Keep Teams Dreaming with Angela Mangiapane
Angela Mangiapane is the President of Mars Global Services at Mars, Inc. She received her MBA from York University in marketing and strategic studies, and studied strategy at the London Business School. She joined Mars in 1990 in her area of expertise, finance. Angela speaks 4 languages, and has worked in Latin America, North America and France. In 2007, Angela pursued an opportunity in People & Organization, or HR, at Mars Latin America and quickly rose to be Vice President P&O for Mars Global Chocolate. In 2017 Angela became President of Global Services, which provides global operational support for IT, Finance, Procurement, Marketing and HR.
Carlos: Angela, I'm thrilled you could find time in your very busy schedule to be here! You and I have known each other, 18 years. I think we first met when we were both working at Mars in the early 2000s You came over from Mars IS, right?
Angela: That’s right, which has now changed to becoming Mars Digital Technology. A whole different ball game.
Carlos: It’s been a big, full 18 years of stuff. So, tell me just a bit about you, where you come from, a quick bio if you will.
Angela: Sure. So first of all, Carlos, I’m just thrilled to be here as well. Anything I know that has to do with teams and leadership I'm speaking to the right person, and so I want to thank you for all the support that you have given me during my time and career this 18 years. Just a little bit about me :I'm Canadian, born and bred in Canada.
Carlos: Alright well we won't hold that against you.
Angela: …and I had a great opportunity to join Mars back in 1990, so I’m celebrating 30 years. I didn’t actually think I was going to be at Mars as long as I have been because I was planning to stay in Toronto pretty much the rest of my life. But this came along and gave me this opportunity to work across various countries. So, from Canada I moved to the US. I had an opportunity to work in Latin America and then after that into the beautiful South of France and then here back now into the US. My background is finance. I’ve worked across many of the different areas within finance. Mars gave me an opportunity to work in other functions. What brought me to the US actually was a stint in the IT world, that's where we met. And then I went over into the world of P&O - People and Organization, known elsewhere as HR. Then I dabbled a little bit in some other operational areas. Then, as of four years ago, had the opportunity to head up what we call Mars Global Services which externally would be called a global business services type of organization.
Carlos: So today you're sitting atop a fairly large organization, right?
Angela: It's an organization that's made up about 3200 Associates – we call our employees Associates. We have a few towers or centers. So, we do finance; HR; indirect procurement; there's the IT which we call Digital Technologies; we do laboratories; and then we also have a small insights team that does our consumer insights.
Carlos: How long ago did you lead your first team?
Angela: It was 1995 and the reason I remember that is we had a GM by the name of Brian Lauzon who came from the US. He wanted to put in place a whole new area called Demand Planning which was essentially, what's the forecast from our consumers, right? So I had a small team made up of about four people. And so it was a new team, and to be honest with you, also a new concept. At that time it was something very different for us to have a separate area. So 25 years ago.
Holding the team together after the pandemic hit
Carlos: We are still in the throes of the pandemic. You sit atop an IT organization which I’m sure had a lot to do with holding the entire organization together as people were forced apart physically. I would imagine it was a huge challenge to confront this, and to rally your team, which covers a lot of areas, to execute together to do this. Can you tell me what it was like in March 2020?
Angela: I would say that the attributes of what Mars is very good at is coming together in a time of crisis. There was so much uncertainty. We were already, in one sense, seeing it in January because we have a hot site in China. They were already starting to experience some of these challenges and by March the dark days hit. We were seeing what was going on in Europe and made a few changes, then started to see things change here in the US.
I would say what was really great was from the senior leadership team at Mars, was essentially them saying, what are the things that are urgent? Their clarity of purpose of keeping our associates safe was first and foremost their priority. For our group, keeping our associates safe in an environment where we are seen as an essential service. Our food business, for example, responded to people’s need to keep food in their pantry as who knew how long access to food would be constrained? Back in March 2020, very little was known about how long this was going to last.
So, keeping our associates safe while keeping our plants running for our consumers was very important, particularly in the categories of petcare and food. The senior leadership team was focused on how to empower the force to keep connected, and to keep the business going.
Of course, big or small, every organization’s cash became very critical. We were very proud that no one’s pay was affected, no one was furloughed, we kept the business running.
The Digital Technologies team did a brilliant job of getting 40,000 people access to a secure VPN from home, virtually overnight. I have to give them a lot of kudos to them for 99% success, including onboarding and our intern program run virtually. Getting laptops into their house, phone support in connecting. Where previously we’d discuss going onto a platform for months, suddenly we moved into MS Teams over a weekend and found opportunity in what was really a crisis. It was okay if things weren’t perfect: we knew we’d have to get it up and then fix any bugs instead of taking time and making it perfect before releasing the technology. We had to decide who needed to get what done to implement all this practically overnight.
