Ep. 115 Kevin Powell: the "innovative scientist" on a mission to create delightful consumer experiences.

Kevin spent five years in the aeronautical and defence industry at the nexus of machine learning, image processing and analysis and ceramics engineering before realising that his mission in life was to create delightful consumer experiences.

In the mid 1990s, Kevin joined Gillette as an ‘Innovative Scientist’ and found great reward by applying his love of science to challenges associated with cutting human beard hair with atomically sharp razor blades, whilst leaving the skin undamaged.

Following an expatriate assignment in Boston, Mass., Kevin began a series of increasingly senior management roles culminating with the position of Laboratory Director for Gillette’s global upstream R&D laboratory based in Reading, U.K.. Kevin led the teams that created multi-billion dollar shaving systems including Gillette Guard, Fusion and Venus.
 
Following the $57bn acquisition of Gillette by P&G, Kevin and his wife Ruth moved with their family to Cincinnati, Ohio where he led global R&D for Head & Shoulders, Pantene and Herbal Essences.

A desire to broaden his responsibilities led Kevin to join Mondelez International in East Hanover NJ, where he had global R&D responsibility for Gum, Candy and Biscuits with 800 colleagues in Tech Centres across the world.

In his time at Mondelez, Kevin led consumer-centric new product launches and quality improvements across brands including Oreo, Ritz, belVita, Trident, Sour Patch Kids and Lu.

After 12 years of expatriate life in the US, Kevin and Ruth returned to the UK to live near Cambridge. Kevin is enjoying a life of semi-retirement where he is focussed on giving back, guided by his purpose of helping improve the lives of others. He is an advisor to the Carbon 13 accelerator and coaches companies in the realms of consumer-centric innovation, innovation strategy and sustainability. Kevin is also realising a decades-old promise to himself of becoming a Reader in the Church of England.

I’m confident that you’ll find his story and his insights about consumer focus gleaned at the cutting edge (literally) of another global industry fascinating. I’ve had the privilege to call Kevin a friend for over 20 years and I’m delighted to introduce you to him in this episode. I look forward to hearing what resonates with you.

Reach out to Kevin:

LinkedIn: Kevin Powell

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Episode recorded on 18 April, 2023

Transcript

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Kevin Powell: 0:00

And then I just out of my reverie, I just feel this hand on my shoulder. When I turn around and I see the CEO at the time a guy called Ed DeGraan. And he says, Kevin, I see that you're you're clearly impressed with all this equipment. I said, Ed, I'm in heaven. This stuff is just amazing. And he said, Kevin, I'd like to remind you that this cost three quarters of a billion dollars, and this is based on the razor that you tell me is going to be superb. If it's not dude, you are out.

Aquilae: 0:29

Welcome to Career-view Mirror the automotive podcast that goes behind the scenes with key players in the industry looking back over their careers to share insights to help you with your own journey. Here's your host, Andy Follows

Andy Follows: 1:01

Hello, listeners, Andy here. As always, thank you for tuning in. I really appreciate that you do, and we love hearing from you when you give us feedback. As a rule, we typically celebrate the careers of colleagues in the automotive and associated industries. Every once in a while though, I have the opportunity to introduce you to a guest whose career is so interesting that I'm more than happy to bend that rule. With that in mind in this episode, we're celebrating the career to date of Kevin Powell. Kevin spent five years in the aeronautical and defence industry at the nexus of machine learning, image processing and analysis and ceramics engineering before realising that his mission in life was to create delightful consumer experiences. In the mid 1990s, Kevin joined Gillette as an innovative scientist and found great reward by applying his love of science to challenges associated with cutting human beard hair with atomically sharp razor blades whilst leaving the skin un-damaged. Following an expatriate assignment in Boston, Massachusetts, Kevin began a series of increasingly senior management roles culminating with the position of a laboratory director for Gillette's global upstream R&D laboratory based in Reading, UK. Kevin led the teams that created multibillion dollar shaving systems including Gillette guard, fusion and Venus. Following the $57 billion acquisition of Gillette by Procter and Gamble, Kevin and his wife Ruth moved with their family to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he led global R&D for Head and Shoulders Pantene and Herbal Essences. A desire to broaden his responsibilities led Kevin to join Mondelez International in East Hanover, New Jersey, where he had global R&D responsibility for gum candy and biscuits with 800 colleagues in tech centres across the world. In his time at Mondelez, Kevin led consumer centric new product launches and quality improvements across brands including Oreo, Ritz, belVita, Trident, Sour Patch Kids and Lu. After 12 years of expatriate life in the US, Kevin and Ruth returned to the UK to live near Cambridge, Kevin is enjoying a life of semi retirement where he's focused on giving back guided by his purpose of helping improve the lives of others. He's an advisor to the carbon 13 accelerator, and coaches companies in the realms of consumer centric innovation, innovation, strategy, and sustainability. Kevin is also realising a decades old promise to himself of becoming a reader in the Church of England. I'm confident that you'll find his story and his insights about consumer focus gleaned at the cutting edge literally, of another global industry fascinating. I've had the privilege to call Kevin a friend for over 20 years, and I'm delighted to introduce you to him in this episode. I look forward to hearing what resonates with you. Hello, Kevin. Welcome. And where are you coming to us from today?

Kevin Powell: 4:13

Hello Andy, I'm coming all the way from lovely sunny Cambridge, so slightly northeast of Cambridge.

Andy Follows: 4:19

Right quite a well known landmark in the UK for our international listeners. I'm sure they'll have heard of Cambridge and be able to place you can we start with the beginning of your journey though? Where were you born?

Kevin Powell: 4:29

I was born quite a way from here actually down in the SouthEast of England. A place called Tunbridge Wells well known for its spa water.

Andy Follows: 4:39

Okay, did you did you partake of the spa water when you were there?

Kevin Powell: 4:43

I don't know. Maybe I did. Maybe it explains a lot. You know, my mother said I was dropped on my head as a child and that explains a lot but it could have been the spa water Andy who knows?

Andy Follows: 4:52

So let's talk a little bit about your childhood and growing up. You've already mentioned Mum, did you have any brothers and sisters?

Kevin Powell: 5:00

Yes, I have a sister called Roseanne. She actually lives within about half an hour of us now. And we weren't that close growing up. But I think as we've got older now we appreciate the ability to see each other regularly and the you know, the bond that family forms.

Andy Follows: 5:14

Is she older or younger than you?

Kevin Powell: 5:16

Almost exactly two years younger than me.

Andy Follows: 5:19

Okay, so you were the firstborn? Do you think that had any significance in your childhood? Were you helping your parents learn to parent and she had an easier ride of it? Any of that stuff going on?

Kevin Powell: 5:31

I'd like to say Yes, Andy. But I think if you looked at it through her lens, and I think it's good to look through other people's lenses rather than your own. I think she would say no, she sort of followed in my footsteps. I had a, I found education relatively easy and enjoyed it. And she didn't. And I think she found that too often she was caught in the comparison of why couldn't you be more like Kevin so I think she reminds me often now in later life, that was not such an easy journey. So from my point of view, looks good. from her point of view, a little less so Andy.

Andy Follows: 6:02

Okay, fair enough. And in terms of Mum and Dad, what did you see them doing? I always ask my guests what roles they had visibility of what sort of work did you see your Mum and Dad occupied with?

Kevin Powell: 6:15

I came from a more sort of traditional as in years ago, type of family. So, you know, my father was the one that was out, earning the living as such, so he was an engineer. And I saw him as a leader, quite a senior leader in industry in the oil industry, and really got to learn about sort of the importance of work ethic from him. And then my mother, she really was the person that ran the household, you know, she brought the kids up, she brought up Roseanne and I, she taught us values. And I think values have just been so important in life, you know, I like to spell out what my values are. And I got my values from her largely. So you know, you kind of got the best of both worlds in looking at parents doing some slightly different roles, or be it sort of that's quite old school. I know, these days, it's obviously the jobs are more equally shared. But that was the experience I had growing up.

Andy Follows: 7:10

So that family model might be, as you say, perceived as old school. But the idea of instilling and verbalising your values at an early age, that's pretty up to date, as quite, you know, cutting edge even, I'm thinking so tell us a bit about what are your values?

Kevin Powell: 7:30

So I actually, I've been able to crystallise them over the years. And I think that they can be simply stated in an acronym, which is pilot. And I must say, you know, I've sort of I think learn to crystallise these through companies I've worked with over the years, but they've always been there. So the P of pilot is passion. So it's passion for winning, and passion for learning, and passion for making mistakes, frankly, making mistakes is important. I is integrity. I mean, for goodness sakes, I think that's all we have at the end of the day is our integrity. And we should never give that up. The L is leadership, I think it's incredibly important that as leaders, any of us we lead, and that means that there is a certain responsibility, if others are going to follow. The O is ownership, we need to own problems from start to finish. And that means not just when things go well saying yes, I was the person I did this, its when things go wrong is the hand goes up and say actually, that was me, I got that wrong. So be very honest about that. And then T and you know, you could argue maybe this is the most important to the five is trust. It's just so important that we grant each other trust, and we never do anything to lose that trust. And I think you know, it's often said that business transactions relationship happens at the Speed of Trust. And I think that that is so perfectly said. So I think those five Andy are the ones above all else that I cherish.

Andy Follows: 8:59

That's really cool. I like that you have an acronym for it. That's really helpful. Trust does this mean then that you're the sort of person who extends trust to someone sort of almost immediately and it's theirs to lose? Yeah, you're nodding vigorously at that.

Kevin Powell: 9:14

Yeah I'm nodding. And I'm knowing that I'm not on video. But nonetheless. No, I think it's really important in any situation, whether it's a work or non work scenario, is that you extend 100% trust to come in with 90% Trust and say, I'm not going to quite give this conversation, this relationship, everything. I think you're planning to fail. I think it's as simple as that. So you just assume that you know, that trust will be repaid in 100%. And in those few cases where it isn't, that's fine. That's life, chalk it up and just understand the trust isn't there and move on. But I think you've got to trust each other or you're going to waste a lot of time, and there's going to be a lot of emotional capital that will go down the drain.

