One common concern among brands attending the 2020 Global Pet Expo are the staggering rates of CEO and CMO turnover. Changes in the c-suite of national retailers can wreak havoc in an organization and brands can find it difficult to navigate changes after they have made plans and built up momentum with a previous team. In this podcast, Kristin Demel, retail strategist at Callahan, outlines three ways brands can navigate changes in the c-suite:

1. View the glass as half-full – see working with a new team as an opportunity


2. Let data be your historian – make sure you have the right data and right insights to inform strategy


3. Let your experience be a benefit to you, not baggage

Learn more about these three ways to navigate change and be a contributor to the retail strategy success.

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Welcome to Callahan’s Uncovering Aha! podcast. We talk about a range of topics for marketing decision-makers, with a special focus on how to uncover insights in data to drive brand strategy and inspire creativity. Featuring Kristin Demel and Jan-Eric Anderson.

Jan-Eric:

Hi, I’m Jan-Eric Anderson, chief strategy officer at Callahan.

Kristin:

Hi, I’m Kristin Demel, retail strategy director at Callahan.

Jan-Eric:

Kristin, thanks for joining on the podcast today. So today’s topic is going to be a topic of change and it seems like it’s a relevant thing to be talking about. Everything’s always changing. It’s certainly a timeless topic and things that we can, something we can always be talking about and change comes in many forms.

Jan-Eric:

Today’s topic of change though that I really want to hone in on and pick your brain on is the type of change when there is turnover within an organization or key personnel or key people leave an organization. And there’s turnover, say it’s in the chief marketing officer or the CEO role, a VP of marketing role, those types of things.

Jan-Eric:

And I think this is a relevant topic. We’ve had a couple of conversations, but certainly as we look at our own clients at Callahan, we’ve seen a significant amount of change in key client personnel or key roles that the people, the turnover has been pretty significant over the last year. And then even in this new year in 2020 we’re a couple months in, we’ve seen quite a bit of turnover. And I know that you then kind of took that and ran with it to say, well, is this an anomaly to what we’re experiencing? Is this a bigger thing? So what did you find?

Kristin:

Yeah, I had been hearing a lot of rumblings about leadership changeovers, but I was reading an article from Retail Dive that said 2019 had the highest number of CEO exits and the next highest year was 2008. And we all know the financial situation we were in as a country in 2008 2009 and so for 2019 to have that rate of CEO turnovers. It’s pretty staggering.

Kristin:

And then when you think about what happens after a CEO turnover, you start to see that trickle down into the rest of the C-suite down into the SVP VP level. I’ve read a recent article also that says that CMOs now are starting to have that next high rate of turnover coming off the year of 2019.

Jan-Eric:

Yeah. Change ends up kind of wreaking havoc in an organization for a period of time after that. Right? Especially if it’s a significant change such as a CEO change. A new CMO, or CEO rather, she’s going to come in and maybe want to restructure a team around who she knows, right? Or who she trusts and who she wants to bring in.

Jan-Eric:

It’s not always the case, but sometimes CEO changes are due to bad performance within an organization. A business performance is not where it, where a board expected it to be. So it could be that there was change made seeking better performance. In that case, typically, a CEO is going to come in and make changes across the C-suite to make sure that there’s kind of a shuffle up with the team, right? To get the right people in place. So that’s sort of would be expected that you would continue to see those changes kind of trickle throughout the C-suite. Right? Trying to find a team that’s like-minded to what the CEO is trying to accomplish.

Kristin:

Yeah. Typically, with a new CEO comes either a revised or a totally different strategy as it relates to the business. And then that’s where the evaluation of the rest of that team starts to come into play. Is this team that I have inherited going to get me to next level and going to achieve the strategy and objectives that ultimately we owe to our stakeholders as a company.

Jan-Eric:

Yeah. A good CEO is going to come in and probably come in with an open mind to say, Hey let’s make sure that, let’s give everybody a fair chance. Let’s evaluate who we’re dealing with here and are the people in place the right cast members for what we’re trying to, what we’re trying to accomplish and what the vision is that this CEO has?

Jan-Eric:

But man, when change like that happens, it can create quite a bit of stress, right? And there’s plenty of documentation around how the havoc that change creates for people in our professional lives as well as in our personal lives. It’s difficult to navigate changes, at times. So I would imagine it can become a bigger distraction.

Jan-Eric:

But you were also recently at an industry event and this topic came up as well. Kind of serendipitously, I guess, you heard about this theme was coming back, right? So where were you and what were you hearing?

Kristin:

Yeah, so I was at Global Pet Expo, which is a pet industry trade show. There are two large pet trade shows a year. This is the first of the year down in Orlando. And tying with the theme that we’ve seen with our clients and the theme that we’ve read in articles about leadership change, the pet industry has not been shielded from that.

Kristin:

There’s been a lot of leadership changes happening in a couple of the key retailers, which trickles and impacts the brands, the manufacturers, even the teams on those retailers. So I heard every conversation I was in was questioning what I’d heard about the changes, giving me their perspective on it and wanting to understand a little bit of what this change could mean to their role.

Jan-Eric:

Interesting. So the predominant theme was change the, or changing people. So there’s a new person in a key role that’s different than probably, Whoa. I guess I should ask. I’m assuming. Is that different than what the normal topics are you would be hearing? The big themes that you’d normally be hearing is this an omnipresent kind of thing?

Kristin:

Yeah. Normally, I would be hearing things like, “Did you check out the new product? Did you see this new vendor booth? Do you think that’s going to be infringing on my consumer, my shelf space? What are your thoughts on private label and how should I work with private label either with it, can I fight against it as a national brand?” So yes, very different conversations that I had this year.

Jan-Eric:

Those are probably pretty expected and traditional recurring kinds of topics. But those have all been, are playing second fiddle today to change in personnel.

Jan-Eric:

So what do you tell somebody? If you’re in a role as a retail strategist and you’re talking to somebody who’s trying to navigate this type of change, what types of tips or advice would you give to somebody who is facing this kind of situation?

Kristin:

So I’ve got three pieces of advice. These are not going to be revolutionary. These are not things that probably no one else has thought about. But I would really just like to bring them top of mind as everyone’s dealing with change in the industry.

Kristin:

The first thing I would say is let’s be glass half full. This is an opportunity. There’s a new leadership team that doesn’t know your brand, that doesn’t necessarily know the history, but probably has some passion for the business. Think about the first time that you were working the business that you’re on today, how excited were you? You were probably thinking outside the box. You were ready to try something new. You were ready to really take this business to the next level. So as a brand, this is a great opportunity for you to get in on that excitement, help educate them on the history, help educate them on opportunities, and really grow a strong partnership.

Jan-Eric:

Yeah, they say change can be good. I think that’s kind of what you’re speaking to you, right? So I think about how we navigate that,