Radical Innovators #18 leading with principle: supporting leaders and making work better with Mondelez’s Stephanie Lilak

In this episode of the Radical Innovators podcast, host Frank Congiu sits down with Stephanie Lilac, EVP and chief people officer at Mondelez. Stephanie details her extensive career journey, which began with 15 years in supply chain-oriented roles — including a stint as a plant manager — before transitioning into commercial HR leadership for major brands like General Mills, Dunkin' and Bumble. 

The conversation delves into the evolving role of the CHRO and how it has shifted from seeking a seat at the table to balancing high-level strategy with deep operational execution. 

Highlights from the discussion include:

• the power of managers: why managers are the most critical factor in the employee experience and how they can foster a supportive team environment
• AI and continuous feedback: how Mondelez utilizes AI to analyze over 210,000 employee survey comments, creating a "flywheel" of continuous improvement
• digital transformation: the strategy behind creating a "one-stop shop" for employees to access information 24/7, particularly for manufacturing staff
• balancing strategy: Navigating the tension between long-term multi-year strategies and the "tyranny of the urgent" in a decentralized global organization
• the value of mentorship: Stephanie reflects on how a wide range of people, from her family to the experts on her own team, help her stay current with industry trends

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to the Radical Innovators Podcast. I'm your host, Frank Hanju, and for this episode, I sit down with Stephanie Lilac, EVP and Chief People Officer at Mondeleese. Throughout our conversation, she discusses why managers are so important to the employee experience, how her team is leading the digital evolution to make work better, and how she uses AI to analyze employee feedback. And she even reveals her favorite Mondeleese product. So let's dive in with Stephanie Lilac. Hey Stephanie, so great to see you. And thank you for joining us on the Radical Innovators podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

And hi Frank, thank you so much for inviting me. I'm really grateful to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

You know, I've been eager to get you on, as you probably know. And I know it took a couple of reschedules. So thank you for um sticking with me and and and joining us today.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Thank you so much for your patience.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Every time I do one of these, it's really important. Obviously, people want to get to understand who you are as a person. And of course, they want to get to understand, you know, who you are as the executive. So I think what is really cool and what I loved in your bio is um, which is a bit unique in terms of sitting on two corporate public boards and prior to this role. So I would love to hear a little bit about what your journey was like and uh leading into your current role at Mondelee's.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

I would describe my career as a wonderful diverse mix of experiences, whether it was the kind of roles I had, the industries I've been in, um, and then the the kind of global uh footprint I've been able to experience as well. So the first probably 15 years of my career, very supply chain-oriented. I came up through a lot of different roles in supply chain as HR manager. I was a plant manager at one point. I actually paid for college by being a plant operator. So I made doors for four summers. Um, so I learned a lot in supply chain, and I'd say it really formed my leadership foundation for how I let I lead today. And then I spent the next another probably 10, 15 years in commercial roles. So HR leadership for different parts of the business. And I've been in kind of the B2C part of the business, B2B. When I left General Mills, I joined uh Duncan as the C as their CHRO was my first um CHRO role. Very different industry and a fully franchised organization of a great brand, which was amazing and actually an incredible experience before taking this role at Mondeley's because everything I did there was very influence-oriented. The franchisees really didn't have to do anything I asked. So it was a lot of influence, learned a lot. QSRs, a really interesting industry. And then shifted from there into the tech industry and was the chief people officer for Bumble, which most people know as a dating app, but it's also a friend-finding app. And that was incredible to um really get deep into the tech industry. It was a founder, it still is a founder-led company with a global footprint. So learned a lot there that again, as we talk about what's happening here at Mondelee's, gave me a very good grounding in HR and technology marriage. And then, you know, landed here at Mondelee's in my dream job. So chief people officer for, you know, large global CPG organization. We have almost 95,000 employees around the world. I feel very, very lucky to be here. I also sit on an external uh public board. So I'm a board member at a company called First Watch. Um, and that's great experience. I chair the comp committee there. So I get to see both sides, you know, of that board experience as management and as a board member.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

Nose in, hands off.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

Is that the uh ideally, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

Yeah. You know, I can really relate to that Duncan story that you you shared in terms of uh doing a lot of work with General Motors and the strained relationship that they had with dealers, uh, with the dealerships for a long time, and the unique ability that you need to build to influence because you can't control. And so you'd go in from one dealership to the next. And I'm sure this is true of Duncan stores, and the experience is wildly different from the cleanliness of bathrooms to the appearance of uh people at the counter and so on. And so you really need to go in there and build genuine relationships and show these people you care about their business versus just sort of forcing things and mandating it.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

I mean, it really is, I think about trust fundamentally, and most things in business are about trust, being able to truly impact the business and think about what you're doing through what the business needs and the and retail is really a people business. Those stores do as well as the team does and as the staff does. There's a big role HR can play in supporting those dealerships or those franchisees.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

You know, you've and you've consistently focused on making people and culture a strategic pillar of business. What's the biggest misconception leaders often hold about the employee experience or that you've had to correct as a at a massive global scale, particularly in an organization as large as Mondelee's?

