This document discusses strategies for making good managers great at General Mills. It outlines research identifying behaviors that distinguish great managers, including leader engagement, accountability, and accessibility. General Mills launched training to develop these skills in all managers. They encouraged managers to select one behavior to improve using individual development plans. General Mills also created an internal social network to help managers learn from each other by sharing ideas and asking questions across the company. The goal is to scale their "hallway culture" and tap into employees' knowledge to continue developing great managers.

1. Making Good Managers Great Steven Brantner, Manager, Learning & Communications February 24, 2011

2. General Mills The Company of Champions One of the world’s largest food companies $16 billion USD inFY10 net sales* 33,000 employees Marketed in morethan 100 countries * Includes proportionate share of JV net sales

3. Global Brands: A Broad Portfolio Popular Around the World

4. In Good Company: External Recognition “United Kingdom’s 50 Best Workplaces” “Top 10 in National Corporate Reputation Survey” “Best Places to Work for LGBT Equality” “100 Best Companies to Work For (#58)” “Top 50 Companies for Diversity” “2010 Best Workplaces in Canada” “Top 20 Companies for Leadership” “Best Employers for Healthy Lifestyles” “Top Companies for Executive Women” “Top Workplaces 2010 (#1 in large public company category)” “World’s Most Ethical Companies” “Best Places to Work in IT (#4)”

5. Do you remember a great manager? 5

7. Describe your great manager experience:

8. What do remember that made them great?

9. What impact did they have on you?

10. What would you tell them today?

11. We got started the same way

12. That led us to do some research and ask some questions and we’ve been working it ever since.What’s your Great Manager Story? 6

13. How Did We Define Great?

15. Focus Group Data: Great is Clearly Different! 10

16. 11 Great Managers – What’s Different? Using Climate Survey Data, Created Three Groups of ManagersBased on Employee Response

17. Now what do we do? 12 Leader Engagement & Learning Metrics &Accountability Lots of Activities AccessibleTools One over One IDP

19. Engaged SLTs, hosting great manager town halls, mandatory objectives for Managers, and Great Manager IDP lunch and learns.

20. Created some resources just for managers including an onboarding resource guide, leader circles for 14 different groups of managers, and some "manager essentials training“ complementing other courses.

21. Used video to share stories, 180 feedback, and mentoring for new managers and peer to peer support.

22. Leveraged prioritization and clarification of purpose as well as top down, personal commitment, 1 over 1 IDPs, and finally manager meetings and integration into regular training and onboarding. 13

23. Use IDP to help managers find one behavior to do differently Strongly encouraging managers to use their own IDP (Individual Development Plan) to become a better manager Use new assessment of 20 specific behaviors that most describe Great Managers Custom portal with Harvard Business Publishing Communications targeted at managers for IDP season

25. Developmental and emotional appeal

26. Simple (thin) design to provide easy links to:

27. Self-assessment,

28. Development resources from our Harvard ManageMentorv10 content mapped to specific Great Manager skills, and

29. Easy to follow next steps/tools in one place

30. Pulling live feeds from the best of the web and Harvard Business Publishing

31. Encouraging use of our own internal best practices15

35. What if Great Managers Were Social?

36. 20 John Mancini, President of AIIM, February, 2011

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40. The General Mills’ Business Case 24 “We have a strong hallway culture. How do we scale that around the world?” “ If only General Mills knew what General Mills knows!” “ I just wish there were one easy way to tap into all the knowledge that the General Mills community has”

41. Key Features and Purpose Profile Key to people finding you and building connections Newsfeed/Microblog Narrate your work and ask questions Search Key to finding/following people, communities, and content Communities, Blogs, Discussions The social tools Document storage and links Shouldn’t replace a team site or intranet site Outlook, RSS, and mobile integration 25

42. Where are we at now? Beta included 2,000+ users, 900 actively posting 400 visits per day Great uptake in I.S. and I.T.Q 75 communities Live Enterprise Wide February 1 Soft launch, no broad promotion, viral marketing 2,000 visits per day this week, avglength of visit 1 hour 50+ new community requests – managed process including community manager training Some bright spots…a live look 26

44. WWMZ do? He would allow the crowd to compare two managers against each other right? 28

45. A Community of Great Managers Idea from Accenture’s “30-day challenge” A girl, a blog, and 30 days to business impact Our own social experiment Planning for managers to share ideas with each other through a community Recruiting 30 bloggers to share insights over 60-day period We’ve already gathered some ideas/input from a “live” jam session with managers 29

46. What’s next? Cultural change Technology isn’t magic Building adoption slowly Collaboration across silos Social learning Iterate the platform 30

47. Summary It all started with three e-mails Measurement (and building the story) was key When we boiled it all down: Invest, Value, Stretch Managers want to be better, they need tips/tools What if managers could teach each other? 31