The value of failures as learning opportunities
Carlos: You are the president of an organization. It is not even a function. This is an enabling organization at a time when that organization has never been more important, and when execution was never more important. That wasn't always true for you. You've worked your way up. You led your first team in 1995. What made it possible for you to participate in this amazing feat of keeping this massive organization running and connected and executing and delivering? What were the lessons you learned along the way? I want to know about your leadership journey and what you learned in particular about how to lead a team.
Angela: I certainly don't profess to have all the answers. I think I'm still a work in progress
Carlos: Wait, you don't have all the answers?? Why did I invite you on my podcast?! Come on!
Angela: I would say my journey has been fraught with lots of successes as well as failures and I have to say that it's been the failures that have taught me the most. Because you then reflect. When you have success, you move on. When you have a failure it does give you that moment to pause and say, “OK, what am I going to learn from this?” and I'm a big believer that it is all about learning that it's not about an indication of “OK, let's go and bury your head in the sand.” So no, you pick yourself up and you move on.
If I had to say a couple of things in terms of what I’ve learned: One is really being clear about what you stand for, and being very clear in terms of the sense of purpose that you want for the team and for the organization that you’re leading. Why are we here doing what we want to do? It's less about what I'm going to do; I didn't sit there and go “I'm now going to do the financial transactions for the business”. It was, “Why am I here? Why is this organization called MGS here? What’s it in service of for the greater good of the purpose of Mars?” And then putting that back in. So, starting with purpose for me was always important.
Grounding your team in the Why helps your team grow and develop, and drive the objectives
Carlos: So even from the beginning in 1995 you felt that sense of the importance of purpose or is that something that along your journey you came to understand?
Angela: I think that’s along my journey… so if I think about when you're in the early stages of your career…because this is all about experiences, not about so much the level that you're at; it’s more about the experiences that you gain. If I were to start today, going back to the role that I had, we would do things differently. I would say, “Let's look at our purpose.” But at that time when you start and you're young and you are very much looking at delivery. So you look at, “What do we need to do?” So, you say, “OK listen up folks. “Here's our task, here's our objective, here is what we need to do”. You look less at, “Well, why am I even doing this?” and what you miss then is with your team as well as yourself is, “Hold on a minute: Is what I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing?” and I may have missed the boat totally. And therefore, that's why I was grounding myself in the why, Why am I doing what I need to do? What's that purpose? Because what I've learned is that people then would become less dependent on you. What you don't want to do is create a team where everything then goes back to you to decide. You really don't want that because you want to be able to have an environment where people can grow, develop, feel they can be who they want to be and they can activate, figure out how to do it in a way that they believe will fit that purpose and will drive the objective.
Team Purpose fuels dreams of the future
Carlos: I think as you know I'm a huge proponent of purpose and its power. It is part of creating a powerful group identity, something people can connect to at a gut level. I had a moment of awakening around this. People love stories, they love to hear things put in the context of how an individual got to their understanding. Do you recall a moment when a light bulb went off around that idea of purpose?
Angela: I don't think this was like somebody kind of gave me a smack on the head and said, “Hey it's now purpose!” I think these are things where you start to collect over time and it builds and builds. If I had to give an example of where I ah- ha moment came for me, it was actually my time in Latin America. I had a bright group of P&O folks who were managing each of their markets with the GM, and these were professionals that had Masters in psychology and organizational design and here I am, I'm leading this group but I'm thinking to myself “I’ve got a finance degree.”
Carlos: So this was this was a P&O, or an HR group, P&O in Mars-speak?
Angela: This was a HR group and they were down in Latin American I was leading this group. And initially when I connected with them it got to be very much around what the businesses or the markets are expected to do in growth and earnings, and so forth. Each one started commenting about the kind of talent and capability that they needed, and yet they were operating very much in this mode of, “You don't understand about my markets…” Everybody was saying how different the Colombia market was versus Argentina versus Brazil. Finally we said wait let's take this step back. What do we want Mars to be? So we kind of did a little bit of a dreaming exercise where we said, “What could Mars look like in 10 years’ time?”
Carlos: Was that to dream about the function or was it to dream about the whole business down in Latin America?
Angela: It was actually to dream about the business of Latin American, what it was going to need.
Our brands and our people
Everybody kept saying that we were different. Everybody kept saying we need to grow. And then one of the things that always struck me when I first joined Mars is somebody telling me that Forrest Mars, Sr. had actually talked about the two most important assets in a business: the brands and its people.
