Ellen Kerr: Building trust with the new team

In early 2002, DuPont Group reintegrated the original high-performance fiber department, chemical solutions department, non-woven department, safety management consulting department and face material department, etc., and established a new safety and protection platform. Ellen J. Kullman, who is in charge of this business platform, is currently the highest-ranking female manager in the group. She joined DuPont in 1988 and has served as the head of nearly ten different business units.

These accumulations not only made Ke Ailun's initiative to win the trust of the board of directors and successfully assumed the current position, but also allowed her to have an accurate vision for the integration and management of the new business platform and be able to do it with ease. In fiscal 2003, the platform's annual operating income exceeded $3.6 billion, achieving a steady 17 percent year-over-year growth.

Since you joined DuPont, you have served as a leader in nearly ten business units. How has this experience influenced your career development?

Indeed, I have worked in many different areas of DuPont's business. The various experiences I have accumulated have created important opportunities for my later career development, and have also continuously built up my self-confidence.

Although there are many similarities between these businesses, there are also many differences. Different departments have different products, different customers, and different marketing methods. Therefore, management also has its own characteristics. You can only have a specific understanding by being involved in it yourself, and you will continue to learn management in the process of management, and enrich different management skills in different periods.

Does the frequency of frequent job changes affect the depth of your understanding and management of each business unit?

If I have worked in some business departments for a long time, say 3 years, then I can have a deeper understanding of the business and personnel, and can also see the results of some major decisions I have made. , foreseeing future developments.

But some are relatively short, like 18 months or 2 years. I think two aspects of ability are very important in this situation: not only need to have a deep understanding of the basic business situation as soon as possible, but also to focus on relatively urgent matters and make decisions in a short period of time, which requires a judgment of priorities. Ability; another point is that no matter the length of time you have been in office, you must treat this business with a long-term and developmental perspective, and consider issues from the overall perspective of the company.

I think, no matter what, these different business units belong to the same DuPont company, and in fact many aspects are the same. For example, core values, business operation rules, cooperation with each other, etc., these are the parts that I have always insisted on, and nothing has changed in any department.

How did your experience add to your score when DuPont decided in 2002 to re-integrate the security and protection platform and select a leader for it?

Very helpful. I came to the board myself and expressed my high interest in integrating this new business platform. Because I have accumulated a lot of resources in various businesses, including a management team of my own. I am very confident in the development of the new platform, and I have put forward my own set of plans and ideas. Of course, the company's hope is to find a suitable person to take up the right position. They also feel very confident in me taking this position. This is undoubtedly a two-way choice.

So as a manager, how can you adapt to the new environment as quickly as possible?

I think the most important thing is to get to know and get acquainted with your subordinates as soon as possible. Because they are the people who work with you to accomplish your goals. For every business, the people part is the most important, they are the soul of the whole business. When I move to a new environment, I try to spend as much time as possible with my employees, communicating with them, understanding their roles, their goals, and how they work. For employees, I am also very willing to let them know what I think, I am a straightforward and transparent person, and I also want to be a collaborative leader.

What I do is bring the whole team together so that they have a common understanding of where to perform and how to accomplish them. Everyone needs to know what part they are responsible for and what it means to the overall performance development. I want the entire team I lead to have a harmonious order where everyone is able to set and achieve high standards.

What was the biggest challenge you've faced along the way?

I think the biggest challenge is building trust with a brand new team. Because for some employees, I am a foreigner, and I have never worked with them, nor do I understand their business. So they think, what can I bring to help this team? I want them to believe that my presence is helpful. It's more value-added to the business than they've ever done on their own, or than they've ever done before.

For example, when I arrived in 1994 as head of the White Coatings and Minerals division, I had a strong marketing background, but no chemical background. So after I went, the first thing I did was to visit customers with the front-line sales staff; then I went to the laboratory to learn what they were doing and how they were doing it. During the first 90 days, I spent half of my time visiting customers in Asia, Europe, South America, etc., all over the world; and half of my time in technical labs and factories to learn about products. In this way, I have some basic concepts about product features, customer needs, and market prospects.

Also, having spent so much time learning and understanding the details, my team members felt that I genuinely cared about what they were doing, and they felt that I would provide real support for the development of the project. So, to build trust in a new team, be sure to show your professionalism, commitment, and focus.

What kind of hope did DuPont place on this business platform at that time? Integration will bring a lot of changes, what do you think is the hardest part of it?

At that time, the company's expectation was that through the cross-cooperation of different businesses, some cross-business development fields could be created, new development opportunities could be found, and employees in different departments could form cohesion to achieve the goal.

For example, we now have a new market unit called Personal Protection. This is a new business that has been extracted and reorganized from the protection products part of the original Tyvek business and the protection products part of the original fiber business. It needs to face customers with the same market power, sales power, and service power.

The hard part, then, is changing the way we communicate with our customers. Because the products of each department previously appeared as a separate image, the same customer may receive a variety of communications from different products. And now, what we're doing is reinforcing to the market and to our customers that we're providing these products and services, no matter which business line it originally belonged to, from the same DuPont.

So what do you think about the risks that this new business platform might encounter? How to avoid risks?

The main risk is that there is a lot of opportunity and a lot of competition in the market right now. In fact, it is impossible for us to seize all the opportunities. If you want to seize every opportunity, attack from all sides, distribute resources, and do not have a core competition point, it is very likely to generate great risks. So for the integrated business platform, I emphasize to find out some specific core development areas and focus on them.

Our current practice of selecting projects is "close-up". When an opportunity is identified, some resources are tentatively invested, and after a period of time, follow up to see if the effect is smooth. If it does not go well, it is necessary to analyze whether the investment of resources is not enough, or the opportunity itself is not ideal, and the next step is to continue to invest or give up. Every quarter we check the progress of each project to continuously understand and make decisions.

For example, when I came to China this time, I made a close review of the projects in the Asia-Pacific region in the previous year, not only to communicate with each person in charge, but also to understand their market opportunities through direct contact with customers. views and suggestions. These all directly affect the decision-making and execution process of the business development direction. In short, we try to put the best resources into the most promising opportunities.