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Dig In is your go to source for insights innovation. It's for anyone with a genuine interest in fostering brand and product growth, exploring groundbreaking innovations, and embracing the dynamic world of expanding businesses and brands.
Jess Gaedeke (00:00)
Hi everybody, I'm Jess Gaedeke Chief Commercial Officer and host of the Dig in Podcast. And today I'm joined by a dynamo guest. I was able to speak with Sean Burress He is Senior Director, Insights and Analytics, Baby and Child Care Enterprise Initiatives at Kimberly Clark. And we talk about a lot of things. We talk about TED Talks. We unpack how he has really developed a new capability at Kimberly Clark and using AI to develop an innovation pipeline, which I'm sure a lot of you are will be interested in.
We talk about what it really means to have a growth mindset and how that sort of manifests at an organization like Kimberly Clark. And we talk about some impulse purchases that were interesting as well. So enjoy this one.
Jess Gaedeke (00:44)
Hi everybody, welcome to the Dig In Podcast. Sean, I am so happy for you to be joining us today. Thank you for taking time during a very hectic time for both of us, I think, is what I'm hearing.
Sean Burress (00:53)
that's the new normal these days.
Jess Gaedeke (00:55)
There you go. Never dull, as I diplomatically say. So I'm gonna get going with an impromptu question that you have not seen. So here's one coming at you. if you could relive one age for a year, what age would you choose?
Sean Burress (01:06)
Ooh.
One age for a year. Probably sixteen.
Jess Gaedeke (01:10)
Mm-hmm,
Sean Burress (01:11)
just got my driver's license. Excited to drive. Had been practicing for quite a while, but if nothing else, I felt free. I felt like there wasn't any place I couldn't go. I found myself visiting neighborhoods I haven't visited. I found myself traveling to visit family, looking forward to driving.
Jess Gaedeke (01:30)
Right.
Sean Burress (01:30)
In different cities
around the US, simply because I'd be free to explore at my own leisure. Only to find out that not everyone was going to give me a car to drive in every city that I went to. But at least my mom and dad, they really gave me a lot of opportunity to explore. something I've always enjoyed and to this day I still enjoy driving. just getting on the road and seeing what's out there. I think more people want to take
advantage of it.
Jess Gaedeke (01:53)
Yeah. I love that. And I feel like I can relive that experience right alongside you. Absolutely. I can remember that year of my life very well. As well as the soundtrack to that year. So maybe my next question is, what's the soundtrack
to Sean out in his sixteen year old car driving around?
Sean Burress (02:07)
I'm not sure I would say that publicly.
the days of hip hop and rap music and anything that pops into my mind, I'm like, should I say that? Should I not say that? I was a fan of Digable Planets. the verses that I like or the verses that come top of mind, it's always about something that maybe was the unexpected, right? So
in my desire to have freedom and explore, I'm always looking for that unspoken, unrecognized, or that non-traditional lens. Cause for whatever reason, that's what pulls me in. So most of the music I would listen to at that age, 16, driving the car, music loud, windows down, just enjoying the wind blowing. It's literally going to be something that wouldn't have been expected by the kid who goes to church three times a week, the kid who is absolutely
Father disciplined, follow the rules, mama's boy, all those things. It was just like I said, it was opportunity to be free to explore.
Jess Gaedeke (03:01)
I love that. I love that.
So tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and where you are now.
Sean Burress (03:06)
Well, I'm currently at Kimberly Clark. I'm a senior director on our baby and child care business. I often work on many enterprise initiatives. been at Kimberly Clark for about twelve years. as you know, we've gone through rounds of change over the last I would say since twenty eighteen and had the opportunity to do a variety of roles both on the analytic side as well as on the insight side, on the global side as well as on the local side.
my background, I started my career at General Mills even as an intern while in college. Spent a couple of decades there. really enjoyed that experience. One of the things that I think makes me uniquely Sean is that I've had the opportunity to rotate. I've worked on big brands. You know, you talk Huggies today or Cheerios in my previous timeframe or Nature Valley. I've done the brand team, I've done the innovation team.
Even done the sales team, spent a couple of years at Walmart, even behind the firewall at Walmart. So that broad array of experience,
created an opportunity for me to utilize my ability to connect with different people from different walks of life, which I've used throughout my career. Upon joining General Mills, which is very much a Midwestern culture, the idea that all people could come together with a common purpose and create and build, that's been my experience.
