1. 32 33issue 14.11 hRmasia.com issue 14.11 hRmasia.com
Case Study Case StudyL&D
Special
L&D
Special
world, and allow their organisation to take
advantage of the opportunities that will
exist in this world of tomorrow – a world
that is shaped towards the developing
and emerging markets of Asia.
“The start point of your leadership
should be where do you think you’re
going to be and I think it’s one of
the most important things about
leadership,” says Nolan.
He explains that for him, one of the
most important things about leadership
is having a point of view about the future.
“So you try and develop people who
are able to bring all of those things
together and help you lead the business
forward in a way that you like it to
develop,” elaborates Nolan.
The birth of leadership in Unilever
Nolan takes pride in the fact that Unilever,
a company that has been around the blocks
since the 1870s, actually laid the pillars
of its leadership development structure
with the opening of its first leadership
development centre in London in 1954.
He says the organisation was one of the
first companies in the world to build a
bricks and mortar management training
centre, called Four Acres.
“You can only imagine – it was a few
years after the end of the Second World
War and it was slightly ahead of its time.”
According to Nolan, in the old model
of leadership, companies may have had
20 or 30 years to prepare people for
leadership roles.
Now however, he says the tide has
changed and with the world moving at a
much faster pace than before, leadership
can emerge at any age.
“One of the things that keeps us awake
at night is how do we develop leaders fast
enough for the challenges of the future,
and to keep pace with the growth of the
business,” explains Nolan.
“So, starting with that sort of problem,
we then started to think about what
could be the potential solution.”
Revving up the leadership pipeline
One of the solutions is a leadership
programme called Excelerator.
This programme is designed to take
people identified as having potential to
progress further in the organisation to
leadership positions that will accelerate
their development.
The year-long leadership programme
consists of residential teaching and formal
academic learning, on the job training,
projects, coaching and mentoring, and
feedback, and is all put together in a menu
of activity which, over a year,
accelerates the participant’s
readiness to take on a leadership
position at the next level.
“Business is moving
fast and opportunities are
developing around us, and
there’s a shortage of talent and
leadership,” says Nolan.
“So what we have to try and do is to
identify the people we think have got
that potential to be accelerated and try
to give them formal development and
leadership programmes which allow
them to fulfil that potential.”
Pointedly, Nolan reveals that the
Excelerator programme, which was launched
five years ago, actually originated in China.
Whereas previously, the old model of
leadership development programme was
that things would be developed in the US
and Europe before then being rolled out
into Asia, Nolan says the company is now
seeing this model in reverse.
While this particular programme was
developed under the Unilever China
initiative to address a specific problem
of how to develop Chinese leaders faster,
it was under the auspices of the global
team that the pilot programme was
rolled out in every market around the
world, including in the US and in Europe.
“So we’ve almost reverse-engineered
a leadership programme back to the
developed world that was actually
developed in China. I think that is
how the world is actually going to go,”
explains Nolan.
As Nolan frequently reiterates
the notion of a dearth of talent and
leadership, it should come as no surprise
that Unilever pays heavy attention to the
recruitment of university talents.
Globally, Unilever recruits around 800
management trainees each year from
universities all around the world.
Each year, the company runs a global
competition whereby students from all
over the world compete to take part in
what’s known as the Unilever Future
Leaders League.
“This is about tapping into the leaders
of tomorrow who are currently on campus
today,” elaborates Nolan.
Students compete against each
other in a simulated business
case and the winners progress
through to a final where they get
to do a real-world case study.
Four Acres in Singapore
While London is regarded as the
original Four Acres facility, Singapore is
now looked upon as Unilever’s second
leadership hub, following its official
opening in June last year. Paul Polman,
the company’s CEO, said: “Four Acres
Singapore will support Unilever’s efforts to
develop tomorrow’s business leaders.”
Nolan also reveals that Four Acres in
Singapore allows Unilever to double its
leadership training capacity. He says its
location in Singapore was chosen for a
number of reasons.
Firstly, Unilever has a significant
presence in Singapore and it is the
headquarters of its global markets
operation.
Secondly, Nolan explains that
Singapore sits at the nexus between
the developing and the developed
worlds, and has great communication
capabilities, infrastructure and transport.
However, he believes the most
important reason is that the Singapore
Government has a very far-sighted view
of the need to develop human capital.
“The Government is looking to bring
together like-minded parties who are
interested in the development of human
capital,” says Nolan.
“My own view is that we all have
a responsibility to contribute to the
development of human capital and we
shouldn’t just leave it to schools or to
universities or to governments. I think
Charting your
Try asking John Nolan, Senior Vice
President, HR – Global Markets,
Unilever, how his company – comprising
of more than 174,000 employees globally
– formulates its leadership development
programmes and he quickly cuts you short.
“Even before that question, I think
it starts with what your purpose is
and what you’re trying to achieve,” he
says. “What type of company are you
trying to be, and therefore, what type of
leadership does that require?”
Nolan explains that it is imperative to
start the developmental construction of
any leadership programmes or any people-
development programmes through the lens
of “what is it that you’re trying to do?”
For Unilever, a conglomerate in fast-
moving consumer goods (FMCG) boasting
of more than 400 health and wellbeing
brands, this is “to do well and to do good”.
