Being A Leader In Emerging vs. Mature Markets
Someone of an impressive 25 years of experience at L’Oréal, holding executive positions in four countries sure has a thing or two to say about what it takes to be an inspirational leader! Vismay Sharma, General Manager of L’Oréal UKI is a leader who’s nothing short of inspirational. Since starting his career at L’Oréal India in 1994, he has since enjoyed several management positions across the globe in Indonesia, France and the United Kingdom. We couldn’t help but wonder how a leader can keep the ship afloat and navigate these countries toward success; it’s more than just cold hard business. It’s about the people behind the progress, the teams bringing each and every one of L’Oréal’s successes alive. What leadership qualities does the captain of the ship need, especially when sailing through challenging waters of both emerging and mature markets? We asked Vismay to share the importance of good leadership from his experience.
Quite simply put, what gets you up and ready to work every day?
I’ve worked in the emerging markets of Indonesia and India, and the mature ones of France and UK over the last 25 years. I’ve enjoyed every single day of these years, thanks to the people I work with, within and outside L’Oréal. It’s their energy, commitment and passion that motivates me to wake up for work in the morning!
What’s the difference between mature and emerging markets?
Mature markets are ones who have been through industrial development, and have good infrastructure, such as health care and education systems. Often, consumers have seen our products over the last 2 to 3 generations, they’ve seen their grandmothers and mothers use them. Emerging markets are countries where the economy is still developing. Currencies fluctuate, and there is still much investment in infrastructure, healthcare and education to be done. Populations usually grow faster in emerging markets over those in mature ones. In terms of beauty in emerging markets, consumers are usually in the first or second generation of exposure to beauty products. For example, my mother did not use a lot of products that we sell at L’Oréal. If I was a young girl living in India now, I wouldn’t learn about mascara from my mother directly, I’d seek information and practise elsewhere.
You’ve been a leader in mature and emerging markets — is there a difference in leadership styles?
I’d say emerging markets are fluctuating and more dynamic. You have to have a leadership style that’s more reactive, agile, and fast reacting! Let’s dig deeper into the context of the world in which we live, big shifts and how it’s impacted my experience as a leader…
What do you mean by big shifts?
We live in a stormy period of global disruption everywhere around us, where there are great big shifts in global society, and hence, business too.
Consumer shift
Consumers today want trust, transparency, authenticity, sincerity, and they want a direct relationship with brands. This wasn’t the case 10 or15 years back and it’s coming largely with the digital explosion.
The internet explosion means that every consumer has a voice and choice. The internet reduces boundaries and barriers and this has a huge impact on our industry. Did you know that in the beauty industry there were 2 trillion photographs that were shared over the internet by 7 billion people last year? We couldn’t even imagine this 5 years ago. Content is made by consumers these days, and not by corporations.
In 2016, 45 billion beauty videos were viewed on Youtube, and 90% + were created by consumers! Corporations like L’Oréal have to adapt to these rising consumer behaviours.
Ccompetition shift
New, small successful brands emerging all over the world, which respond to the consumer trends of the moment. With the internet, barriers can be broken and they can make a global impact.
Employer shift
Expectations are significantly higher amongst the millennial generation. The new generation want a sense of purpose. They want collaboration, cooperation in the workplace, and they want to change the world. That’s why we see the ‘startup explosion’. People don’t create startups to make money, they want to go out and change something. Companies are taking this into account and finding ways to offer this ‘sense of purpose’ in work.
Sustainability shift
This is massive! 81% of millenials believe big companies have a special role to play in sustainability projects of the UN. Citizens of today demand ethics, inclusion and diversity principles to be embedded into their work. For big companies, these are not nice to haves, they’re core to their existence.
Now let’s overlay these big shifts with the big social/political events of the last 18 months and the business impact as a result. Brexit, the US election, East/West relations just to name a few. The speed of change in our world is going to be bigger and more disruptive, with shifts happening even faster. Now we can’t make these world events and shifts stop. What we can do though, is prepare.
In situations like these, what can organisations do?
How L’Oréal survives and does well in such a climate comes down to empowering leadership. Our individuals alone are smart, but our teams are smarter. We’ve been in tough situations during my time as a L’Oréal leader, and every time we came out of them it was because we had a good team with us. The first and foremost thing is having a strong team and empowering them to find solutions to problems.
If teams have a sense of purpose, they will go beyond the call of duty and find solutions. If you put high performing people together, there will be clashes. Leaders have to create an environment of trust and belonging, so people can collaborate. Competition is good to an extent, but cooperation is much better.
I’ll give you an example: I moved to UK in 1999 and went back to India in 2000, as General Manager for our Professional Products Division (PPD). At that time in India, there was no modern hairdressing salons, no professionally trained hairdressers and no schools to train them. My team went out did something about it- a very small but committed one with a mission to create an industry. This industry would bring brilliant experiences to consumers and create jobs and livelihoods for people who need them. It was this exact sense of purpose which really motivated them. We did everything from finding locations for hairdressers to setting up their salons, to training and development of their teams. In less than five years, we created a hairdressing industry in India, with PPD in India being the fastest growing industry at L’Oreal in the last 16 years. India was the first country in the world to create hairdressing schools, over-investing in education, but never underestimating its impact. And it was all down to that passionate team!
Team work, that can’t be the only thing a great leader encourages…
Encouraging a ‘test and learn’ attitude is also a key leadership behaviour given the world’s unpredictable and ever changing climate. No one has enough experience to say what’s going to work. I myself have no idea what’s coming in the next three years! We can predict, but we have to constantly test and learn. If we fail, we fail fast. If we succeed, we scale up fast. Leaders need to create an environment where we can take risks. As long as you have lessons from failing, it’s fine.
All in all, the speed at which change is taking place, I don’t think size is an advantage anymore. Large organisations need to be agile and have to be willing to try and fail to succeed. We don’t know how to respond to change, so we have to keep testing and learning. The agile teams you put together will be the ones that make all the difference.
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