SPEAKER_01 5:32

I don't know if it's a misconception or just not well understood, but employee experience is a very broad description of a multifaceted approach to the way an employee experiences their time at a company. It's everything from the hiring process and what that was like to their onboarding. It's the full cycle, right? Of hire to retire and what the experiences of people in the business. And most people understand, I believe, that managers, the people's managers have a huge impact on an employee's experience. And that's true, and we focus on that here. I think another aspect uh related is the connection people have to peers. And managers have a big role in that and how they build and and develop their teams. And so I think something that's not well understood that deserves a lot of focus from leaders and from managers, is not just what is the manager employee experience in that relationship like, but what kind of team environment are leaders creating for people to operate in? Because I think those two things really drive a significant part of how people experience life at work.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Yeah. Is there anything that you'd say, like if you thought about the top 1% of managers or to your point, the employee-to-employee experience, where you'd say, like, hey, here's a really cool thing that we're seeing some of our best leaders do to help drive this behavior? Because I always love number one, being able to extract the best practice. But then I'm curious, like, what do you do to amplify that within your organization so that others come on board and you make this more of a movement within the organization?

SPEAKER_01 7:18

That's a great question. I I think we know because we measure it, the impact that leaders have on individual colleagues and employees around the world and the impact that the team that they're on. So we're a very metrics data-driven organization. And we've got an incredible engagement survey practice here. And so we're we're able through data to convince leaders of the importance of this. And so we get a lot of uptake on um what makes a leader great here. It's it's many things, but a few things that are really critical are are they able to articulate a compelling and inspirational vision? Do they create an environment of trust and safety where people can really have open conversations and more importantly, bring all they have to offer and co-create solutions together? Then I think it is about are standards held equitably across the organization and the team. So one weak link can really throw off the ability of a team to be high performing. And so are people willing to have tough conversations? Are people, you know, ready and willing to lean into goal alignment, development conversations and then expectation setting with the team.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

And I bet there's one other thing that's there that that would be underlying for these top managers, which is giving a damn, right? And so when you're asking people how they're really doing and caring and building that in, and it's so often we we jump into calls and meetings, and it's really about like what's on the agenda versus taking that intentional pause to check in and see like how people on the team are doing and following up on that. And you notice that the people that have a true following or the people that do that, they're invested not only in your professional success, but your personal success.

SPEAKER_01 9:21

It's okay to tell you a story.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Go ahead, of course.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

Just to amplify what you're saying, because I couldn't agree with you more. It's probably actually two stories. So when I onboarded here, you know, two years ago, every conversation I had, whether it was with my team or other people I was meeting and onboarding, I started every conversation with tell me about you personally and tell me about your career aspirations. That was nothing special. That was just that's just how I connect with people. The impact that had and the referencing people made to that over time, I think it is really important to show that you care about people and that you give a damn. And frankly, that you that you have a personal life and story too, and it's not perfect, right? So I had a meeting with my leadership team this summer, and one of the conversations we had about, you know, okay, how can we get even better as a team? And I've got a great team. The conversation migrated to how are we there for each other? Right. We have big, tough jobs. Everybody's kind of in their space, you know. I've got region leaders and COE leaders, and we ended up having this really robust conversation about what's our commitment and responsibility to each other as peers to support each other through the good times and the bad times. And I think that's another way that caring really shows up. Are there safe places you can go to process things and get support?