I started off in IT, which a lot of technology is baked into what I do today. I then ventured across the organization. One of the things about General Mills is you often rotate and you want to take your top talent and give them as many experiences as possible because you're building that individual for the long term. And so I've worked in the sales division, I've worked on the brand side of things, I've worked on big brands, small brands, entrepreneurial roles.
Later in my career, I noticed that most of the roles I took on they had never existed before. And so I love being in that ambiguous space of creating and bringing something to fruition. So as I ventured into my insights career, what I found was there was an opportunity to focus on the technology, the people, and the business. And that broad experience really gave me a lot of exposure. So after a
A decade or so at General Mills doing insights. I then came over to Kimberly Clark. I've taken a variety of roles on the analytics side, on the insight side, on the local side, and on the global side. And today where I see myself is as the senior director on insights and analytics for our baby and child care business, who also takes on enterprise initiatives periodically. So it's a very exciting role. It's something that I enjoy. I often put on a lot of the experiences in my past.
And I use them in my day to day work.
Jess Gaedeke (05:33)
Yeah, I love that. And what a rich background, a diverse background that I'm sure serves you well, serves your team well, serves your consumers well, because you are bringing that well-roundedness. And we're gonna dig into some of that when we ask you to tell us this story. So as you know, our listeners crave inspiration from other leaders, and I think one of the best ways to inspire is to tell a story. And you have a really interesting story that is very topical for a lot of people right now. That's about
helping develop the capability at Kimberly Clark to fill the innovation pipeline using AI, which is still a newer capability in so many organizations. And a lot of them don't even have this yet. So I'd love for you to go back to whatever version of the beginning is of this story. You
Sean Burress (06:13)
Mm.
Jess Gaedeke (06:14)
know, what was the context at the time that this was initiated? how did you tackle it?
Sean Burress (06:18)
Well, I'll say it this way. I think the idea of AI is something we all talk about. Some with fret, some with excitement, some with purpose. Just, hey, I want to use it as much as I can. And this was early in our AI journey. We didn't have a specific objective around it. We just knew that we wanted to find opportunity with it. at the same time, we had just
rolled out a significant amount of best practices around design thinking. We were trying to build standards across all our markets, all our categories to ensure we were bringing the best thinking forward when we're building the innovation pipeline. We wanted to be more externally focused. We wanted to bring in experts who we wouldn't traditionally engage with. When you think of the baby and childcare business, often we all have children, we all have our own perspective.
But it's good to hear sometimes from the doctors who service you with those babies, or the nurses, or people who make baby clothing and might be experts in kind of other aspects of the baby experience or the parenthood experience. And so we were building out a new process for design thinking. were embedding it across five different countries, and we wanted to have ideation on what could be, where you both diverge and then converge on some specific
spaces, things we all do using some of the same foundational knowledge we all use, whether it be unmet needs or demand spaces, whatever you might traditionally utilize as you're trying to say here, here's an opportunity space with a specific target that we want to go after. And we think we want to build out our innovation pipeline around that. So imagine we are just rolling out that process and we're now about to implement it on our largest, most profitable business. And we're saying we really want to break the mold.
And the team says, hey, why don't we at the same time run a little human versus machine exercise? what could we do if we use the power of AI? And we had some good consultants that we had brought on board who had some capability. We had some internal experts who were really exploring that capability. And we really didn't want to intermingle the human experience of design thinking because this is a new best practice for us that we wanted to roll out.
While at the same time, we were building a tool, a capability, and we wanted to increase our understanding of the best application and usage of AI when it comes to building the innovation pipeline. So that was kind of the onset, right? what are the possibilities? What can we do? We've got a capability. How do we not allow it to interfere with the process, but build on the process? so we learned a lot on the journey, I must tell you. everyone had assumptions on what would
Work well. Those with fret thought, you could never use it for this, never use it for that. But we picked up a lot of key principles, right? Number one, it's a capability, it's a tool, it's a technology. It only knows what you allow it to know. So the better the information you give it, the better it will give you results that fit the purpose. And so those are principles that we use today. Let's make sure that every aspect of engaging with AI capability and technology is fit for purpose.
number two, not everyone is champion of the tool and the capability. So you must have a little bit of curiosity. You must be willing to engage. And so we had a small portion of this team that had that curiosity. They understood the design thinking process. And so we said, that's the team we want utilizing the capability because they're going to bring the richness along the journey. Along the way, what we realized was we couldn't keep them separate for long.
