VO: Purpose Haze. A new series featuring Scott Goodson. Founder of StrawberryFrog. Together with New York Festivals. It will defog purpose through in-depth interviews with those at the forefront of purpose driven companies. Watch what happens when the smoke clears.

Scott: Hi everyone. Welcome to a new episode of Purpose Haze. And today we have an amazing show. We have a very special guest. He has spent his career in consumer goods. He has worked at Procter and Gamble and Diageo. Most recently, he headed up Tiffany's, and now he heads up Pandora in North America. Luciano Rodembusch, welcome to Purpose Haze.

Luciano: Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Scott: It's a pleasure. I've known you for many years and one of the things that I really love about you is you're a very human leader. You really get a sense of who you are and you understand the passion that you bring to your work. How important is purpose in your life? And can you talk also about the purpose of Pandora and the role those both play in your life?

Luciano: Thank you for the question, Scott. And I think, in life is crucial, right? Because I think personally I’m always thinking those philosophical questions why we are here, right? And how we want to be remembered someday. I always try to understand who came before me. I'm a son of an immigrant family into Brazil, five generations. So I'm always just curious what moved those individuals a long time ago to leave everything and take that chance. So, then for sure doing things with a purpose, not just because is very important for me, right? And I'm very happy that I always work with companies that I believe are in the world because of something, right? All these companies were founded by dreamers and Pandora is an amazing example of one, right? Usually when you go to Procter, go to Diageo, you talk about dreamers of two centuries ago, three centuries ago. Pandora is dreamers of 40 years ago. And I think the purpose of the company, which is: give voice to people's loves, it's an amazing one, right? It inspires me a lot, and I think when you have an inspiration in a business, things become easier because it helps you to course correct on those. All of us, we have, those crossroads moments, right? Should you go to the left? Should you go to the right? What's the right decision here? And that happens every day. So looking back to why we are here, why this company exists, I think it's a great beacon on those moments, right? And voice and loves, I think are super strong words. Everybody in the world should have a voice.

Scott: Absolutely.

Luciano: So I think the jewelry we make is a jewelry with a purpose, right? And each one of those small charms, they carry a lot of emotion when you talk with one of our fans.

Scott: I love that idea of voice, giving a voice to all those people out there in the world who are sitting there trying to figure out whether their individual personality is relevant in the world, right? They're sitting there feeling increasingly alone because of technology. And so the idea of giving a voice and also the idea of love, those two connections are I think, really powerful.

Scott: I know that when you came to Pandora, it was just post, you know, the pandemic. So a lot of companies had challenges, and I know one of the challenges was how do you use purpose to help keep and inspire your own people inside the organization? Can you talk a little bit about some of the challenges you were addressing when you were brought in and what you did to solve them?

Luciano: I think I cannot take the credit for the pandemic time, but the company did an amazing… it was one of the few retail companies in the US that kept the entire workforce, right? I think that was very important for our chairman and for our CEO. And I think that makes a difference. It's..every company has values, but I think you really see the real values when they are tested, right?

Scott: Yes.

Luciano: So that was a great example of our organization. I came after that and I came during a major moment of transformation where the Pandora in North America grew up as a company that was franchising their stores. And the new strategy of the organization is to manage ourselves, our stores. So it was a major transformation for our team in the office, which is what is the focus of the future and how you take the people through that change. But also we have, we had, and we still have to learn how to work with thousands of employees now. Our organization was much smaller in terms of population. We're gonna finish this year with more than 7,000 people in Pandora in North America. So it's a constant challenge. It's very interesting how our employees come as fans, right? Very rarely we find someone that joined the organization that was not already a fan of the brand. They already use the brand, have the brand, have a brand in a moment. So that's why they come. So they come with a high expectation. How we fulfill that expectation, and also how we keep them engaged is the major challenge we have. It's a journey. I cannot say that we are there yet, but I think it's very important that it's front and center in the conversations we have as a leadership team. How to keep that growing, right? How to keep…our brand is an affordable brand. It means that it's very present in the low income class in underserved communities. How can we have that same representativity inside of our office, inside of the things we do? We are not there yet as well. Right? But I think, again, it's something we consciously are pursuing.

