A psychologist at PepsiCo

Dr. Matt Del Giudice

When executives at PepsiCo wanted to speed up the process of bringing new ideas to market, they sought help from clinical psychologist Matt Del Giudice (del-joo’-dis), the company’s senior director of global talent management and organizational development in Purchase, New York.

This was no small undertaking. PepsiCo has more than 260,000 employees in over 200 countries and territories, and its leaders from various departments around the world were expected to work together to design, produce and market new products like Lay’s Poppables and LIFEWTR, PepsiCo’s premium bottled water. Leaders often had competing priorities and reported to different parts of the 64ドル billion company, making such collaboration difficult.

To start, Del Giudice partnered with Taylor Flake, then vice president of human resources at PepsiCo, to design a survey for senior leaders to evaluate 10 key collaboration behaviors, such as how well they shared innovation strategies, and how they prioritized PepsiCo’s overall interests over the interests of their specific region. Del Giudice also partnered with management to incorporate evaluations of these behaviors into the leaders’ annual performance reviews—a strategy to ensure new communication patterns would stick.

Then, to glean further insights into which factors boosted the odds of better collaboration, Del Giudice mined the survey data to identify trends, like whether leaders in specific jobs, regions or countries were more likely to score better on the 10 behaviors. He discovered that leaders who over the years had held different jobs in various locations and markets were the best collaborators. That led PepsiCo executives to prioritize breadth of experience when building their leadership teams.

"This was a critical insight from Matt’s work because it informed our talent management plans at the company," says Flake, who recently left PepsiCo to start his own consulting business. "It also highlights Matt’s ability to toggle between psychological details and business knowledge to create programs that are very strategic for a large company."

The project is one example of how Del Giudice partners with departments worldwide to design and implement strategies that strengthen leaders and help teams collaborate more smoothly at PepsiCo, where strong leadership and teamwork are essential to the bottom line.

"Matt brings decision-making to a new level by taking a more analytical approach," says David Harris, senior vice president of human resources at PepsiCo. "He culls through massive amounts of data and translates this into practical insights about people, which are critical in a fast-paced context where people tend to act first and think later."

A change of plans

Del Giudice first caught PepsiCo’s attention in 2014 when the company was looking for someone to lead an executive assessment and development program for more than 150 senior vice presidents. At the time, Del Giudice was an organizational development consultant for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), a role that helped him refine his skills. "I spent a lot of time consulting with senior leaders, and often this included giving them difficult feedback," he says.

Dr. Matt Del Giudice

After completing his undergraduate degree, Del Giudice had planned to pursue a career in clinical psychology. But he enrolled in the dual PsyD-MBA program at Widener­ University in Chester, Pennsylvania, to expand his options. After working at mental health clinics during graduate school, he realized that he found clinical work isolating and that he wanted to be part of a team and work with teams. That revelation led him to pursue the VA job before PepsiCo tapped him to manage its executive development program.

In that first job at PepsiCo, Del Giudice was responsible for sussing out barriers preventing PepsiCo leaders from maximizing their effectiveness. At times, he encountered resistance from senior executives who were unconvinced they needed to change their management styles. One leader, whose team members felt intimidated by his communication style, told Del Giudice he’d been promoted many times and was good at the things that mattered. But Del Giudice challenged him by sharing that successful leaders at higher levels need to build inspired teams. The executive subsequently adopted new interpersonal habits, and interactions with his team members improved significantly.

To put his executive development program to the test, Del Giudice conducted a follow-up study evaluating its effectiveness. He found that more than 90 percent of the leaders who participated improved on key leadership behaviors, and this successful track record earned him promotions in 2016 and 2018. Now, he oversees succession planning, leadership development and performance management for thousands of employees who work in marketing, design, e-commerce and a range of other departments around the globe.

Del Giudice’s penchant for translating assessment data into business insights not only helps with hiring decisions, it also helps teams improve their work. When the innovation groups needed to boost their efficiency and effectiveness, for example, Del Giudice studied teams’ work patterns and discovered that some teams had too many members, which led to unproductive meetings. Other teams forgot to include critical stakeholders with specialized skills, such as lawyers and food scientists, in their work. Del Giudice also learned that many teams were not receiving feedback from senior leaders frequently enough, so projects were delayed, or teams were forced to switch direction after months of work had already been completed.

To make teams nimbler, Del Giudice partnered with Justin Wells, MBA, PepsiCo’s director of global commercialization, to teach employees new work behaviors. Rather than coaching the teams himself, Del Giudice trained one member of each group to guide the other team members on the best ways to set project strategies, conduct meetings and share progress with senior leaders. This training strategy was vital for securing buy-in from teams, says Wells.

"Matt helped me see that change is hard for people," says Wells. "Even if people know something will make them more efficient, they may not like it. Matt helped with engaging the teams to make them open to change."

Follow-up surveys showed that the new approach improved the work of the innovation teams. "When senior leaders reinforced that work products were ‘works in progress’ and did not need to be perfect, communication and feedback flowed more freely," says Del Giudice. "The dynamics became more iterative and focused on learning."

Winning over skeptics

Although Del Giudice spends most of his time developing programs and tools that affect large numbers of PepsiCo employees, he occasionally partners with smaller groups. When one team sought him out, Del Giudice started by interviewing members individually and by conducting a team dynamics assessment. He found that most of the people in the group had similar personality traits: They were skeptical by nature and highly pragmatic—traits that can be associated with a tendency to be more critical of others.

"Initially, many in the group were skeptical of the assessment results," says Del Giudice. "But when I pointed out the problematic behaviors happening during the meeting in real time, they realized that this was an opportunity to be more inclusive of different opinions and new ideas."

During one discussion, the team members followed Del Giudice’s advice by asking each other clarifying questions and encouraging input before reaching a decision. In a follow-up session, employees reported that the team’s behavior had improved because they were using the new strategies.

Del Giudice also consults with leaders who show potential for higher levels of leadership, like Thanh Nguyen, a legal director at PepsiCo. Through a formal leadership assessment and informal feedback from Nguyen’s colleagues, Del Giudice found that positivity and resilience were two of her greatest strengths. But he also shared with her the potential pitfalls of these strengths. "He helped me see that jumping to positivity during interactions with business leaders could come across as Pollyannaish and lacking in empathy about what colleagues were facing," says Nguyen. "If I’m constantly hitting a high note, this could seem like I’m not taking time to listen."

Del Giudice suggested that Nguyen start asking her colleagues about the challenges they were facing so she could help them solve problems, rather than focusing on how to improve her programs and initiatives. Nguyen says Del Giudice’s coaching insights have changed the course of her career.

"I originally thought that my goal was delivering a strong legal compliance program, but Matt showed me that I’m here to help other business leaders succeed," says Nguyen.

The guidance goes two ways, says Del Giudice. By working with his PepsiCo colleagues, he has discovered that the psychological details he finds fascinating may not interest business leaders, who are primarily focused on getting business results. Gradually, he has honed his ability to approach problems through that lens.

"I consider it a privilege to work with leaders," says Del Giudice. "They wield a significant amount of influence over the lives of those who work with them. I believe that helping leaders create a positive work environment is not only good for business, it’s also a moral imperative."