Leading the Trend: Mars' Mission-Driven Transformation

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Poul Weihrauch, the current President and CEO of Mars Inc., served as the Global President of Mars Petcare from 2014 to 2022. Under his leadership, the scale of the Petcare business doubled, and the average annual organic growth rate increased by more than three times. In a conversation with Thomas Malnight, Weihrauch reviewed how he led this traditional business focused on pet food to transform into a leader in the pet health and care field.

Thomas: Poul, let's start by talking about the "mission". Many business leaders talk about mission, but few can truly translate it into strategy and achieve business transformation and growth through it. When you took over Petcare in 2014, how did you proceed?

Poul: First of all, Mars is a company that has long adhered to "principles". We have five core principles - quality, responsibility, reciprocity, efficiency, and freedom. These principles are not just written on paper; they are deeply ingrained in the company's history, culture, and daily operations. This foundation makes it not a strange thing for us to talk about the "mission". However, putting the mission at the center of strategy and decision-making was a brand - new attempt.

Petcare put forward its mission - "Create a better world for pets" as early as 2009. At that time, it was just written on the wall and printed on business cards, without really changing the way we operated. It wasn't until 2015 that we officially integrated the mission into the strategy and made it the core of the business. Mars has a strategic model framework called "OGSM" internally, which stands for Objective, Goals, Strategy, and Measures. At that time, we directly set the "mission" as the highest goal of the Petcare segment, making it no longer an empty slogan but the starting point for all strategies and decisions.

After putting the mission at the core, we realized that the needs of pets and pet owners vary greatly at different stages. If we really want to "create a better world for pets", we must deeply understand these needs and find ways to solve them. This thinking not only changed our business portfolio but also the operation mode of each business unit.

We no longer view the business as a series of vertical product lines but focus on building an overall "pet health ecosystem". For this purpose, we spent a lot of time interviewing thousands of pet owners to discover the pain points they encountered in the process of raising pets. For example, during the adoption stage, many people are confused about what kind of pet to choose, what to feed, which vaccines to give, where to go if the pet is sick, and what to do with the pet during holidays. We comprehensively sorted out the entire pet - raising journey from adoption to the end of life and then thought about the help we could provide one by one.

This "pain - point - based" thinking gradually led us from a single - business company to a platform - based company, and we began to play the roles of "connector" and "enabler".

Take pet food as an example. Royal Canin, a subsidiary, has always focused on the nutritional needs of pets of different breeds and ages and has even developed nutritional solutions for specific health problems. It often collaborates with veterinarians to develop products that support pet health before market demand emerges. We not only strengthened this positioning but also continuously explored how Royal Canin could collaborate with more stakeholders to jointly promote pet health.

Another example is the pet adoption platform. Initially, our goal was to help pet owners find suitable pets. But soon we found that this was not enough. We had to consider the entire adoption process, including how to help families that had to transfer their pets for various reasons. For pets, being sent to a shelter is a huge trauma, and it is the same for the owners. So we developed a "re - homing" platform to help these pets find new families through a peer - to - peer approach, avoiding being sent to shelters. This approach is not only about the well - being of pets but also addresses the pain points of pet owners.

Identifying the "pain points" in the lives of pets and their owners is the key to success.

We also expanded the Whistle platform. Initially, it was a GPS locator installed on pet collars. Now it has evolved into a system that can monitor the activity and health status of pets and is equipped with an online consultation function. For example, when a pet owner wonders, "My dog is always scratching. What should I do?" they can directly click on the platform to connect with a veterinarian and get professional advice.

In this way, we expanded our focus from simple devices to the overall health management of pets, an area that has often lacked sufficient professional and systematic support in the past.

Meanwhile, we expanded our veterinary - related business by entering specialized hospitals and diagnostic laboratories. The diagnostic link is a crucial part of pet health. We acquired a company that produces veterinary diagnostic equipment to help animal hospitals obtain more advanced testing capabilities. In these layouts, we were not restricted by traditional industry boundaries but always judged based on one standard - whether this business could truly improve the lives of pets.

In the process, we also noticed that the situation of veterinarians themselves is not easy. They often carry heavy student loans and sometimes can't fully pay them off until retirement. So we cooperated with financial institutions to help them consolidate loans, reduce interest rates, and provided loan repayment support for veterinarians working in our hospitals and clinics. Although this initiative does not directly increase the company's profits, it actually improves the living conditions of veterinarians, who are the core and indispensable role in pet health.

