence in the team, like I always used to say in GrowthWorks, I want the teams to shut the programs down, or the teams to be the ones that are driving it forward. But it's hard, it is hard to create a culture where people can be agile enough to move to different programs, and we are in the learning, we don't have it all figured out, but you know, we've been at it for a while, and so it's just really, it's exciting to be part of this organisation at this time, to see how far we've come.  

Ula Ojiaku 

Wow. So, for them, because you said something about clarity in times of uncertainty and, you know, the teams actually come to you and say, they've done the due diligence, it doesn't meet the criteria. That suggests to me that you’ve, you know, and you, as a leadership team have taken the time to sit down with them to identify what those clear criteria are. Are you able to share what these are, or at least the process, you know, that made you arrive to those criteria that is open and transparent to everyone that it makes the team, you know, that helps the team to determine if it meets the, it aligns with what P & G is looking for? 

Chris Boeckerman 

Right. Well, I can share it in general terms, right. And so a lot of people listening into the podcast would understand a funnel, right? You know, you have big, broad ideas in the beginning of the funnel and you're trying to figure out, and that's what this particular project was at, is you're trying to figure out really at that point in time, how big is the problem? It's got to be a problem big enough that P & G will care about it. Right. But the problem itself, that's more of a, how many people have it? How many solutions are out there already? What are the dissatisfiers with the solutions? So you kind of go through the essence of how big is the problem? And could we do something about it? So how big is the problem? Does P & G have a proprietary, unique reason why we should go after this versus somebody else? Do we have the capability and the technology, or do we have the partnerships? We do external scouting, right? So do we have external solutions that look viable? And then you put that together to figure out financially, what do the signals look like? Does it look big enough that it's going to be a business that P & G would care about? Because there are plenty of businesses. I've done this myself, I've fallen in love with the business, I want to do this business, and at the end of the day, it's not going to look attractive to P & G, you, at the end of the day, you are choosing to put resources on different programs at different times, and they have to not compete, that's not a great way of saying it, but they have to be big enough that it's worthy of putting a team on it. So we take a small team, they do that early work, and there's a sprint that you go to it, but it's not the same for everybody. Like it's not hard and fast numbers at this point in time. But it is all around, is the problem big enough? Do we have a reason to think that we can deliver a breakthrough solution? And then, when you put that together financially, does it look good? And so we have, I would say, what we have, the leadership team has determined is, there are some ranges that the teams work within, but what really helped this team in particular, which is something that I think people could value is we really enabled the team to focus, right? So they did this broad, like what are the parts of this problem that we think are interesting? And they did a sprint, they identified those spaces. We were like, great. We love it. Now, with that criteria go run some sprints to figure out quickly, how big is it? Is it growing? What are the gifts we have in the company? What is the quick scouting? And is this something that makes sense for, you know, P & G to create a new brand VR work or not. And they really, they came back and they said, thank you for the focus, we met with them every month after the sprint, we made decisions, but they made the recommendations and then they were like, this one isn't big enough, it's not growing, we're going to stop work on that one, do you agree? They were like, yeah, because you made such a compelling case, how can we not agree? And then the other, you know, the other, we were like, we are still really interested in the other two. Do you have enough time? And do you have the right people to do that? They went after it, they came back and you know, and then it becomes much more of a discussion because it's like, is it really something we should do? Is it something the other businesses have a better, do they already have a brand? It is expensive to create a new brand. So, we have amazing brands in this company. And so, many times it's like, wait, do we need to influence, or do we want to try to influence another brand to really take this on, because it's big and growing. So that's how it, early in the funnel, as we go later in the funnel, it becomes much more of, the first question is, could we do it, the second question is, should we do it? Right. And so the, should we do it is all based on can you create the business? Right, so then you really start pulling in all of the business aspects, the full qualification that we tend to do, transactional learning tests, incubations either in stores or in small markets or in direct to consumer. So you really start to get that behavioural and transactional data giving you the signals that this is a business. Janice Fraser, who was also one of these external experts, she would always say, you know you're ready to scale when you've put the variables together and you know where to pour the money to make it grow, you know where the money should be poured to make it grow. If you don't know where to pour the money, you're not ready to scale. And, you know, those are always, so it's complicated. Business is complicated. The channels are complicated, the platforms are complicated. So, you know, that's when you really have to figure out, do I have, you know, should I invest the big money in this? And I think one of the things that you have when you're doing intrapreneurship, you're creating startups inside the company, is you should be able to get through that funnel faster, if you can get all those parts to come together and that's, you know, that's our goal, that's what we're getting to. In P & G Ventures,  I mean, we have a new opportunity area around safe and effective insect control. And it's a brand called Zevo and it's amazing, right. And so it's nice to have a program that has been through those parts and is really kind of in that space now that we can all look to and, you know, say, all right, how are we looking compared to where they were looking at the time? Because it's like, that uncertainty and clarity, like you said, it is just uncertain space. You don't know, you can't predict a billion dollar brand, you just can't, but what are the things that you can start running after and you can learn fast and you can validate that gives you the signals at all different fidelities and levels to then go, all right, we're going. So anyway, that's the goal.  