Andy Follows: 9:59

I'm excited to hear that, especially from you, because I know you've had a significantly successful career, you've dealt with 1000s of people over the years across the world. And so for you to have realised that actually, it works for you to start from a basis of 100% trust, and then just deal with the people who don't deserve it, you know, didn't warrant it afterwards is far more efficient and effective than doing it the other way round. That's really encouraging to hear. The word integrity is used a lot. Can we just dive into what what does that mean to you integrity?

Kevin Powell: 10:39

Integrity I mean, it's so easy, isn't it in any part of our life is to tell a little white lie, if the truth is not that convenient. I mean, I love that term, the inconvenient truth. And therefore, you kind of tell a little white lie, you sort of gloss over things, just because it makes the conversation a little easier. I don't believe if you have integrity that you should do that. You should just be very honest and say, Look, this is not how we wanted it to be, this is how it is. Now what are we going to do now where we are today? Once you kind of get that out of the way, then you can say, all right, what are we going to learn from where we are today? We're not where we want to be. Got that. Now let's move on. And that phrase, which and again, I must say, Andy, most of what I've learned, I've literally taken from mentors and people around the world. So these aren't my ideas, I'm synthesising them in my situations. But the one that I caught on epitomise this very well is, as I said, the inconvenient truth is great in a meeting to signpost that, and say, you know, when there's an elephant in the room, you just say, Okay, let me state the inconvenient truth. Now, we're not where we want to be. Now, what do we want to do about it? Once you get that out of the way, Andy then you really can sort of build and move forward. But no, I think integrity is about calling out the inconvenient truth.

Andy Follows: 11:59

We've not had the opportunity to work together. But I'm thinking that I would quite like to be in one of your meetings, if that's the level of candour if you like that and integrity that is happening. And if you're able to help people disassociate themselves from the issue, so find the situation is not where we want it to be. But that doesn't mean that we're not the people or you're not the people I want in the room to help solve this, or it's not about your character or anything about you personally, but that separate you from the problem. And that's all tackle the problem together.

Kevin Powell: 12:36

And I think, Andy, that's very perceptive, where you've just gone. I think too often in industry, we associate a person with a problem. And worse yet, we tend to associate an element of their character with that problem. And therefore you make them very defensive in the meeting, especially if you are relatively senior, and they are relatively junior. There's that sense of, oh, gosh, I've messed up, it's on me, you've called it out, it's on me. I go into this sort of analysis, paralysis spiral I don't want to do once you say actually, no, it's not about you, or something you've done. We didn't want to be here. And now let's just go on forward. And then you enrol them in it, and they become part of the solution, rather than switching off from being defensive. And I think it's, it's just too often I find in industry that happens and and, you know, I love your comments about you'd like to have been in meetings with me, I'm sure if you talk to people being with meetings with me, there are times where I completely got that wrong and messed it up. And mea culpa, no doubt I have, it was something I certainly aspired to anyway Andy.

Andy Follows: 13:40

Well, that's a really good start, Kevin, it's having the paradigm in the first place that this will be more effective, it'll be more effective. If I trust people from the get go, it'll be more effective if we address the elephant in the room, the inconvenient truth. So if we carry that as a paradigm, and get it right more times than we don't or remember it more times than we don't, then that sounds pretty good to me. So the P was for passion, passion for winning passion for learning, and passion for making mistakes. And that also seems to fit with this idea of not being afraid of the elephant in the room. So very, very topical trendy to be into making mistakes these days. How early did you adopt that? And how were you able to get comfortable with it?

Kevin Powell: 14:28

It's a great question Andy I mean, I really sort of comes back to where I started at university when I realised I wanted to be a scientist. You know, for me, science actually isn't about the particular type of science you practice. I'm a material scientist, it doesn't really matter what a material scientist is. What a scientist does, however, is I think, what most of us should do, that is practice the art of science. So that is simply stated. You make an observation, you see something that's happened. And you form a hypothesis, you know, I think this has happened because of the following reason. And then you test a hypothesis. And you do that with some sort of an experiment. And then you say, when I get the results of the experiment, was that hypothesis correct or not? And invariably, the answer is not. You could say its a mistake, my hypothesis was wrong. Well, you know what, that's great. Because then you say, what did I learn? And when I learned something, then some real magic occurs. People seem to think when we learn something, we've made a mistake, and we learned something that's bad. No, not at all. If you're making a mistake, and you're learning something new, and you're gonna do something about that. That's good. I think people talk a lot in industry. And I think you're right, it's very topical, Andy, people talk a lot about failure, we need to fail more, we need to fail more often, we need to fail big. I disagree with that. I absolutely disagree with that. I think you'll make mistakes. And I think you'll learn, I think failure is not learning. Okay? So I think if you make a mistake. And you do the same thing again, and again, that's failure. That's not learning, if you make a mistake very late in the game, so if you're in the car industry, knowing your your background, Andy, if you've learned something in R&D very early on before you've gone into production, and you realise that that element of that car isn't going to work, and you change it, and you find something that's really going to work for that car, and then you put it into production, and people buy it good, those mistakes take you to something that's better. If however, you've gone into production, then you realise that feature of the car that you've made is really bad, you're going to waste 10s, if not hundreds of millions of pounds of retooling production, and really upsetting consumers to do that. That's failure. So I think we need to say, we need to learn quickly, we need to make mistakes, but do them early and learn. Otherwise, we're in failure mode, failure is not learning. And failure is learning far too late. And I think for me, that is the scientific method. And Andy, I think that's something that we all need to do, whether we're scientists are not,

Andy Follows: 17:25

I'm fighting, not going down a tangent about some of the recent failures we're seeing in our industry with disruptors coming in and burning through 10s of millions of dollars of other people's money to, to reinvent something not as good as it was before, etc, and be very arrogant about it. So fighting that, I haven't fought it particularly well. But let me drag myself away from that. Drag myself away from that. Let's go back to school, you said school was quite or learning was quite effortless. Tell me more about about that. So natural intelligence and brightness, you know, that's come across since ever I've known you. And that was already there in school days. So tell me about you as a student, Kevin.

Kevin Powell: 18:13

Yeah. So I think it's fair to say, Andy, that, you know, my core, I'm an introvert. I know that. I mean, that's something that, you know, having done things like the Myers Briggs profiles, I know that I'm an I. And I've learned to live in a world that, frankly, is extrovert to the E's. So when I was at school, I very much was that introvert, I was the nerdy kid in the corner of the class, I enjoyed the process of learning, I did not enjoy the process of school. So I didn't like interacting with others. But I learned I needed to interact with others. And I think that sort of that sense of learning and putting on a mask and pretending to be a bit of an introvert that helped me in later life in my career. In fact, many people said, You were an extrovert. And my response is no, I'm just very good at pretending to be one. But I'm actually a very quiet analytical introvert. So I'm actually at my happiest sitting there at a desk with some books and studying, thann I am sitting there in a in a large meeting as sounding off as often we do in industry.

Andy Follows: 19:16

Yeah. So you would have had to really overcome that for the level of roles that you were operating at. So it'll be interesting to talk more about that as we go through. So very happy learning very happy with books at school were you are already becoming a scientist at school or were you equally happy with art subjects?

Kevin Powell: 19:36

I wish I was happy with that. I think my poor mother just got frustrated trying to get me involved in anything remotely artistic, whether it was music, and on that note, Andy I failed my grade three guitar spectacularly. My tutor basically said Just stop. This is awful. This is going nowhere. I was the only person that was not allowed to go in and take O-Level Art because I was so appallingly bad at art and history, basically, I was asked not to do anything further on history. So now I'm afraid anything on the art side, I'm just totally inept. Therefore, I naturally found myself into the more scientific side, and particularly in the mathematical side. So I mean, I was more into the physics and the mathematics and the chemistry than I was even biology at that early age.

Andy Follows: 20:24

So see that sounds absolutely fine to me, I think school's done its job if it allows you to find where your strengths are, or find something that you get excited about. As long as you've got the base, as long as you can read, read and write if you like, but you're more passionately leaning towards sciences, then I think that's a good outcome. So coming towards the end of school, what were your thoughts on what you were going to do?

Kevin Powell: 20:50

Well, it's interesting, given the acronym I've shared on terms of my values of pilot, that's what I wanted to be is I wanted to be a pilot, I would have loved nothing more than to set the left hand seat of a Boeing 747. And flown it for British Airways or any other airlines for that matter around the world. And my parents, particularly my Mother, bless her, she said, Look, your mind is too good for science. You shouldn't waste it on being a pilot, you should go out there and you should be a scientist. So we looked at the joining, you know, a university to do science. I'll be brutally honest with you. I think I would still like to have been a pilot. I think there was something I don't know whether it's I'm seduced by that sort of sense of, you know, wearing the peaked cap and having the four bands on the gold bands on the epaulette. But, you know, I still get on a plane these days, and I look wistfully into the cockpit and think, hmm, maybe that could have been me. But no I science is where I went Andy.

Andy Follows: 21:50

Yeah interesting. So the paradigm there from your mom was that you can do greater things, or you're, you've got the capability to do more. So where did you choose to study? And what did you go on to study?

Kevin Powell: 22:04

I knew I wanted to do material science. That was that was really clear. I mean, I was just very interested about, you know, materials and why things don't fall down. You know, that, to me was a really interesting area. And I figured pretty much anything we do in life needs materials. So I thought there will be job security in materials. And I was not wrong in that sense. In terms of where I wanted to study it, I went to Norwich School, which is a Cathedral School in Norwich. It's a public school. And there, they placed a lot of emphasis on the fact that you're only successful if you go to Oxford, or Cambridge. So I showed up at school one day, and as was the school rule, you had to go to the school notice board, and on the notice board it had who was going to go to which College in Oxford and Cambridge. And I was listed to go to a particular College in Oxford to study physics, none of which I had said I had wanted to do. So I went to the deputy headmaster, and I said, Sir, I really, really do not want to go to Oxford. And I certainly do not want to study physics. And he said, Well, this is a terrible, terrible decision, Powell, you will not do well in life as a result of this. So I went back to my mother and said, Look, this is what they want me to do. And my mother being the wonderfully supportive person she was she said, No problem. She said, let's look at this together, we'll solve this together. So we looked at universities, and we narrowed it down to universities, with material science with the industrial year, so so called thick sandwich course, so you do two years of degree, you go out in industry for a year, and you come back for a year. And I picked the University of Surrey, because they ran a sponsorship programme with IBM at the time the computer people. And so I was actually paid to go through the university. I worked for IBM for a year. And actually IBM offered me a job which I didn't take at the end of the day. And I had a lovely time at Surrey, now, you know, Surrey, had really not that long been a university. It was a polytechnic before that. So there was all kinds of academic snobbery, you know. So, you know, one hand, you've basically got your school telling, you should have gone to a particular college in Oxford. On the other hand, you're going to this really no name University in Guildford, of all places, you know what's gone wrong, you know, you're going to fail in life because you're at this place. And I had the most wonderful education there. And I learned so much by applying my learning in industry. And it was by far the best decision ever. So again, having the support of my mother to do something that was right, rather than being forced into something that the school thought was right for me, was just absolutely pivotal. And I think that my mother not supported me had we not made that decision together. I think my career would have been very fundamentally different. Andy.

