How to Manage Treasury Teams in Our Diverse and Dynamic World with Philip Sasse

Foreign.

Welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week I talk to them about how they've built their careers, where they are now, where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next. Let's get on with the show. In this week's show, I'm delighted, delighted to be joined by Philip Zasser, the Vice President of Treasury at Unilever. Established over 100 years ago, Unilever are one of the world's largest consumer goods companies. Inherent belief, if you like, in doing business the right way. Truly global. 190 countries, 25 million strong global network of retailers. Incredible. 400 household name brands. I used a couple of them myself this morning, probably. And approaching 150,000 employees globally. I mean, incredible. But we're going to focus on Philip's story. He's been with the group for a number of years. We were just talking about, talking before the episode, how you can stay with one company for most of your career if you like, and how the diversity of challenges that are there, which I think will be a different element to the podcast today. But again, as always, I'm going to shut up in a second. I'm going to get Philip to take us back to the beginning of his career and how he discovered firstly finance and then came into treasury and then this incredible career from there. So as I say, sir, over to you.

Yeah, thank you, Mike. And hello everyone. Pleasure to be here. How can it happen that you're in a company for that long? I guess if I reflect back, I studied business in Cologne, I'm German and I spent a term abroad at London Business School in their MBA program on an exchange program, finished university. And I was wondering, well, where am I going to go work? And I always was looking for a broad ocean of opportunity. And with a company like Unilever, that seemed like one of them, where there could be a long journey ahead. I wrote my thesis together with someone at Daimler Benz, a senior manager there, and I asked him what he thought about Unilever and he said, great people come from Unilever. What's his take on this question? And that was quite encouraging. So I felt this company invests in leadership development. And that's true. Looking back over the last 24 years, actually in the company. Now the other bit was when I was doing the assessment, when you come out of university and you do these assessment centers and interviews and all of those things. And, and it was at the time, it was a two day kind of Assessment center, quite a proper selection process. And halfway through they actually sent people into the coffee break that had just joined the company on the same program. And he just ended up chatting to people, very like minded, very similar. And I thought that was a very nice way of figuring out the look and feel under the hood. You know, it's not just the employer brand, it's also who are the people in the company. How do you see yourself working in that culture? Because ultimately, you know, you need to have fun along the way. So yes, we all want to make a living and want to have a great career and we want to grow ourselves, face challenges, meet challenges and grow along the road.

And at that stage, had you even heard of Treasury?

At university I was kind of looking at marketing and then I did an internship and I figured out, well, it's not really what I want, right. So it took a slightly different turn more into kind of commercial finance, strategic direction. And then, then at Unilever, you know, they put me on this commercial training program where you kind of, you spend time in different parts of the. But ultimately you'll end up in finance. And it has many aspects, of course. I joined them in Unilever Hamburg in Germany with the ice cream business at the time, which was quite nice. You know, ice cream is a nice category. It's lively, it's happiness, it's emotion, it's joy. You have an ice cream, the sun is shining, you're on the beach. It's kind of a positive type, fun category. I enjoyed that. But of course treasury was far away. All the corporate functions were far away. I was in a subsidiary in a country looking at the operational side of things, managing the P and L, managing the growth of the business, being competitive. And actually to be fair, I joined Unilever because I wanted to work internationally. That's also been a theme kind of in my life. My mother was English, my dad kept visiting my grandparents in London. That opened up a door where I was getting curious, what's out there? What's happening in other countries? So again, another reason why I joined Unilever but Treasury, I had no inkling of what treasury might be, if I'm honest with you. I was a management accountant in the ice cream category at the time. I was working on the Expo 2000, believe it or not so long ago, where Unilever had bought the exclusive rights to distribute ice cream cream at one of the big expo. And I was the guy doing the math. How many stands, how many ice do you have to sell and at what price? And can you make a break even, etc. Etc. So I kind of, I was starting very granular, far away from the financial markets and it turned out that I spent the first 10 years in my career working in different roles in Germany actually. Whereas I always joined Unilever to go abroad and work internationally. But turned out it took me like 10 years to get there. And then that, of course in 2008 when I moved into the corporate treasury team, into the funding team.

So you started, you were approaching your move into treasury and you'd ticked a lot of boxes. You knew the business you run category, you'd done all that. What then appealed to you about Treasury? How did it come about to say, oh, we've got a Treasury role. And you're like, okay, what's treasury about? Or how was it presented to you at that time?