Right. We had all the creative talent. We had all the business knowledge on the design thinking team. We had a subset of that on the AI team. But there are points in times when we had to ask, is this even possible? Or we got stuck where we thought, wow, this is a great idea. This is very unique. I've never heard anything like that from the tool. But yet we didn't even know, not only was it possible, but is it really in the same wheelhouse? Does it really address the same target in the same space of opportunity?
That we wanted to explore. But then also we found vice versa. The team started to explore, they would build out concepts and ideas. And then they thought, wow, we could really use a little creative juice here. What if we throw this idea or this concept over at the AI team? Let's see what they throw back to us. And let's see if it kind of takes us to a new or unique space. And so, along the journey, after we kind of crafted an initial set of ideas.
These five countries. I want to say it was at least 30 ideas per country. so it was a broad list, I want to say about a total of 150 ideas. About 40% of that was initiated through the AI capability tool. And then the other 60% came through the design thinking team. But 100% of the ideas probably had some influence one way or the other on each other. we use the tool, the capability to enhance the design thinking process.
We use the experts in the design thinking process to enhance the ideas that were coming out of this AI capability tool. And ultimately, I would say that's all it is. It's something that helps us accelerate our own capability. It takes us to spaces that maybe we wouldn't have thought of before. And it builds on a lot of what we already know and must use in our day-to-day businesses. So my advice to any team that's considering it is.
It's the usage of it. Your expertise is not influenced by the tool or the capability. It can only be enhanced by the tool or the capability based on how you engage with it. So what we learned as a team is it still requires those individuals who know the goal, know what we're trying to accomplish, to find the ways to embed it, to find the ways to engage it, to get the value out of That's why we encourage the embracing of it.
Jess Gaedeke (11:44)
Yeah. I mean a lot of lessons packed in there. And I am curious where are you seeing the greatest value? Is it that it's getting you to better ideas faster? Is it actually getting you better ideas? Like what are some of the
core benefits that that's delivering to the team?
Sean Burress (11:58)
there are things we saw from the Kim Kardashian diaper, which totally off the rail, not even sure where the concept came from, but somehow a concept was written with that in mind. Or a concept with the baby with a mustache. We're like, yeah, as kids get older, we didn't mean that much older, but you get the point, right? But if nothing else, it's bringing the creative juices out of
Those of us who are spending our time day in and day out with these categories to just break the mold. Sometimes it brings more of the human aspect out of humans to remember, hey, there's a world of culture. There's a world outside of the office that is thinking about things in a different way. And so bringing some of those elements into the process, the same way we were bringing in external experts, we started to see the tool as just one more lens on the possibilities.
Jess Gaedeke (12:47)
Yeah. And it is that disruption, right? the contrarian viewpoint that can actually lead to the new and different ideas. And so it's feels like a very elegant way that you guys have folded those things together. has it been a difficult process to employ? you're making it sound like it kind of came together easily, but I imagine there were some hiccups along the way.
Sean Burress (13:05)
what I'll say is this if you go into it with a learning mindset, and you treat it as such, but you put your practices in place that you know will deliver, those tried and true practices, it gives you a little bit of comfort to know, hey, we're doing this, but we're not betting the entire business on this one tool, this one capability.
And so coming into it, we knew that, right? We had a full design thinking process embedded. had some of the best experts in the industry on the journey. So we knew we'd get to a good result. And the tool was just an enhancer. It was just something that ended up breaking the mold. When we tested the results, it's what gave us more confidence that hey, it did help us in some ways, whether it was initiating ideas or enhancing ideas. It gave us something more, one more thing.
Put in the pipeline to bring more innovative creative ideas. And when the test results came back, some of those same ideas that were maybe initiated through AI were some of the top scoring ideas. But every idea had the human engagement, the human touch, the creative juice that comes from the human experience and knowing what the objective is. So to the extent that it was easy, it was probably comfortable, I would say, because we weren't betting.
the entire house on the tool, but we were using it to see what the possibilities were. I think what it's done is it's given us a mindset of being more controlled when we use our tools and capabilities. So today we try to be much more specific about what's the purpose and intent when we're creating a tool or a capability. I would say we often are very targeted when we talk about what data will we put inside of the tool and what access
Do we want it to have to additional information to build on what we've given it? If we want it to be all about the baby care business, then that's what we'll put in. If we think we need elements of technology, elements of external expertise, we'll be more specifically intentional about what we embed as a source for that tool to use to inform us back. But it has helped us a ton with democratization. It has helped us a ton with being purposeful in our intent.
