Rakesh Kapoor, born in India, became the new CEO of Reckitt Benckiser Plc (behind brand such as Dettol, Disprin and Cherry Blossom) in August 2011. He was recently interviewed in the Indian magazine Business Today.
According to him, when taking over the company as the new CEO, the main goal was to make sure that the company would keep being as successful as it was before. The organization structure needed to focus around consumers. Therefore, the company identified 6 major consumer clusters for growth and called it BRICAM which refers to Brazil, Russia, India, China, Africa and Middle East.
The company has always been aggressive, in a good way, and entrepreneurial when it comes to India. It has also this edginess where it is able to take risks. According to Kapoor, being unreasonable is a good quality CEOs should have. Indeed, you better not get into too much detail of why things did not happen, as you would end up agreeing with the other person. Therefore, he is sometimes not very interested in the “Why” but more in the “How”.