Yeah, I mean, the good thing is that in the Unilever they don't run these corporate expertise functions as a kind of closed shop, experts only type setup. So typically the business rotates people like myself into the expertise functions, whether it's M and A, whether it's treasury or other areas. And you'll find a mix of career experts mixed together with people rotating in and out from the business for various reasons. You know, you kind of, you cross pollinate, you avoid the expertise function to become a silo far away from the operational reality of the business. But equally you give that learning experience to someone who's on a career track in the company to be a CFO in one of our subsidiaries, as it turned out to be the case for me. So having exposure to that key knowledge of financial markets, financing, everything, treasury is actually super important if you want to be kind of ahead of finance in a company anywhere really. And it's of course a small expertise team we have. Treasury is about 20, just above 20 people in a company like Unilever, so there are only so many opportunities to get in. So at the time, how did this happen? I guess, and that's maybe also part of my career reflection. You have to be great in the job that you're in for people to notice you rather than worry about what next. I felt corporate finance would be an attractive step for me to see the more corporate side of Unilever, the more global side, also the more outward focused angle towards the financial markets and the stakeholders there. The banks, rating agencies and people had noticed me through the job that I'd done in my previous role. The last job before I left the Germany was kind of customer finance director. So at the end, at the opposite end, downstream, facing our customers and making sure we invest smartly and work well, collaborate with our customers. And we've been through these were the days of One Unilever, where we're basically consolidating all our companies into a single entity, first within a country and then multi countries. So now we're talking about Dach, Germany, Austria, Switzerland. So it was quite an interesting journey as we consolidated the companies and also the systems. You know, can you imagine four SAP platforms into one and what that means, how you price products and how you sell to customers and price lists and trade terms and all of these interesting operational bits. And then I was part of a European network and somebody had noticed me in that job, connecting the dots across Europe and trying to create community of practitioners who are facing similar challenges. If you're doing customer finance in Germany or in France or in the uk, there are some similarities. You're dealing with big, chunky customers. Tesco in the UK being one of them. Or in France or any kind. Germany, you know, you've got similar dynamics in the different markets. So having a platform to learn from each other and see what best practice might look like is something that people noticed. And then. And I think it was time for me, and I was quite vocal that I wanted to explore the international side of Unilever, to kind of. To move out of my home country. Yeah. And then see what else is out there. And then it was just. I think it's also sometimes luck, to be honest with you, because I ended up working as a Treasury director in the International Funding Group, we call it, and there were two jobs in that team. So what are the chances that even if I had planned for it, that there would be. The stars would align for me to be there at the right point in time to know the right people to be. To have that opportunity. So always really plan what might happen next. But I think it's setting the frame kind of, what would you be interested in next? And being great in the job that you're in at a given point in time and then everything else will come from that. And it turns out moving into treasury in 2008 was quite a ride. This is when people were reading about the Black Swan and the Lehman crisis and we were signing Unilever's standby credit facilities, more than $5 billion worth of standby credit facilities at the time, in about August, September time, 2008, when Lehman collapsed. So it was quite an exciting moment to be joining Treasury, I have to say. Also scary in a way and you.

Were fresh to Treasury. A lot of the people that I talked to in treasury, they sort of come in at treasury assistant level analyst and then grow and develop their career. Now you were coming into it with all this financing and background within the business. Did you feel that made you different to the other team or is this a Unilever thing that you develop up through it? Rather than have a Treasury track, you'll have a finance track and then come into treasury or what are the pros and cons of that? If you like moving into that role? Freshers treasury, but you're a Treasury director as such.