Scott: So as a leader that came in, obviously had some challenges, but you had people that had intrinsic passion like you said. How did you, what did you do? What did you do to, you know, engage all those 7,000 people inside the company?

Luciano: The first surprise for me is how disconnected we were from the front line as an organization, right? So, I love to sell, my beginning career was as a salesperson. So I love that. I see it as a kind of intellectual challenge to really understand what you want as a client and how can my offer fulfill your needs, right? So, and I'm constantly trying to be every week at least behind the counter in a store selling for the fans. Because it’s when the PowerPoint, the beautiful PowerPoint of our strategy and our programs that you see in the office, you see in reality, right? And then you start to see, which is not the disconnections, our intentions of programs, activities, activations. They're never a hundred percent well executed at the end, right? So I think that's being there constantly and showing, I think genuinely and genuinely it's a strong word, showing genuinely to our teams that I do care and our leadership team does care, right? So, tell me what's not working and oh, I can see that's not working. How can we fix it? Right? Because sometimes, unfortunately, if the front line is too far away from the core of the organization, you start to develop a perception at the front line that they, someone did this on purpose, right? Versus we make a mistake sometimes and we need to correct this quick. And we decided this route with a good intention and maybe it was wrong. So, being frequent across the country, popping up in different places, spending meaningful time, not just doing a visit to check stuff, but spending… so I plan to come here for two hours and I see that you need more support, I would stay the entire day, right? Let's bring more people to help you. So those kind of things you repeat and you repeat and you repeat, and people start to say, well, that's genuine, right? It really matters to them. They really care. So that I think is one of the pieces and create a communication network that kind of helps to create a community is super important as well. That's exactly what we are just starting, right? To ensure that those positive news, they start to travel faster than the bad news,

Scott: Right, cause it's only one of you. So we can't get you everywhere.

Luciano: That's it. And find people like that, believe that this job, the job they're doing, it has a purpose as well, right?It's not just, I'm making a dime here. We are trying to tell the fans stories and to show, especially to our frontline people, how the quality of the experience they do matters to our fans. Because jewelry it’s very interesting. Basically, you're not buying a piece of jewelry. You, as I believe, you're encapsulating a memory.

Scott: Right.

Luciano: So if you speak with a woman, or any human being that is wearing jewelry, I can guarantee that they can tell the story behind it. Oh, I bought this when, because, right?

Scott: Right

Luciano: So, and the person that creates part of that story was the person that interacted with them because they say, oh, why you don't pick this piece?

Scott: You always remember that person.

Luciano: That's it.

Scott: Exactly.

Luciano: So that's what we do. And the moment that the people start, our people start to understand that versus the process, the checks, the things that they need to do in the POS machine, and stuff like that. And say, I'm here for you, my fan, right? And to create…I'm honored that you came.

Scott: Yeah.

Luciano: Because you could pick another thing, you could pick another company, you decide for us, so we need to celebrate that. But it's beautiful words, but that happens in five minutes. So you don't have a lot of time as well. So every movement you make in front of the fan matters for that experience.

Scott: To help facilitate this, you know, internal leadership, explanation to your employees, and…you call them employees or what's the term you use?

Luciano: We call them Pandorians.

Scott: Pandorians, and Pandorians are part of, I understand this community, but you've launched some kind of internal movement.

Luciano: Yes, yes.

Scott: Can you talk a little bit about Pandorians and talk about the movement?