And I think it holds us accountable to understanding that it can both help or harm if you are not intentional as you interact with the tool and capability. But I would say that's true for most technology. you put the wrong technology in the wrong hands, you'll get bad results. You know, garbage in, garbage out. It's something we've said on many fronts. And that also seems to be true in this case.
Jess Gaedeke (15:27)
I love that you have such conviction around that idea of being purposeful and intentional with it because I even find that when I, sit down to start a new project in Claude, really giving some thought up front to okay, what context do I want to give this project? what output do I really want and picturing that end game in a much more thoughtful way
AI has helped me think that way with greater specificity. So it's like a a byproduct of using this type of technology. I feel like I'm getting a little stronger at some of those things. Do you feel the same way?
Sean Burress (15:54)
Ab
absolutely. Yeah. And I would say some of the richest learning that I've gotten is from individuals who just use it on their everyday practices. From creating PowerPoints, from crafting emails, from setting up objectives, from building a brief for a particular project. That is happening so much, so often, that when something works really well, I get excited to see how it's done, and then I want to learn from what others are learning.
I think that's the curiosity that many of us in the insight space have to have. And then I think more importantly, we have to be willing to share and build principles and take others along with us on that journey. It's a journey of learning for all of us. And whenever there's new technology, the learning expands, the learning continues, and learning together makes it that much more powerful.
Jess Gaedeke (16:39)
Absolutely. Well, thank you for sharing that story. Again, I think it's relevant for so many people that are listening in and got some inspiration there. We're gonna move to now you as a leader and you have a lot of very passionate points of view. And when we were chatting, the
Sean Burress (16:52)
Mm-hmm.
Jess Gaedeke (16:53)
real vibe I was getting is like a growth orientation vibe and all the things that it takes to be part of an organization that is growth oriented, a team, insights function. So one of the things that you said that really stuck with me was
it's not about the work. It's about bringing people along. And I just love that. I love that vibe. So talk to me a little bit about what it means to be part of a growth oriented team or business. What is a growth mindset? How do you just achieve this vibe?
Sean Burress (17:19)
so I do sit in the global growth organization. and it's something that I feel like it's a balance when we're doing the work that we do as analytic professionals, as insight professionals, as business professionals, we should have our eyes towards what drives growth. often we can talk about, this is our biggest business, this is our most profitable business, we can improve the margin, we can do all the things with what we currently have.
But the space that I enjoyed the most is when we're talking about driving growth from the mindset of what is it that we've not done for the consumer? And what is the consumer asking us for that we've simply not tried to address? If we bring purpose to the corporations that we work for, to say you're here to serve a consumer who's willing to exchange with you the cash that they have, the time that they have, the value that they bring.
You find yourself in a growth mindset, not just having a big business, but servicing something that hasn't been serviced before. It's what brings the interesting projects, right? Whenever we're looking for white space, it means I'm looking for an unmet need, I'm looking for something that could be done better, or I'm looking for someone who's not been thought of, right? So you're turning over rocks that haven't been turned. That should excite you if you're going to be in a growth.
Organization. That should excite you as a human if you want to have greater purpose within the corporations that we work for, with the resources we have in our remit to say what would we do to make this world a better place? When Kimberly Clark talks about being a company that cares, well, we can talk about we care for the millions of babies being born in the US or the billions of babies being born globally.
And what is it? How might we want to enhance their lives? Not just with the products that we sell, but with the services that we provide, with the comfort and reassurance that we give their parents. In that type of mindset, inevitably you drive growth because you bring purpose to the lives that you serve. And the value that you provide becomes greater and greater, but it's because you're always looking for what is additional value that we can bring to the people that we serve.
When I talk about bringing people along, often it's getting everyone on the same page. You know, when you sit in a global role, you're trying to get this market to agree with the other market. When you sit in the senior leader role, you're gonna have different teams with slightly different points of views. I'm a very inclusive leader. I appreciate the debate and the dialogue. And then if we need to shift the objective, sometimes you have to be willing to shift the objective for what brings the greater cause, the greater value, the better purpose.
And if that's your guiding star, you find yourself in a better place every time. whenever we're building an innovation pipeline or we're talking about the purpose of the brand, or we're talking about what should this product actually do for the people who might be willing to purchase it, that's gotta be your driving motivator. I'm looking for growth, but I'm looking for growth because I'm bringing greater value to the consumers that we serve.
