Managing Through the Meltdown

Former General Mills CFO Jim Lawrence remembers well the challenge facing the company six years ago, just after it acquired Pillsbury. Suddenly, the merged operation found it had two staffs, one at Pillsbury’s home office in downtown Minneapolis and the other at General Mills’ headquarters campus in Golden Valley. The solution to this inefficiency: bring them all together in Golden Valley.

That was a big task, but far less gargantuan than keeping managers plugged into one another at the infinitely more expansive and complex matrix that top officers at Lawrence’s new employer now oversee.

Since September 2007, Lawrence has been CFO at Unilever, the global colossus that he has been leading through the financial meltdown.

Unilever, with $60 billion in annual sales, is about four times the size of General Mills. It is the world’s third-biggest consumer packaged-goods corporation, trailing only Procter & Gamble and Nestlé.

You may be using its products without realizing that they’re Unilever brands. Its best-known names in the U.S. include Lipton tea (the world’s most popular branded beverage after Coca-Cola), Hellmann’s mayonnaise, and Dove lotion and soap. Unilever’s top 25 brands account for 75 percent of its sales. “We have some of the world’s best known and most loved brands,” Lawrence says.

Lawrence lives in London, where Unilever is based, but he retains many of the Twin Cities ties he forged during his nine years as the top financial officer at General Mills and, before that, two years as CFO at that former local corporate stalwart, Northwest Airlines. He also continues to serve on the board of overseers for the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.

Lawrence returned to Minneapolis in July to address the school’s First Tuesday luncheon gathering. After the address and an interview, it’s clear that his move to Unilever has catapulted Lawrence into one of the most influential CFO posts in the world.

Unilever’s Universe

Unlike many transnationals, Unilever is not dominated by its home country either through its sales or the nationality of its highest-ranking officers. Its two largest markets, the United States and the United Kingdom, account for just 17 percent and 6 percent, respectively, of overall sales. Almost all of the rest of the business is scattered across 100 countries.

Unilever draws its top management team from four continents. Lawrence and two others in the company’s 10-member cabinet are from the U.S. Two other members are from India and one each is from France, the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, and Zimbabwe.