Luciano: So it, it's very interesting because in those trips, right, you start to listen to beautiful stories. So the first thing is kind of how can we connect those people to hear each other's stories? And many times we have more than 500 stories in North America. The problem in one where it was already solved by another one in another part, but they don't know each other, right? So the idea is to create first a movement that they see the value of what they're doing, right? That the action they're doing at the counter with the fan is relevant for the fan, as I said. The second one is, by the way, you're creating things that are not just valuable for the fan, but for your colleagues as well. So we start to celebrate those kinds of things. And for the first time, we launched that movement we call Pandora Nation. We launched it in March. So it's brand new. Mother's Day is the first time that we'll be able to share those experiences. We had for the first time the opportunity to celebrate our internal moms as well. And it was very interesting. We just did that yesterday, to invite people to tell their stories and their struggles as a mother.

Scott: Beautiful. Love it.

Luciano: And we had an open call that we invited everybody last week. And I was amazed to see how people were open. I didn't expect that. To tell their own stories in front of people that they never met. But the simple fact that they’re colleagues and that becomes a safe space now, right? You start to share your struggles, your challenges. And the other one came and built on that. And there is already, we heard the story that someone that was in the call already made a video to share to the others, to tell them her own story. So it’s beautiful when you trigger that and that you don't control anymore, right? It sparkles and starts to go and connect with other people. So it's the beginning.

Scott: I think Carl Jung said that, “Through vulnerability comes strength.” So by being a vulnerable individual with others, that's where you can actually become a stronger individual.

Pandora Ad: Where we are united by our love of giving a voice to people's loves. It takes someone with incredible focus and brilliance and passion to do this well. That's me. That's me. C’est moi. That's me. Y esa soy yo. That’s me. That's me. And you too. It's all of us. Because in a world where everyone is told to be the same, we say, nah, nah, no way, nope, nah, We say express yourself, unleash your voice. Tell your story. Help others tell theirs. Shine your brightest at Pandora nation.

Scott: So can you talk a little bit about how this is used and any results, or you're just launching it, you said? Is that correct?

Luciano: It's brand new. So we basically use the video to invite people to join. We are using social media, internal social media channels for the company to do that. We have now…

Scott: That's cool, that's interesting and unusual for companies to do that. That's great.

Luciano: And, we have now some influencers early on, people that joined and started to create content and as part of willingness, let me tell my story, let's show how I style my fans and…

Scott: That's awesome. That's cool.

Luciano: That’s why it's the beginning, but you can see things start to pick up. Right?

Scott: It becomes kinetic, you know, when people are engaged, it takes on multiple dimensions and speed, and that's great. What I love about it, it's not top down per se, it's top down in the sense that you're creating sort of a framework for interaction and engagement by the, all the Pandorians.

Luciano: And, you start to see milestones again when people see genuine contributions from management, right? So we had a conversation about examples, how you can create, connect in the point of sale, personal stories with the fan stories, right? And the example was from one of our VPs that told a story about how an autistic child made a huge difference for her in her family, right. And she told the story of one of the family members that is autistic and how important they were. And how that single charm that another individual presented to her, that she did not even know that Pandora had, made a completely different holiday season last year with her family. And I think that stunned the people in a way that, whoa, whoa, whoa. So I have a VP on the stage telling an authentic story, putting her heart there super emotional, right? Well, if she can do that, why can’t I tell my story as well? Right? So I think those milestones it’s kind of little bricks that you start to put one on top of the other. We didn't do that because we wanted to create a kind of a commotion in the community. We thought that it was a relevant story to tell, right? But you create even more impact that we imagine.

Scott: Do you think you're successful because you're empathetic? I mean, someone who is fascinated by your ancestors' decisions and conundrums in order to immigrate to Brazil is someone who's empathetic and deeply interested and curious about other people's feelings and challenges. Do you think that's why you're successful in this? Why this is part of… because not every leader does that right?