Jess Gaedeke (20:09)
Yeah. Absolutely agree with everything you said. And I think it's something that, keeps me still excited about this industry. And, the fact that what we're trying to do is help people out in their everyday lives, right? Buy the products and services that they need to make whatever progress they're trying to make. Give them joy. Give them experiences, connections with brands that help them, you know, again, just make progress. And
That is what it's about. And it's so dang cool that insights can help drive that, you know, and you sitting on the insights and analytics as one combined, force, where are some of the best examples you have or illustrations
of how you've actually been able to directly tie it to a growth outcome?
Sean Burress (20:48)
Yeah,
honestly, that's the space that I love. When you can say, Hey, I've looked at this business, I've dissected it to understand what's driving growth. And I can tell you where the biggest growth opportunities are occurring, whether it be through an experience that I'm seeing change behavior in the world of culture, it could be something I'm seeing as a behavioral change in where people and consumers are voting with their dollars.
They're saying, hey, I want more of these types of things, or just the idea that there's a level of engagement or loyalty that seems to be increasing because there's a certain type of communication that seems to resonate. When you find what's driving growth in behavior, which you can pull that through many data sources, whether it's ratings and reviews or point of sale data or panel data that gives you an expression of what's driving growth, right?
Increased in kind of incremental dollars, incremental time, or just incremental usage occasions. And then you put a lens on, but why? Help me understand the motivation behind the behavior that I've seen. So you're combining both the insight that's driving the individual decision that you can see in the behavior can be read through our databases and other sources. And so the combination of
What we've done at Kimberly Clark is build a market development model that combines a lot of the data that we know that identifies growth, proven practices that can be shown looking backwards, but also identify through some of our insight engagement, whether it be surveys or more sentiment type of work, understanding the why behind it, the barriers to overcome or the motivations that are driving the shift.
The combination of the two then gives you the opportunity to say, so what could we do better? What would the incremental value be that we might bring? Or what's the white space that no one's really addressing that could also be the cause for the drive in that behavior that we're seeing? So taking the analytic behavioral assessment, combining it with the human insight of why that's happening, and then looking for the opportunity that is fit for purpose for the resources within your organization, finding that sweet spot.
That's something that we do day in and day out. We may not always think of it that way, but that's exactly what we're doing. We're trying to say, hey, analytically, I see growth for these reasons and the human behavior behind that, the human insight that motivates that, that drives that. When I bring those two together, I talk about opportunities in a way that would say, hey, this is a business that we can develop because this is the way that consumers see it. This is why they're voting with their dollars.
So
yes, you saw growth of that retailer, or yes, you saw growth in that specific region. But the reason why behind it, that's what you want to capture, that's what you want to bring in. And you want to be able to translate that back through your business partners to say, and how should we go about it? And getting beyond the here's what I know to the so what, here's what we think you should go do creates opportunity where you spark innovation. And that innovation can be communication, it could be branding, it could be product, it could be packaging.
It's whatever you truly believe can inspire consumers based on what we know their motivation, their barrier, or whatever the case might be.
Jess Gaedeke (24:00)
Sounds like a dream job that you've described. And we're lucky to be in it, right?
After this many years, it still gets us excited.
Sean Burress (24:07)
It's good
to talk about it sometimes because sometimes we forget this is what we're doing, right? Like we should be changing lives by bringing to the world that we exist in new products, new services. And we should be utilizing all the resources readily available to us to get the best out of what we have available to enhance people's lives. If we're not doing that, then you might want to look for a bigger, better purpose.
Jess Gaedeke (24:32)
Yep. Love that. so we're gonna go to the final dig. This is all about you, just says
Sean Burress (24:35)
Okay.
Jess Gaedeke (24:36)
the everyday consumer. So feel free to take off your professional hat if you wish.
what's the last product or service you bought on Impulse?
Sean Burress (24:42)
all right. So last product or service that I purchased on Impulse, Dubai Chocolate.
Jess Gaedeke (24:47)
Hmm.
Sean Burress (24:48)
I was spending some time with my daughter. We were just trying to get away before going back to school. And she just kept talking, Dubai chocolate, Dubai Chocolate. And I was thinking to myself, what is the big deal? and not only was she saying it, but also her cousins. We were visiting family. My brother lives Vegas. So everywhere we went that weekend.
