WEBVTT

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Dirk, Rich, welcome.

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Dirk, to you first.

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There's so much talk about AI,
but how are you seeing it transform

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Mondelēz the most?

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Where do you expect most of the resources
to kind of go?

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Yes.

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So AI is super interesting,
and it's really booming.

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I think the big risk for a company like
ours is that we start to experiment in

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different areas, and it's not easy,
not cheap to implement.

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And then the return on investment becomes
really difficult.

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And so I think you can really go all in
in AI if it's transformational for the

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company. And that's where all our focus should go.

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So what is transformational for us?

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The way we relate to consumers—and if we
could transform that in the way we

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produce communication,
the way we connect to them,

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the way we understand them—that is
transformational for us.

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The way we run our supply chain and how
AI could optimize our plans,

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our logistics—

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and so sort of an all encompassing
approach to the supply chain—that would

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be a second big area for us.

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And then the third one would be
internally,

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as we work with the people in the
business,

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how can we make everything
self-serve and AI driven

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Those would be the three big areas for me
where AI could really have an impact on

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the business.

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Building on transformation more broadly,
Rich, I suppose,

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what are the imperatives for leaders?

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Where are the opportunities?

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What advice would you have for anyone
going through that process?

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It's interesting because we did a lot of
research on this recently

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that's pretty timeless.

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And then there's some things of the
moment that Dirk just started and I'll

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pick up on.

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The timeless part is great
transformations.

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And by that I mean things that at the end
let a company grow faster relative to the

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market than it did before and create more
shareholder value relative to the market

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than it did before.

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Those are hard to come by.

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And when they come by them,
it's because people have balanced discipline

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on the one hand—it is a discipline
process to go through—with creativity,

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with a mindset to how will we unlock
innovation and growth.

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And they balance winning in the medium
term with delivering value in the shorter term.

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You've got to do both.

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It's not an either-or.

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So when you say how do you break those
two paradoxes,

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one thing is often having one leader who
can look across everything matters.

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We find when a chief transformation
officer is involved,

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it really ups the odds of success quite
dramatically.

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Second is around narrative—being clear,
what are we trying to achieve both near

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term and medium term,
both internally and externally in a very

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aligned way.

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A third thing is not shortchanging
innovation.

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Actually in many cases, upping R&D
spend at least relative to peers in the

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market is a differentiator in terms of
performance.

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And those things I listed all go back in
time pretty well.

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But just to pick up on what you said,
it was so important.

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Making AI work as part of transformation
now is a big deal.

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And it's a big deal not just to make it
work in pilots and small settings where

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you control the data,
you control the team,

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you control the environment.

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It's how to make AI at scale have impact.

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And making AI at scale have impact means
one,

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you can't do too many efforts at once
because they take a lot of work to really

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address it.

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Second,
really focusing on the human aspects of

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it, not just—and you mentioned that as among

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the things you were listing—that it's
about the human elements of embracing AI,

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figuring on how it really gets used,

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reskilling the organization,
building new muscle,

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changing the silos that often get in the
way,

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alongside getting the algorithms right
and the tech and data platforms right.

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So I think that's a new element to
transformation,

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which has now become quite important.

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We're in a period of great disruption.

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There's so much going on, isn't there,
in this space. I suppose,

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How do you keep calm while others around
you are losing their heads?

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You know, what are you focusing on?
It seems like there's so many things

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coming at you from all different directions:

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consumer expectations, AI, transformation,
geopolitics.

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Yeah, it is a sporty environment, I would say.

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Sporty's a good word.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Most of the time I don't feel sporty.

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But anyway,
I would say trying to predict what's

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going to happen has become—and we do a
lot of risk management—

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we try to list all the risks that we
could potentially face,

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and are we preparing ourselves for that?
Then the risk really materializes—

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a pandemic.

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Well, that wasn't on our list.

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No. The fast growth of AI
—that wasn't on our list.

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The disruption of the cocoa supply
chain—wasn't on our list.

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So the problem has become that you—it's
very difficult to really know where the

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next challenge will come from.

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And so I think the secret is to create an
organization that is ready for anything.

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That is,
that knows they will be surprised by

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certain things,
but that they are not surprised in the end.

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Making that,

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oh yeah, OK,
we got the cocoa supply chain being disrupted.

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OK, we'll deal with it.

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And this is what we do.
That I think keeps everybody calm and

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there's confidence we can deal with it.

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That is critical in these times,
I would say.

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And then you need to adapt very fast.

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You can't lose a lot of time.

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So agility,
speed has also become very important.

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So it's more—for me,
the most important thing is the mindset

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of the organization,
the preparation of the organization,

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and then the reaction to what happens.

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Create an organization that's ready for
anything, Rich.

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That's the dream, isn't it?

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Yes, but there's a really—there's several

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important points in what Dirk just said.

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One is how much resilience has grown as a
top of mind issue.

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If you compare CEOs today versus CEOs six
years ago in 2019, I would say in 2019,

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everybody was just so focused on
performance, performance, performance,

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and they created more brittle and often
more rigid enterprises to extract every

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last ounce of performance out of the
enterprise.

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After six years of pandemics and
inflation and supply chain shock and now

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tariffs and all of the pressures we're
feeling,

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CEOs of this generation understand
resilience in such a deeper way.

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And you highlighted several of the points.

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It's about how do you think in advance of
what could happen,

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even though you'll never get it exactly
right,

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because it makes people more ready for
different shots that could come along.

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How do you respond in the moment?

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And how do you create more adaptive,
agile enterprises so they're not brittle,

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so that they can respond more quickly,
so that they can work together in teams

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that often need to form just in the
moment?

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Right now,
people are putting in tariff command

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centers.

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Who would have thought of a tariff
command center a year ago?

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But you need to bring different parts of
the organization together.

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They need to think dynamically between
supply chain, pricing,

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the government affairs teams.

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So I think that resilient mindset has
grown so much in importance.

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And frankly,
there's no sign of that becoming less

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important

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looking out ahead.

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I think this is the world we're in right
now, don't you think?

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Yeah, yeah.

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I don't think it's going to change
anytime soon.

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And the one that I would add to all this
in the CPG industry is the consumer is

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also fundamentally changing.

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So the way we've always thought about the
consumer is severely being disrupted at

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the moment.

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So we talked all about the shocks that
come to us externally,

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but our fundamental model to connect with
and delight consumers is also under pressure.

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And so there, it's less about resilience,
but it's more about how do we every day

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understand the consumer better and how do
we find solutions that even when they

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feel pressured in pricing or whatever it
is that they still keep on buying our

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products—that is probably one of the
biggest challenges that we also face.

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That's fantastic.

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Dirk, Rich, a pleasure, as always.

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Thank you so much.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.