Listening begins at home

Procter & Gamble has long been regarded as a major power of the marketing world and a prime training ground for marketers. But in the summer of 2000, with half of P&G's top 15 brands losing market share and employee morale in ruins, company executives realized that the marketing organization was in trouble. Training programs had been dramatically downsized and in some cases eliminated, employees were being fast-tracked up the career ladder without sufficient time to develop and hone their skills, mentoring had all but disappeared, and the marketing career path had lost its prestige. In an attempt to rebuild P&G's marketing strength, James Stengel, the heir apparent to the chief marketing officer position, began working with University of Cincinnati professors Chris Allen and Andrea Dixon on a new training program to fix the weaknesses in the marketing organization. But when the two professors began interviewing P&G senior executives, they discovered that the plans in motion for mapping out the marketing group's recovery were based not on data but on the intuition of a few individuals at corporate headquarters. So began the most comprehensive internal research endeavor in P&G marketing's history. Using the company's existing process for consumer research, Allen and Dixon shadowed employees, conducted one-on-one interviews, held focus-group sessions, and surveyed 3,500 members of the marketing staff to learn what the company was doing right--and wrong--and what mattered most to its people. The results led to the most sweeping redesign of P&G's marketing organization in 60 years. In this article, the authors explore the value of listening to employees--and truly hearing them. One of their conclusions: A structured research process can show you what's really on employees' minds.