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Yeah, I love it, right? It's this idea of like moving away from a hub and spoke team to how are we truly a team? How are we helping each other? Uh, and and to your point, personally and professionally, and you can't do that if you don't know what's going on for an if for an individual's life, right? And so I've been hosting these CHR events for the last 10 years, and it was the first back in 2015. Actually, uh today is the 10-year anniversary of the first CHR agenda that I hosted. But in 2015, congratulations. Yeah, thank you. Uh, it was beginner's luck. I had all the top new CHRs in New York, and so that'll be cool. We're doing we're doing it again, actually, in uh in a few weeks. But in that conversation, it was so much different than what it would be today. There were there was this conversation of like, how do we earn a seat at the table? And like those are just long gone, right? Um, you know, like that's that's just not the conversation. Now it's become more of this balance of like, how are CHROs both strategic and deeply operational while being stewards of culture? And there's this like dynamic of how do you balance a few of those? I'm curious if there's any um current examples of you having to navigate that tension or or where you see the evolution of the role um going even further from you know where it is today, and maybe let's say in the next year to five years.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

I think one of the great tensions that leaders are consistently navigating is the balancing of long-term and short term, right? There's always the tyranny of the urgent, even in um, you know, the top jobs in the organization. You have to very deliberately make time for the long term. Um, because for most people, the short term, the urgent is gonna be a more comfortable, if not, you know, um required place to be. You know, what's the way to do that? I mean, the way to do that is, you know, at the start of the year to break to block the time for it when you're setting strategies and agendas to set multi-year strategies and agendas so that what you're doing year on year is maybe tweaking the priorities, you know, within the strategic framework and getting momentum moving over time. You know, I'm in a global function, right? In a very decentralized organization that is basically run by 23 presidents. So we have 23 presidents running independent business units. And it's this is back to Duncan, you know, okay, what does this have to do with Duncan? Well, there's a lot of influence, you know, that goes into um driving an agenda. And if the if the agenda is not connected to business needs, business requirements, um, and if the impact isn't being felt, you're not going to get the uptake on the work. Um, and the other piece is creating enough space cross-functionally within leadership to spend time on the things that ground a good strategy, right? So your design principles, your um, your long-term measures and KPIs. And I think for a lot of business people running PLs, it can be tough to get that space and time. Um, and so a lot of co-create co-creation goes a long way in those processes, people seeing their voices and their words and their ideas in the final product. Um, we're building um out our talent strategy here globally. And this year we've um rolled out a set of talent principles, which are going to define what are our commitments and how will our programs be built to represent these principles of um transparency, you know, behavior, performance, you know, et cetera. That lays the foundation, the groundwork for the work ahead. So that's to me, the balancing the long term and the short term is one of the toughest um aspects of running one of these global organizations.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

So I love that, right? Because it is tricky, particularly in a large business where you're publicly traded, measured by the quarter. So there's always that pressure. And then this idea of like a three or five year plan seems so foreign given everything that's massively changing. And so leads me to my next question around the digital transformation that you're leading. And if I think about the largest transformation that you're leading with your CIO to create a one start stop for employees, what's the greater ambition on how you're rethinking the end-to-end and employee experience as part of that journey?

SPEAKER_01 15:46

There's really two main goals of this evolution in our business, which is how do we create greater enablement of for faster growth in the company? And then how do we make work better for our employees so that they can focus on driving that growth? So where we have work or activities happening that aren't contributing to building our brands, driving innovation, producing our, you know, safe, high-quality products where that is not the focus for the business. How do we create more focus and capability there? And then how do we, there's other very important work that happens in the organization that can happen in other parts of the organization. And I think shared services organizations are one of the greatest centers of excellence a company can have because that is critically important work, right? It's the engine, it's it's the it's the important contributors to being able to grow the business quickly. And it's best done by people who do it well and do it every day, enabled by technology. And that's the digital part of this is how do you remove manual work, rework, um, you know, things that can be automated out of out of people's remit and put them on more value-added, higher order, higher thinking level of work. And so essentially that's that's what we're that's what we're looking at.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

Yeah, I love it. I mean, that's the uh that was the spirit of the podcast uh when we started it, which was what are the world's leading organizations doing to uh create processes or introduce things uh innovating to support the the ability to make employees' lives better. So whenever I hear that, that's where I key in and where I get excited because I think about the workforce that you have, um, particularly the number of individuals that that probably um can benefit significantly from the uh whether it's upskilling and reskilling programs or there's financial literacy programs. I'm sure there's a number of great things that you're doing. So those are those are the things that we're always looking to extract here on the podcast. Just I'm curious around process elimination and AI. You talked about there's there's this ability to remove some of the things that people aren't um great at, but like, so I'd love to talk a little bit about process elimination and AI and and particularly what you've done, where you've extracted some of the stuff that just, for lack of a better way of saying, just sucks. Like employees don't enjoy doing it. And you've been able to take that on automated and improve uh what people are focusing it on and what kind of outcomes that's driven, and and whether or not you you specifically looked at certain roles to pilot this. Um, anything you'd have to share there?