It's amazing, isn't it? Reflecting back, I'm grateful that the company is willing to invest in people where they see potential and expose them to challenges that are fantastic. It was quite scary because of course I was moving into an area where I had very little, next to nothing prior knowledge. I had an idea of how Unilever operates and then how the business works, but I had no idea how treasury works and so I felt proud. Being afforded this opportunity was just amazing. You're surrounded by experts and that's what really helps. And I think that's the key enabler. This wouldn't work if you just rotate people into an expertise function that don't really know too much. So the first thing they did is they shipped me off to a five day training in London with the ACT to get some of the basics into my head and then take it from there. And of course the funding side is quite a technical side. When you talk about the bond markets and issuing debts and loan documentation, debt issuance programs, EMTN programs, it's quite a technical expertise area. But also the other side of it is we have a relationship approach to banking. We've been working with at the time 10 banks in our top layer. Today it's a few more over many, many years. Some of them we celebrated 100 year business relationship with one of the banks whilst I was there. So that also helps because you have people around you, even outside of Unilever, that have a lot of history. And of course when you talk about the big international banks, Citibank, hsbc, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, all of these guys, bnp, they've got a very strong muscle and depth of expertise and it's just an ocean for learning. So I went through a series after that ACT training which just copied the basics that I then dipped into separate sessions with the bank teams and then some of their more junior staff to understand, okay, how does bond pricing work, how do the different technical elements fit together? Sessions with or law firm firms to understand a bit more deeply the ins and outs of law documentation or at a personal level, at some point, Unilever sent me on a workshop. Discover your purpose, find your true north. And that was fascinating experience at a personal level. But then what that unpacked is, that's something that drives me. I'm looking for challenges and I want to win together with the team around me on a task. So being allowed to face such an amazing challenge, to be able to join the treasury team during the financial crisis and work alongside some true experts in the field and being able to learn from them was just an amazing opportunity. And I think in a slightly different way that happened again because afterwards it turned out I joined the M and A team, which is also something many finance people put on their bucket list when they join the company. Say, oh, would it be lovely to work in M and A and to kind of buy and sell businesses and negotiate on behalf of a big multinational company? Isn't that exciting? The leadership development that this company provides and purs is just amazing. Yes. The stars have to be aligned and the opportunities have to come at the right moment and then you need to be doing well where you are and then who knows what might come up next.

I was just thinking to myself, actually, quite selfishly, this is great because without me sort of nudging along the journey, you talked to him, treasury, then you went M and A and then South Africa as well. So walk me through that. You went into more a natural progression, I would say, as well. With M and A, it's A, you've understand all the finance, you've got all the treasury pieces, you've got those blocks in place and then you continued your journey, if you like, and then did you, you know, an adventure in South Africa as well, talk us through that sort of thing? Because I think it's fantastic.

Yeah, well, I guess when I joined the company, I think the dream was to be a CFO in one of our subsidiaries at some point in time as a medium to longer term type goal. And that's what I aspire to. So when, when I went to the, into treasury, you know, I looked at my different steps in my career as does it build a more rounded CV and does it, does it make me more attractive as a finance professional, as a talent proposition? And then that's how I judge my different steps. And it was clear when I moved into treasury that I was going to be doing this for two, three years and it pretty Much turned out pretty exactly three years. And then the question came up, well, what next? And then there wasn't really that CFO type opportunity available. And then somebody, today's cfo, Graham Pit Cathy, at the time he was the treasurer. He put me in touch with someone who was heading up M and A. I had this conversation, I said, wow, that's pretty awesome in a way. It's also again scary because it's yet again a very different skill set. I wasn't an expert of negotiation, I wasn't an expert of how do you run an MA process, due diligence. I was not an expert of valuation of companies. And you get bombarded with these information memorandums of 100 pages where someone then asks you after 10 minutes, what do you think? Is this interesting? Yes or no? And it's quite daunting when you first go there, but I think it's a muscle. You grow quickly. And then what I found was really important as I went through these somewhat scary career steps, kind of exposing yourself in areas where you don't really have long standing experience. On both occasions, I knew my boss had my back. I knew they trusted me and of course they knew that I didn't have a long list of experience in that particular area. They knew that, yet they hired me and they said that's fine. If it feels uncomfortable, that's good because that means you're growing. But of course it's also scary because you want to be the best you can be and can put a lot of pressure on you to perform and try and keep up with people who've been in the space for 10, 20, 30 years. And of course you cannot compete with that experience. So it's acknowledging the fact that your boss has got your back, they trust you, they think you can do this, so just go out there and do it. So that long term aspiration of being a CFO then obviously once I did that M and A stint, which again was an amazing experience because in treasury sometimes it can feel a bit lonely if I can say that in particular if you're in the funding side because I was talking to banks, I was looking at financial markets, I was looking at relative pricing across different markets and renewing our standby facilities and documentation and talking to lawyers. I remember I was dialing into a quarterly results calls to understand what's really going on in the business because all I cared for what's on net debt and what's on cash delivery and what's the refinancing need and L1 maturities coming up. So it felt quite distant, certainly kind of coming from customer finance on the front line with our customers going all the way upstream in finance, looking at where you source financing for the company and looking at the financial markets and then M and A brought me closer to the strategic side of our divisions categories and what's our strategy in a particular category and what might be wide spaces where an acquisition could suit. So you know, that strategic side was quite a nice complement to the financing and technical treasury side. And I guess when then the opportunity came up to go to South Africa, which is one of our proudest country subsidiaries. You know, again, we've been there. Lord Lever went there and built his first personal care factory in 1905, I think it was 1905, 1906, and then made a morph in Durban in South Africa. So there's a long, long history there and the has has been there ever since. So there's a lot of legacy in history. I'm a European, I grew up in Germany, I had family in the uk. Along this journey I got married, we have two kids, wife's from Berlin. We left Germany when the kids were three and five and then we spent three years in the Netherlands when I was in treasury, moved to the uk, spent kind of two and a half, three years in London and then we moved to Africa. And of course that again, that can feel a bit scary, you know, because you're, you used to the European way of living and kind of walking down the streets without worrying too much what's happening around you. And then you get special training when you move to South Africa in terms of be aware of your surroundings and the do's and the don'ts. And if you get into a car hijacking situation, you need to take your kids a code word. So when you say the code word, they jump out the car immediately so they don't get hijacked with the car. So these things can be quite scary at a personal level, family level. It turned out we had kind of an amazing time. You know, somebody told my wife, you know, we were in London, our kids went to the International National School in Richmond, was beautiful there. Some when we told kind of friends, are we going to South Africa? They said, oh wow, you know, you're going to paradise. And my wife was looking at them going like paradise, really. You know, it's. You're not aware of all the social tension, the inequality, all the challenges that people face on the continent and also in South Africa. But of course it is, it looks like paradise right there's monkeys, there's palm trees, there's eternal sunshine and temperatures hardly drop below 10 down in KwaZulu Natal. So yeah, we had an amazing time there. But of course it's a different kind of life compared to, to Europe. It's been an interesting journey because I went from leaving a team of 15 people when I was working in Hamburg to be working without a team when I was in treasury in Rotterdam, working for my boss in a kind of one to one relationship and then moving to M and A where again I had nobody reporting to me. I was basically a project manager and then moving to South Africa where the finance function had about 150 people when I went there. And I was kind of head of the finance function for the country, of course, prominent business, more than 3,000, three and a half thousand employees, seven, eight factories as member of the board and when you stand on stage, you're looking into the faces of 7, 8, 900 people sometimes. So that was again quite a different kind of growth experience and challenge, but totally rewarding.

