On 22nd of June I attended an ACCJ event “Sustained innovation: knowledge-based leadership the P&G way” by Ravi Chaturvedi, president of P&G Far East. Mr Chaturvedi talked about:

“the P&G ideal known as “knowledge-based leadership,” a systemic, cultural approach to enabling employee fulfillment. Basically, it puts the power in the hands of the people, which allows each employee to control his or her own destiny and not be dependent on the hierarchical leadership in the company to win in the market.”

P&G’s basically hires their staff at entry level and trains them inside the company. Mr Chaturvedi told the audience that he puts a great emphasis on empowering his staff and creating an environment where work is fun. He mentioned the word “fun” at least a dozen times during his presentation. I spoke with him after his talk about WorkVitamins and mentioned the crucial factor of the work enviroment in being able to create a basis for the staff to have fun. “I had a difficulty convincing the architect about the colours of our current office in Tokyo” Mr Chaturvedi told me, ” the architect wanted to use black, white and grey, which I thought was going to make the office very boring. In the end we decided to use colours to make the place more fun”