SPEAKER_01 18:50

We have found ways to um organize work, organize end-to-end processes, and enable them in such a way that we have experts um who are really governing and leading those processes enabled by technology in service of employees and also the HR function, right? This is pretty classic, but I'll just talk a little bit about just employee questions, right? People tend to have questions about policies, about their pay, about benefits, you know, name the topic, right? And in a global organization, how do you create 24-7 access, you know, for everybody and the very diverse kinds of questions around our diverse programming that we would have. And AI is a natural place for this. And I think for us in particular, as we think about our manufacturing employees, and we have tens of thousands of manufacturing employees around the world, giving them we we've created apps tools, so mechanisms that people use in their personal and daily lives here at work that are very intuitive, that give people answers in real time. As we've rolled that out, we've learned a lot about what's working and it's not working in our policies and our processes. So it's this wonderful flywheel of improvement, of continuous improvement that happens where we're learning, where we're getting um information into the hands of people when they need it, but they're also giving us feedback that we can leverage.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Yeah. Have you become feedback rich as a result of this?

SPEAKER_01 20:36

Uh and we have uh we have so much feedback. And it's and and you can use AI again to, you know, to to analyze and prioritize that feedback. I'll go into another place in our in our um engagement survey, really proud of our engagement survey. We have 93% participation globally in our engagement survey. It's it's best in class. This year we had 210,000 comments written into our engagement survey. There is no way a human any human, no met no number no number of humans could process all of that information. So AI is really, really important to us in that way. And that gives us the insights that then lets us actually put meaningful actions in place, again, that drive that employee experience. So it's I'm sure you know, I'm sure you've you've heard this over these 10 years. We're getting to a point where there's not a lot of places technology isn't touching right now.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

It's almost as if we had this plan. We didn't, but this is exactly where my next question was going to go because in the last three years where I've pivoted is a bigger focus on the relationship with CHROs and CIOs. And this was actually spurred by Jackie. Canney, who said to me, We are intentionally making sure that I partner more closely with my CEIO and conference, speak about this the stage. She was on the podcast, talk about this. And I feel like they were one of the organizations that were slightly ahead of this, but now you're seeing other organizations coming around to the realization of just like how critical of a partnership this is that probably like didn't really get that sort of attention several years ago. So I'm curious in terms of like what that looks like. And you know, with if you I'm assuming you agree that's vital, but how did your technology counterparts collaborate with your organization to both shape that digital strategy so that you know you you've talked about some of the great stuff you're doing, but I imagine you're you're thinking about like what's next. So curious what that partnership looks like and if there's any cool things that are on the horizon that you'd share.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

I am incredibly lucky to work with a very talented chief technology officer. His name is Filippo Catalano. I think at this point, Filippo and I feel like we're attached at the hip in all the best ways. And I think I think what we understand is you can't advance organizational effectiveness or employee experience without technology. And he can't build a digital organization without organization and without HR. They have to be connected and done together for it to be done well. We are together defining with our CEO and with our leadership team the digital agenda and our board. Um, our the digital agenda for Mondelees. And we've got some incredible areas of best practice. I think some of the partners that you mentioned earlier would say our people services organization is probably one of the best in the business, along with the tech stack and the partnership we have with our external vendors. So almost two-thirds of my organization is part of that people services organization. The opportunities that Filippo and I and the leader of that organization see to layer on more sophisticated, sophisticated technology is high because the groundwork was laid well. So you can't do more advanced technology and you can't develop technology with your vendor partners if you don't have really strong end-to-end processes defined in the first place, if you don't have really good data um integrity in the organization, and if you don't have your services organization structured and staffed with top talent, like those are all required before you get to, in my opinion, dabble in the some of the newer and more not exciting, kind of more exciting um areas of technology. And so because we're in that position, you know, we're we've got great partnerships with our tech providers, and we are partnering with them on the evolution of their technology and what it's delivering. I can't probably say a lot of details about it, but we feel really privileged to be a critical voice and how it's being shaped. And then how we are getting prioritized in the organization for for AI, agentic AI, you know, some of the newer uh evolution of AI in the industry. And I and we will we'll be well positioned to start leveraging that. We're you we're leveraging it, we're testing it now, but we see a lot of applications for that in the future.

SPEAKER_00 25:43

Yeah, fantastic. So I wanted to shift a little bit to one of the things I'm always uh, I'm a big believer in in the most successful people who don't get there by themselves. They they find mentors and and partners. Uh I'm curious if there, you know, there's any big mentors and influences that you would say have have been critical to you. And then the second part of the question is there's so much content out there. Where do you go to today if you want what you would look at as uh impartial and and fairly balanced content that is uh helping drive your thinking as well?