Impulse by, we were testing sampling Dubai chocolate Sundays, Dubai Chocolate Ghirardelli bites, Dubai chocolate mixed in with the shake. Like it was a Dubai chocolate experience over the weekend, and it was absolutely on impulse, largely just to please my daughter, and not something that I would normally do, but we were on vacation.
Jess Gaedeke (25:26)
Well, what's the verdict?
Sean Burress (25:27)
I'm indifferent. I really am. If I think about my motivation,
Jess Gaedeke (25:29)
my gosh. I didn't hear
Sean Burress (25:30)
it had nothing to do with the product. We were being serviced by multiple people, but my true motivation was having a happy daughter. When you work in
Jess Gaedeke (25:37)
Yeah. Hey.
Sean Burress (25:38)
a world of baby care, it's what drives many of the decisions that you make. Yeah.
Jess Gaedeke (25:40)
Absolutely. Yeah. If we
unpack ninety percent of our decisions are probably for the joy of others, including including those those kiddos.
Sean Burress (25:49)
Love that. The joy of others.
Jess Gaedeke (25:50)
Yeah. so what's a category or brand that you could really rationalize any price point for? You just have to have it in your life.
Sean Burress (25:57)
sadly, I'd say it's probably a cross between shoes and cars.
Jess Gaedeke (26:01)
really? Okay. Let's unpack this.
Sean Burress (26:03)
Yeah, I often ask why do I have so many shoes, right? I'm I'm a Kohl Han guy and I have
so many shoes. But when Kohl Han built a relationship with Nike and they started to put the Nike air in their shoes, I just genuinely began to look at them differently.
Here you've got a professional shoe that you can wear to work that also has the same comfort and feel as a gym shoe. And I was like, sold, right? get to be comfortable and still be appropriate in the office. I found myself wearing them all day, every day. And then now I probably have I don't know, 30 or 40 pair. And I used to only buy on sale. Now my wife will say, Hey, you can't buy another shoe. You've probably got that shoe. You should only buy it on sale.
If I pass a store, it's like I gotta at least go in and take a look, make sure I'm not missing anything. So I find myself spending way more on that brand of shoe than I've probably spent on any brand of shoe and
probably have more variety than I should have. And I struggle to even throw the old pairs away. on the car front, I come from a family of classic car owners.
my grandfather and uncle built a nineteen thirty-four Ford. And so having watched them do that, it was the car that I had in my wedding. So that experience alone is more connectivity across the generations. each of my family members now own either a Ford or a Cadillac or a Chevrolet classic car pre-70s. And
Jess Gaedeke (27:26)
Uh-huh.
Sean Burress (27:26)
I'm probably the only one who doesn't have one yet.
So at some
Jess Gaedeke (27:29)
Okay.
Sean Burress (27:30)
point I'll have to get.
Jess Gaedeke (27:31)
Yeah. I love that yet. Yeah, exactly. You'll you'll catch up to them. Well, I have a really soft spark for Cadillac because my first car was a nineteen seventy six Cadillac Seville. It was gold. It had an eight track in it.
Sean Burress (27:42)
love that. Love that. Yeah.
Jess Gaedeke (27:45)
Big Daddy Caddy was what we called it. It was a pretty legit first car. and just to re that was my first car. And to be
Sean Burress (27:47)
Yeah. That was the first car? Lovely.
Jess Gaedeke (27:52)
clear for anyone listening in, I didn't turn sixteen in the seventies. So like it was an old car by the time I got it, you know.
Sean Burress (27:58)
Yeah. okay,
okay.
Fair, fair.
Jess Gaedeke (28:00)
Yeah. it was yeah,
but my dad's whole theory was he wanted me to have a big boat so that, you know, I was safe basically. If I got into any accident, I wasn't gonna get hurt. So No, no, they do not.
Sean Burress (28:07)
Hm, absolut. That's They don't make like they used to, right? All right, dude, they we
Jess Gaedeke (28:14)
well I'm excited for you to one day get your sixties or even prior car. I'm sure it'll be epic.
Sean Burress (28:19)
Got
my eyes in mind on one. It's a nineteen sixty four Chevy and Palm.
Jess Gaedeke (28:23)
Nimpala, yeah, that'd be cool.
Sean Burress (28:24)
I'd love for it to be a convertible.
Jess Gaedeke (28:26)
Yeah. What color? Well cherry red action? Okay. Yeah.
