When you're walking through the supermarket, you'll see many familiar brands like Lipton, Dove, Continental, Resona, Ben and Jerry's. And at first you might think that they have much in common, but actually all of those well known brands are all owned by Unilever. I'm talking about a global megastar company responsible for four hundred brands in one hundred and ninety countries. And Nicki Sparshot is CEO of Unilever Australia and New Zealand. And she's also the global CEO of the super premium
tea brand T two. So it's safe to say she's someone who has a lot on her plate. So how does Nicki set goals for herself and her businesses but also planned for the unexpected?
And how does she get to switch.
Off when there are so many priorities competing for her attention? And I was also keen to find out what Unilever has learned from introducing a four day work week and it's New Zealand office. I'm doctor Amatha Immer. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium. And this is how I work a show about how to help you do your best work. Now, one CEO role is probably plenty for most people, but NICKI has two.
So how does NICKI manage to do two CEO roles at the same time.
It's definitely been an experience to have both gigs, but I have to say it's also been one that has been super fun for me and really complementary. So basically, we've got on one side, the Union lead of business. This is like a fast moving consumer goods company, and I look after the Australian and New Zealand division of that. And then we've got T two, which is on a global scale and it's much more a direct to consumer bricks and mortar and e commerce, luxury gifting and tea business.
And they're so different. So what I find is it's actually my own very simple way of getting outside in perspective, because I can take best practice that sits in one organization and take it into the other. And likewise, when we have challenges in one business, we can almost preemptively
navigate for them in another. So I've really enjoyed the fact that they're two such different business models, but that transferable learning between one into the other has been so invaluable and the talent, the great people, and the capability that we have sitting in the respective businesses is also different. But we can benefit from that difference in a really remarkable way. So, yes, it's been it's kept me out of trouble, but it's been also incredibly enjoyable to do.
And how then do you think about your time and how you're dedicating time to the two different businesses in a given week or a given month.
Yeah, look, it's a good question. I think I singlehandedly keep post it note in operation because I kind of run a little bit of my life on analog in many ways. But I do use the post it notes
to kind of keep my priorities really very much in check. So, you know, I would have a quarterly priority list, like what are the things that are you know, if I get these done in the next twelve weeks, will deliver eighty percent of the value that I can deliver for the organization, you know, notwithstanding things that are throwing your
way that you haven't planned for. And then I translate that into a monthly to do, into a weekly to do list, and into a daily to do list, and I take great satisfaction crossing it off in a pen at the end of the day. But that's actually been pretty important ritual for me because it helps me to look across both the businesses and really determine where can I focus my energy and my time most over the next little while to create the most impact of both organizations.
And then I also make sure that in any week, I allocate deep work time. So I just carve out four hours where I don't schedule any meetings, I don't plan to do any phone calls. I just give myself the space to think about strategy, to think about people, to think about culture, new business opportunities, but that real moment to just reflect on the businesses and take a sort of aerial view, because it's I think it's really important to get thirty thousand feet in the air and
equally at times be deep in the weeds. But to move between both of those vantage points I think is really important it for any any leader in any role.
I want to dig deeper into a few of those things. So I want to understand your quarterly planning process. And I'm not sure if this is a stupid question, but how do you know what you should be prioritizing in a quarter?
Yeah, it is a really good question, and I think, well, for both of our businesses, we have our you know, three year let's call it our three year strategy. It's a bit of our north star. It gives us the why we're doing what we're doing. It helps us to articulate the strategic priorities, maybe the what that's going to get us there, and above all, it is a really strong foundation for the values on how we show up. So it's the it's the how, let's say, and that's
sort of done on a three year horizon. It's a very simple document. I have a really big belief that there's sophistication in simplicity. So it's a one page document and by and large, you hope that that doesn't change so much over a three year period. Certainly where you focus your energy and some of the curve balls and the changing market dynamics may determine where you dull things up or dull things down. But that comes a little bit of our compass, so to speak, our strategic comforts,
and then we convert that into an annual plan. So for each of the businesses, we sort of look at, well, the next twelve month horizon, where what does good look like and how we're going to get there, and then I use that as the base to chuck down my year a little bit more by quarter.
Yeah, now I want to know an example, like, what's an example of a quarterly goal that you would set for yourself.
