Before joining Implus LLC in 2020, Michael Polk was the kind of executive most people associate with scale. He served as CEO of Newell Brands from 2011 to 2019, leading an organization of over 50,000 people through a complex transformation from a holding company model to a streamlined operating structure. That job, and the decades of experience that preceded it at Procter & Gamble, Kraft Foods, and Unilever, gave Polk a deep understanding of how large organizations work. What he discovered at Implus, though, was something different.
Why Small Companies Move Faster
Private, smaller companies can grow at a pace that larger public firms rarely match. Without the obligations of quarterly earnings reports and investor relations demands, leadership teams can make decisions and change direction more nimbly. Michael Polk Newell Brands has noted that this agility is one of the defining advantages of smaller firms, and it shapes how talent develops within them.
At a small business, relatively junior employees find themselves making significant leadership calls well before they would in a corporate hierarchy. They grow and learn by doing, according to Polk, and the breadth of exposure they get covers everything from working capital management and cash flow delivery to commercial strategy and logistics. That kind of comprehensive learning is difficult to replicate in organizations where roles are more narrowly defined.
Accountability Without the Noise
Michael Polk is careful to point out that private company leadership is not without accountability. He remains answerable to a board and to Berkshire Partners, the firm that brought him in to lead transformation efforts at Implus. The responsibility to create value is a constant. What changes is the texture of the work itself. Leaders at private companies spend less time navigating internal bureaucracy and more time doing the actual work of building a business, which is precisely the kind of engagement Polk has found most fulfilling in this stage of his career. Refer to this article for more information.
Find more information about Michael Polk on https://nyweekly.com/business/michael-polk-from-newell-ceo-to-growth-mindset-advocate/