Sean Burress (28:27)
A little bit of crimson and a little bit of cream. Yeah, you can call it
cherry red. I'm sure that was the original color, but a little red and white there.
Jess Gaedeke (28:35)
I love it. Well, I may have just cheated for this next question, so you might have to pick something other than Cadillac, but brands have distinct personalities. What's a brand that you
Sean Burress (28:41)
Okay.
Jess Gaedeke (28:43)
would date and a brand that you would marry? And they can be different brands.
Sean Burress (28:45)
a brand that I would date would probably be like Louis Vuitton or Gucci.
just because it showcases a choice. A choice to commit to something that you would consider the best for yourself, that you only want the best.
I might date that. But then when you look under it and you find out, you know what, this isn't much different than any other purse. You think about the brand that you would marry, I might look at more of a Dooney & Burke. I might look at more of a custom leather factory, something that has meaning or purpose, not because of the brand, but maybe it was where you had the experience.
when we travel and we find something, we're like, this is a local maker from this country, you'll never find it. It's one of a kind. those are the brands that stand out to me. The boutique brands. Those are the
ones I might marry versus the mass production focus on profit brands that I might date.
Jess Gaedeke (29:34)
Yep. Love that. A lot of meaning to that marriage choice.
what's a word you would use to describe your function two years ago? And what's a word that you would use to describe it today?
Sean Burress (29:43)
two years ago, I would say exploratory broad expansion. if I go back, a year or so more. we're in a space of bringing in new capability, new tools, exploring all the possibilities. Let's see what's out there, let's kind of really push our thinking on methodology, traditional thinking on how we might service the organization.
Whereas today we're thinking smaller, bigger, greater impact. We're saying, what is the space that we want to show improvement? And if we choose a specific space, then our exploration is a little more contained, a little more focused, and then it is absolutely contracted with our business partners to say these are the things that would bring us the biggest impact. And candidly, as I talked earlier.
We spent more time doing analytics on the business. Where are the biggest growth opportunities? And then focusing our insight development and our understanding on and how would we go about doing that uniquely as an insights and analytics function. So because we've had the wherewithal to take a step back, purchase a broad set of data and then do an analysis across the entire company on our biggest countries and our biggest businesses, we've said this is where we want to win. And then let's go understand how and why we should do that.
as Kimberly Clark with the brands we have, with the services, the assets that we have, the resources that
Jess Gaedeke (31:01)
Yeah. Very eloquent. I'm gonna spend some time thinking about that because I think there's a lot of ties to the other pieces that you talked about in terms of growth drivers and our thesis on growth has really shifted in a lot of ways, which is interesting. Makes our industry a fun one to be a part of.
Sean Burress (31:14)
Absolutely.
Jess Gaedeke (31:16)
so finally, what keeps you inspired at work? It feels like you still love what you do. So why is that?
Sean Burress (31:21)
It is always the people. And not so much the people on my team, but when I see the growth and development of individuals, whether they're my peers, they're people I may report into, or especially the people on my team, seeing people evolve, knowing the role that I've played in that, knowing the impact that it may have had on myself, that's what excites me. when my team says
You know what? I'm really proud of this work that we've done. I get excited because we were afforded the opportunity to do it. When my team feels like this is crazy and this is the biggest challenge. And sometimes I feel like I'm pushing a rope upstream. But then they get to the end of it and they go, Yeah, it still had major impact. And I'm glad we did it. And I probably would have done it differently. That growth and development, I hope I never lose that.
I hope I never lose the willingness to learn, the willingness to bend. And sometimes it can be tough, but when I see it in others, it's what keeps me inspired when I'm in a similar place.
Jess Gaedeke (32:20)
Well, I love that. And keep that inspiration going. Keep sharing it with others because you really are a treat to listen to, to talk with, interact with. I just think you bring a lot to the industry. So I appreciate your role that you play in it.
Sean Burress (32:30)
No, Jess, thank you for all that you do. Thank you for your continued effort to bring the best out of our organizations. I've looked at some of the sessions that you guys have posted in the past and I was inspired to say, I'm glad to be on the list. As well as it's good to see you doing what you do because it is something when you're in a company, you often can miss out on those opportunities that there are others just like you in different companies and different countries, even having the exact same experience. So please keep doing what you're doing.
Jess Gaedeke (32:56)
well I can't stop now, so thank you for that. appreciate
Sean Burress (32:59)
New ball.
Jess Gaedeke (32:59)
your time so very much. Thanks for joining.