Ula Ojiaku 

So, the listeners might be wondering, especially for those of us who are not so familiar with the intricate, you know, organisation, the way P & G is organised. So, what's GrowthWorks and then, what role did you play in that?  

Chris Boeckerman 

Perfect. Well, I ended up being able to be the co-founder of GrowthWorks. And GrowthWorks, in a simple term, is, a framework that you can apply to nurture startups inside the company. So, we are a big company and we know how to do big, big programs. Right. As we got into this disruptive world and we were being disrupted and, you know, we were looking for how to become agile, it, you know, it was sort of like we needed to shift how we did our innovation. And so we needed to be able to apply these principles from lean innovation, but in a way that made sense for P & G. So one of the things we learned, you know, very early on and everybody would know is, you know, at the end of the day, our goal is to build a business that we cultivate. We're not trying to sell to somebody. That's a very different aspect of being a startup, in a startup you want to get bought, right. But here we need to create a value creating business. And it is interesting during this time is when, Marc Pritchard, who's our Chief Brand Officer, really started to talk quite a bit about constructive disruption, and it was really important, and I think it's important for any big company to understand as they're doing this, is our job is always to build categories, to build the industry. We don't ever want to take the industry down. We want to build the industry. So we want to be disruptive, but in a building way, and so as we were thinking about that, it was just like, okay, there's probably three components that we were pulling together that you can apply, whether you're doing sustaining innovation, or disruptive innovation.  

There's a, how do you learn, right. So it's the build, measure, learn, but how do you handle this, helping an organisation feel okay about sending five prototypes to consumers and not being concerned that it's going to fail. Right. So that is sort of the build, measure, learn loop. We base everything in the consumer love and the consumer need. And so we wrapped that together to kind of give it, this is how P & G applies the lean innovation model. There's also, how do you think about the type of innovation you're doing? And so, like I said, whether it's sustaining, disruptive or anything like that, but visualising that is really important, helping everybody understand, what are the new spaces that we're looking at? Placing lots of bets in these new spaces and knowing the high percentage is going to fail, right. And so, how do you measure progress in this uncertain space? That was a part of the framework as well. And then the last part of the framework was how do you organise to do this work? And I'd say the biggest thing we learned then is yeah, when you're early in the funnel, a small team can make tremendous progress, make it less hierarchical, let the team lead, leaders learn, because this is new. So I used to always joke. I was 20 years in fabric care, right. And so I would be working with an internal startup team in fabric care. And my 20 years of knowledge of fabric care wasn't what was helping the team. I was holding them back because I have all these biases of the past and they needed to go into the future and I needed to learn, so you just have to let the teams lead at that point in time and you have to learn, and be supportive. Then you do get to the point though, where my 20 years of knowledge of fabric care does become important. And that's where every startup runs into as well, is you get it to a certain point, but if you need to industrialise something, that is the core capability the company has, and you can't do that with three people, and you need hierarchy and you need to, so it's like, how do you take the best of both worlds and bring them together? And so that was how we had to figure out how to organise for where you're at and what you need at the time.  And then how do you shift to that when you need to shift it quickly? And so those were the three aspects, how you learn, what is the type of innovation you're going after, and then how do you organise, and that we made it a broad enough framework so that we have 10 business units and P & G Ventures who were at the tip of the sphere of doing this for the company anyway. And we were trying to help the rest of the company, but you wanted to give them that framework and then no matter what they were working on, could they fit themselves into that framework or could the framework enable them? And so we started as two people and our leader, and I was able to grow that organisation to about 25 people across every function of the company, but just a small group, like we just had, you know, 25 people out of a hundred thousand, right. But each of us were a function in the company, but we were one team across all functions. And so that's how we were able to kind of like be like the Navy Seals, we could come in and we could help support the business unit for what they were doing. And then the business unit would take it on. That was the only way we could become sustainable because we weren't, I never wanted to create a 500 person organisation.  Everything I learned about from all my predecessors who've tried this at other companies as well, that just gets to be too heavy. And it doesn't integrate into the entire company because you're reliant on the coaches or the experts versus our job was eventually like when we were about three years in and we kind of knew what we were doing, when we would come in and help train some part of the organisation, we would only do it if they offered up a person that would then take it from us and do the next training. And so, you know, then you start to really get into the fibre of the company to really drive the change. And it's not perfect, right. But it really was able to shift how we did our innovation and the BUs own it, right, the business units own it.  