Another typical investment is the VETgirl platform. It is a digital education platform founded by two veterinarians, dedicated to helping peers learn the latest diagnosis and treatment plans through online courses and live broadcasts. For small - scale veterinary clinics, such educational resources are particularly valuable. By supporting VETgirl, we further expanded our support for the veterinarian community and helped them continue to learn and grow.

The design logic of these platforms always revolves around one starting point: Identify and solve the pain points of key stakeholders at different stages. If we want to achieve the goal of "creating a better world for pets", we must also create a better environment for these stakeholders. The significance of the platforms does not lie in the profitability of individual businesses but in promoting the growth of the entire ecosystem, driving the company's development, and truly implementing the mission.

Therefore, our strategic judgment is clear: We will focus on investing in any business that can promote the "better world for pets", regardless of whether it conforms to traditional industry boundaries. Conversely, if it has nothing to do with the mission, we will not enter even a large and fast - growing market. It is this mission - driven approach that allows us to integrate the "purpose" into the strategic framework and make it the core of all decisions.

When I took over Petcare, I inherited a successful traditional business. But my goal was to drive it to achieve a complete transformation and growth. For this purpose, we launched an innovation exploration process called Pathfinder, which was designed and implemented in cooperation with IMD. The core of Pathfinder is to empower employees and the leadership team to face existing obstacles, actively identify and create long - term sustainable growth opportunities. During the process, we arranged in - depth exchanges with some external companies on specific topics, drew insights from an external perspective, and then fed them back into the organization to break the inherent thinking and stimulate new strategic ideas.

We call this the "outside - in, future - back" way of thinking - both inferring the strategic direction from future possibilities and breaking through internal barriers through external insights. It is this method that helped us lay a new strategic foundation for the future of Petcare.

In the Pathfinder program, we selected 20 high - potential employees from the global business and sent them out of the company to conduct in - depth investigations of 30 high - growth enterprises around the world. Through these studies and exchanges, they summarized four common themes that shape the future:

• Always maintain an "external perspective" and continuously evolve the understanding of stakeholders' needs;
• Start from the integrity of the ecosystem rather than being limited by traditional industry boundaries;
• Focus on real disruptive innovation and avoid falling into the trap of incremental improvement;
• Truly implement the "mission" as the core of the strategy.

These insights not only challenged our Petcare Leadership Team (PLT) but also the entire organization, forcing everyone to rethink the essence of the business and explore new growth paths. Many of the original "Pathfinders" still hold important positions in different business units today, and their contributions have helped us turn the mission from a "nice - sounding phrase" into the foundation for shaping the strategy and the future.

Of course, all this cannot be achieved overnight. At the beginning of the transformation, the biggest challenge we faced was how to build momentum and credibility at the same time. So we made several major acquisitions outside the traditional business - all of which were highly consistent with the mission. Once these initiatives were launched, employees within the organization immediately realized that "they are serious." Actions speak louder than words. People saw that this was not just empty talk but real actions. Next, we had to continuously follow up with new initiatives and mobilize more employees to participate in this journey through continuous communication. Let them feel that the management is not only "talking" but also "doing"; more importantly, this is a common journey that everyone can participate in and contribute to.

Meanwhile, we also had to redefine the business model. In the past, we adopted a typical FMCG (Fast - Moving Consumer Goods) model, emphasizing the scale and efficiency of a single business. However, this obviously could not support our move towards an interconnected ecosystem spanning services, technologies, and solutions. The mission - oriented strategy requires us to break out of the traditional "vertical segments" and instead think about how to connect the entire pet ecosystem. This means that we have to enter completely different new businesses and establish new relationships with stakeholders. This transformation from "transaction to relationship" is the core of the strategy but also sparked a lot of debates and doubts at that time.

In this process, the role of the PLT is crucial. Any leadership team determines the energy and direction of the entire organization. In the past, the structure of the PLT was linked to traditional functions: production, marketing, regional business, etc. The core focus was on efficiency and performance rather than the overall mission. To make the transformation really happen, we had to make the PLT the strategic designer of the company's future and the advocate of the mission.

