For an experienced large company executive, Michael Polk, the decision to grow to be a director of a smaller private company was a significant selection. Polk has many years of experience leading change and transformation at large public companies and has had a distinguished profession at Procter & Gamble, Kraft Foods, Unilever and Newell brandwhere he was CEO from 2011 to 2019.
While Polk believes he has grown tremendously as a leader and executive in his greater than 35 years at large public companies, he believes the growth that can be achieved at smaller, privately held companies can be equally rewarding and challenges leaders in a variety of the way they check them at the starting of their profession.
Polk retired in 2020 to guide the transformation of personal equity firm Berkshire Partners’ Implus LLC portfolio company. Implus is a leading company offering a range of fitness accessories, with 16 brands in its portfolio and an international reach.
Polk joined Impus just as the pandemic began to accentuate in early 2020, it has guided Impuls through multiple waves of pandemic-related disruption, transforming the company’s operating model and strengthening financial performance while building recent capabilities that position the company to deliver sustainable organic sales growth into the future.
Through this experience, Polk witnessed young members of his team step into leadership moments they might never have had the opportunity to experience at larger, more established companies, and grow professionally in “leaps and bounds,” as Polk puts it, “learning by doing.” .
“One of the most rewarding aspects of my time at Implus has been helping to lead the growth of our team and seeing our employees grow through the work they do to strengthen the company,” said Polk
Michael Polk believes that leaders can gain broader experience in small companies more quickly
Polk believes that giant companies provide leaders with the opportunity to develop deep competencies and expertise, and to grow and develop through the breadth of experience that giant companies can provide. Skills develop over time (normally many years) and shape leaders to acknowledge and adapt to different leadership moments to make the right decisions at the right moments. This thoughtful and patient model of talent development is one of the advantages of scale and diversification in large companies.
Polk says this is a very effective development model leadership development the compromise in comparison with a small company for an individual is time. “I spent the first decade after graduation building my portfolio of marketing, branding and sales skills while having the opportunity to learn from different consumer franchises and the dynamics associated with different brands and category assignments,” Polk said. “While I was developing technical skills, senior leaders were responsible for making larger business decisions about trade-offs, and we grew as leaders by watching others lead in these moments of choice.”
Polk said there are fewer resources at smaller companies, “so younger talent is forced to make more important leadership choices much earlier in their careers. . . they grow and learn by doing,” Polk says. “As a result, senior leaders are drawn deeper into the business as player coaches and must help their people at selected times as well as manage risk.”
As a results of being small, the organization from top to bottom tends to have much fewer layers, and exposure can be much broader to issues you won’t ever be exposed to, reminiscent of working capital management, money flow delivery, procurement and manufacturing, logistics and also industrial issues regarding retailers and marketplaces.
Polk says his current role as CEO of Implus is rewarding and incredibly fun
Serving as CEO of a multibillion-dollar public company from 2011 to 2019, Polk led an organization that employed greater than 50,000 people. He was chosen by Institutional Investor magazine to The All-America Executive Team as the top CEO in the consumer goods industry in 2017 and 2018. He is very happy with what he and his team have built at Newell Brands, growing the enterprise value from $5 billion in 2011 to over $15 billion after his retirement, complete restructuring of the company from a holding company to an operating company and transforming the portfolio through 35 transactions during the 12 months eight years of experience as general director. He also served as chairman of the People and Organization Committee and on the Board of Directors of Colgate-Palmolive for nine years, in addition to chairman of the Compensation Committee and on the Board of Directors of Logitech International.
Despite all the accolades and achievements, Polk says he is having the “time of his professional life” building Implus LLC, which he expects shall be a larger, higher and highly competitive fitness and lively lifestyle consumer goods company by the time he graduates. passing the baton exam to the next leader. He describes his job today as “a throwback to a moment in the future” because he gets to do the whole lot he loved as a marketing and sales executive early in his profession.
Polk is quick to indicate that the responsibility for delivery is no different for the CEO of a large public company or a private mid-cap company like Implus. Polk says, “I had a Board of Directors and shareholders to answer to at Newell Brands, and I also have a Board of Directors and owners to answer to at Implus LLC. . . In both circumstances, I was and am responsible for driving value creation, and I am fortunate to have done so achieved this goal at Newell and so far in Impel.”
Polk says the biggest difference at Implus is that as CEO, “I spend much more time working on brand and business development directly with my team, rather than focusing on resource allocation and having to work at different levels of the organization to influence creation demand or cost-cutting choices that people make. . . I am with them at this difficult time, helping them make choices that will drive our company forward.”
Polk says it makes work fun.