Originally posted on 26 September 2018
At the beginning of September, Christina Bauer-Plank became the Global Brand Vice President for Hellmann’s, adding yet another high-profile role to her stellar career at Unilever. It has been this – the opportunity to follow her passion and inner drive to take on professional and personal challenges – that has seen Bauer-Plank remain at the global consumer goods company for 22 years of her working life. Indeed, embracing new frontiers is at the very core of who this business leader is. After all, when she finished school in the late 1980s, she chose to study chemistry at the University of Vienna because she wanted to do something “really challenging and not typical”. “I’m curious and ambitious and I aim for personal mastery, in most of what I do.” With chemistry, this mastery took the form of earning a PhD. In her working life, it was to transition out of R&D after five years and into the world of brands and marketing when she took up the position of Brand Manager Spreads Europe in 2002. And in terms of her personal growth, it was through earning an MBA from RSM Erasmus University in 2002, as a way of boosting her general management skills. We chatted to Bauer-Plank about her career progression, role-modelling and the importance of flexibility and curiosity in a fast-changing world.
Your career is a fantastic example of growth and reinvention in a single company. What has been the highlight of your two-decades plus time at Unilever?
One of the most important highlights for me, and the reason why I’m still with the company after 22 years, has been the opportunity I’ve been given to work in so many different roles. Unilever has a system of job rotation where every couple of years you move on to a new role which offers a new set of learning opportunities, both professional and personal. It could be working on a new brand or category, with people from many different countries and cultures, or even changing to a totally different function. In my case, it was moving from R&D into brands and marketing. Progressing through many different roles doesn’t only keep the work interesting and fresh but it’s also an amazing learning and development opportunity. You are constantly evolving your skills and building your leadership, and this is what has kept it interesting for me.
What motivated you to transition out of Unilever’s R&D department and into marketing?
A whole new world opened up for me when I joined the company. Quite quickly - it wasn’t more than two or three years - I realised that my interests were moving far beyond R&D and technology. I started becoming extremely interested in many different aspects of business – primarily in consumers and marketing. You may ask why those areas, especially for someone who had been on a science academic track before joining the company. Well, on the one hand, both of these elements really define Unilever as a consumer goods company. But I also discovered that I had a real passion for consumers – and was driven by a desire to understand and serve them. I wanted to know what their needs were and then work on how better to meet these through innovation and communication, as well as the different aspects of marketing. Even after all these years, I still love marketing the most as a function. It’s very broad in its own right and covers the full spectrum – from creativity, innovation and consumer proximity, to the other side of hard numbers and commercial imperatives. Marketing’s breadth really plays to my strengths of being multifaceted and versatile, and it taps into my different interests and abilities.
MBA from RSM Erasmus University
You went into Unilever with a PhD in chemistry but you’ve since added an MBA to your qualifications. What was the value of this?
I am always hungry to learn new things. That was the primary motivation for doing my MBA at RSM Erasmus. But I also realised that I was interested in understanding much more about business and I wanted to educate myself and build my ability and competence to operate in the areas of marketing, finance and general management. I found the two years of the executive business programme such a treat. It was challenging as I was working and had had my first child. But I was inspired by the topics and the Professors. And I really loved the network of individuals that I met doing the MBA – colleagues from many different professional backgrounds who were willing to share and exchange their experiences before and after classes. Sometimes people ask if you really need an MBA. It really helped me – not just because of what I learnt during those two years and the connections that I made, but because of the way that it boosted my self-confidence and my self-belief. It encouraged me to switch into marketing and, after that, to take many more courageous steps into challenging management roles.
Speaking of challenges, what have been the most significant ones that you have faced during your career?
Of course, there have been many professional challenges – complex business environments, business turnarounds to manage. But professional challenges are, for me, simply part of working life. The bigger challenges have been at the interface of work and life. I was already in fairly demanding professional roles when I had my children and my husband was also working. We didn’t have any grandparents or family around as they are all in Austria, and so at times it wasn’t easy to keep all the balls in the air. This is something that I think many working women can recognise. But we worked it out and we grew through it. I learnt that you have to be well organised, have all your ducks in a row and set up a support system. I am blessed to have a super supportive partner and I also have a good level of resilience. My career at Unilever has had an exciting international element – I’ve worked in France and Poland - and moving to new places has taught my children flexibility and an open mind and has also nurtured their ability to manage whatever situation might be thrown at them, enjoying the new and staying curious.
Embracing Transformation and Reinvention
You’ve mentioned resilience in yourself. What are the other skills that have helped you navigate to the top of Unilever?
Agility and the curiosity to learn new things, to discover and to reinvent. These are core aspects of who I am. They are also very important in the current working environment – in a time when the change that we are experiencing is incomparable with anything we have seen before. Even within this fast-changing context, change will never be as slow as it is today. We live in a time of massive acceleration and disruption in all industries and the only way you can keep contributing and leading the way is to embrace transformation and reinvent yourself.
You are a great role-model for women in business – especially in the way you embrace everything that comes your way. How important are role-models in business, and, indeed, life?
I believe that women in senior positions have a hugely important role to play – particularly in inspiring young women to unshackle themselves from their fears and self-limiting beliefs. I seldom see limitations in ability, but I do see limitations in how young women view themselves and the vision they have for what they can achieve. This starts young because there remains a gender bias in education. I always encourage young women to go for higher education, to push themselves to choose difficult subjects and then, once they have entered the workforce, to be ambitious, go out of their comfort zone and take risks. I find it so rewarding when I can inspire and support young colleagues in their careers, and coach them to discover what it is that they want to achieve. It’s a personal privilege to do that. I also think that senior women have a role to play in transforming the organisations they work for - by calling out gender bias, challenging stereotypes and changing those parts of corporate culture and policies that don’t support the growth of women. Diversity and inclusion is a top priority for Unilever at large and in every aspect of the business - and I am proud to be part of this change. I believe passionately in women supporting each other and am committed to continue pave the way. And the most important thing is making women believe in themselves.