Jess (00:06)
Welcome to Dig Inspiration, a quick recap where we dig deeper into the story behind the story. In each bite-sized episode, I'll revisit key moments from our incredible guests, highlighting the most inspiring parts of the stories they share. And today, we're dropping a quick

memorable parts from my talk with Paul de Larzac president of Nestle Ice Cream Canada. It's a pretty cool job. First, I want to acknowledge that my favorite part of these interviews tends to be

what went wrong. I think there is so much humanity and vulnerability in that part of the story. And I love that Paul chose to center his story around an entire launch that really went wrong. And so much can be learned from that in the reflection of what you would do differently if you were to go to market again. So just from a conceptual standpoint, big fan of leading with that idea of failing and what can be learned. And as he said, it took a few public iterations of sharing that failure.

before it didn't sting so much and he could really learn from it.

So in terms of why that launch didn't go as planned, I think the point around the rush to get to market and secure the distribution before the competition got in there, that really led to skipping some important steps. The machinery issue wasn't identified early

impact of seasonality to the physical product, even the brand fit, all those issues needed further vetting. And I think the linkage between

those things and the capex involved really upped the ante for how big of a bet it was for Nestle.

that time pressure certainly didn't help. But I really loved Paul's perspective around reasonable risk and encouraging reasonable risk taking. And when I asked him about, know, what defines, what determines what is reasonable, he talked about how you shouldn't go so big that if

your initiative fails, it really hurts your P &L or really hurts your plan for the year. He talked about go big enough that you can live with it if it fails and you can iterate fast so it has a chance to succeed. And I really like this thinking. I think about this in a big bet context. Part of how I handle organizational planning for my department is what are those big bets where if they really work out, we can crush our goals for this year and

we can manage the risk around time investment if they don't work. So I really love this thought about go big enough. And I think that was a very wise lesson.

Well, that's your Dig inspiration recap for the week. We would love to hear your takeaways and thoughts on the conversation with Paul. So please visit the link in the description and leave us a comment.