So while we would have quarterly financial targets that we would set ourselves, we would have and they would become critical measures for the whole organization to be rallying around. I might look at one of those and say, well, for us, for me specifically, this month, I'm going to focus our energies on the cash target that we might have for the business and what can we do to really influence that. And it could be around inventory management, could be around working cap or it could be around
different leavers. But there are some things that there are plenty of things that I could spend my time on, and I am so grateful because I have many, many people in both businesses that are a lot smarter than I am who can take on these jobs and deliver
them much more effectively that I can do. And then there are other areas where I think maybe I have a little bit of a superpower that I can bring to the table, and when I focus my energy on those things, then I can create some value for the organization.
So how do you then go about breaking that down into monthly and weekly?
Like?
Is that something that you do at the beginning of the month or at the quarter?
Like the start of the quarter? Is that when you break everything down?
Yeah? I sit down at just the end of every month and just take a a bit of time for myself and just go how do I convert that into a monthly to do with? If you think about it like a backlog all of the things that I need to get done, and then I'll have a look at that and think, well, what are the things that I'm going to pull off the backlog and put on a
to do list that I now actively work on. And I'll do that on a monthly basis, And then at the you know, on a Sunday night, just before I kind of kick off a new week, I'll sit down with a cup of tea, maybe a glass of wine, and we'll just map out, you know, what that looks like for the weak ahead and how I'll lokape my time.
I'm loving how methodical this all is.
Can I ask do you have any daily rituals around planning or reflection.
Yeah, I do. So I get up. I get up early. This is going to sound ungodly, but I need to do it because it's the only time that I can get that quality meantime. But you know, I'll set my alarm for four forty five.
That's ungodly, Yes, yeah.
A little bit. And at least every second day I'll go do some exercise. So I'll go to the gym, or I'll go for a really long walk or something like that. But I do have to just get some exercise into my day. And I just know that if I don't do in the morning, it's just it's not going to happen. So I'm just really conscious around my own kind of disciplines and rituals that but that gives
me some really good time to just think. And then when I come home, I will make myself, you know, a coppa, and then I'll write my to doers for the day. So just check to see what the meetings are that already in my diary, and what are the things that I need to get done, and I'll just wrap that on a post it note and I'll go onto the front of my journal. I write everything down because the way I remember things is to kind of put them on paper and what throw paper. Somehow they're
magically ingrained in my head. But that helps me to then prioritize for the day. So that's my little morning ritual.
Do you have an end of day richual at all?
Ah? You know, I'm really fortunate at the moment that I'm in a role that doesn't require as much travel as some of the previous roles that I have done, and so the last particularly in the last eighteen months, we've been able to have dinner as a family almost every night, and that's something I really try to protect.
So you try to get even if it's twenty minutes in the morning for breakfast together before everyone goes off doing their own thing, and then even if it's just forty minutes at night, to reflect on the day that we've each had and just spend some quality time together. That is I would say that is my evening ritual.
And quite often after that I need to get back on two meetings and calls just because of my colleagues that I have that are in the US or in the UK, and so making time zones works sometimes means that I have to do that, But that's okay because I've actually given myself the gift of having my time with my husband and my two kids, which is really important to me. That gives me energy.
Now you've mentioned that you deliberately leave.
Time for or reactive work in amongst looking at your quarterly priorities, Like, how are you doing that in practice? Like do you have buffer time in your diary? Like what does that look like?
Yeah? I literally have like my deep work is coded in yellow. That's my favorite color, and you know that's so that's like kind of maybe my favorite time. And then I've got Yeah, it literally says do not book meetings, and it might be colored in you know, orange, and I know that that time's then available. But you know what, there's a lot of freedom in it as well, because Anna, who works with me and she helps me manage my daring,
does it really well. Yeah. She can then call me and say, Henny, can know you said no meetings here, but this has come up? Is this more important or not? And that's so helpful because then I can just take an informed decision about, you know, whether I give up that space or actually whether or not I need it for something else.
Yeah, I'm really fascinated with this.
I need more details, nikis so would every day of your week, because I know you have your specific deep work time which I do want to get into. But with all the other days, would I be seeing a chunk blocked out in your diary in orange that says do not book like?
Is that a daily occurrence?