Andy Follows: 24:55

I'm noticing a few things there. First of all the supportiveness of your mother. Was your mother well educated or he had a university background?

Kevin Powell: 25:05

She didn't actually and he neither of my parents did. So my father went to technical school. So he didn't have a degree. That's how he became a draughtsman and got into engineering. My mother, as very much was the day many years ago. She was rather railroaded into becoming a secretary. So she learned how to type and she took shorthand. And yet she was an incredibly bright individual, very well read, very naturally gifted at picking up languages. I think, had she been growing up more in our age, she'd have gone to university and got a tremendous degree and had gone on and done that. But no, I mean, she was a very bright, self taught woman.

Andy Follows: 25:45

So your parents were sufficiently affluent to send you to a fee paying school, not intimidated, though, sometimes those schools can be quite intimidating and the headmaster's, and their decisions can be quite intimidating. So she was, it's great that she sat down with you and supported you and was not afraid to come up with an alternative plan. So that comes out of that story. And also, what was it that meant you clearly didn't want to go to Oxford, because that was, you know, pretty easy choice. If you had the if you had the opportunity and the level of intelligence and were on track. And, you know, that would have been a, an obvious choice for a lot of kids. So where was the self awareness or the insight at such an early age to say, no, that's not for me?

Kevin Powell: 26:33

I did go and interview at at Oxford. So I went through that process, and they said they wanted me. But as I got down there, and I talked to the academics and people there, it just struck me, it was very much very pure science, you know, it was science, for science sake, we're going to learn some very fundamental things. And that's important, I don't want to put that away, you know, if you're going to learn about particle physics, that's very important. But what I didn't see was a more immediate application, how was I going to take that learning and apply it to the real world and do something to make people's lives better. And that's a theme that sort of really has underpinned my career is how do I make people's lives better. And so without seeing that path, through physics, and Oxford, that was really what led me to Surrey, because Surrey, I could immediately see already through the application with IBM, how the material science was going to make people's lives better in computing. And I think that really was just a fundamental life learning lesson for me is that my purpose, not saying this is others. But my purpose is in applying my understanding, to improving the lives of others.

Andy Follows: 27:46

I'm glad you mentioned purpose, it was clear we were going to we're coming on to that and we've done values. So you've got your values. So how early did you articulate your purpose? We clearly it was it was there, steering you in terms of what you found more yourself drawn towards at that age? Were you thinking of it in terms of a purpose then? Or is that something you've managed to look back and, you know, put language to afterwards?

Kevin Powell: 28:12

Now, I'd love to be able to say to Andy that, you know, way back then at university, or when I was deciding on university that I knew my purpose and could articulate it, the inconvenient truth is, that's not the case. I didn't actually learn it. And I wasn't able to articulate it until many years later, when I became part of a company called Procter and Gamble. And I understood Procter and Gamble and their purpose actually became my own. So there it was about touching and improving consumers lives touching and improving lives. And that to me, you know, I still get goose bumps on the back of my neck when I say that. And I think about that. And I think simply stated, that is the purpose. So I learned that from others, I can now look back and say it was there, but it was nowhere near as well as in fact, it wasn't articulated back then Andy.

Andy Follows: 29:01

I love that answer. I actually prefer that answer, because it's really encouraging to all of us listening, you know, whatever stage we're at, in terms of identifying our purpose, to hear that you didn't, you know, come out of school with it. Obviously, it was there, affecting your decision making. It's only recently or more recently that you, you articulate, you're able to articulate it. And I think that's fine. And I love that you had a physical reaction or you have a physical reaction even now, when you mentioned it, and that's a good indicator when you're trying to find the words to articulate your purpose. If you say it and it just really resonates with you and you have a physical reaction, then you know, you've hit the right word, someone else might. Nothing might happen to them when you say it, but as long as when you read it, or say it out loud, you have that feeling then it's a clue that you're on you're getting close to naming it. So you chose Surrey, you had a fabulous time. Did you get a good degree?

Kevin Powell: 30:00

I did because I really enjoyed the subjects and I enjoyed the application. And it was very mathematical. I was fortunate enough to be able to excel. So I came out with first class honours with distinction, which was fantastic. But equally, I guess I enjoyed it so much that it then logically said to me, do I stop now at a first degree? Or do I go on and do a second degree? And that was really the second degree I felt calling Andy once I graduated.

Andy Follows: 30:30

Right, right. So you did decide to go and do a second, a further qualification then after that?

Kevin Powell: 30:36

Yeah, I did Andy, it was tough because I had a job offer from IBM, which I think IBM today is still a very well regarded company. But back in the early 90s, it really was viewed as the creme de la creme when it came to computing. And so you know, I was really in a difficult place, do I do the IBM job? Or do I go on and do a PhD. And I would say, at this point that I listened to my heart more than my head. So when I was doing my final year project, I was working in an area called electron microscopy as a means of imaging materials at very high magnifications. And there was this really incredibly lovely and very attractive young lady who was a technician there. And I thought, gosh, if I do a PhD, instead of work for IBM, I get to spend more time getting to know this technician. And so I did. And at the end of literally on, when I submitted my PhD, I then married the technician, and she's been my wife for the past 30 years. And so that was my I'd like to say, I got there for entirely academic reasons to a PhD, but it was actually because I wanted to get to know and marry this lovely lady, who is Ruth Powell, who's now my wife.

Andy Follows: 31:53

I actuallylove and we've had it a number of times recently, where someone's trajectory is, is influenced by love. I mean, there's lots of different reasons why people's trajectories go the way they do and the decisions they make and the directions they're pulled in. And it's really nice when, you know, love comes in and starts affecting someone's path. So thanks for sharing.

Kevin Powell: 32:16

If I may interrupt, because I think it also I think it raises another model. And again, I'm very big on these mental models. It's a great way of articulating how we think about things. And again, not mine, but others, they love the model of head, heart and hands. Now, at the end of the day, we are human beings, all these things are connected, and we can see and intellectualise things we can feel in our heart. And I think love is really important. You know, purpose is about love for what you want to do. You know, you can intellectualise it. Only when those two are active head and heart does it then move to hands and we actually do something we physically do something and make a change. And I think that head heart and hands model is so important. And I think it's not something I hear often enough these days, certainly at least in industry, Andy.

Andy Follows: 33:07

Yeah. So come the end of your PhD. You've you've come away now you're Dr. Powell. And you have a young lady by your side that you got married straight afterwards, did you?

Kevin Powell: 33:20

We did literally it was like a month or two after I finished my PhD. We actually got married and then I started a many months process then as to what job am I going to take because unfortunately, when I finished my PhD it was a bit of a downtime in the jobs market. So my early married life was spent sort of job hunting Andy.

Andy Follows: 33:42

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Kevin Powell: 38:15

It was an interesting approach, because as we've discussed, I hadn't actually found or been able to articulate my purpose. So I didn't really understand what I needed to do next. And yet I did understand I was a bit of a techie. I like gadgets, I liked computers, you know, that's what my degree and PhD had been about. I've done some work for the Ministry of Defence in my PhD. Also in my PhD, I was sponsored by Rolls Royce. So I was working on jet engines. So I kind of knew the military arena to some degree. And I thought, gosh, maybe I could do something that's maybe where my, my calling is in the military arena. And where I actually was applying was to a number of military research companies. And I actually got a job with a company called Logica in their defence and civil government arm. And, you know, there I carried on that military research. So I was actually working on trying to teach infrared missiles how to see and autonomously segment battlefield scenarios. So well before you know, we're talking three decades ago now, Andy, well, before AI was a big thing. I was using neural networks and knowledge based systems to teach missiles, how to understand the difference between a sheep and a tank. And if you're a sheep, that's a really good thing to know.

Andy Follows: 39:38

That someone's got your back. Okay, so that's where you started. I get it, its progression. You were already in that field during your PhD. So you were drawn in that direction opportunities arose in that direction. And I'm sure it was fascinating from an intellectual point of view yeah.

Kevin Powell: 40:00

You're right, Andy, intellectually, it was incredibly interesting. I mean, it was the early days of image processing and analysis. You know, a lot of the things I worked on not not necessarily me personally developed, but worked on the algorithms have gone into things like automatic number plate recognition and things like that, that we take as a given today, or facial recognition. Those were the early algorithms that I and others were working on. So it was incredibly interesting. We were working on big Silicon Graphics computers with a large processing power and storage, it was it was big, exciting stuff. But you know, you're hardly in a positive way touching, improving lives when you're working on missiles. And I found that that was just distasteful. So as much as it was fun, the technology, the application of the technology was just incredibly distasteful. And I knew literally very early on that I made a big mistake here that I should not be working in this arena. And I started looking very quickly at things that were not in the military arena, that would be good for Applied Science. So I started applying for other jobs very early on, and frankly, spent literally, I think it was like a week less than a year working in Logica, because it just was not the place for me. It was not my

Andy Follows: 41:18

Now, that makes sense, Kevin, and I'm sure that purpose. people would argue, Well, that's about protecting people, and so on and so on. But if you're right at the pointy end, if you like I'm sure that doesn't sit necessarily sit well, especially if you're values driven and purpose driven as you are, what came up, then did you manage to find something before you left?

Kevin Powell: 41:42

I did Andy. So I was as often as scientists do. I was regularly reading New Scientist and looking at the job pages in new scientists. And there was a job, you know, in the back of New Scientist, and it's really the job title said nothing more than innovative scientist. And I thought, well, I like to think I'm innovative. And I'm a scientist. So I didn't know anything more about this. I'll apply for it. And sure enough, within a week or two, I got an invitation to interview with Gillette, based in Reading. And I that was the beginning of a wonderful career with Gillette. So working as a junior scientist, understanding how shaving works and how razors work.