So we made a major adjustment to the team: reducing the number from 14 to 8, including the heads of each business and key functions such as finance, human resources (which we call People & Organization, P&O), and corporate affairs. Finance is no longer just the gatekeeper of the budget but helps to plan future businesses and shape strategic choices; P&O focuses on building the team, culture, and capabilities to ensure that the entire organization can support the new direction; corporate affairs is responsible for integrating the mission into internal and external narratives and making it the core story of the enterprise. At the same time, we newly established a business unit called Connected Solutions. Although its revenue is negligible, its mission is to promote digitalization, explore disruptive opportunities, and continuously challenge the thinking of traditional businesses. This small team later became one of the most active forces in the PLT discussions.

How did the traditional pet food segment adapt to these new transformation ideas?

This is another important challenge we faced. In any transformation, the traditional business is often the initial resistance. At that time, we had a pet food business with a scale of over $10 billion, and it felt marginalized: the investment seemed to be flowing to new businesses, and it "wasn't getting enough attention." Some people even said bluntly, "We're just paying for your new things." There was indeed some truth behind this sentiment, which brought a lot of resistance for a while.

It took us several years to gradually explore a new model for the pet food business. Fortunately, it finally became a key part of the mission - driven strategy. You know, this business reaches more than 400 million pets and their owners, with a coverage far exceeding that of any of our other businesses. By establishing a deeper relationship with pet owners, we realized that the traditional pet food business is not a "burden" but the most valuable asset for achieving the "better world for pets".

Veterinarians' lives are not easy. Many of them carry debts during their studies.

As your company shifts from focusing on traditional business and transactions to relationship - building, how do you measure the value being created and captured?

During the process of shifting from a "transaction - oriented" to a "relationship - oriented" approach, the way of measuring value also changes.

Of course, we still track hard financial indicators - including the performance of each business and its contribution to the entire Petcare business group. But we have long realized that if we only look at individual businesses and rely solely on traditional financial indicators, it will be a stranglehold on our strategic model.

The mission - driven thinking has expanded and reshaped the boundaries of our business, leading us on a completely different growth path from the past. This is not a linear logic but a brand - new way of definition: since we have redefined "the business I'm in", we must adopt different growth models and measurement methods.

Our platforms are not designed to make money one by one but to support and promote the growth of the entire ecosystem. As long as the ecosystem thrives, our enterprise will also grow, and the mission can be truly implemented.

Therefore, we pay attention to both "hard value" and "soft value" and continuously explore new measurement dimensions. For example, currently we are working hard to solve a grand challenge: ending the problem of pet homelessness. This is not just about serving the pets of our existing customers but about the well - being of all pets. Together with external partners and NGOs, we established a measurement system for stray cats and dogs in 20 countries for the first time and initially estimated that there are about 225 million. Based on this, we launched projects such as adoption, feeding, and sterilization. Even though this goal may never be fully achieved, as part of the global pet health cause, we must get involved.

In my opinion, measurement is important, but measurement does not equal the answer. Especially, we cannot be trapped by short - term financial indicators. The significance of indicators is to help you ask better questions and face the future, not just to evaluate the past.

As a member of a family - owned business, how has this development journey been affected?

As a family - owned business, Mars' private - owned status gives us a unique advantage. Petcare is a cause that makes family members extremely proud because who doesn't want to create a "better world for pets"? I can talk to the company's owners for a long time about how pets relieve loneliness, provide companionship, and reduce stress and anxiety. These daily topics are closely related to our mission and make the mission vivid and specific.

In contrast, for a listed company, with frequent changes in shareholders, it is difficult to have a conversation with the real "owners" and get long - term support. No matter how far - sighted the CEO of a listed company is, without the continuous endorsement of shareholders, it is difficult to promote real long - term transformation. In a family - owned business, the mission and values are the cornerstone for driving business evolution.

Let's return to the topic of the mission. What characteristics should an excellent and effective corporate mission have? And what misunderstandings should enterprises avoid?

The mission must be real, based on a deep understanding of human nature and society, rather than a packaged slogan. It should touch the lives of different stakeholders and have a real external impact, rather than just serving the enterprise's own interests or financial performance.

For example, when I post on LinkedIn, if it is a "mission story", it often gets ten times more attention than product news. Recently, I was at our veterinary business site in the Netherlands, sitting on the office floor with two dogs, being lovingly licked by them. I posted a photo with the caption, "Had a great