If I can get it every day, then I will do it every day. And to be honest, some days of train wrecks. You know, if you would some days in my diary and it would look awful, it would look awful from seven thirty in the morning till eleven thirty at night because it just happened to be one of those days where there's you know, late night meetings with our global teams, and that I just suck those up.
Right.
If every single day was like that, it'd be really difficult. But the nature of the job is such that there needs to be a certain degree of flexibility. And you know what, I'm fine with that because it means that when there's something on at the kids' school and they've gone exhibition, and I think, gosh, I am going to out and go and go and see that, and it might be three o'clock in the afternoon, but that's okay because then I'll come back home and I will work
later on to the evening. I feel that that, to me is a version of work life balance. Right. I've been able to make the choices that are right for me and my family and still give what I need to do to the job. And so there's an enormous amount of freedom in that for me.
Now, deep work.
I know you take deep work seriously, and you're referring to kind of having that thirty thousand feet view from the air of what's going on.
Tell me about your deep work routine or ritual.
I think that the first thing that I love about it is that I'm not I'm not in a meeting, and I get a bucket boat of energy from being with other people. So this is not necessarily about the need to be on my own, but it gives me the space to have a bucket time that I can now choose what I'm going to do with. And so I think just the very act of not having to be on a screen, not having to be in a conversation, just allows me some space to go through just actions
that require some thought. And you know, I can at times get into a habit of feeling like when you take action, you've got momentum. But what I've learned the longer I've kind of been in their career is that actually, sometimes the moments of greatest impact of the times when you don't feel the need to act, but you just give yourself the space to think. And I'm getting better
at that. You know, when I, on occasion receive an email that sets my love boiling, Whereas my inclination may have been to respond, I now sit with it just that little bit longer than I normally would have, and I I think nine times out of ten, my response is different to what it would have been had I just allowed myself to react instinctively. So that's what I
love about that deep work time. I just have that opportunity to give myself the space to think about things without the rush, without the chaos, without the noise of the daily operation.
Will you have particular things that you bring into that deep work time that you're like, Okay, I want to think about this particular goal or this particular project.
Like how planned is that deep work time?
It varies depending on what I need to do. So let's say it's a bit of work on the organization and people. Then I might actually use some post it notes and stick them up on the wall and you know, have a little bit of my own mini workshop on my own that's really valuable. Occasionally I will call other people. I will do a sort of dialar friend, because that is the time I actually want to get some outside
in perspective. So sometimes I use that deep work time actually to connect with the people in other companies quite often, sometimes in other industries. Quite often that can give me a different way of looking perhaps at the problem. All the opportunity that I have.
That idea of like the kind of phone a friend. I like that, Like how do you think about your networks in that sense? And who you'll call for what?
Yeah, look, I think actually, you know, people will say how important is to have a network and to do networking and all that sort of stuff, And I think, actually, just at the heart of it is two you can either feel incredibly resource constrained at times, or you can realize that there's an incredible amount of resource abundance if you just reach out and generously share your knowledge. And equally, you'll find that people are very, very generous in sharing this.
That's been my experience at least, so sometimes the people that I have in my network, I like it to be varied, like I'm a really big believer in the businesses I lead or the teams that I'm part of, and I also would put this in my own kind of personal social kind of circle. I like diversity of perspective. I like to be able to connect with people that can offer alternative ways of thinking about things, because they just give you a very creative lens.
I like what you said about I guess sharing with an abundance mindset or giving with that kind of mindset. I would imagine that you're someone given your position, you would have a lot of people reaching out to you for advice or guidance or to speak at this event or that. How do you balance having that abundance mindset and wanting to share generously with just the realities of only having a certain amount of hours in the day.
I do have to say no at times. Alternatively, I'm also quite good at saying yes, but yes, but I won't be able to do it for another six months. Yes, but I'll only be able to give you twenty minutes and my time at this stage. Does that work for you? Yes, I would love to be able to participate, but I can't be there in person. Could I drop you an
email with my thoughts? I think you know, sometimes it's about finding ways that allow you to share, even just a little, but in a way that's reflective also of the time that they have.