Andy Follows: 42:27

That innovative scientist, is that's quite interesting. Were they deliberately being coy in their advertising there? Was there anything to read into that?

Kevin Powell: 42:36

No, I asked the hiring manager. So a lady called Joan Pumfrey, who, who, since retired, but it was just an amazing mentor and coach in my life. I did ask her about that. I said, Why did you put that title? And she said, you know, we don't know what we want. She said, we're trying to create an understanding of the science of shaving. It's not something you're going to find in a book or in a university. So we just want creative, innovative minds to go in there and just ask some big questions, and run some experiments to understand those questions. So it was deliberately vague, because they were vague. And I think the people they recruited about seven people at the same time as me. So I was certainly not the only person. And we had radically different backgrounds. And it worked really well, because you come to realise that creativity is all about taking people of very disparate backgrounds, and putting them together to solve very difficult problems. And I think that's how it works.

Andy Follows: 43:34

So you had an early experience of diversity, certainly diversity of background and fields of expertise. What were some of the questions you were asking? I think I find this absolutely fascinating. And I'm sure a lot of my listeners who will shave. So what were some of the questions that you were looking to answer?

Kevin Powell: 43:53

So they were really fundamental questions, it turns out, believe it or not, Andy and I say this knowing that both you and I have beards, but that shaving is actually a really difficult scientific problem. So you're dealing with quite a hard, wiry material, the human beard hair, and it's supported by a very soft jelly like substance, which is skin. And that makes it really difficult if you want to understand it, and modelling. So I went in and with another colleague, we did finite element analysis to actually model how the blade interacts with hair and skin and to cut it and we were using a lot of techniques actually, that the car industry, and also that the aeronautical industry were using, both in terms of modelling but also in terms of imaging because actually even today, I don't think the high speed cameras are quick enough to capture the cutting event. It's that quick when the blade penetrates the hair that I think even at a million frames a second. You still can't resolve that. And as far as the finite elements analysis concerned is even with modern codes, you still can't really model this very difficult. I mean, it's temporarily geometrically and materially nonlinear. So it's a very, very complicated process to model and to image and to design razor systems, then that will be very good at cutting the hair and of course, not cutting the skin. So it's a very difficult and interesting scientific problem. But yeah, thing is, it's a problem that most men and women and others and you know, wherever you may find yourself, people want to remove body hair in some way, shape, or form. And they want to do it safely and comfortably, and that they're willing to pay money for it. So it remains a very interesting applied scientific challenge.

Andy Follows: 45:47

Yeah. And I think, one that I'm lucky enough to have known you for a while, and we've chatted about various aspects of it over the years. And so I've had my eyes open to how big a challenge it is, how complex it is, as you say, and how sophisticated the solutions have to be to help you learn more about it and to create better products for consumers. So that's why I was happy to or keen to share a little bit of the it's quite a big deal, really, when you think about it. Nevertheless, when I suggested Why don't you just chuck another blade on there, Kevin, I was delighted that you did.

Kevin Powell: 46:21

Yeah, Andy, I do credit you with the fact that fusion has two more blades than Mach three, I'm sure that came as part of one of our conversation somewhere along the way, I just regret the fact that clearly you didn't get the royalties from those extra blades.

Andy Follows: 46:34

Sorry, I just do it, do it for the love. But it's nice to be recognised. Thank you very much. So there actually you were recognised weren't you during your time at Gillette? Weren't you in Esquire Magazine as one of the top 50 most influential people on the planet or something like that, or GQ or something?

Kevin Powell: 46:52

Now, I have to admit, Andy, one of the problems with you is that you have an incredibly good memory, I was a bit worried you were gonna bring that one up. Yes, it was a joke. I have to admit, I was in the press a lot for a while around the time that the fusion razor was launched, because I was the head of the upstream R&D globally for Gillette. So I was there for fronting a lot of the technology, conversations with the press, and we constantly had, whether it was the BBC or various newspapers or magazines in the laboratory and Reading, talking about the technology. And as a result of one of those, you're quite right, it was one of the reporters from Esquire magazine, decided to print a fairly cheeky article. And it was on the front cover of the thing. And it was basically I think you're right, it's the 50 most influential people in your life. And, you know, I went through the list and I don't recall exactly what it was Andy, but the president at the time, I think it was one of the George Bush's Jr. I guess, was I think number 10 on the list. And then regrettably, I was actually number one most influential person on the list for creating the fusion razor, which needless to say, I didn't do any way it was my team, not me. But nonetheless, I was the target for the amusement. Clearly, it's still tickles you to this day.

Andy Follows: 48:07

Yeah welll, no, I think I like it makes sense. I mean, I have used razors frequently. I've had very little to do with George W. Bush. So what about some of the science and that what was special about that razor?

Kevin Powell: 48:23

That was really the question. I think, Andy that the press was really most interested in and appropriately so is Hold on a minute, you guys make expensive razors, and you're making them more expensive every time. So to put it into context, the fusion razor cost 35% more than its predecessor, Mach three, which was not exactly cheap. So you pay for this technology. And the question is why? I mean, as you said, you know, with a degree of jest, you can say, all you're doing is adding a couple more blades surely doesn't cost that much more. And the point really was is when you actually stop and think about it, so you go back to what I said, now you're dealing with human beard, hair and skin, which are very different. You're trying to cut the hair, and actually you need to cut the hair below the skin level. So you're using, there's a temporal difference that you're using called hysteresis, where you can pull the hair out a little bit, and it trailing blades cut that hair before it dives back into the skin. So you cut it below skin level. But you really want to make sure you don't cut the skin, you've got to penetrate the hair very easily. Or you're going to get the pulling feeling which is uncomfortable, so to manage all of this, you've got to be able to control everything incredibly tightly. So as a material scientist, you're talking about the tip of the razor blade as being about 50 iron atoms across. So if you're controlling something to 50 atoms, okay, and you stopped to think what other mass produced product controls things to within about 50 atoms, maybe Intel microprocessors even then I don't think there is accurate as that. So you'll get to be more accurate now than Intel and NASA, then it's not just the tip radius of the blade, you've got to control the blades relative to each other. So if you misplace one blade relative to another by about the radius for human beard hair, so about 50 micrometres, so when you assemble that product, if you get that wrong by 50 micrometres, then you will get a bad shave. So we're talking atoms and micrometres here, and you've got to mass produce these things. So, you know, you look at the cost of the razor blade. And you compare that to something like the cost of an Intel microchip. Frankly, it's a bargain. So when you start to look at the technology required in these things, it's incredible. And you think from a manufacturing point of view, I mean, I remember when, when we had agreed to do Fusion, and we were putting Fusion, all the manufacturing equipment on the floor in Boston, Massachusetts, which is the headquarters, and I was in there with the CEO of the time. And we were having a tour, and it was all it was all done in secret its called the plywood Ranch, they put big plywood floor to ceiling so no one could see it. And we were walking around looking at these fantastically complicated machines to assemble Fusion. I mean, these machines have more components than a Boeing 747 400. Just to dimensionalize it, you know, really all the precision required. And I'm just looking at all my mouth has dropped, I'm looking at all of this equipment. And you know, it's $750 million of capital equipment that I'm looking at three quarters of a billion dollars. And I'm just there and I'm lost in that total geeky nerd sort of phase. And then I just add to my reverie, I just feel this hand on my shoulder. When I turn around. And I see the CEO at the time, a guy called Ed De Grande. And he says, Kevin, I see that you're you're clearly impressed with all this equipment. I said, Ed, I'm in heaven, this stuff is just amazing. And he said, Kevin, I'd like to remind you that this cost three quarters of a billion dollars, and this is based on the razor that you tell me he's going to be superb. If it's not, Dude, you are out. And so you've kind of you're kind of just get this sort of sense of like, Wow, there's so much riding on this so much technology, so much knowledge, but it's there in service of delighting a consumer. And of course, you know, Ed knew full well, that I had, together with my team created this huge body of scientific evidence that convinced us, you know, with very advanced statistics, that consumers absolutely loved and adored the experience, and were willing to pay for that experience that it would cost them. So again, that point is yes. I love the technology. Yes, I really do appreciate why it costs so much. All of that is irrelevant if it doesn't deliver someone a really delightful experience that they're going to value. And I think that's the key. And that really was my answer to Ed's question is don't worry Ed, I know this thing's going to be successful. And Andy the footnote is it was so around the time soon after that is when Procter and Gamble bought the Gillette company, it was a big purchase, it was for $57 billion. And the Fusion was the leading razor that they knew that we were working on. And it was launched soon after the purchase. And actually, it became the fastest growing brand in P&G history to reach a billion dollars of sales per year. So it didn't surprise me at all given the scientific data. But certainly it did very well. So very proud of that little baby.

Andy Follows: 53:37

Congratulations. And what a great story. And I do remember now that 750 million figure because I think I remember the Rover 75 was about 700 million was the figure I knew for that. So you think about your, your little razor, having the same level of investment as a car to make. Also what I was recognising as you describe that situation, what an incredible case study what a an organisation to be part of what a playground you had, what a level of investment resources you had for your passion. So you were passionate about what you were doing. And you were doing it in an incredible place. And you're also doing it in an environment, which is known for great sophistication in terms of sales. So this this, making sure that consumers really loved it before you built the Fusion, before you created the fusion. So it's very commercial place to be doing your science, if that doesn't sound clunky. But say a little bit about that. If there's anything that comes to mind.

