Unilever’s New CEO Is ‘Fed up With Mediocrity’

It’s not just tech CEOs — consumer brands are going hardcore now too.

Unilever’s new CEO, Fernando Fernandez, said he’s shaking up the company’s top leadership, and he expects that to result in a “refreshing” of up to a quarter of the company’s top 200 leaders.

He said Wednesday, speaking at the Barclays Global Consumer Staples Conference, that the company is reviewing these leaders one by one and asking: “Are they good enough? Are they at the level that Unilever deserve?”

The global consumer brand conglomerate, which makes everything from Dove soap to Vaseline to Ben & Jerry’s, has cut roughly 18% of its white-collar workforce in the last 18 months, Fernandez said, in an effort to ensure “accountability.”

The cuts also come amid a broader shift from a geography-led strategy to a category-led one. In other words, the company is now running its brands and products as comprehensive business units, rather than dividing them across the markets where they are sold.

Fernandez, who previously served as CFO before taking over the top job in March, said that Unilever had “many pockets of mediocrity” that required immediate attention.

“We have absolute accountability now in the company,” he said. “Four business group presidents, 44 P&L units. I have their names, I have their phones, I know who they are. Nobody can hide.”

In addition to having fewer people making decisions, Fernandez said leaders are pushed to make decisions faster with higher risk tolerance.

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“We are taking decisions with 70% certainty,” he said. “Fast because 90%, 100% certainty, you are late. Late in consumer goods is a very bad word.”

The comments come as CEOs in other industries — Amazon’s Andy Jassy, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, AT&T’s John Stankey, and more — are expecting deeper commitment and higher performance from their teams.

“We want to operate the world’s largest startup at our size — that has not been done before. It is hard to do, but it is doable,” Jassy said at a town hall earlier this year.

The e-commerce giant created a “bureaucracy mailbox” for employees to submit what they consider unnecessary processes or rules. Amazon says the initiative has already led to 375 changes.

Unilever’s Fernandez isn’t only wielding sticks, but carrots too.

Emerging talent is being hired and promoted, performance incentives have been increased to as much as 200%, and rewards are now offered in “hard currency,” he said.

“We will build a culture in which playing to win is really recognized with very, very strong incentives for our leadership and ensure that Unilever is never again an insular company,” he said.