How did treasury grab you back? What happened to you're now the Vice President of Treasury there? Before we get towards the end of the show, I want to talk into you talk to your treasury experience because we talked before about some of the key drivers you had behind your treasury ethos, if you like, if that's the right way. But you were in South Africa. Treasury came knocking again or what happened?

I moved to South Africa, of course, let's be realistic here. So shipping someone from Europe to South Africa is quite costly for the company. And also I was on a work permit with an end date, so it was always clear I wasn't going to stay in South Africa forever. In a way there was an end date to my time there. And then of course the question at some point came up, what else? And there were different choices on the table. And if I reflect back, how did I end up back in Treasury? I think I enjoyed the three years that I had in Treasury. I enjoyed this mix of business and expertise, this global perspective, very externally focused, you know, building relationships broadly beyond just kind of our own business, but, but into various stakeholders. That was quite appealing to me. And then I think another element was that, you know, my prior Boston M and A, he was the group treasurer by that time. He asked me if I wanted to come back. So I had to think about what would different opportunities look like on my cv. And what I found appealing was I'm responsible for treasury operations. So it's basically that part of treasury that I didn't see in my prior stint. I found that attractive to build that. And equally what I liked is once you've done CFO type job in a market, then of course you could do another such job in a different market or in a bigger market or a market with different dynamics, but it's a similar role. So I found it appealing to go back to Treasury. I knew some of the people there, I knew elements of this and I found it quite appealing to complete that other half of treasury that I hadn't yet seen, which of course is the part that interfaces into all of subsidiaries around the world. And then of course, having been a cfo, I was at the receiving end of some of those treasury services and discussions whilst I was sitting in South Africa. So I felt it would also be a nice dynamic to go back to the other side of that table, having had the experience in country because you can collaborate and relate to people from a different angle, you've been in their shoes. So you're not just talking to them as corporate treasury, you're also talking to them as someone who's done a job similar to theirs kind of a few years back. And then in the operations piece that I'm currently heading up, we have the front office and then we have the whole transaction banking infrastructure. But we also have a small team, what we call the corporate finance team, that are basically financial consultants for all our subsidiaries around the world. So we talk to all our finance teams at a global level. So I found that was quite appealing to me to take that global perspective and with that CFO experience in my backpack, to Talk to the CFOs around the world and try and help them on some of the more technical challenges they're facing on financial risk management, currencies, cash remittances, financing, you name it, transactions, MA transactions, all of those things. I am four years on and I have to say I'm really enjoying it. Treasury has got me on the hook somehow. I don't know how this happened, but it's quite a fascinating cocktail of ingredients. You've got this whole technology angle happening, you've got this global perspective where you read a newspaper with a different mind. Because when I read about the coup in Myanmar earlier on this year, I knew, okay, we have a business there, so what does it mean for our business? How do we manage business continuity, liquidity? Can we get funds out? What's the currency going to do? So when you read something like that in the newspaper, I know immediately this is going to impact what we do and Again, that's quite nice. And what it also allows me to do and my team around me to try and replicate and share across the markets. Because the experience that the team in Myanmar went through is something that the team in Argentina has gone through many times or other markets. I'm just choosing these two. But there are other difficult geographies in terms of macroeconomic volatility and difficult regulatory environment and all of that. So we as treasury, we can also be the glue across our markets to share some of the things that our teams are doing because our team in Myanmar wouldn't regularly talk to our team in Argentina. And then of course, we as treasury, we look at the whole world and we look at the financing challenges around the world. And if we see commonalities between some of these markets, then we can connect these dots and we can help the team on the ground, but also help Unilever at a group level by facilitating some learning in that network. I guess that's how it happened that I ended up in treasury again.