Kevin Powell: 54:43

I think, Andy, you're absolutely right. And I think actually, it comes to a very important point that I learned is the importance of being able to clearly articulate a goal as a leader. So, you know, we've talked about purpose, you know, it's clear the purpose here is to Touch and improve a man or a woman's life, you know, so to be able to enable them to remove hair safely, so they can look well groomed, that will allow them to attract and retain a mate or to get and to keep a job. It's as simple as that, you know that that's really why people do it. So the purpose is is very clear. purpose alone, to your point commercially, is not the sufficient articulation, you know, you can't just say, oh, let's spend 750 million, because I think this person is going to have a better life, that's not a good bet. What you need is a very, very clear goal. And we had understood over the years that you needed to be able to take the best razor that you were creating in development, you needed to shave it blind, and now we're talking men or women against the best on the market, which invariably in that time, at least, was Gillette. And you needed to beat it two to one in blind testing. So when you ask that preference at the end, which of the two razors did you prefer, then it needed to be experimental. And you would put statistics around that. So we knew very clearly Andy that this purpose, I could articulate as a goal. And that goal, simply stated was, would I get a two to one win it was done in a very sophisticated way, so you went out on 214 men, they were newly recruited, they'd never been on a shaving panel before they were all over the country or all over the world, it didn't matter. They were not told it was Gillette, these things looked very experimental. They shaved for two weeks with one product, they shaved for two weeks another product, you asked them the question, which do you prefer? And then you say, at the end of the day, do I get that two to one or not? And we did that multiple times? And if you did you then knew you had something that was delightful. And so everyone in the laboratory doesn't matter who you were, we had about 120 people there in the Reading laboratory. Everyone in that laboratory knew their job was to get that two to one when and not just one, several, you want to create a pipeline of two to one winners. And they were so good at it. That and that is a they not me, I was fortunate enough to lead the laboratory, I had some of the best and most creative and very much to our earlier conversation, diverse minds and talents. Scientists, engineers, rapid prototypers, people working on time compression technologies, you know, well, before what you're seeing today, they'd learned how to be able to make a razor in 24 hours instead of three months, you put them together, and every single person knows that their success is did we get this two to one win or not. And so the whole laboratory was literally sort of chewing on fingernails, when the results of one of these tests came back, because they knew it was a really clear indication of were we successful or not. And if we weren't, then frankly, you know, the whole laboratory was at risk. So when I took over leadership at the laboratory, predecessor had been removed from the role because he had not been able to lead the laboratory through a two to one win, well, frankly, the reason he hadn't, he had not put that goal out there and held it up. You know, he'd allowed all sorts of other things to happen and people to work on all sorts of diffuse things. But he hadn't brought everyone together around that very clear crisp goal, that really Andy, underpinned the rest of my career was that sense of okay, I know what my purpose is. That's clear. But in each circumstance, What's my goal? What does winning look like? How do I quantify that it's the old classic, make it smart, specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time bound. But make sure everyone knows that it's got to be on every single person's work plan, their remuneration must be linked to that your whole culture has to be built around that. If you get that, right, if everyone like a finely tuned orchestra is playing from the same script, and is in harmony, magical things will happen. And that really is what allowed us to have that playground there in Reading and frankly, although I've gone on to work in other wonderful companies and positions, I've never known such an experience is that such a creative experience such a focused experience, and such a successful experience that group, you know, the things that Gillette is launching now, were developed 20 plus years ago, you know, based on that group working together by and large, I think there's a lot to be said for that.

Andy Follows: 59:36

That's brilliant. Thank you for sharing how you did it. Kevin. How long were you at Gillette from starting there to P&G taking over?

Kevin Powell: 59:49

Seven to 10 years. I don't recall exactly Andy but it was less than 10 years before P&G took over.

Andy Follows: 59:55

And they took over just before Fusion launched?

Kevin Powell: 59:59

Yeah, they did.

Andy Follows: 1:00:01

So other thing to mention is of course, Gillette was a shaving company. So you were you were making razors at a razor company, you became the leader of that incredible team of people who created the Fusion. How did your role change from joining as an innovative scientist on day one to leading this team? Was that effortless? Or was it? Were there some bumps along the way? Or how did that because presumably, you had to step back, and you have to lean into leading and step back from being the actual scientist, or doesn't it work like that?

Kevin Powell: 1:00:37

Again, I'd love to say it was effortless. But the inconvenient truth, once again, was it was anything but I think it was a fairly painful but important learning process. So you know, my mentor, my manager, Joan Pumfrey, that I'd mentioned earlier, she was very good, you know, she, she said, Look, we can see we'd like you to become a manager. Now after having spent a few years as an innovative scientist. And so she actually had me go and do an ex Patriot year in Boston, Massachusetts, where I worked with the downstream R&D group. So you know, there's two elements of R&D in Gillette, or at least they were one is the upstream where they create the ideas and they prove out the concepts. And then every bit as important is the downstream R&D group that turns that into a product that you can manufacture by the hundreds of millions. So I got to work in that downstream group. So I got to understand what's the customer group got to see. And that's really important. Because if you're designing something, it's going to go to someone else who's going to have to go and make it. And if you haven't walked in their shoes, you're never going to understand, and I understood from their eyes, some of the stuff that they were getting from the Reading team was just not fit for purpose. Okay, so I really understood that I got some early experience in how to lead others. So I had others reporting to me. And then when I came back, from my expatriate assignment to Reading as a manager, I was able to come in with a bit of leadership experience a bit of management experience, and a bit of sense of what is it like for the downstream team, then I found myself in ever more senior positions where I had bigger groups culminating in then being the laboratory director. But the thing I learned to your question, Andy, along the way, was, what does leadership really mean? I remember having an early conversation with Joan. And I said to her very naively, Joan, I don't think I understand the difference between being a leader and being a manager, you know, you're asking me to be a manager and ever more senior manager, I understand what a manager's role is. But what's a leader? And I think what really mattered there is you know, it's not about the stripes on your shoulder. That's what a manager is. And of course, there are certain things a manager has to do. But by and large, people don't follow others, because they're managers, they follow them because their leaders and leaders have that sense of purpose. Leaders have very clear values, leaders set goals and critically and this is the thing I learned more than anything else Andy is leaders are responsible for creating culture. And I think culture has been probably the biggest thing in my career from that point forward. Because I understood if you're going to set one of these big goals, you need everyone to come with you on that journey. And you can tell everyone what to do. And that might work for a day. And after that, they're going to get a bit cheesed off, and they're going to probably leave you and leave the company. What you need is and to paraphrase what others have said, culture eats strategy for breakfast, it's not about strategy. It's not about plans. It's about creating a culture. So if you've got a goal, then you need to make sure that you've got you know, do I have the right people? Do I have the right reward remuneration system? Do I have the right processes? Do I have the right organisation? Do I have the right information and knowledge? How does that flow? Do I have the right decision making structures? Those elements all come together holistically to create a culture which is in service of delivering a goal. And many leaders don't recognise that that's their job. So you can have whatever manager title you like, you could be a section head, a director or vice president, the CEO. Don't care what the title is. What I want to understand is, what is the culture you're trying to create in service of your goal? And how are you going to do that? And that's the really interesting piece Andy, and in my career, what separates the good from bad teams, good from bad companies, good from bad brands, has been those that have been deliberate or otherwise in creating a winning culture.

Andy Follows: 1:04:48

I'd love to hear you talking about that. Kevin's what are some of the things obviously we've heard some of the things you did with your Fusion team. You had a very clear objective, clear goal. Everyone knew that you had you'd created a diverse team, you had different people, different backgrounds, different subject areas coming together. Are there other things you did to help the behaviour of those people? So the way I describe culture sometimes, or quite often, in fact, is how is the behaviour of the people around you supporting you to perform at a high level? So how did you work on the behaviour in that team?

Kevin Powell: 1:05:25

Yeah, it's a really great question Andy and actually, if I just step back a little bit before Fusion, because I've sort of skipped forward to Fusion, you know, I did talk about that my predecessor, as the lab director, had not been able to deliver actually it was the prior system was called Mach three turbos. So the upgrade to Mac three, the team had not been able to create that. And frankly, the team was then struggling on what became Fusion. And so when I became lab director, I asked myself a very simple and painful question, which is, how am I going to make sure I don't go the same way as my predecessor? You know, what, yeah, because he was an exceptionally bright, capable individual who's done very well, in industry, he was not a silly person, and he didn't do silly things. So what was it that he was unable to do? And it struck me, it comes back to where I sort of learned at school science. It's all about having experiments, okay, it's about running experiments, which in this case, a shave test. So if you have an idea for a new razor, you then want to be able to try that idea out, which basically means make the razor and give it to people to go and shave as simple as that. That's your job. And it's a bit like going fishing, Andy, if you guarantee you want to get fish for dinner tonight, put as many lines in the water as you can, if you've just got one fishing line in the water, you may not catch a fish. And that was the problem of my predecessor, he was only able to put one line in the water, because as we've talked about razors as so complicated, it actually took in some cases up to six months to go from an idea to making sufficient number of shaveable prototypes. So if you think about it, that means you get two shots in a year, at your an idea. Now, you know, if you take your average sort of, you know, rule of thumb, if you will, Andy, how many experiments do you have to run in order to get successful one, it's roughly one in 10, if you're lucky. So if you're going to run two in a year, it's gonna take you five years to get one, right? Well, you don't have five years, you've two to three years. Okay? So by definition, the odds were entirely stacked against him. So the question then is, how does the laboratory go from six months to make a shape or prototype to 24 hours, that was the big, hairy, audacious goal I set. And I brought the whole laboratory together and said, Look, you know, call me mad but this is what we need to do for all of us to continue to exist here to get create these two to ones, we're going to have to go from six months to 24 hours. Now, believe me there are a lot of people looked at me like I was from Mars, or from worse, and said, No, it can't be done crazy. But we started to break the problem down and own it together. You know, we started to say, What would need to be true for 24 hours, okay, we would need to be able to bring consumers in the average day in morning. So could I bring 100 people, men and women in the morning to shave the prototypes, and to watch them and measure them. And then I would want to be able over the afternoon to have engineers create three dimensional CAD models of ideas based on what they'd seen overnight, I would want to be able to create the prototypes. And then the following morning, I would want to be able to shave those. And so we retooled the entire laboratory and everyone's jobs around this vision. And it took us a while and we went down a lot of dead ends. And it was very painful. So I'm not going to pretend that this was easy. But at the end of it, we all owned it together. So we all had a clear goal. You know, we had to get these two to ones, we had to be able to turn things around in far less than six months, ideally 24 hours. And after a couple of years of doing this, Andy that's exactly what we did. So was every shave test done within 24 hours? No, it wasn't. But it wasn't nor it was it six months, maybe it was one month, maybe it was two weeks. So now we had many, many lines in the water. And we were able to create many two to one winners. And everything was linked to that. So the items I've talked about. So the organisational structure reflected this vision. The rewards and recognition reflected this vision of people we hired, we trained, we promoted how we thought about organising our knowledge and information systems all reflected this goal. So you know when you do that, and you bring people with you and you're very honest and you celebrate the failures, and the celebrate the successes and again, failure here is defined as learning a mistake early, not late in the day, then I think, well, that's where we got to. And now we lost people along the way. You know, people said, I'm not with you on this journey, others couldn't get there. And we had to let them go. But frankly, we all ended up much stronger. And there was that just a sense of corporate achievement. And I think that's the thing is that we felt as a team a bit like running a marathon as a team, you get to the end, and you just feel like you've done something together, and it bonds that team. And then they are just incredibly strong to go forward. And you can then empower them to take it forward. So no, it's a very deliberate set of cultural interventions around a very clear, smart goal.