“We want to do well as a business but
also do good for the societies and the
communities that we operate within,”
says Nolan. “It’s not a corporate social
responsibility (CSR) initiative; that’s who
we are, and we are a purpose-driven and
values-led organisation.”
Leadership development from scratch
There is no doubt that leadership
remains a pressing issue among
organisations around the world.
In the Global Human Capital Trends
2014-Southeast Asia Report by Deloitte,
74% and 76% of global and Southeast
Asian survey respondents respectively
acknowledged that leadership was of
chief importance in their firms.
In fact, below half (38%) of the
respondents in Southeast Asia
believed they were high in readiness
in terms of the leadership roles
within their organisations, implying
a 38-percentage-point gap between
importance and readiness, similar to the
global gap of 34 percentage points.
According to Nolan, companies are trying
to develop leaders who can fulfil the firm’s
purpose and values, operate in what is a
highly complex, volatile and ambiguous
leadership map
Sham Majid
sham@hrmasia.com.sg
Leadership is espoused by almost every organisation. But what do these businesses
need to actually craft their own credible and thorough leadership development
programmes? HRM profiles the leadership armada within FMCG giant Unilever
Globally, Unilever
recruits around
800
management
trainees each year
from universities all
around the world
at Unilever

2. 35issue 14.11 hRmasia.com
Case Study L&D
Special
corporates have got to play their part as well.”
In fact, the facility is used for all levels
of learning and development at Unilever,
from graduates all the way to the board and
in between. Leadership meetings are held
there, along with academic programmes
and the consortium programmes that
Unilever runs with other companies.
Nolan says one of the great things
of having Four Acres in Singapore is
that it allows Unilever to tap into the
infrastructure here.
He cites the three major universities
(National University of Singapore,
Nanyang Technological University and
Singapore Management University), other
academic institutions that sit in Singapore,
such as INSEAD and ESSEC, and a number
of professional service firms.
Nolan stresses the Four Acres facility
in Singapore is not a centre just for the
Eastern part of the world.
“We have one global leadership
development curriculum and it
just happens to be delivered in two
locations,” says Nolan.
He adds that possessing two
leadership facilities in London and
Singapore allows leaders globally to
get a feel of the respective business
challenges and experiences being faced
in different parts of the world.
“We can expose them to some
leadership thinking that’s maybe slightly
different than the leadership thinking
they perhaps get exposed to in their parts
of the world,” adds Nolan.
“So it brings it all together and there’s
a wonderful reason to locate Four Acres
in Singapore.”
Leadership by education
With Unilever partnering with the crème
de la crème of educational institutions,
including Harvard and INSEAD, it is
pertinently clear that the company places
primary importance on bringing in the
best academic thinking.
“Whether it’s from Harvard, from
SMU or from INSEAD, we bring in that
academic thinking and that academic
perspective as a core component of our
leadership programmes,” he says.
A key leadership programme for
the most senior people in Unilever is
the Unilever Leadership Development
Programme (ULDP).
The next iteration, called
Unilever 2020, is about
providing a framework where
Unilever leaders can think
about moving from what is
their individual purpose as a
leader, to how they can bring
that purpose into some kind
of impact on the business and
impact on the community.
“For example, they work on PII
(Purpose Into Impact) exercises and they
have academic inputs and structured
thinking, but they also have projects
and they take their projects out into the
business,” explains Nolan.
“These are the ways we bring together
the purpose of the company with the
purpose of the individual within an
academic framework.”
In fact, Nolan adds there is a plethora
of leadership programmes all the way
through from the day an employee
joins the company till the day he or she
becomes the most senior staff member.
“There’s a full curriculum –we call it
‘from cradle to grave’,” he says. “Every
few years, there’s a leadership programme
and there’s a way you can improve yourself
and get exposed to some new thinking.”
Leadership pointers
While Nolan says Unilever does
not profess to have the answer for
leadership, he is happy to share several
aspects of leadership the organisation
has garnered from experience.
Firstly, he says a company needs
to have some very clear objectives of
what it is trying to achieve from the
leadership development
programme, and it must
be things it can critically
evaluate.
Secondly, once a firm
has identified what the
core components of its
leadership programmes
should epitomise, working
with quality external faculty
will provide the company with important
perspective and know-how.
Thirdly, it is important to also engage
with people from different disciplines,
different backgrounds and diverse cultural
mixes and to include them in programmes.
Fourthly, Nolan adds that allowing
people the time to reflect on themselves
and to get some personal feedback on
what their strengths are and where there
are opportunities is also vital.
The fifth aspect he says, is that,
wherever possible, there should be some
output, or some activity that’s linked
directly with business objectives.
“There should be some action learning
projects when people go back into the
workforce after they have been on a
leadership programme, and this is
something they then have to do on a
continuous basis,” Nolan explains.
“I think for me, those programmes
tend be more successful than what
I would call ‘one-shot’ episodic
programmes.”
“So the best programmes are
integrated into the business and they
have some continuity around them.”Unilever’s Four Acres facility in Singapore
Unilever was rated as the
number
one
employer on campus in
29 countries around the
world in 2013