We'll be back with Nikki in a moment talking about how her four day week experiment has gone in New Zealand where staff only work four days a week but they get paid for five. And if you're not connected with me on the socials, why not? So I would love to connect with you as a listener of the show. You can find me on LinkedIn just search for Amantha Imba and on Twitter I'm at Amantha and on Instagram I'm at Amantha I and drop me a note saying
that this is how you found me. Now, something that Unilever in New Zealand has made headlines for is trialing the four day week.
Can you tell me about what led to the decision to try the four day week? And I will frame this.
I'm sure that a lot of people listening to how I work a familiar with the concept, but in a nutshell. The four day week involves paying people their full time salary one hundred percent of their salary for having them work eighty percent of the time, but at one hundred percent performance, so achieving what you would achieve if you were working those full five days.
So tell me what led to the decision to try that in New Zealand.
Yeah, there were a couple of a couple of things.
The first one is, I think there is this huge cognition that time is probably one of the most precious commodities that we crave, and certainly whether it's in our personal life in our professional life, the idea of gosh, I wish I had a bit more time, I think is not lost on any of us, and it just got us wondering around whether or not we would be able to create an environment where people felt really actively engaged and energized being part of the Unilever community and
simultaneously we could unlock productivity gains as a result of that. And so we thought, well, if we were able to give everybody a day back for them to use however they wanted, so, whether that's for further education or to exercise, or to participate in a hobby, spend time with family.
It doesn't really matter, but that time of an extra day, with one of the caveats being that as a team, you no need to find out how you can unlock twenty percent of that capacity to free up that time by removing all of the non value added work and processes and bureaucracy and legacy stuff that we do that might not make sense any longer in order to be able to do that, and then in the process allowed us to be more efficient and more effective and more
energized about being at work as well. So we pick the New Zealand business because it's a big union leave business for us, but it's also not so big that we can't manage it. And we really wanted to run this as a twelve month test, and we've got the University of Technology partnering with us on this actually, so we've got some independent assessors as we go through this
journey so we can hold ourselves to account. But we're about six months in now and it's been really exciting to see how the New Zealand team have come together to try to take up this opportunity and how they've removed a whole lot of work that doesn't make sense. And equally, how they've put in place some really good behaviors that allow us to be more efficient and more effective.
Do you know, like of any examples of maybe some of the biggest changes that the New Zealand crew have made to how they approach work or meetings, or you know, processes that have been improved, or you know, like things that have been killed off. I'd love to know a couple of examples of things that have made a really big impact.
Yeah, I think meetings is a big one, right. We end up sort of sometimes we convince ourselves that because we're busy, we're being purposeful, and meetings can be a great way of feeling busy but not necessarily purposeful. So that's certainly been an area the team have tackled. When do you have a meeting, why do you have it, who needs to be there? How do you empower people to take decisions in the meeting without creating further meetings
to validate what's been done. So I think there's been a lot of work that's been done around meeting discipline. For sure. There's been interrogation around processes, so the way we're getting things through the system and is there ways of just radically simplifying some of the internal processes that
we have. They've looked at projects, so you know, inevitably there is a fine amount of time and there are plenty of things we can do, but probably only a few things that we should do at a certain point. And so the teams have really had a look at flowing resources to where most value can be created or where we can have the most impact.
What's been the biggest challenge or some of the biggest challenges that the group has found from trying to squeeze five days where they work into four.
And I think the therein lies the biggest watch out right, if we simply push five days of work into four, we haven't actually realized what we intended to do here, because this isn't about now stretching four days of the week so that people are now working longer hours. This is genuinely about removing twenty percent of the stuff that
slows us down. It's unnecessary to give us that extra day to ourselves in the spirit of rejuvenation, energizing, getting outside in perspective, being much more on the front line. You know where our consumers are and the people that we serve rather than being sort of city behind the laptop. So the key to that is we genuinely do need to find those unlocks, otherwise we haven't actually delivered the intent of what we want to do with the four
day week. The other area is, you know, one of the criteria that we did say is that for our our customers, for our suppliers, for our team members that aren't participating in the four day week with that in Australia or across the globe, they should not feel any differently about working with the team in New Zealand other than perhaps the positive impact that this should bring to the team, because we did want to make sure that we had that servant leadership or that customer service orientation
at the core of what we're doing it. And that's a really easy thing to say, and that takes a little bit more time to make sure that you genuinely do have five days worth of coverage so that you are able to honor all of those commitments as well. So look, I'm really optimistic about it, and I think part of any good test is actually that constant check
in and feedback loop. So as Nick and the team in New Zealand go through this process, they're almost reorientating priorities on a month by month basis as well, so that they're taking those learnings and now asking themselves or what do we doing need to do differently as a result of that.