Andy Follows: 1:10:44

So you did it, you made the Fusion, the team made the Fusion. It was a massive success. And it also $57 billion acquisition by Procter and Gamble of Gillette, how did that change things for you?

Kevin Powell: 1:11:02

Pretty fundamentally. So I didn't know anything and nor should I have done at my level at the time of the acquisition, so I was actually driving up to Reading for work. And I was halfway into work. And I was listening to BBC Radio four. And they said, Awesome, big news for us in the corporate world, said Procter and Gamble is buying Gillette, right woah l just pull the car over. Like I did I just hear that. And then I thought, Gosh, I'm the leader of this laboratory. No one's going to wake up in this is an American company and tell me what happened here for the next five hours. So I'm about to drive into laboratory and meet 120 people who are going to want to know, all sorts of questions that I simply can't answer, because I don't know, I'm not a party of this. So I thought, Okay, what am I going to do? You know, do I just basically hide in my office and only come out when I've spoken to America? Or do I just do what we've done and bring the team together? And so I did that, you know, I got into the laborotary spoke to my admin and said, Look, you know, all hands on deck in five minutes, we're all going to come around, we had a big central staircase that we could all stand around, and everyone that laboratory could see me, it was unfortunately called the pulpit because it looked like a pulpit, but I was not there to preach. And I just had, fifteen minutes of very candid conversation. I said, Look, you know, I heard about this same time as you, I'm sure you how many questions rest assured I do, too. But here's the deal. What I do know is that Proctor & Gamble is one of the world's greatest companies. So we are going to something really good, really good, it really we're going to learn a lot, okay, now they've paid 57 billion, they paid that for a company that makes the world best, literally the best a man can get. And we are the laboratory that underwrites that we have the science, the engineering and the know how to do it. We've just done it with Fusion, we've created more. So I said, we don't know what changes they're going to make, they will be absolutely foolish if they did anything to change us the way that we work, I would hope that they would learn from us, and that we would learn from them. So I said, I wouldn't waste a second in your day, not today, not any other day worrying about is my job secure. What's this company going to do? What's my new job title to be? Rest assured you're going to work with one of the world's greatest companies, and that they desperately want to have you. And let's move on. And we did. And that's exactly how it happened, actually. And again, I don't claim any insight there. It was just a sense of logical inferences. But it was just so important to be very honest with the team, as always, that's what they were used to, not to fluff it. And actually when Proctor & Gamble started to come in, so when Gil Cloyd, who was the Chief Technology Officer of the time, came over, he flew over to England, and I took him on a tour in the laboratory and he got to meet people and present it. And he sat down at the end of the day in my office. And he just said, Wow, he said, I've seen some amazing laboratories in my time. He says, I've never seen anything like this. I've never seen such focus back to our point of goal and purpose, and such diverse creative talent. And he said, You gotta tell me how you guys did this, you know, I would like you to be able to share some of this with the rest of the company, because I'd like to bring some of this capability elsewhere. And at the same time, we learned a lot about how Procter and Gamble understands consumers. What are the tools that it uses to understand consumers? And how does it design and unlock consumer delight? So we got much closer to understanding the consumer. We were more of a technology laboratory, we became a technology laboratory with insight into consumers. So it was as I had said at the pulpit, we learned from them and they learned from us, and frankly, the laboratory went on from strength to strength. So yes, it was a huge curveball, but actually it turned out to be a real benefit, I think for both companies.

Andy Follows: 1:14:58

That's good to hear. And you also mentioned that it was at Procter and Gamble that you became able to articulate your own purpose. So clearly they were very purpose driven. For you personally, what did it mean role wise?

Kevin Powell: 1:15:14

Initially, it didn't change my role. You know, they wanted some continuity there as the lab director. But what it did is it changed completely how I thought about my job and the job of the team. So I can give you an example that really, I think this is the example that crystallised how I understood my purpose now. And that was, you know, we were told, okay, we need to make sure we have really good products in the more developing markets. So places like India, particularly some of the poorer parts of India. And I remember saying, Oh, we do that we do that we take the old systems that we've paid the capital of these systems are really good take some like Sensor or Atra or Trac, and we give it to them at a low price, they get a great razor for a low price, life is good. And my boss at the time, basically said No, said you need to understand what's the problem that consumer wants to solve, you're assuming that they want to get a closer shave, they can get at a low price, you might be right, but you don't know that you need to understand consumers. So myself and the downstream director, a guy called Eric Liu, we put together a team of people, we put them on the plane scientists, engineers, consumer research people, marketing people, it was about 12, 13 people. And they went spent several weeks living in some of the remote parts of India. And they spent time literally living with consumers and understanding consumers. It was nothing about technology. But it was the most humbling of experiences. So what they understood was that the consumers there, like the rest of us, they wanted to attract and retain a mate attract and keep a job. And in order to do that, they need to look well groomed, so the men needed to shave. But the team followed them to what does the shave look alike, and they go to a barber. And a barber is little more than someone with a chair sitting on rubble with a very dirty pot of water with a little bit of foam. And they take a double edge razor blade, and they snap it between thumb and forefinger. And they shave literally guarding the blade against the gentleman's skin with the thumb. And you can imagine that that leads to all kinds of nicks and cuts. It's a very unsanitary environment, it means that there's in many cases, there's blood borne pathogens, which can lead to sepsis and ultimately death. So you know, you want to say like, is shaving really touching, improving lives? Yes, in the act of someone wanting to look good for life, they are running the risk of death, that's unacceptable. And the razors that we were giving them like sensor, oh, sure, they were close, but they would cut them. So if they weren't using the barber if they were shaving at home, it would cut them and you know, it could ultimately lead to death, certainly some nasty, you know, blood borne illnesses. So the team literally was so moved by these consumers needs and experiences that on the plane, they started sketching out literally on napkins, classic engineering style, how could I create a razor that literally couldn't cut you, as that hadn't be done. It had to be close enough, but it couldn't cut you. Well, by the way, it had to be five shaves for five rupees, because that's what it costs at a barber. And there was no way I've talked about how complex and expensive the technology, current technology would not allow you to do that. So they had to redesign manufacturing technology, the whole system, and they ultimately created the Gillette guard, which was a very successful razor for these consumers in India. But at the end of the day, Andy, it was only possible because they deeply personally understood the consumers, their lives and their needs. And that for me, was it so the hairs going up on the back of the neck completely at this point? Because that really is the purpose? Can you really say you deeply enough understood another human beings life and needs to say I could create an experience for them that they will value? Because if you have you've done something miraculous, you really have? And if you haven't been you have no business being in a consumer facing industry. And let's face it, most of us somewhere, have a consumer in our chain. So I know I'm talking to a lot of people who would probably sit there now saying, I'm in a service industry, I don't see a consumer, I will argue you're only one or two steps removed from being a consumer. And therefore you do need to understand that consumer and their needs. And I think that's, that's really the core of it. And there are some very good techniques that companies like Procter and Gamble, Unilever, and others, certainly I know that the car industry, the BMWs of this world, they have some very sophisticated techniques for understanding the consumer. And I think that's the criticality of it and the so did it change my title? Did it change what the laboratory did not at all? Did it fundamentally change how we thought about consumers and putting them first in the equation not last in the equation? Yes, it did. And then as I've moved on, and elsewhere, in Procter and Gamble Company, I did that more and more often.

Andy Follows: 1:20:23

That's a wonderful, very powerful example. Kevin, can I just clarify then? So the reason that we hadn't needed or hadn't known we needed Guard? Is that because we don't have the same waterborne bacteria? In the shaving water that we're using? Is that the main...

Kevin Powell: 1:20:40

You're right. No, you're absolutely right. I mean, you know, in many parts of the world, we're fortunate that we can stand there over, you know, a clean sink with clean running water and a brand new razor. And we can just sort of shave that in a very sanitary, hygienic environment. There are many parts of the world, but that's just not possible. You know, you're sitting with all kinds of pathogens and a dirty pavement. And that is the difference. So, you know...

Andy Follows: 1:21:04

So the environment it was the environment, not the individual, not the razor, it was the environment required a different solution.

Kevin Powell: 1:21:12

That's right, Andy, the environment so, context is so important, you know, what is the context in which a consumer finds him or herself, we will only understand that by walking in their shoes a little way.

Andy Follows: 1:21:26

Brilliant example. Thank you. Now, I know you moved over to the US at some point with Procter and Gamble. So at what point did that happen? And what were the conversations around that? How keen were you to go? How was that for the family?

Kevin Powell: 1:21:41

Yes, so that was about 14 years ago. The company basically said at the time, hey, you know, we're a bit worried you're a one trick pony here, that you, all you know about shaving and creating razors. We'd like to try you out and see if you could do a little bit more. So we'd like you to do a three year assignment at the headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio. And we're going to change three things in your life. So we're going to move you from shaving to haircare. We are going to take you from something that is very physical, a razor blade, to something that's very chemical shampoo and conditioner. And we're going to take you out of England and Reading and put you into the mothership of P&G in Cincinnati, Ohio. So I said, those are the three changes and we're going to see do you literally do you sink ro swim? I think that was the experiment they wanted to run. And I said, Okay, I spoke to Ruth and the girls, and they were up for the adventure and bless them. Thank goodness they were and it was not an easy journey for them to move. It's a little bit provincial, shall we say, in the Midwest in Cincinnati, Ohio. But we started our three year expatriate journey, which went from three years to ultimately we lived in the US for 12 years. So it was...