Bringing that back to talking about growing this business, and recalling that sentence, which was, “Our brands and our people.” What kind of talent will we need? Then the dreaming started going with, “Well, actually, given the potential in 10 years time, what could the dream of Latin America be?” And remember this was 2007 where there was a lot about The BRIC, the growth of Latin America, Brazil, was seen as on fire.
Carlos: So the Brick is Brazil, Russia,…
Angela: India, and China. At the time back in 2007 there was lots of excitement in the emerging markets. And so we dreamt Latin America would double its size. Wouldn’t that be amazing? Because these were some of the aspirations that we had. So, what does that mean for the talent? Is this talent going to be part of the Mars, Incorporated leadership team? And all of a sudden I could see the energy in the room shift from “my market” to How might we look if we actually are anticipating and saying, “How do I grow with my Latino talent to be part of the Mars top 200 one day?” Because Latin America is going to be a big part of that portfolio.
Carlos: That is a fabulous, fabulous story, Angela. And I think that notion of dreaming together is very potent. And: you used that language with these very pragmatic Mars folks? Because Mars people are really very feet-on-the-ground, let's keep it practical.
The importance of bringing your whole self to work
Angela: You have to respect the culture of the area. This worked because of the culture that I saw there. I'll tell you the story. When I first got there, I introduced myself as Angela Mangiapane. I have a finance background. I'm now entering this world of HR and I'm here in Latin America, period. And then we went to the next person. Next person said, “Let me introduce to you my beautiful family. I have a beautiful wife and two wonderful children. They are my heart. They are my life,” right? And I'm sitting there thinking, Gee, I’ve got two kids and a husband, too. And I said nothing.
What Latin America taught me was you have to bring your whole self to work. You cannot just leave at the door…Okay. I'm going to click. And now I don't even think about my family and my other life in my life outside of work. I go into work mode. You bring everything because you don't click it and shut it off, right? You do think of your family during the day, things are happening. It's life, life is messy, and you're going to bring that mess in with you. It was their acceptance of me, and me getting to know them.
And it's not something I did right at the beginning. To be fair, this was a year in. I felt there was something that was missing, it was ripe to take. And I know that they're very much of the heart, the corazón.
To lead or to manage a team?
To your point, do I use this language all the time? You really need to look at and determine what leading is about. Leading is about getting people to do things that they did not think was possible. So, you're bringing change. Am I here to lead or am I here to manage? Manage, is about getting your stuff done. It's providing that consistency of performance management. Actually, if I think about even how I'm leading my team right now, we always say we need to have brilliant execution and we should never be embarrassed by that, but that's managing.
Actively dream about tomorrow
We also need to start looking at tomorrow and what we need to start building for tomorrow, which is where you can do the dreaming.
We started building a lot more credibility because when I first took over this role, we had a lot of challenges. It was a reset and we had many challenges: the way IT was perceived, the way finance was perceived, we were just kicking off the HR side. There were a lot of naysayers. We needed to start delivering, do what we said we were going to do. Now we're at a stage where we have more and more credibility.
Where do we want to dream going forward? We went through a dreaming exercise and it was amazing. When you unleash that purpose is not about making money. That comes. If you figure this out, the money comes. It was about the contribution, what we're doing, from a human capital perspective. How do we increase the capability of our associates as the world is quickly, quickly changing and we need to increase our competency of analytics, as an example?
A dreaming exercise as a tool
Carlos: Let's think about purpose/dreaming as a tool in somebody's team toolkit. Would a more frontline team, like the ones you probably led in the middle-to-late nineties, still benefit from something as lofty as dreaming together? Or is it just for big leadership teams?
Angela: I think we've got to get rid of the hierarchy kind of concept that says, “If you're a leader, then this is what you do - you think about dreams. And if you're on the line or, you're the sales guy going out there to visit the customer you're not allowed to dream.” If I were now back at that time I’d say It is important to dream. Because dreaming unleashes your own potential. I have an example of that.
We've been doing a pilot and we didn't take the typical section of folks from the organization. We did a bit of a diagonal cut. We were able to get people that were on the front line of sales, of finance, an account receivables person, and the overall VP of sales. Now, while we went through a dreaming exercise, we stated, “What would it look like if we had zero defects in our order flow?” So, it's a dream, right?
Carlos: Yeah.
Angela: And, seeing the reaction of the AR folks or that salesperson who actually has to go in and speak to the account was just great to see, because they actually felt they could come up with a solution. They weren't waiting for me or for the VP of sales. All we did is open up the sandbox or we gave them the environment that It was okay.
Carlos: How many people were involved in this exercise?
