Marina Hong Mealin

▶0:00HostWelcome to the Built by People podcast, where we share the stories and insights of the world's top HR leaders. Join us as we dive deep into the minds of HR executives, uncovering their strategies, challenges, and triumphs in shaping today's workforce. I'm excited to welcome Marina to the Built by People podcast. Marina, thank you so much for joining us. And as a starting question, I always love to ask if you could share a little bit more about your career journey.

▶0:49GuestThank you for having me, Dave. My career journey. Wow. There's not just one path. I think I've been going zigzagging. I am originally from Singapore. That's where I started my career. The first 10 to 15 years is really in total rewards, and then I spin out from there. Instead of going through my CV, let me just share maybe a few of my milestones of what lessons I've learned through my career. I want to say the first one is really on customer service, and that I learned when I was in American Express because that's just the culture of it, customer service. And then after that, I was in Mercer, which is a consulting company. Carrying the bag and really understanding where the customer comes from and having the pressures of the P&L, right? It's like you've got targets you need to hit, really brings home the message that, you know, in human resources, it's not just the P&L, but the people that is behind everything that you do marries both together. And so customer service and people really came through. The second piece really was in when I was moving countries. I moved from Singapore to Germany at that time, and that was navigating through different cultures, and that was with Linda Yee Gee. Different cultures, different language. Oh my gosh, with a very young family, 3 little boys at the time, with my husband, it was quite a feat of major challenges, but at the same time, the best times of our lives because once you go through the challenges, you realize the rewards that come afterwards, it's just amazing, right? So that's something that I really learned. It was also the time where I learned about leading teams. And later on in Becton Dickinson, it was global roles. Again, it came in very useful in everything that I'd done so far. Leading teams came through with navigating different cultures, different expectations. And then the latest I've been with Bayer right now is how do you do transformation? The enterprise mindset, and then really going through coaching C-suites. So that's what I've done so far, and the journey continues. Every day is a learning process.

▶3:00HostRena, can you tell us about a specific moment during Bayer's dynamic shared ownership transformation that really showcased the power of this new approach? What happened and how did it change things?

▶3:13GuestGreat. So, Dave, maybe a very few minutes to share what dynamic shared ownership is. So we've been on this transformation for the last 18 months, and there's 5 key areas here. First is putting the mission first so that we are very purposeful of what we're doing, that collaborative mindset of working in cross-functional teams, and then putting the customer first. If we put the customer first, everything else revolves around it. And we went into rapid cycles of how we would go about putting these cross-functional teams together, and then empowering the teams and the people to make a lot of these choices of where they want to go and how they're going to go and deliver for the customers and for themselves as part of the learning. So with that, let me give you an example, Dave. So here we are with One A Day vitamins that, that is one of the brands that we've got. Our sales is not doing as well. At the same time, we realize that it is an unmet need because about 60% of women that want to get pregnant are also facing the fact that they're not taking prenatal vitamins. And so that could actually impact birth defects. So with that in mind, this team was a cross-functional team. So in the past, you would just have of salesperson or a marketing team that is not in tandem doing different things. Now we've brought the whole team together. So in this pod, as we call it, there's manufacturing, there's a person from marketing, that could be somebody from regulatory, the salesperson, and maybe even the finance or HR. In there, they lock themselves up and they went into rapid cycles of 90 days looking for the outcome of that vitamin one a day. To get from R&D all the way to out the door into the hands of the customer takes more than a year, in this instance, 18 months or even longer. They did this in record time and shortened it by a year. So to do that, to meet the unmet needs, going out to the market a lot faster because of how the structure is being made, how the mindsets are coming through, has been really phenomenal. Ultimately, the people feel fulfilled and empowered. And then, like I've mentioned, customers come first, but because they put that into their mindset, it really gets a lot quicker. So it's been very impactful.

▶5:40HostReena, how does your team practically implement the shift from traditional job roles to skills-based progression? Can you walk us through a specific example?