Ula Ojiaku 

That's the only way it's going to be sustainable, if there’s ownership from them.  

Chris Boeckerman 

Exactly. And they applied it in different ways, our beauty care business is very different than our fabric care business. So one size fits all was never going to work.  

Ula Ojiaku 

Oh my gosh, sorry, that was a theme at the conference I spoke at, you know, it was like, no, there's no one size fits all approach.  

Chris Boeckerman 

I'm very thankful that I had the support around me, and that the company invested to bring external people in, right. One of the people I haven't mentioned yet is Maxine Friedman and she started with Bionic and, you know, now has her own work that she does, but she was my partner day in and day out as we were trying to figure out how to make this change. And without having people like that near me, Karen Hershenson's an internal person that was with me. They're the ones that really helped me see it was more than us. And in order to make it more than us, we had to enable others. We had to give it away. So first we had to figure out what it was. So don't get me wrong. That was not easy. It took us an entire year of really crazy experiments that the business units did. And we were just learning and running and helping and doing everything that we could, but we were pulling together the learnings. We were strategically figuring out what was working and what wasn't working so that we could land within the first year with this framework. Then once we had the framework, then we had something more intentional that we could work with the business units on. And we showed up for free. That was the other thing is, when they called, we showed up, right? Like nobody paid for us, we were helping them, but then they started to pay with their people, and they became the experts who then moved it forward and they moved it forward in different ways, because the external experts were the ones telling us we've seen other companies try this, don't try to mandate, don't force it, help figure out an agile framework that people can fit for what they need. And to this day it still exists. I mean, I'm not on it anymore, there's a small team that's still is working through it and, you know, but the businesses own it. They're the ones who really drive it in the way that they need.  

Ula Ojiaku 

Wow. I respect your time. I could delve in more. I think, Chris, this is an official invite to have you back sometime, you know, for a sequel to this conversation.  

Chris Boeckerman 

I would love it. I would love it. This has been so much fun. I really, I have a ton of passion for this type of work and our motto in GrowthWorks was unleash people to unleash growth. I do think P & G has the best people. I think everybody thinks that about their company, but I just really, I believe it, you know, when I was 20 years in fabric care, when I was, you know, 5 years in GrowthWorks, and now in P & G Ventures, that we just have the best people. And as we unleash them, we're growing, and so it's just a ton of fun, so happy to come back.  

Ula Ojiaku 

Your passion shines through and for you to say P & G has the best people, speaking with you, I am left with no doubt about it because you are a great ambassador for that. So thank you for that. So, in terms of a few more questions, so what books, if you had, because you said you had to go to school to learn more about innovation and you got in coaches. Are there any books that have helped you, you know, in this learning journey? 