Andy Follows: 1:22:54

Sounds like you swam Kevin sounds like you swam. That's three things to change. Sometimes try and change not too many. If you're going to make a big change, like move another country, then try and keep most of the things the same. How was it? How did you find, I mean, you must have been well out of your comfort zone.

Kevin Powell: 1:23:18

Yeah, it was difficult, Andy, I mean, it really was because I think and I think you're right, and I actually was one of my learnings from this experiment is I wouldn't do that with others. I would do what you said, I'd change one thing, you know, you're going to move country but at least let someone work in the same type of job in the same type of you know, category or industry. Don't change everything else. And so it'll be difficult. The first couple of years were really difficult. I was scrambling to learn how to live in a different country. I was scrambling how to work in the headquarters of a company I've only recently become part of had to learn all about chemistry in shampoo & conditioner about which I knew nothing. And I had to learn about the world of beauty care hope in a jar as Estee Lauder once said, and that was really

Andy Follows: 1:24:03

Hope in a jar? Hope in a jar?

Kevin Powell: 1:24:05

That's what beauty was called.

Andy Follows: 1:24:10

I've not heard that before, I like that, we know how passionate you are, we know how much you love to learn. Are there limits I mean, it's shampoo and conditioner it from a scientists point of view is shampoo and conditioner just as exciting as razor blades?

Kevin Powell: 1:24:28

Not for me. So again, I want to be very clear, I think I think for some people, you know, there were people who really understood the the science and the technology involved. And it was every bit as deep and complex and impressive as blades and razors. It just wasn't for me. You know, I was more in the physical side than the chemical side. So no, I didn't enjoy that as much. But what I did enjoy Andy was getting to know about a very different group of consumers and consumer needs. And that was endlessly fascinating, though. Going around the world and meeting some really interesting consumers understanding about their lives, and then working with teams to create products for them. And so that element of the learning journey was just endlessly fascinating.

Andy Follows: 1:25:13

Yeah, so your role has evolved. And your focus has evolved to now encompass consumers. And that's become equally a part of it as much as the science if you like the identifying the customer need, and it came with a global responsibility and global opportunities to travel. What are some of the fascinating things you have you got some examples of things you discovered from different parts of the world? And how people use these products? Or what their needs are?

Kevin Powell: 1:25:42

Oh, absolutely. I mean, so you know, it's one of these classic things exactly. As you say, you've got to understand what's going on around the world. You know, I found and again, I'm sure people would like to argue with this, but I'll tell you, you know, please contact me if you found different ones, but I found this four drivers of human behaviour. So you've got socio economic, you've got contextual, you've got cultural, and you've got psychographic. Three of those are local, psychographic is a global thing. It's how our brains are wired. So if three of those you know, are local, you better get local and understand that local sort of contextual space. And so, you know, if..

Andy Follows: 1:26:22

Can we go down, can we just go down a level of detail with each of those to understand a bit more deeply what you mean?

Kevin Powell: 1:26:29

Yeah, absolutely. So let's take a look. Okay, so let's take contextual as a starting point. So you know, if, even if I'm in one country, so let's, let's say I'm in the United States, so you know, if I'm living just outside of New York City, okay. You know, and I want to buy toilet tissue, toilet paper, okay, I've got my big van, you know, huge van, I go to Costco, I buy, I don't know, whatever it is 120 Count of toilet tissue in this huge, great pack, and I run it in the back of my van and I take it home, and I can use it for a year. I am literally 20 miles down the road. And I live in Manhattan, I don't have a car, I don't have access to Costco, I have a really small apartment, in which case, I buy toilet tissue and a pack of two, maybe a pack of four, not a pack of 120. So right there context in the space of 20 Miles creates two very different product architectures, like a two versus a pack of 120. I exaggerate for effect, but you get the idea. So if you don't understand someone's context, at a micro level, you're never going to really unpack what they want. So that's a critical change right there. Second one, culture, culture is so important. So you know, in the United States or in the UK, we're quite happy talking about dandruff. I had the Head and Shoulders brand was one of the shampoo brands. It's the world's biggest selling shampoo Andy Go figure, it just is you know, and you know, we're quite happy talking about we've all seen the advert you know, the guy with a flakes on the shoulder or the lady with a line with flakes in the hair always scratching and you know, we're talking about dandruff, it's fine to talk about dandruff. You know, Claudia Winkleman is on TV, showing her lovely hair and talking about her dandruff. If you then go and fly over to Japan, the worst thing you could do is talk about dandruff. It's embarrassing, you would never talk about it, you would never advertise it, you will never see the word dandruff. In fact, it's not even called Head and Shoulders, it's Derma care. It's all about the care of the scalp and the skin. It's exactly the same product, packaged and sold very differently. Culture is critical. Socio economic is a third leg socio economics we've already talked about with the Gillette guard, if someone has a more limited means for paying for something, that's mean to say they have lesser needs, it just means you need to design a product that will provide them value at a different price point. The final one is psychographics. And actually psychographics is where I learned from your industry from the car industry. And I'm not sure that this is ever taught by your industry. See, we've not had this conversation, you can tell me, my mentor, a guy called Al Maingot, he talks about this very well. So psychographics is really introversion and extroversion. We talked about that earlier in this conversation about me being an introvert. What you can do is take that so the way the brain rewards you for introversion and extroversion that plays into how you are as a consumer. So just imagine a classic graph for a minute, Andy. So on the x axis, you've got the degree of interest in a category. So let's imagine at the moment as we sit here, you and I in the UK, but it could be in any country. That axis is how interested Am I in buying a German car, a German automobile? So the zero point is, yeah, I'm interested. All the way up to the right is I am desperately interested. I'm all in I'm all about German cars I would never think about anything else so that's the X axis. The y axis is now introversion and extraversion. So if I go up the y axis, I've now got extraversion. Okay, I go down the Y axis. So below the x axis, if you will, I've got introversion. So now I'm going to just draw 2 45 degree lines. So one above the axis, one below the axis. So one goes up with introversion, one goes down with introversion. Okay, now I've defined something that is very difficult to describe given, we're not looking visually, but a chart will be very simple to do that. Now, just imagine for a minute that you were at that far right hand side of the x axis. So I was really interested in the German automobile industry. Now you would say, Okay, if I was a really extrovert person, what kind of car company German car company really understands how to design and delight for extroverted consumers? The kind of consumer that walks into a room and goes, Hey, I've arrived. Look at me, everyone. Am I wonderful? Or what? Look at what I'm wearing. Look at who I am. Mercedes Benz is completely and utterly understood that it's the badge, the bling, the car, the rappers talk about it. It's the Mercedes Benz. They are they're at the top right of that chart. If you now go to the other end of the chart, so you're right down at the bottom, so you're still very interested in German cars. But now I'm extremely introvert. It's not about me walking the room. It's about how do I feel about myself? How do I you know, as I as I came here, how did that car drive? How did it feel? How did make me as a person how did it corner? That's the BMW it's the ultimate driving experience. Okay, BMW, everything they do they design they advertise is for introverts and introversion. Okay, now, so we've talked about the extremals. Let's come partway back, let's say for people who are moderately introvert and extrovert people who are moderately interested in the German automobile category, that's Audi. Okay, that's exactly where Audi plays, you know, if you now come back to the left to the origin, so I'm not really it doesn't matter, my introversion or extroversion, I am just an entry level interested in the German car market. That's where VW clearly plays. And so the design, the marketing, the communication, how they find the consumers is incredibly important. The Germans have rarely understood this. So P&G, literally took that understanding and that's what they do with if you look at dental care, oral care, so I challenge anyone is called go to your supermarket, you know, certainly in the developed markets, and go and look at the oral care, you will find something that is called 3D White, so all about me, my you know, I walk into a party, I smile, my teeth are brilliantly white. So there are beautiful, healthy teeth they have to be healthy. But first and foremost, they're beautiful. They're the extroverts. They are the Mercedes Benz owners in the room, and they want 3D White, so the toothpaste, a toothbrush, the mouthwash, the everything else is all about whitening. Okay, that's, that's what it is. You've beautiful teeth, you then look elsewhere on the shelf, and you will find something called Pro health. Pro health is all about health first. So it's healthy, beautiful teeth. So it's about getting every last bit of plaque off my teeth. You know, having that feeling like I've just walked out to the dentist, the toothbrush, the toothpaste is all about that. Okay, those the packaging the design, the products are designed for entirely different people. Based on the psychographic spectrum. Literally, you've got 3D white Mercedes Benz, you've got ProHealth, BMW, and then you've got this total, this sort of complete range, which is really for people who are interested in oral care but aren't about get your white teeth or brilliantly healthy teeth. And that's the Total. That's the VW users. So you've got these three, entirely holistic all the mega properties that are designed just the way the German cars go. And it really allows you to segment on shelf between consumers and create unlock vast amounts of value, Andy, so again, it's about really deeply understanding consumers in their behaviour, whether it's socio economic, cultural, contextual, or psychographic. And then designing the experience around them. If you get those rights, you will win. I promise you every single time.

Andy Follows: 1:34:36

That's golden, Kevin, and very entertaining and I'm thinking also will fuel potentially some great clickbait for if I drive a BMW what toothpaste should I be using? So, But joking aside, that sounded like a fantastic recipe. In fact, the whole conversation so far has been full of really good ingredients for success. So thank you for giving us giving us all that. So the P&G journey, what happened there? And how did you come to move on from there?

Kevin Powell: 1:35:12

Pretty simple. Andy, I think after seven years of working in hair care in Cincinnati, I figured I wanted to do more, I want to learn more about other consumers. And I wanted to have a broader responsibility. The way that Procter and Gamble is set up is at that level, you only got a bit of the pie, you couldn't go from the very early idea all the way to in market and post market as an R&D responsibility. And so I looked around, and actually, I was offered a role of Vice President with a company called Mondelez International, which almost no one will have heard of, but they own brands like Cadbury and Oreo and Ritz biscuits and things like that. So they're probably the world's biggest or second biggest snacking company, depending on the day. So I got global responsibility for developing all their gum candy and biscuit products. That's about two thirds of the business. So it's about 19, so about 16 $17 billion. So I mean, that's a much bigger profile. haircare was considerably less than that. But I got to do everything from beginning to end the early research all the way through. And it was just a fascinating journey being part of that you learn a new company, and company that had very similar values, that doesn't change a very similar purpose. It's about delighting consumers, a very different sets of delights, you're now talking about a snack, something that's fun and engaging and more emotionally engaging than, say, a razor or or haircare, so you're meeting different consumers needs. And that was just wonderful learning. And also with a company that really didn't understand as much about deeply understanding consumers not as well as P&G. So it's about bringing some of those tools, and some of that sort of, you know, consumer led innovation strategy to that company. So it's about creating capability in the company. So I did that for five years prior to retirement and absolutely loved it Andy, I mean what's not to enjoy when you enter a meeting, and there's just a table full of new Oreo prototypes for you to munch your way through, it doesn't get any better than that.