▶5:50GuestOkay. So HR plays a very pivotal role in making sure that happens. So what we've done so far is you need to take a look at structure, mindset, and then what types of tools that you have that you can do this. If you only look at one component, I don't think that's going to really come through. So structure, what did we do? We made sure that we used to do a lot of these job descriptions and then look at jobs. Now that we're moving into skills-based progression, it also means that you need to have a structure in place. I just mentioned to you the other example earlier, Dave. It used to be that if you're in sales, you're in sales all the way through, or you're marketing. But now that we have put people in pods, you're learning different skill sets. And in there, it means then today if I'm in HR, tomorrow if I want to go into marketing, there'll be baseline kind of skills that you have, and then you build on top and say, hey, what other skills do I need? And because you're in these pods, it's so much easier to pick up those new skills that you otherwise would not get because you're very functionally built. And so that structure is going to be important. And we've put in this platform called a talent marketplace. So in there, we've got jobs or projects that we're looking for. So for this example of One A Day, they could be advertising, hey, I'm looking for an HR person, I'm looking for a finance person who has these skills, and you want to go into rapid cycles with us. For the next 2 cycles or 90 days. So you apply that, and the person, you know, that is looking for it in the talent marketplace, that's why it's called a talent marketplace, because if you're that individual and you're looking for different skills, this is where you would go into that platform to look for it. And as a hiring manager, I am looking in there for people with that skill and maybe be able to tap them on the shoulders and say, hey Dave, would you like to come join me? This is the mission that I'm trying to go solve for the next 180 days. So that tool has been tremendous. And Dave, the last part, as I've mentioned, is this mindset shift. If you're jobs and you think that you have job security and you only wanna do HR, that's good and fine. But if you're looking to expand and wanna do something else, this is the opportunity and it is very much what we call self-authored. This is where I wanna go. This is where I get energy from. These are the skills I want to pick up.

▶8:11HostMarina, when was a time you had to help leaders or teams rewire their hardwired brains during a transformation, and what specific strategies worked?

▶8:23GuestWe have also, Dave, in this whole transformation, gone in to redescribe what we think is very important in terms of the leadership behaviors and mindset. I've mentioned earlier about the enterprise mindset, but also what we're looking for in leadership skills would be 4 things. The first one is visionary, being a visionary to be able to inspire and be transparent and articulate where we're going in the longer run. The A, A is actually the architecture work. As a leader, we're expecting that you'll be able to architect what the future looks like so that the rest can follow you and be able to co-create what that architecture work looks like for the future. The other two are really coach and the last one. Here we are, VACC, coach and catalyst. The coach is, I don't think we need to describe what a coach is. It's really being able to go out there and work with the teams to be able to help them develop the skills that they're looking for. And the catalyst is really being that ability to ignite new thoughts, new creativity, new mindset, so then others can follow. So with this new guidance, it's really shifted the mindset of our leaders, but also our teams, of how we're going to go forward.

▶9:49HostReina, how are you measuring the success of moving from career ladders to career progression at Bayer. Can you share a story of someone who has benefited from that approach?

▶10:02GuestYes, absolutely, Dave. I am that beneficiary, and just like me, others have as well. So going from career ladders to career progression, I stepped out of HR for 18 months. While I was doing HR, I also had to do the transformation, and I had to put on my enterprise mindset, Dave. I think there's a few basic skills that you go in with. It's this curiosity to want to learn and that almost take away the fear of failure and said, hey, why not just try that? So I think that has been very much the culture that we're building as new skills in Bayer. So what I have done so far, Dave, I have been with Bayer for 4 years and I've had 4 various different roles. That's pretty much unheard of in a big corporation like Bayer. So when I took on the North America HR head role, I was then tapped on the shoulder, hey, would you want to do this transformation on top of what you're doing? So I was one of the original, I want to say, dozen of us that went into this and said, hey, what does this look like if we're putting our customer first and if we're looking at the basis of making this a turnaround business and really accelerating the growth? What would it look like for our customers? And so all the things that I've shared with you, whether it's the mindset shift or the VACC and other things, it is the co-creation and leveraging all these, all these brilliant minds of my dear colleagues and I coming together and just co-creating. So it's been quite a journey, Dave, and I think like myself, others have come along this journey and it's benefiting from having these cross-functional, cross-divisional projects.

▶11:52HostReena, what parting advice would you like to share with our community?

▶11:56GuestBe bold. Be that change. Either follow the change that others have made or be that shaper and uplift others. If you don't, why be here? Because there's so many people, in my opinion, that have uplifted me. It is now my time to do, and I hope that if we can all do that, It will be fantastic. The world would be so much better.

▶12:18HostRaina, thank you so much for joining us today on the Built by People podcast. It was a pleasure to have you involved.

▶12:24GuestThank you for having me.