Angela: I think when it was about 20 people. Every two weeks we have a one-hour - I call it a standup meeting because now we have 20 people and everybody just comes in and talks about what they've done. I was talking to my other colleague because he and I basically had kicked this off. and we sat back and said it's getting to a point where actually, I don't even think we need to be in it anymore. We start it off, we just say, “Hey, good afternoon, everybody. Great for coming. What’s on the agenda?” and they're managing the agenda. They're doing the updates. They figured out what the next steps are. And I said to Joe, “I'm feeling like, you know, I'm kind of in the way. I should just get out of the way now.”
We seeded it. The green shoots came out and we're just ensuring that we keep watering. And, let them handle it.
Carlos: So, let me be sure I understand and that our listeners are coming along on this journey. This is a slice diagonally. So, we've got people who are frontline folks as well as more senior folks.
Angela: Yeah. Like the AR clerk.
Carlos: So, we've got a clerk in there and you've got a director, I imagine.
Angela:,The Director of Sales who reports into the VP of Sales at Mars Wrigley attended.
Carlos: Are these building towards some grander output, like a big report that gets issued at the end of the year? Or is it really just about what comes out in the moment?
Sprints
Angela: What comes out in the moment. We set up sprints. One of the other things that we've looked at was what needs to get done over six weeks’ period of time. We went through the data, and we said, “Why do we have so many imperfect orders?” Because ideally what you want to do is you send out the invoice, you ship to the customer, the customer pays you and you're done right? Instead, we had an activity that was taking over 20 people involved and, at times, six months to clear. Lots of waste in the system. Plus the markets talking to the actual customer. This was selling a Snickers bar to a customer.
We got involved with the folks in the market that we're selling to because we take it on from invoice to cash. There's the other part that takes the order. There's also getting the customer and ensuring that everything is fine. In reviewing this whole activity set people always talked about why it costs so much money to process this. And everybody was saying, “Well, let's just automate,” That was the answer to everything. Let's just automate it. Great. We're going to automate a mess.
Carlos: I'm sorry. “Automate a mess,” is a great phrase.
Angela: Let’s all just automate a mess. So then we said, “No, no, let's eliminate it. Why do we even have these disputes with the customer? The customer is saying, “I only owe you $8” and we're saying, “No, no, you owe us a hundred,” And so always keeping that in the front of mind is what made people go, “Okay, well, what is my involvement then?” It goes back to purpose. What's my involvement in ensuring it is flawless?
Carlos: You've got this cross-sectional team that has grown and its job is to help solve that problem of order-to-cash. Every two weeks this group gets together and talks about things they've done that have cut down the time and cost. They also talk about new ideas. People are testing out theories and ideas?
Angela: That's right. And it can come from anybody in that team.
Energizing a team
Carlos: It sounds like it's an energized group, even without your leadership.
Angela: At the beginning Joe and I needed to be there. Now my sense is that people are really getting excited. “Why am I doing what I'm doing?” Initially, people would have said, “Okay, I just transact something.” Now they're actually understanding that what I do has an impact with my customer, let's say a Walmart or Kroger. I can see, I can make a difference. It can make my life easier, by the associate who’s dealing with the customer, but more importantly I just see that I don't want to be with the waste because I can then redirect my energy towards actually growing the business, giving them an idea that helps them add value to that customer relationship
If I ask people, “Can we map out the process of how we do order-to- cash?” it'd be like watching paint dry on the wall. Now, I love process, but I gotta tell you it's hard to get people motivated by it. You say, “I want to have zero dispute with Walmart. What can you do to figure it out?” And you get everybody who's associated with Walmart.
Carlos: I'm excited by what you're talking about, because I think what it offers people is a super simple way to think about bringing their teams together and centering them around a concept or a notion that's important to everybody.
Angela: That's right. What I'm also hoping to do out of this, whether it's in work or about what's going on currently in our society, is that it's easy for someone to feel I'm just a small cog in this big wheel and what is my action going to do that's gonna make a difference? And I think if somehow, even just with this one exercise, we can get that team to believe that everybody on that team is relevant. “I can make a difference,” People want to feel that they actually are relevant. That I have done something that is going to be of value.
Carlos: Angela I think it's time for us to wrap up this conversation, which went a direction I never imagined. I struggle sometimes with helping teams understand why having a shared purpose is useful, necessary to create productive collaboration. You've put it so simply. You have inspired me with these stories.. I want to say a huge thank you for the way you're thinking about this, for what you've brought to the teams you've led, and for what you bring to our listeners today.
Angela: Well, thank you very much, Carlos. You were one of the many seeds that I have had, but a very important one. And I want to thank you for all the coaching and mentorship that you have given me when you were at Mars.
Carlos: We've been speaking today with Angela Mangiapane who's the president of Mars Global Services. And until the next time, everybody, keep collaborating.
Angela: And keep dreaming!