Andy Follows: 1:37:18

I'm imagining maybe this is an assumption that the move from P&G to Mondelez was, you didn't change as many things. So yes, you changed the product, but by then your your interest was on consumers. So that would be sort of a constant. If you like consumer response and needs and behaviours, you have a more senior role, perhaps a bit more bread? Is that a fair assumption that it was less of a shift or was actually quite different when he got there?

Kevin Powell: 1:37:45

No, you're quite right, Andy, I think the biggest shift. So I mean, obviously, for any of us learning a new company, you know, it's going to take a little while to learn new company systems. But that didn't take too long learning about the different consumers and different consumers needs. That was a big deal. That took me a long time to learn about that. And then of course, you're learning about food, you're learning about nutrition, you learn a lot about food safety. I mean, I think Mondelez must be one of the best in the food industry, when it comes to ensuring safety of people. And I think that that's obviously incredibly important, we're all gonna eat things, we want to know we're safe. And that company really knows how to do that, and has encoded that. The other thing that company has got really good at this is something I learned Andy and I think late in my career, but I came to enjoy it. You know, and I never thought I'd say this quality is really sexy. You know, I used to think of quality as some sort of necessary evil. But I absolutely came to love quality. You know, there's nothing worse than opening a pack of Oreos, and finding crumbs or insufficient cream in the sandwich or whatever it may well be you and every bite every Oreo to be incredibly tasty. And that takes you then to a whole world, which I didn't know about, have integrated Lean Six Sigma of modelling, back to consumer needs of lean to have advanced process control techniques that you'd be more familiar with in the car industry where you can have things monitored and move in real time on the production line. So you stay always on centerline and every consumer gets the treat they want, that I actually found to be really fascinating learning and something that we were able to take from other industries and bring across and that really did prove to be fun. And in fact, I would now say actually, some of the innovation in my whole career of which I'm the most proud, has actually now been quality related. So things you wouldn't know other than God, this products just really good.

Andy Follows: 1:39:42

Yeah. And I love the very direct connection there between some thing you might put in place in the manufacturing environment. But that links to the experience that the consumer has, so it's when they open that packet, it's a widget you've put into the line. That means they get a much better experience at the end, you had people I remember being quite entertained by the fact, people paid quite good money for eating biscuits?

Kevin Powell: 1:40:10

It's biscuits, chocolate, a number of areas, there are sensory panels within the company who are highly trained highly attuned human beings to elements of taste and texture. And they have very specialised techniques of being able to sample these products, whether they're new or for quality control and be able to score them very rigidly so you can actually assess elements that you need to make better or to control so and they are they are paid to do it. We won't talk about how much they are paid because, they are so good at what they do so yes, believe it or not, there are people pay for a living to eat Cadbury bars and and Oreo biscuits and other such products and, and they are critical because they make sure we have the quality of the product that people deserve.

Andy Follows: 1:40:54

Very good. So shall we talk about now and what you're doing now? Because I presume your reason for leaving Mondelez, were you are ready to do something else. Would you say you're retired now or semi retired or?

Kevin Powell: 1:41:05

Semi? Retired? Andy? Yeah. So, you know, just almost two years ago now, I suppose, you know, said okay, you know, what was a three year expatriate assignment has become 12 years, I think it's time to come back to England, to focus a little bit on health, I'd let myself get a little unhealthy and have a few health conditions to go focus on, and focus on family, but also go back to my purpose, you know, if I'm really am going to touch and improve lives, how else am I going to do that? You know, and I think, you know, this is where a few things have, you've alluded to, really caught my attention. So that's why I would say semi retired, so I do some consultancy. In areas where I see value, how can I help other people understand consumers well enough to make products and services that delight them. So that's one of the things I enjoy doing is a bit of consultancy, to help people companies to do that. I'm also working within a local accelerator called Carbon 13. It's down in Cambridge. And there they bring small companies, very small, nascent companies into a world where, you know, they're looking to take, you know, millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the environment for sustainability. So I'm mentoring the CEOs to help them do that as quickly, as efficiently as possible. So it's some of the areas that corporate industry puts in their way. So they can actually get some of their ideas in market quicker. So I'm really enjoying mentoring them doing that, as well as other companies in sustainability. So those of you who are familiar watching this with doughnut economics, and some of the areas that I'm starting to work my way through and helping companies with..

Andy Follows: 1:42:46

what's the, Sorry, I've missed, I missed something. What's doughnut economics?

Kevin Powell: 1:42:50

So simply stated, doughnut economics is a very different way of thinking about where we create value. So we're in a world of GDP, you know, so I want to sell more and make more money. Basically, it's the very consumer society we've been talking about. But you live in a sense of that world, that everything is unbounded, you can use as much of the environment as you like, and you can do whatever you like, to the poor people who are producing the ingredients in the products. And that's just a failed model, we are wrecking the planet and the people on it. And I think that's very well understood. Unfortunately, the way we measure that the way Wall Street measures that is, you're not going to change that significantly, you've got to rethink your economic model. So doughnut economics, and please, there's some great TED Talks and lites if you just go into Ted and look at doughnut economics, you'll find it with some great books that simply stated, if you imagine the doughnut, so doughnut you know, as you grow the doughnut, the outside of the doughnut says I can't go any further. And the outside is the environment. So if I go outside the doughnut, I am now using too much of the environment. So don't do that. And then the inside of the doughnut is you mustn't undershoot which means I mustn't, you know, basically, for example, you know, people growing things in fields and parts of the world and not pay them a living wage, you know, or not, not enable them to go through schooling and education, you know, these are things you've got to go do. And again, Mondelez does that very well with things like the cocoa life initiative. So you've got to do you've got to rethink the way you shape your economics around the planet and the people on it. It's not just about I make as much money, I don't care about people and planets.

Andy Follows: 1:44:33

Okay. Thank you for sharing that. I'll look that up. So you're doing consulting now here in a good part of the world for a centre of gravity for bright people to come, I imagine with the startup incubator. And did you want to touch on faith?

Kevin Powell: 1:44:49

Yeah, I'd love to actually because I think it's one that you know, obviously, it's very personal, and I'm certainly not going to sell, excuse me, or evangelise but it's one of the things that throughout my life, I've had a faith, you know, I'm a I'm a Christian, and that has strengthened. But I've always said, I've not had the time to really focus on it. And I think that was one of my decisions in terms of you know, in early retirement or semi retirement was, how can I focus on my faith? What is there that I could do, where my faith then would have an impact? Because again, it's not just about my faith is what can I do to impact positively others. So what I decided to do is I was fortunate enough to be selected as a reader. So I'm in training to be a reader with the Church of England. And a reader is someone that's licenced, to give sermons to lead services in the Church of England, and actually to lead funerals. So that may be part of my ministry is funerals. So to help people at a time where, you know, if your loved one has just died that;'s a pretty low time, be able to bring some hope and joy to them and some comfort, whether they believe it or not, I think it's a wonderful thing to do. And again, I think it's part of that touching, improving life is being able to share that so no, my Christianity is important to me, it's always been there. We talked about the values, I think all of that is part of being Christian. And I think, you know, that's something I just want to be more overt. And to be more informed about. So I'm going through training on that now. I think it's a far more ability to round off my life's experience Andy,

Andy Follows: 1:46:23

I love the different application of your purpose throughout your story. And obviously, your values prevalent, your faith has been there. Is there anything I haven't asked you, Kevin, that means I've left a big stone unturned?

Kevin Powell: 1:46:38

No Andy. I think this has been a phenomenal experience, really enjoyed it. As you said, this is going to be fun. And I think you've asked some great questions. And you've really, I think, given me some things to think about as you've paused and you've reflected on some of it. So now it's it's it's been really helpful. And you understand my passion. So you know if any of those watching feel that there is something that I could do to help them then please feel free to reach out.

Andy Follows: 1:47:00

Yeah, I mean, if you'd like to reach out to Kevin, we'll put links in the show notes, as we always do to Kevin to LinkedIn, and you can connect with him there. So thank you very much, Kevin, really been great to have this conversation with you. Thanks for joining me.

Kevin Powell: 1:47:14

Thank you very much, Andy.

Andy Follows: 1:47:15

You've been listening to Career-view Mirror with me, Andy Follows I hope you enjoyed hearing Kevin's story as much as I did, and found some helpful points to reflect on some key moments in Kevin's story that stood out for me, were Kevin's mnemonic for his values, pilot standing for passion, integrity, leadership, ownership and trust. His story about leading the team which created Gillette Fusion, which was the fastest growing billion dollar product line for Procter and Gamble, the approach they took to create fusion, asking how do we have more lines in the water? How do we reduce our test lead time from six months to 24 hours so that we increase our chances of hitting that two to one consumer preference requirement for a successful product, the evolution of Kevin's career as he became more rounded and learn from the strengths of organisations he joined, like the laser focus on understanding consumers that he experienced at P&G, the clear objective model and the emphasis on creating a system or culture where everybody is clear on what they're doing, the context culture, socio economic and psychographic elements that you need to understand to deliver a successful product to consumers with different needs. So many insights that are relevant not just to fast moving consumer goods, but to the automotive industry, too. If you'd like to reach out to Kevin, you'll find his LinkedIn contact details in our show notes to this episode. If you enjoy listening to my guest stories, please could you do me a favour and share an episode with someone you lead parent or mentor or a friend who you think might also benefit. Thank you to Kevin for joining me for our conversation to our sponsors for this episode, ASKE Consulting and Aquilae and to the Career-view Mirror team, without whom we would not be able to share our guest's life and career stories. And above all, thank you to you for listening.