The Startup Magazine Michael Polk Shares How Smaller Companies Can Offer Big Leadership Development Opportunities

For experienced large company executive Michael Polk, the decision to serve as an executive of a smaller private company was a significant choice.  Polk has decades of experience driving change and transformation at large public companies, with an illustrious career working at Procter & Gamble, Kraft Foods, Unilever, and Newell Brands, where he was CEO from 2011 to 2019.

While Polk believes he grew tremendously as a leader and executive in his over 35 years in large public companies, he believes the growth one can get in smaller, private companies can be equally rewarding and the challenges test leaders in different ways earlier in one’s career.  

Polk came out of retirement in 2020 to lead the transformation of Private Equity firm Berkshire Partners’ portfolio company, Implus LLC.  Implus is a leading Fitness Accessories Portfolio company with 16 brands in the portfolio and a multi-national footprint.

Polk joined Implus just as the pandemic began to take hold in early 2020 and has led Implus through the many waves of pandemic-related disruptions, transforming the company’s operating model and strengthened the financial performance, while simultaneously building new capabilities that position the company to deliver sustained organic sales growth into the future.  

Through this experience, Polk has seen young members of his team rise into leadership moments they would never have had the opportunity to tackle at larger more established companies and grow professionally in “leaps and bounds” by as Polk says “learning through doing.” 

“One of the most rewarding aspects of my time with Implus has been to help lead the development of our team and to observe the growth of our people through the work they are doing to strengthen the company,” said Polk

Michael Polk Believes Leaders Can Get Broader Experiences Faster in Small Companies

Polk believes large companies give leaders the opportunity to develop deep competencies and expertise and grow and develop through the breadth of experiences large companies can provide.  Skills are developed over time (typically many years) and set leaders up to be able to recognize and adapt to different leadership moments to make the right decisions in the right moments.  This deliberate and patient talent development model is one of the benefits that come with scale and diversification in large companies.  

While a very effective development model, Polk says the leadership development tradeoff versus a small company for the individual is time.  “I spent the first decade after graduate school building my portfolio of marketing, brand building and sales skills while also having the opportunity to learn from the different consumer franchises and dynamics associated with different brands and category assignments,” said Polk.  “While I was building technical skills, more senior leaders had accountability to make the larger business tradeoff decision and as leaders we grew by observing how others led in those moments of choice.” 

In smaller companies, Polk said there are fewer resources “so younger talent gets thrust into making bigger leadership choices much earlier in their career . . .  they grow and learn by doing” says Polk.   “As a corollary, senior leaders are drawn deeper into the business as player coaches and have to help their people in those moments of choice and also manage risk.” 

As a consequence of being small, the organization from top to bottom tends to have far less layers and the exposure can also be much broader to issues one might never get exposed to like working capital management, cash flow delivery, sourcing and manufacturing, logistics and as well as the commercial issues related to retailers and marketplaces.

Polk says his current role as CEO of Implus is Rewarding and Incredibly Fun

In his role as CEO of a multi-billion-dollar public company from 2011 to 2019, Polk was leading an organization of over 50,000 people.  He was named by Institutional Investor Magazine to The All-America Executive Team as Best CEO in the Consumer Goods industry in 2017 and 2018.  He is very proud of what he and his team built at Newell Brands building that company from $5 billion in enterprise value in 2011 to over $15 billion when he retired, completely restructuring the company from a holding company to an operating company and transforming the portfolio through 35 transactions over an eight-year span as CEO. He was also Chairman of the People and Organization Committee and member of the Board of Directors of Colgate-Palmolive for nine years and Chairmen of the Compensation Committee and member of the Board of Directors of Logitech International.

Despite all the accolades and achievements, Polk says he is having the “time of his professional life” building Implus LLC into what he expects will be a bigger, better, and highly competitive fitness and active lifestyle consumer goods company by the time he passes the baton to the next leader.  He describes the work he does today as a “back to the future moment” because he gets to do all the things he loved doing as a marketing and sales executive earlier in his career.  

Polk is quick to point out that the accountability for delivery is no different as CEO of a large public company or a mid-cap private company like Implus. Polk says, “I had a Board of Directors and shareholders I was accountable to at Newell Brands and I have a Board of Directors and owners I am accountable to at Implus LLC . . . I had and have responsibility for driving value creation in both circumstances and I have been fortunate to have achieved that goal at Newell and so far at Implus.”

Polk says the biggest difference at Implus is that as CEO “I spend much more time doing the brand and business development work directly with my team as opposed to focusing on resource allocation and having to work through layers in the organization to influence the demand-creation or cost-reduction choices people are making . . . I am right there with them in the crucible helping them make the choices that are going to drive our business forward.” 

Polk says that just makes the work so much fun.