I love that distinction between sort of framing it is how do we fit five days worth of work into four, but actually going no, no, no, we actually need to change how we work and we need to stop things
and kill things. It reminds me A good friend of mine is Scott Anthony, who's a bit of a global thought letter on innovation from inosit and he talks about zombie projects and the value in organizations looking for zombies, which are projects or processes or meetings or things that have been worked on that are kind of like the living dead, but no one has actually stopped to have the courage.
To kill them.
And like, how how do you create that environment where it is okay for people to stop doing things?
You've got to kill your darlings, right. It's a really hard thing to do because in many ways, some of the things people don't want to stop, the things that they've invested time, energy and effort into up until this point, and in some instances are also sort of pet projects, but they're not really the things that are going to shift the needle. You've got to lead from the front as well. I think, you know, stop a few things in a really material way to demonstrate that you're actually
prepared to stop it. You need to not allow for creep. So when you do stop things, you don't all of a sudden now you know, in a moment of panic replace it with something else, because you know you feel that that's the thing to do. Is you've sort of got to stay the course on this stuff. So much
of it I think is about behavior, isn't it. It's about sort of just the choices that you make to commit to an initiative of this nature, agree the principles that are going to make it successful, and then like walk the talk. And when you do that, it gives others the permission to do the same.
That's something I've heard about.
Something you do is that you'll get staff to coach you, like the CEO, in things that they know more about than you do, kind of like I guess reverse mentoring. I want to say something that came from ge possibly and can you give me an example of how this works? In practice.
Oh yeah, totally. I'm a huge fan of it. Look at it comes down to, Oh, give you some real examples right now. So I have team members that reverse mentor me in say digital and e commerce. When I took over the T two business, we didn't have a really big e commerce platform at that point in time, but we could certainly say that e commerce was where we needed to invest our time, and we had to build the infrastructure from scratch and the supply chain that
sits around it, the range everything. So we're building at bottom up now. And I can tell you that was not my wheelhouse, but I needed to learn it very very quickly. So asidne from putting together a team of people who for whom it was sort of second nature, I really wanted to make sure that I upskilled myself in this area, so in the world of e commerce and the world of digital more broadly, in part not because I need to be an expert in it, but I need to be able to ask the right questions,
and that's where reverse mentoring is great. So I just had a couple of team members. I would meet with them for maybe an hour every month. We'd just pick a different topic area and I would just ask them to teach me literally, or sometimes I would come with questions. So here are a few areas that I've come up against. I'd really like to kind of get under the skin of them and understand them better, you know, show me.
And quite often we do a quick pro quo so that someone will say to me with Nikki, a oh do you reverse mentoring on you know, a common digital and can you kind of help me out with strategy or financial acument or something like that, So you know, we just kind of share it, you know, you trade.
That's really cool.
Now I've heard that something about your style as a leader is that bringing fun and levity into the office is really important for you.
Like, how do you make that happen?
You know what? I just think you've got to hold some things lightly right, because there's we want to take the business seriously, for sure, but we want to take ourselves too seriously. I think we want to recognize that for most people, the time that they're spending at work is more time than they're spending with family and friends quite often, and so you want to know that you're
showing up, you're doing something that you love. And we've all got parts of the job that we don't love, but by and large, you feel like you're part of a community that you really enjoy hanging out with. And so I just like to do little things that just you know, bring to life a little bit of that likeness, particularly in times of challenge in the organization. So they're little things. You know. We have a town hall every two weeks. I've loved it actually because we do it virtually.
It means that it doesn't matter where you are, you can dial in and be part of it. So we get you know, hundreds and hundred people that show up to these town halls every week. And at the end of every town hall, I'll kind of sign off with a music track. I'll pick a song of the week and usually to reflect that, you know, the week that's been on the week that's coming, and you know, at the end of the year, I'll put together that full
Spotify list and we circulate it to the accommodation. And that was wonderful during twenty twenty because you know, COVID year was it was such a challenging year. But you know, I became the soundtrack for the year, and I'm with to it on occasional road trips and you really get a sense for the highs and lows that or in the business at the time, just through music to look at little things like that.