Luciano: I never thought about…That's a good question. I think I never took for granted that the title and the person are different things, right? So I'm very grateful for all the people that someday were in my position and gave me the chance to show my qualities and my… and gave me opportunities for that. And for some reason, I always believe that it's my obligation to pay forward. I cannot give them thank you because they don't need my thank you. They did that for me. But I believe that I would love to see others having the opportunities I had. Right? So I think that's probably in the background of the things I do. And therefore maybe curiosity, I always try to discover which ones can I help, right? It's very interesting. We were in Cincinnati visiting the stores, and when I say we, on the weekends I even take my family.

Scott: Oh, cool.

Luciano: Because it's kind of, that's what I do. You want to come along, come along, right? It's jewelry. My wife loves to have the conversations in the store. And then I found it, we visited a smaller store in the Cincinnati outskirts, and there was a brilliant manager. Brilliant manager, right? And I say turnover in retail is a big problem in North America. And around 50% of the people change in retail, in Pandora it’s not different. And I ask, what's your turnover? And she said, oh, I've been in this store for two years and I didn't lose a single person. Really? And then tell me why. Tell me how. It's kind of, it's not because you are in a position of power, of leadership that you shouldn't continue learning. So she knows to do something that I don't know how. And so some of the tips we implemented, right? But also, she shouldn't be in the smallest store in Cincinnati, right? She should be in the biggest store in Cincinnati. And she's there now.

Scott: Wonderful.

Luciano: And again, it's not an order. I just talked with the local manager, and say, have you seen? It’s just one impression. Right? But it's a very positive impression. She should take a look at.

Scott: Those are great stories also for the organization, right. Because you see upward movement and growth.

Luciano: But I didn't know that she was moved, right? Because again, 500 stores, you talk and off you go. So we have our summit where we invite all the managers and for some reason, you know, 300 visits a year, I can’t remember, connect every single individual, the story… I remember the stories pretty well, right? And then…

Scott: You remembered that one?

Luciano: I do. And then she passes by and says, I need to tell…I need to thank you. And I remember who she was. Thank you for what? Well, don't you know, I'm running this and this. Wow, that's amazing. Right? What's she gonna create for the future? I don't know. Right. But imagine the amount of possibilities one can create with just these small gestures. Put the right people in the right place.

Scott: Fantastic. So one final question. How has this purpose-driven leadership approach that you've applied here, or brought to life perhaps a better way, how has it resulted in terms of business outcomes? Are things better than they were?

Luciano: I'm super happy. I think one motto that we created, a phrase that I'm using since I joined Pandora, which I wanna use for life, is that we are calling every year our best year yet.

Scott: Oh, that's cool.

Luciano: Right? Because the next year could be better. And will be better. And I believe every time I talk with everyone in life, when I look at myself in the mirror in the morning, can I do better than I did yesterday? I can. Everybody can. I think sometimes you think of these big leaps, right? Doesn’t need to be a big leap. It could be small, can I do a small thing? Maybe a smile that I missed yesterday. Could I do it today? It's improvement versus yesterday with those small gestures, you change your behavior and you change your performance, right?

Scott: The Japanese have a phrase called Satori. It means continual improvement, more of a philosophical perspective, but I love it.

Luciano: And that's what we implemented as a philosophy in the business, right? It's kind of every year our best year yet. So 22 was our best year, 23 was our best year, and our Q1 of 24 was our best yet. So we are beating our records. Every single quarter.

Scott: That's amazing.

Luciano: If you look at the results of Pandora North America, and Pandora as a company, especially in 2023 it was an amazing year, right? Q1 of 2024 was a record. And we want to be the engine of the growth of the organization. Right. And I think we can. So, even very interesting, I heard one senior manager of the organization, when we talked about December, he shared with me to say, you know what, this 2023 was an amazing year for Pandora worldwide. I don't know if you can beat that. Right? And I said, then you cannot work with us in North America because here we believe that every year will be our best yet.

Scott: I love these stories. Thank you so much for joining us, Luciano.

Luciano: Thanks Scott.

Scott: Wonderful. And thank you everyone out there for joining us.