SPEAKER_01 26:21

Of course, I've had many mentors. You know, I've been around a long time, and there is no way I got here at all by myself. So what what similar to my um my my my career journey, which was a lot of diverse experiences, I have a lot of diverse people who've kind of formed a backbone for me in my journey. And it's made up of my husband's on the top of that list. He had a long HR career himself. Um my son um is is on that list, kind of a um no-holds bard, gonna tell me like it is what he's seeing kind of person. You need those people in your life. Um, and then there's been so many people in my career that I've relied on, and and sometimes it's been bosses, but a lot of times it's been people who've reported, who report to me or have reported to me, who I bet on, and they have evolved in their careers, and I'm I I learned from them then and I'm I'm learning from them now. So it's uh it's a diverse group of people. And where do I go for information? It's very interesting. There's these two ideas are tied together. So the people I've surrounded myself with and the people on my team um are experts in their areas and they'll feed me. Right. So I know that Anne Gotti is gonna bring me the latest and greatest on the world in the world of talent, work effectiveness, culture. I know that Vic Malhotra on my team is gonna bring me all the latest and total rewards thinking, and and we're committed to um current current knowledge, but also evolving future ideas and technology. We try to bring in people who are gonna stimulate us to really think differently in my leadership team. We spend a lot of time productively challenging ideas as well. So a lot of it's about uh being ambitious and curious to lead meaningful change because everything around us is changing at lightning speed all the time. So what works today is not gonna work, most likely a year from now.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

That's fantastic, man. Love the shout out to people in the team, uh, particularly because you know that that's the first thing we've had that a lot of times people point to external resources, but I think it's great that you've brought in a team of people that you know can go get the external stuff and then synthesize and bring it back to you and give you what's the best. So that's awesome. We're gonna wrap up where we finished and some rapid fire questions. And the first one, you know, you you you taught you were talking about food you served. So I'm curious, what is the your favorite Mondolese product?

SPEAKER_01 29:35

Ooh, so it's evolved as I've learned the number of brands that we have here. But I love um we have a product called Lou, um, which is a French brand, and they have a product called Petit Ecolier, which is a sweet biscuit with a big chunk of chocolate on top of it. Highly recommend.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

That sounds pretty good. Now, can that be found in the US for uh it can?

SPEAKER_01 30:02

Okay, cool.

SPEAKER_00 30:03

All right, what was your first concert?

SPEAKER_01 30:04

1985 Bon Jovi.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

So you were three. That's wild.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

Um don't even go there. I'm very pleased to be my age.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

Uh red wine or white wine?

SPEAKER_01 30:15

White. I like uh sans serre, chaplis. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:19

Book or a movie?

SPEAKER_01 30:21

I think I'm gonna go movie.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

You know, I would too. Everybody likes to tell you that the book is so much better.

SPEAKER_01 30:27

How about a movie made from a book?

SPEAKER_00 30:29

I would there you go. There's only so much time in the day. Um, okay. Beach vacation, ski vacation.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

So beach, and I'll explain in a future conversation why not a ski.

SPEAKER_00 30:42

Okay. Well, at least we share that part for sure. And favorite sports team.

SPEAKER_01 30:49

So I love college basketball. I'm gonna say the Michigan State Spartans, not because I went there, but because my husband's obsessed by them and there's no escaping them. But Tom Mizzo's an amazing coach, and it's a great team.

SPEAKER_00 31:04

I've got a bet. My wife went to Duke, and I don't have a rooting interest, so I'm I root for Duke.

SPEAKER_01 31:10

You root for Duke. So, I mean, similar, like we're in similar positions.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

Yeah, exactly. Well, now I'm throwing out one last one, only because I just have to know. Uh Rolling Stones or the Beatles.

SPEAKER_01 31:24

Oh, so uh, I think I'm gonna so I'm gonna go Beatles because it was my second album, my second cassette tape I ever got for my Walkman. And Steve Miller band was the first, Abracadabra, amazing album. But Beatles were second, and I love the Beatles. I love the Rolling Stones too.

SPEAKER_00 31:51

You you almost broke my heart. It would definitely be Rolling Stones for me. But since it was so close, I'm not as heart torn.

SPEAKER_01 31:58

Okay, good. I would hate to break your heart, Frank.

SPEAKER_00 32:02

Stephanie, thank you so much for spending time with us. This has been phenomenal. Um, I really appreciate it, and looking forward to the next time we get a chance to spend some time together.

SPEAKER_01 32:10

Me too. Thanks for having me. Uh, and congratulations on 10 years.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

Thank you. Take care.

SPEAKER_01 32:17

All right, thanks.