And they'll give them that roadmap and provide the translators. I'm not talking about language, I'm talking about the issues you guys are facing or that they will, by the way, this will come next, this will happen and things like that. Is that what you're finding? Because I know that you've, you know, one of the key things also you have a very diverse international team as well.

You've said to me it's about how can you help the teams on the learning journey or because you experience a disruptive event. And then the question is, what mitigating actions do you need to pursue? And if you know what some of the other markets have done in similar situations, of course you get a catalog of potential mitigating actions and some might be relevant and some others may not be. But at least you can connect to people who have trained that muscle for some time. You can learn from them. And so you don't have to start from scratch every single time you see a situation like that. And that's been quite appealing. And I guess the diversity bit probably as a white male German coming into South Africa in itself was quite an experience in terms of diversity. There is the equity based legislation in South Africa where companies are being audited in terms of their racial diversity, for example. So I was confronted with a different dimension of diversity and inclusion. And as a business, of course, Unilever South Africa wants to create a brighter future for all South Africans. So it's that strong spirit of responsibility towards the community as it goes through the inequality and the challenges that you can only be a successful business in this context if what happens around you is also progressing. You cannot be successful in a fraught environment. It's very difficult to do business. We spend a lot of energy trying to help people understand how diversity is important. But not just diversity, but also the inclusion side. Yes, you need to have different profiles in the room, but if only two of them say what they think, then that's a missed opportunity. And if you don't unlock the power of inclusion and creating a space where everyone can speak up and is expected to speak up, so you can try and identify the best possible solution. And then that was quite a. It was a very rich experience from the personal perspective. Also quite painful. But of course, unpacking some of the history of racial discrimination in the South African context, that was very powerful, I have to say. Unpacking that in conversations with people. You know, I ended up on one of these trainings, somebody gave me a Zulu name as a signal of inclusion, that I'd moved from being a German outsider to being one of the team. Yeah. And that, that has been so rewarding and powerful. And then of course, now as treasury, when we look at supporting Unilever in pursuing its strategy, we take care. Our purpose is to be the guardians of cash and debt and then we manage the financial risks of the business so the business can sleep well and they can go after their strategic objectives and they don't have to worry about financing and currency exposures and things like that. As we support the business globally and we talk to our finance teams on a daily basis in Indonesia and Argentina, in the us in Brazil, in China, in India, you name it, pretty much everywhere. So of course it helps to have a very diverse team. So I'm proud to say that the treasury team has, I think out of the 20 odd people, we have about 15 different nationalities. And we also have a mix. Again, coming back to that team, we have a mix of career treasury experts and some people from the business who rotate in and out. And it works quite nicely because it reminds the treasury team why they are there and what service we are supposed to provide to the business. We're not in a bank, we're not a Treasury service provider. We are part Unilever. And people coming in from the business remind us why we are there and what the reality on the ground looks like when you sell your magnums to a customer in a country, how much hard work it is. It's not immediately front of mind in a local operating company, what kind of currency exposures you might have to manage. You might be more worried about a clash with a customer or a promotion that hasn't happened as it should have, or you name it, a media campaign that's not as powerful as might have been, or an exploding innovation that's doing fantastically well, where you're running into supply constraints because your factory can't keep up. You've got all these operational things in the business, yet you also need to take care of the cash flows to add value to the group. Because we pay our dividends at a PLC group level in hard currency, so the money is trapped in countries around the globe. Then of course, it's difficult to fund our dividends. So we need to facilitate bringing the cash into the center and facilitate remittance and efficiency in that whole financing network. And that maybe, maybe a slight tangent here, but Mike, what I've also learned through my journey is in order to have a high performing team, you need to be able to trust each other. You need to invest a little bit of time and energy to unpack who the individuals are you're dealing with. And I've had this experience coming as an outsider into the South African business where we did a kind of a high performing team intervention, kind of spending 2, 3 days together unpacking at a personal level, what drives us, what motivates us, what our fears are. And all of a sudden you realize you're dealing with human beings like yourself who have their own strengths and weaknesses and fears. And it's not a sign of weakness to go next door and say, I have a challenge here, can you help me? In fact, it's a human thing to do. It's the right thing to do. But of course, because if you haven't invested in building the trust, then yeah, you can say, my door is open, come and talk to me. But people won't because it's too scary. So you need to build the bridge, invest in those relationships to allow people to come to you or you go to them and you have this conversation. And this is what I've really found from the experiences of Africa now in treasury with the team that operates globally. It takes a lot of pride from expertise. What I've also learned is in an expertise function, sometimes people define themselves purely through the expertise that they've got. But of course, it's not about having the 20 most brilliant experts. And that means I've got an effective treasury team. No, I need to have brilliant experts, but they also need to be able to collaborate and work together and communicate. So you need to have the right mix of people. And I found that it really helps to. To invest in building the trust in the team, having some personal connections, which is I think why the last year and a half are getting a bit tricky. We had these strong relationships. So I think we're doing relatively well, kind of through the work from home period. But I think over time the social capital will erode and the face to face interaction cannot really be replaced. So we're looking forward to kind of heading back to the office here. I'm based in Switzerland, so we're looking to reopen the office soon and then spending time together face to face to reconnect and remind us of those trusted.