That is so good.
I want to know, like we've covered a lot of feel like, really fascinating ways about how you approach your work. Like, what are maybe one or two things that we haven't covered that you feel like would really surprise people to know about how you approach your work or things that you do.
I am oh gosh that we haven't shared so far. You know. I think that you've got to have a healthy dose of conviction in the roles that you take up, particularly in leadership roles. So I think not being afraid to have a clear point of view about the role that business complain, Like I'm a massive believer in businesses
being a force for good. I think I am a bit of a you know, conscious capitalist or a corporate greedy whatever you want to call it, but that genuine belief that you've got an opportunity to have a regenerative impact on the planet, to be a very strong contributor to a fairer and more socially inclusive society, and equally to deliver profits for shareholders that you can reinvest in those other two things, and innovation so that you can
serve your consumer better than you've ever done before. And not everybody agrees with that, but I think it is really important to decide, you know, where you have conviction and how that sort of forms part of your own leadership legacy and the legacy that you want to create for the broader organization. And it can become quite a powerful compass, I think as well for others. So that would be one area, just strong conviction.
And the other thing I would say is, you know, be prepared to zinc when other zag. I've had so many people over the course of my career give me career advice around you know, not taking up certain opportunities because it's not the linear path they should take, or what if it derails your career, or what if it's too small a company relative to the other companies you've run.
And I just think on this sort of stuff, think about your career less like a corporate ladder and more like a rock climbing wall. Whereas sometimes you'll take lives that move you up, sometimes you'll deliberately take sideways moves because they put more tools in your toolkit so that
you've got more transferable skills. And sometimes you might choose to just sit still for a moment, maybe even go back, because you've got other priorities that might take precedent in your life at that point in time, and it could be family. And I think it's about giving yourself and others in your team the space to do that, because I think then you create this beautiful melting pot of experiences.
And I think that is the greatest gift we can give ourselves and others in our teams to further their careers. Is just a breadth of experiences.
Hmmm. I like that, Yeah, zigging when people say zag And I guess, in terms of good career advice, is there anything that stands out for you in terms of some of the best career advice you've been given.
I've had a really great opportunity to work with some incredible people who have always given me some good advice. And I've equally worked with some people that I've learned what not to do as well. And I think, you know, to be honest, both I think are equally valuable learning experiences. One just a little more a little nicer than the others.
But the best advice I've ever had. I had a little opportunity early in my career to work with Bryce Courtney, who you know is the author of the Power of One and April Fool's Day, and at the time he was the creative director for George Patterson and I was doing a bit of that an internship there early on in my career, and he said to me, Niki, when you're skating on thin ice, you may as well tap dance. And that's just held me in really really good step. I kind of think, just feel the fear and do
it anyway, try new things. Necessity is the mother of inventions. So more often than not, when you're out of your comfort zone, you will find a way of navigating your way out of any situation. If you surround yourself with the right people, ask the right questions, ask for help. It's okay to ask help with that. I think it's a really important leadership quality and then give generously.
Yeah, they would be That's wonderful.
And look, my final question for you, NICKI, for people that want to connect with you and the businesses slash brands that you lead, what is the best way for people to do that.
Oh, I think LinkedIn probably the best bet I did. Check check that out also, so yeah, drop.
Me online, wonderful and all link to that in the show notes Nicki, It's been absolutely fascinating getting an insight into how you work and just how deeply and deliberately you think about it. So thank you so much for giving me an hour of your time today.
My absolute pleasure. It's been really enjoyable. So thank you so much, America.
I hope you enjoyed my chat with Nicki.
And if you're not already a subscriber or follower of How I Work, now is the time to hit follow or subscribe wherever you're listening to this from, because next week on the show, I've got Ronnie Kahan, who's the founder and CEO of OZ Harvest, and we're going to be talking about where she gets her best ideas from and also what to do with all the food in your fridge that is about to go off. How I Work is produced by Inventing with production support from Dead
Set Studios. The producer for this episode was the marvelous Jenner Cooder, and thank you to Matt Nimba, who does the audio mix and makes everything sound much better than it would have otherwise.
See you next time.