The Client: L'Oréal USA
L'Oréal, the worldwide leader in the beauty industry, has over a hundred years of legacy creating breakthrough scientific innovations to meet the diverse beauty needs of consumers around the world. As the largest subsidiary of the L'Oréal Group, L'Oréal USA oversees the company’s operations in the United States, managing a portfolio of more than 30 global brands and serving as the international hub for product development and marketing for the company’s 17 American brands. With 11,000 employees across the U.S., L'Oréal USA must challenge its leaders across geographies, functions and business lines to work collaboratively, anticipate the demands of today’s fast moving beauty marketplace and continue to grow its business.
L'Oréal partnered with MIT Sloan Executive Education to help their senior functional managers in the U.S., Latin America and Canada develop strategic, enterprise-level thinking and apply it to key business challenges across the L'Oréal portfolio of brands. MIT Sloan faculty and Executive Education program designers worked closely with the senior leadership at L’Oréal to develop a custom curriculum that would offer immediate and long-term benefits to the organization.
“This program empowered our employees to unlock innovation at deeper levels of the organization. That’s how you sustain a company for the next 100 years.”
Titled Mastering Business Excellence, the annual program is now in its fourth year and brings 40 senior leaders from L’Oréal to the MIT campus for an immersive six-day session. The program includes rigorous interactive workshops led by MIT faculty that show participants new ways to collaborate by building cross-functional expertise in the areas of strategic marketing, finance and operations. Following the session, participants are assigned case studies with guidance by program Faculty Director Dr. Duncan Simester, NTU Professor of Marketing at MIT Sloan. Findings and key takeaways are then presented to senior brand leaders, including Frederic Rozé, CEO of L'Oréal USA. “The purpose of the program is to help L'Oréal leaders foster cross-functional collaboration, think about new ways of working and think more strategically beyond their functional area,” says Kristin Zecca, Director, Executive Programs at MIT Sloan Executive Education. The goal of the program remains the same for each new group of participants but the projects’ focus changes to reflect the immediate needs of the organization.
“The essence of the program is about the importance of thinking rather than merely executing,” says Dr. Simester. For a company that reacts decisively to product performance on a weekly basis, opportunities for reflection are rare. This program offers participants the space and the time for deeper thinking about the effect of their decisions on the overall enterprise-level business strategy.
MIT’s practical approach to learning—Mens et Manus, mind and hand—along with the Executive Education team’s expertise and custom programing tailored to L'Oréal’s business priorities were the two deciding factors for L'Oréal USA in choosing their education partner. The program’s senior corporate sponsor, Maeve Coburn, Senior Vice President, Learning for Transformation for L'Oréal Americas describes the experience as “le file rouge, a red line that ties together the best insights that MIT professors can share with actionable takeaways so our leaders can actually apply these tools to the business.”
The breadth and depth of knowledge at MIT was another key factor in L'Oréal’s choice. “The work that’s happening at MIT is very current,” says Coburn. “The professors that are working on these executive education programs have their pulse on the industry and have a very open learning mindset to actually understand our reality and help us continue to evolve.”
Coburn sees lasting value in her company’s engagement with MIT, “This type of partnership is not something you enter short term. This is a long-term partnership —that’s where the benefits come. It’s a strategic partnership for us, as we’ve already seen great results over the past four years.”
Participants appreciate the chance to think outside the box using newly learned tools and frameworks. “At L’Oréal, we are very fast moving and are always trying to solve problems quickly. Now, I will always have a mental reminder to take a moment, focus on the right thing and execute on it,” explains Rebecca McFadden, Vice President, Human Resources at L'Oréal USA. After participating, McFadden took her learnings back to L’Oreal USA and eventually went on to manage the program. Chris Kay, a Director in Manufacturing at L'Oréal USA, elaborates, “That was one of the most important takeaways for me personally because it allowed me to not only focus on the business in a different way, but to grow as a leader and change my leadership style from being a pace-setter to engaging those around me more.” Since completing the program, both McFadden and Kay have been tapped by the company’s leadership to take on more senior roles.
“This program is bearing fruit already,” says McFadden. “The work that happens on campus, the way that it is so customized to L'Oréal, the time that the faculty take to really understand our business challenges and to tailor every single minute of the program to be relevant for us—it has such a big effect on the participants, enabling them to make business decisions once they are back in their jobs.”
Shortly after participating in the program, Anncy Rowe had the opportunity to step into a new role as Senior Vice President of Marketing for Garnier and immediately applied her learnings. “You need a North Star. You need a leader who is going to be very strategic and set the vision for the team,” she says. “The week at MIT and the month after really helped build us as leaders and challenged us to develop the right strategies for our business.”