Relationships, relationships built of being with people again.

Yeah, indeed.

And just on that, I've often said, and you mentioned about ACT earlier and I talked to Caroline, the ACT on the show a while ago and one of the things I said to her that going into pre pandemic, post pandemic, throughout everything else, a lot of treasurers are like yourself. You're sort of promoted to a level and you obviously got that great people aspect. And what I then say to treasurers, I've said it on the podcast past and I said it before, two, three, four, five years ago. You're expected. You become this, as you say, this expert, this center of expertise in yourself, the head of treasury and everything else. But you're not given training on how to manage and coach a team. I said, oh, so you're managing now? We're leading two people, then four, then 10, then 20. And I text people. How much people training have you given now? It sounds like there you've been not only given that, but it's very interactive with your CFO roles and things like that. That how key do you see that? Because obviously that's your Unilever great global massive. But do you see that as one of the next challenges for treasury experts? Are they actually relating to people on that team level? Because it's not something I see enough teams, enough treasurers probably paying enough attention to. They do it accidentally, if that's the right way.

I think it's absolutely crucial. And Unilever is investing a lot in leadership development across all levels of hierarchy. We have, have. You know, when you move from being an analyst to manager, there is a specific training that people get. When you move from, from manager to director again, there's, there's specific leadership training that, that is available to help you on this journey because of course your role changes as you grow and your area of responsibility expands and it's, it's not good enough to just be the best expert. You have to be able to, to land it with impact, to enable your team to deliver the impact and kind of unleash the power of every single individual. But of course that lifelong learning mantra, when you read business, press, newspapers, you surf on LinkedIn, wherever. I think lifelong learning has never been more front of mind than it is now because things around us are changing so much. Old dogs like myself, having been in the company for 24 years now, I need to constantly relearn, unlearn, relearn, and that's quite energizing. And I think we are encouraging everyone in our team to invest in their knowledge. You know, I think we had two or three team members, I think three doing ACT certifications this year and then, you know, similar number last year. So we invest in our people because long term it will help them to be successful. And of course we also get more expertise out of them. Right. So I think it's a win, win, but it has to continue and it's a constant challenge because so much changes around us. If you look at E Commerce Channel and how that has accelerated over the last 18 months as people have moved online more and more, that poses new challenges to treasury as well. How do you support payments and collections through an E commerce channel is different than collecting your cash from a customer like Walmart. Again you need to grow different muscles and the whole payments landscape is an interesting area right now. Payments, collections, when you talk to banks they have certain perspectives. You've got fintechs, you've got cross border structures emerging, sometimes country specific solutions depending on the, the infrastructure that's there and what it allows you to do. So there are these areas constantly emerging, cryptocurrencies being the next one going to happen to central bank, digital currencies. There are so many things happening and that's also what excites me about Treasury. There's always something more to learn. What do you do in a country like Myanmar when things are being disrupted? How do you support our business in its growth to E commerce? And what does it mean in terms of different infrastructure we need to provide and also how can we use technology to unlock efficiency? We're on this journey of continuous improvement and getting better every single day. And of course technology, this is a great kind of friend and enabler and it allows us to free up resource from simple tasks, reconciliations, kind of small value transactions. If we can automate as much of that as possible, then we can unlock resource to look into more evaluating things and redeploy across the team. We currently were working a lot on cash forecasting and getting better at cash forecasting, which in a company of our complexity and geographic reach, you may imagine is quite something to manage. But we always have to keep moving forward.

