P&G's New CEO: Staying Inside the Box

Procter & Gamble’s new CEO, Robert McDonald, is probably not much of an entrepreneur, judging by his resume. Rather, he’s an institutions man. He’s comfortable with large, structured, pre-existing organizations that already have well-established org-charts. And now he controls the largest ad budget in a world that looks very little like the company that has succored him from Day 1 of his non-military career.

From 1975 to 1980 he was in the military. He got an MBA from the University of Utah in 1978. Then in 1980 he joined P&G and has never worked anywhere else, according to Brandweek.

Although he obviously has a wide range of experiences — Bloomberg noted that he has “certification” in jungle, Arctic and desert warfare, and speaks French and Japanese — it raises the question of how comfortable he is going to be in a world where things only get faster, looser and less formal. Think of it as the difference between desert warfare training and actually having experience knocking on doors in Baghdad trying to find insurgents’ weapons caches.

Take a look at the expanded view of McDonald’s profile in BusinessWeek. You’ll notice that, like his professional career, his extracurricular activities scream “establishment, conservative, traditional!” A couple of examples: Governor of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan, Far East Council Boy Scouts Member, Moderator at Kobe Union Church Council, and so on.

None of this is bad, of course. P&G is a giant bureaucracy that has thrived as such, despite internal efforts to make it less so. If he was an entrepreneur or a rebel he would have left long ago.

McDonald has said he wants to make P&G flatter, according to the WSJ. But how far does his imagination stretch? Not far, according to Ad Age. Here’s his opinion of books:

“I get impatient from novels, because I’m always looking for something to learn from it, something to change my life,” he said. “I’ve read all the great novels — ‘War and Peace,’ ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ And when another great one comes out, I will read it.

So, er, there hasn’t been a “great” novel since since 1960? The books he does like are self-affirming management tomes such as “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” by Stephen Covey.

The most interesting thing about McDonald’s appointment from a marketing point of view is that P&G passed over Susan Arnold, P&G’s president of global business units. Bloomberg:

As head of P&G’s beauty business, she almost tripled its size to $20 billion from $7 billion in 1999. Her departure cleared the way for McDonald’s elevation, investors said at the time. She didn’t return a call seeking comment.

That’s right — this is a company mostly focused on marketing to women and yet has passed over a woman to choose as its leader a man who can kill his enemies with his bare hands.

As this source told Marketing in the UK:

My guess is that P&G has set its course for the next five years and needs a hard-boiled operations man to implement it.

Expect P&G staff and their agencies to man-up, starting now.