Chris Boeckerman 

Yeah, there's a group of books just on lean innovation that definitely helped. So the Eric Ries, like kind of trilogy of books, I would say is The Lean Startup, The Startup Way, but he also had a small printing of something called, The Leader's Guide, which I think you can only get on audio now. And Janice Fraser, Eric introduced us to Janice and she had a lot of that, that really helps you to figure out how to help an organisation, how to help leaders to bring this to life. So those were really critical. And then David Kidder from Bionic wrote a book called New to Big, and I would say that's a great synopsis of what they taught us. And so, that's a good one to go to. And then there's a Scrum book that, I'm going to have to look up afterwards to give you the actual title, but twice the work and half the time. 

Ula Ojiaku 

That'll be Jeff Sutherland, Scrum, How to do Twice the Work in Half the Time. Dr Sutherland was my guest a few episodes ago.  

Chris Boeckerman 

Yes, it was life-changing for me, not necessarily because I became, I did not become a Scrum master. We have people inside the company that have done amazing things, but that was the book where he really articulated the questions that we started to ask, that helped us with teams lead, leaders learn. So he articulated that leaders, you know, should ask, what did you learn? How do you know? What do you need to learn next? And how can I help you as a leader? And, you know, that simple articulation was really great for us. So those are the ones that I kind of went back to again and again, to really figure out how to do lean innovation. I have another book for you just in general to share, and that's called Four Thousand Weeks, and it's a productivity book that somebody had just shared with me and it's by Oliver Burkeman and this, I just really liked because it's made a big impact in my life right now. If you live to be 80, you live 4,000 weeks. So it puts a finite amount of time, which can be scary, but we all know is real. But what I loved about this, it's the first productivity book that I received the message because I'm sure other productivity books have told me this, but it's the first time I was able to openly receive the message that you cannot do it all, so stop trying. You need to be choiceful. You need to be intentional on what it is you want to do and what it is you're going to intentionally not do. And that was just really impactful for me. And I think it can be impactful for a lot of people that really, the quality of your life is based on the choices that you make, and it's part of the reason I'm here because I'm a very busy person, but I just decided, no, I really, this is a passion that I have. I have a unique experience, I would really like to share that with other like-minded people who are on this, you know, what I call rollercoaster journey. It is like high highs and low lows when you are a change agent in big companies, but it's so fulfilling. So that book just had a big impact on me, that I really am in control of my destiny, but I need to make some choices. 

Ula Ojiaku 

Well, I've made a note of those books and they would be in the show notes of your episode. So thank you for that. Would that be, if the audience wants to get in touch with you, how can they find you? 

Chris Boeckerman 

The best way is through LinkedIn, I'm on LinkedIn, and while I would love to talk to everybody in the world, right. The way that I kind of make my choices, like I just said, which is exactly when you reached out to me is, anything that enables P & G and you know, what, what we all have passion for, I make time for, so yeah, so LinkedIn is the best way.  

Ula Ojiaku 

Definitely. I mean, you're a busy person, so LinkedIn would be the best place. And any final words for the audience so we wrap this up.  

Chris Boeckerman 

Yeah. I think, you know, I think it just really is, if you can, you follow your passion and people are everything. I just, everybody in the startup world, everybody in a corporate environment will tell you that the team and the people, they make all the difference in the world. And I just have found through my career as well, the more I invest in the people, the better, and so, yeah, I mean, if there's a way that you can ever really drive together your passions and then the ability to kind of bring an amazing team around you, you can do anything. My favourite quote is, never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it's the only thing that ever has. It’s by Margaret Mead. And I just really, I really believe it. I think, and, in what we've been able to do at P & G, we had the people, the groundswell, and we had the leadership support in, and you need both, but it just really starts with a small group of people that have a lot of passion and are amazing. And so that's what I would focus on.  

Ula Ojiaku 

Wow. Thank you so much, Chris. This has been an inspiring conversation, more like me learning from you. So I do think, and I know that the audience, the viewers and listeners would also find this episode very useful. So thank you again for your time.  

Chris Boeckerman 

Oh, thank you very much. And I've listened to all your podcasts now. And so I'm learning a ton from this forum as well. And just thank you for taking the time and doing it. I love your story and I was really happy to be part of it. So thank you. 

Ula Ojiaku 

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