Yeah, you mentioned there about company of Unilever's size, and I was just scribbling some notes there that you're a global multinational and people listening today, some people will be operating the same environment. I know that we spoke before the episode about, about technology, ESG&E commerce and all these things that are sort of priorities on your checklist, if you like, and things like that. If you're listening today and say, well, amazing story and your growth and development, but they're not in a Unilever size, they're in a much smaller group or a smaller treasury team. They're the head of treasury there. But, you know, it's a team of three people or maybe less. You've got this wealth of experience you can draw from, from everything, which is brilliant. You know, you've done both sides of treasury. You've done finance, you've done actually with the ice cream, actually being a category manager and done all of the different parts you could, you could want if you like. So how do you suggest those treasurers out there prioritize it? As we go forward and we've come out of this difficult, challenging period, the markets are getting back to some sense of normality. Do you think it's right? ESG is the next big thing you guys need to focus on, or is it just just getting the basics right? What are your thoughts about how treasury pushes forward? What are your thoughts for those guys?

Actually you're asking a simple question, but I think there's so many different facets that my mind is racing right now where to start. That's fine, Mike. First of all, I think small is also beautiful. You might have a smaller team in a smaller business, but it means the scope of what you're having to do is actually much wider. There's less division of labor, in a sense, so you get exposed to broader questions. You're involved in a bigger chunk of the end to end process and that in itself can be quite attractive, I find, because it's more tangible, it's more scope of job responsibility. Of course, then when you ask how do you grow yourself in a situation like this, then I think there will be different things you could consider doing whether you move to a different company. Or you move inside the company, into a different area, have a stint in a different part of the business and then come back. Depends a little bit, bit on your personal growth ambition and where you want to head in terms of personal career. You know, if you. And it's also true, if I look at my team, you know, we have treasury dealers who joined the team, two, three of them over the last 12 months, 12, 18 months. And, and of course they, they come in either from somewhere else in Unilever or from externally. They see this treasury team and of course we cannot promote every single one of them. So at some point in their development they have to think about what's next for me, what's best for me. And I think what's important is that, that they need to be great at what they do, where they are. I think that is the best recipe for success rather than continues inside the company, inside the team or outside the team or outside the company. And then you have to enjoy what you do. You know, life's too short, you have to enjoy what you do. You have to kind of feel the energy. One of my bosses asked me what gives you energy, what drains your energy and how are you managing your energy balance throughout your workday, your work week and your aspirations? And I thought that that's quite a. I found this quite helpful to look at work through the lens of energy. What you enjoy doing and what are those things that you need to do. I think all of us have to do certain things that maybe don't give us or give us less energy than other things. That's the reality of life. But we have to have to do all of them. So if I now try and think about, project that back to your question, say what's important going forward? I think for me and sitting in a corporate treasury, it's important to rem ourselves constantly that we are here to provide a service to the business and that service can be supportive on strategic areas. When you go through portfolio change, how do you need to support that? As you know, we've carved out our T division. There's been a lot of work the treasury team have done to enable that. There are other things. We are supporting sustainability big time. We've been quite vocal about establishing ESG investments instead of plan with investment kind of bank deposits with our surplus cash to create products where we invest in green deposits. And then we've been pioneering some solutions with some of our long standing relationship banks and that has been quite rewarding and it's totally aligned with integrated business strategy where Sustainability is one of the core elements since Lot leave us started on the hygiene journey. In a way, E commerce can also be seen as a strategic area. Where you say companies are growing their channel footprint in E Commerce or there's more consumer and shopper demand in that space and what challenges does it provide? But of course we should not forget and there's also a reflection I have looking back at my CFO role. You have to focus on the basics and make sure the basics remain intact. If you deliver the most amazing support on a portfolio transformation or the closing of an MA deal or supporting the sustainability agenda and having green deposits, if you mess up your trades and then you create exposures for the business, then that cannot happen. You have to do do the basics well, but you also have to support the strategic agenda. As treasury, as we remind ourselves we are here to support the business, I find that it brings you back to a place of humility. We have a certain job to do and then that job that we have to do has some basic elements. Do the right trades, protect the right exposures, don't create exposures as we go about what we do and at the same time support some of the fascinating strategic elements, pursue some of these interesting technology innovations that can be quite, dare I say, sexy attractive. When you do new stuff, you have new systems, you see new data dashboards, information trigger new decisions. So that's quite a fascinating space. So it's the mix of all of those. It's a long winded answer, Mike. I hope I touched on what you were looking for. Brilliant.

