The Unilever North Africa & Middle East Way of Working
“A CEO’s Brew, stirred with Passion, Purpose & Humility” by Sanjiv Mehta, offers an insightful blend of leadership lessons, personal experiences, and reflections from a remarkable corporate journey. He shares how passion fuels ambition, purpose gives direction, and humility keeps leadership grounded. Through candid stories and practical wisdom, Sanjiv Mehta shares perspectives on navigating change, building people- centric organisations, and creating lasting impact.
CHAPTER: “THE NAME WAYS OF WORKING”
The chapter “The NAME Ways of Working” captures a distinctive leadership philosophy built around collaboration, ownership, agility, and respect for people. It shows how a shared way of working can transform organisational culture, turning values into everyday behaviours and collective performance. This chapter captures the author’s learnings and experiences with the North Africa and Middle East (NAME) team at Unilever, during his time leading the region. The following section presents the leadership approach shared in the book, in the author’s own words.
i. Overarching theme for team meetings
• Our meetings should produce the quality and quantity of decisions required to drive superior performance. • Our focus should be to spend time productively. • Agendas should be focussed and disciplined with minimal ad-hoc agenda items. • Agendas should not be based on ‘first in, first on’. • We should not let the urgent crowd out the important. • We should structure our meeting to produce real decisions and not just ‘information sharing’ or ‘group input’.
ii. Measure the real value of every item on the agenda
• We should prioritize based on ‘value at stake.’ • We should not let tactical issues drown us.
WE SHOULD NOT LET THE URGENT CROWD OUT THE IMPORTANT. WE SHOULD STRUCTURE OUR MEETINGS TO PRODUCE REAL DECISIONS AND NOT JUST INFORMATION SHARING.
• We should create ‘decision agenda’ comprising the most important opportunities and problems the company faces.
iii. Focus on decisions and not just on discussions
• All reading materials were required to be distributed to the participants at least three working days before the meeting. • All reading materials were required to have a cover sheet specifying precisely why people were being asked to read them, i.e. for information purposes only / for discussion and debate (in which case key issues were highlighted) / for planning and deciding a course of action. • Since the purpose of each agenda item was to be clearly indicated and all materials were to be reviewed in advance, LT members could then focus on making decisions on important issues rather than having issues explained in lengthy PowerPoint presentations.
iv. Treat delay as the worst form of denial
• We needed to have a rigorous process for getting issues offthe agenda as we did for getting the right issues on it in the first place. • Imperative that we have a clear way to resolve them. • Unambiguous timetable detailing when and how decisions will be reached / issue closed.
v. Improve the leadership team’s capacity to take quality decisions
Our decision-making process should be fact based, alternatives driven and consequential:
• Fact based: should be based on rigour and analysis with financial and non-financial information provided. • Alternatives driven: before any recommendations are made, alternatives should be presented for scrutiny and debate.
• Consequential: after a decision is reached it should be embedded in our business operating plan, and its subsequent performance must be carefully monitored.
vi. We should end with alternatives
• Once the right issues are on table, the most important requirement for effective strategic decision-making was to present viable options. • We should have real alternatives (not just minor variations of a single theme) before any strategy was discussed and approved. We should also understand what we are rejecting.
vii. We should make decisions stick
• ‘Operations Plan’, gate contracts and other key decisions should become a formal performance contract which should lay down the resources required to execute as well as the financial results that are pledged to be delivered. • There should neither be ambiguity about resources required nor the results.
viii. Norms of behaviour
• Decisions taken in LT meetings should be final. • Teams were free to debate any decision but once the decision was taken there would be no more debate. • No ‘I didn’t agree with this, but I’ll do it anyway’ halfway conversations.
ix. Deal with operations and strategy separately but seamlessly
• Reviewing operating performance and taking strategic decisions were distinct activities requiring different modes of discussions and different mindsets. • We should focus both on operations to bring excellence and on strategy to bring clarity on what needs to be done. • Balanced scorecards, category deep dives and business unit deep dives should be used to drive operational excellence.
WE SHOULD HAVE REAL ALTERNATIVES (NOT JUST MINOR VARIATIONS OF A SINGLE THEME) BEFORE ANY STRATEGY WAS DISCUSSED AND APPROVED. WE SHOULD ALSO UNDERSTAND WHAT WE ARE REJECTING.
During his five-year tenure leading Unilever’s North Africa and Middle East (NAME) cluster from 2008 to 2013, Sanjiv Mehta delivered market-beating, double-digit growth across 20 emerging markets. Even amid the global financial crisis and the Arab Spring, he successfully strengthened both revenue growth and profitability. His journey reflects how purposeful, resilient, and people-centred leadership can turn uncertainty into opportunity and create lasting organisational impact.
Sanjiv Mehta is an illustrious Indian business executive who brings four decades of extensive consumer industry experience to his corporate leadership roles. Out of his 40-year professional journey, he dedicated 32 years to Unilever, successfully managing businesses across 25 diverse countries. During his transformational 10-year tenure as the CEO and Managing Director of Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL), he exponentially expanded the company’s financial footprint. Notably, under his guidance, HUL’s market capitalization skyrocketed fivefold from $17 billion to an impressive $76 billion before his retirement in 2023.
Unilever Bangladesh (2002–2006): As Chairman and Managing Director, he and his team transformed Unilever Bangladesh into one of the top- performing and most respected businesses in the region, delivering strong double-digit growth (crossing the 20% growth barrier in 2005 and 2006) and winning wide recognition as a “crown jewel” of the parent company.
Unilever Philippines (2007–2008): Under his leadership, the Philippines team restored double-digit growth, improved profitability, and wrested market leadership in the shampoo category from its main rival. For these all-around superior results, Unilever Philippines was awarded the coveted internal Unilever ‘Serve, Grow and Deliver’ Award.