I usually summarize, you know, I say to people at the end of each episode, I say we'll put your LinkedIn details in the show notes and an indication to you to sort of give your top tips. But I think, think, I think you have, I think you effectively summarize it in a lovely paragraph like way. Not, not in a long winded way at all. And it was actually touched on each of the areas that I think if had it before. Where some of my podcast listeners have gone back, they're saying, oh, I'm starting a new treasury. And I've gone back through this episode and this one, I've taken a checklist, I think for yours exactly as you say, that humility that supporting the business sometimes scribble notes. But I didn't need to because it was just such a lovely sort of wrapped up way of describing it. Unless, unless there's. We'll put your details in the, in the show notes, as I say is very kindly Giving me all this time today, and listeners will love it. But any final closing words, although I think you've mostly given it in a very good way, if I would say that.

Sorry for anticipating that, Mike.

I love it.

I guess there's one thing that I would add and I would go for it, and it's probably around the words, two words, kind of curiosity and courage. I would ask everyone, as a personal reflection, whenever there were moments when I needed to muster my courage to do something that was difficult, where somebody asked me something and I had a choice how I'm going to answer this. And I've seen the power of when you have courage in those moments and you reveal yourself and you're putting yourself out there, you're making yourself vulnerable. I've seen this being rewarded over and over again and not abused. So I would encourage everyone to have the courage to speak up and if it's about your career, have this conversation with your boss, with your colleagues. There's no point in staying silent. It's not going to get you anywhere. So having that courage and then the curiosity bit speaks to what drives me. Seeking out challenges and winning. Of course, when you're curious, you want to understand new things, and it gives me energy to do so and go through that learning curve. So it's courage and curiosity that I found have a lot of power in personal development and also as a rec with my team members on my team. And it's sometimes painful, you know, because you unleash something, you give people the license to tell you what they think. And it may not always be what you want to hear, but it helps getting better a lot. So that's probably the final reflection that I wanted to share.

Amazing. And the point of this podcast is, I've talked to you about before, is to bring the stories of amazing treasurers like yourself to life. And I'm not saying that to just blow smoke over your mind. Oh, wow, Great treasure. Da, da, da. What I'm saying there is that if one person were to listen, one treasury professional were to be listening today, to hear this and have the courage, as you say, to speak up to their boss and say, I want this next move, or to come out of their shell and say, say, actually, this is what I think we need to do, then it's all been worthwhile. Sounds very high for looting. That's not what I mean. What I mean is if someone listening can hear your words and go, do you know what? He can do it. I should be able to do it at whatever stage of their career. That's the power of what we do, really.

Exactly.

So astounding, astounding advice. I knew it would be and absolutely loved it. So thank you, sir. We'll put your details in the show notes. As I always say, I can't wait to see you in real life, that real world as we come out, out of this weird time in the world. And thank you very much for your time today.

Yeah, thank you for having me, Mike.

It's.

It was a real pleasure and privilege and I really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you so much. And best of success.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you. Take care.

Hello, it's Mike here again. I hope you enjoyed this week's show. If you did, then maybe you want to follow the show or subscribe, depending on where you listen, whether that's itunes, Spotify, or another great place to listen to the show from. It's totally free and means that you'll be the first to see each and every week when we release a new show. And maybe whilst you're there, you could even leave a quick review. Reviews and ratings are among the most important metrics for a podcast to effectively rank. And as you can probably appreciate, the podcast is a lot of hard work to produce every week and be amazing. Let's take, say 20 seconds, leave a quick review of my amazing guests and their great career stories. We'd really appreciate it. Thanks very much and I can't wait to see you soon.