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When a $65 billion consumer goods giant faces market pressure to move faster and respond to rapidly changing consumer demands, traditional project management approaches simply don't cut it. Unilever discovered this reality and made a bold decision - to elevate agile principles from isolated teams to enterprise-wide execution.
The transformation delivered remarkable results. This is the story of how agile helped Unilever grow faster - creating a complete blueprint for any organization looking to scale operations while maintaining startup-level agility.
In this article, we will cover:
- The 4-pillar agile framework that transformed Unilever's operations
- Measurable results, including rapid product launches, productivity gains, and accelerated growth metrics
- Strategic lessons for project managers on priority-setting, team empowerment, and more
- A practical 12-week implementation plan to apply Unilever's approach in your organization
The 4 agile principles that transformed Unilever's growth trajectory
Unilever's transformation wasn't about adopting trendy methodologies - it was about solving fundamental business problems. The company needed to maintain its global scale advantage while responding faster to market changes across 400+ brands in 190+ countries with 127,000 employees.
Rather than implementing agile in scattered, isolated parts of the organization, Unilever's leadership made a strategic decision to elevate agile principles to the enterprise level.
The four-pillar approach that transformed operations:
1. Ruthless priority setting
Unilever began using objectives and key results (OKRs) to clearly articulate the company's highest-level priorities, a step inspired by technology companies, such as Google, that use OKRs to direct their operations.
The power of this approach lies in forcing difficult choices. Instead of trying to do everything, OKRs help teams understand exactly how their daily work connects to company priorities.
2. Quarterly business reviews
Traditional annual planning cycles were too slow for market realities. The company found that combining quarterly reviews with an annual plan works better than an annual plan alone to track expectations, delivery, and progress toward goals.
Pro Tip: Leadership teams typically spend 70% of a review discussing and agreeing on priorities for the coming quarter and interventions that may be needed to make sure work stays on track. This focus on forward-looking decisions, not backward-looking reports, drives real results.
3. Dedicated multidisciplinary teams
The company reorganized how many people work by grouping them into multidisciplinary, dedicated teams focused on delivering on its highest priorities. These weren't temporary project teams - they worked together long-term to become highly effective.
4. Empowered leadership and culture
Unilever embedded enterprise-level agile coaches with business unit and function leaders to guide them through changes related to working in new ways.
The key insight: top leaders set priorities, but teams decide how to execute them.
The impressive results that followed
Within 18 months of implementing enterprise agile principles, Unilever began seeing measurable improvements across speed, engagement, and financial performance that validated its strategic investment.
✔️Faster market response and innovation
In early 2020, Unilever never had plans to make sanitizer for the North American market. Prior to COVID-19, Suave was their only brand for the U.S. market. It is amazing to see how they transformed their organization and adapted agile methodology in the midst of a crisis. They went from idea to market in just 6 weeks.
This speed wasn't luck - it was the direct result of their agile transformation creating organizational capability to respond rapidly to market opportunities.
✔️Improved team performance and engagement
Unilever conducted comprehensive surveys across agile teams and found an 8% increase in positivity scores and measurably improved work efficiency. More importantly, teams reported higher job satisfaction due to clearer priority setting and reduced time spent on low-value administrative tasks.
Key Insight: Teams generally appreciate the greater autonomy, which creates energy and engagement that bubbles up through the organization and transforms the culture as well as the business.
✔️Enhanced innovation pipeline and speed-to-market
The new Country Category Business Teams (CCBTs) enabled Unilever to roll out global innovations 30% faster while becoming more responsive to local market trends.
This dual capability of global scale with local agility became a competitive advantage in emerging markets.
✔️Accelerated growth and profitability
The Connected 4 Growth program, Unilever's broader transformation initiative that included enterprise agile adoption, delivered measurable business results.
Underlying sales growth increased by 2.6% in Q3 2017, with emerging markets showing particularly strong performance at 6.3% growth. CEO Paul Polman noted: "Our change programme 'Connected 4 Growth' (C4G), which started in the autumn of 2016, is delivering ahead of plan."
What project managers can learn from Unilever's approach
The lessons from Unilever's transformation go beyond methodology - they reveal fundamental shifts in how successful organizations approach project management at scale.
1. Start with strategic alignment, not tools
Many organizations make the mistake of starting with agile tools and ceremonies. Unilever's success came from aligning agile principles with strategic business goals first.
"For years, I thought agile was only relevant for tech startups," Nitin Paranjpe, Unilever's chief people and transformation officer, says. "But when I took a closer look, the penny dropped for me. The things that agile solves are actually the problems of large companies, whether it is obsessive customer centricity, clarity on prioritization - a big problem for large companies with too many initiatives - or driving for sharp accountability on outcomes and not output."
💡Practical takeaway: Before implementing any agile tools, identify your organization's top 3 strategic challenges. Then map how agile principles can specifically address those problems.
2. Focus on empowerment, not control
Traditional project management often emphasizes control and oversight through detailed plans, extensive reporting, and hierarchical approval processes. Unilever's approach emphasized empowerment within clear priority frameworks - giving teams autonomy to decide how to achieve well-defined objectives.
This shift created faster decision-making, higher team engagement, and reduced the administrative overhead that typically slows down large organizations. Teams spent less time reporting upward and more time delivering value to customers.
💡Practical takeaway: Replace detailed task tracking with outcome-based accountability. Set clear objectives and key results, then trust teams to determine the best execution approach.
3. Make priority-setting a core competency
"The core principle is about sharp priority setting and putting our focus where the most value is created," Jope says. Without ruthless prioritization, agile becomes chaos rather than speed.
Their quarterly business reviews spent 70% of the time on future priorities and only 30% on past performance - a complete reversal of typical corporate review patterns.
💡Practical takeaway: Implement a "stop doing" list alongside every new priority. For every new initiative approved, identify what will be deprioritized or eliminated entirely.
Practical steps to apply Unilever's lessons in your organization
Rather than attempting a complete overhaul, smart organizations can implement Unilever's approach through a structured 12-week transformation plan that builds momentum progressively.
Phase 1: Establish clear priorities (Weeks 1-4)
- Document your top 5 strategic objectives using OKR format
- Ensure each objective has measurable key results
- Cascade these priorities to team level with clear connections
Phase 2: Create dedicated teams (Weeks 5-8)
- Form multidisciplinary teams around your highest priorities
- Give teams authority to decide how to achieve their objectives
- Establish clear accountability for outcomes, not just outputs
Phase 3: Implement regular review cycles (Weeks 9-12)
- Set up quarterly business reviews focused on priority adjustment
- Spend 70% of review time on forward-looking decisions
- Use two-page memos to structure discussions around key priorities
Phase 4: Build supporting culture (Ongoing)
- Train leaders in agile coaching principles
- Emphasize experimentation and rapid learning cycles
- Celebrate teams that deliver value quickly, even through failure
Getting started with your own agile transformation
Unilever's success story demonstrates that agile transformation at enterprise scale isn't just possible - it's proven. Their 4-pillar approach delivered measurable results: 6-week product launches, 8% productivity increases, and accelerated growth across 400+ brands globally.
The key lessons are clear: start with strategic alignment before tools, empower teams within priority frameworks, and make ruthless prioritization a core competency. These principles work whether you're managing 5 people or 127,000 employees.
Modern organizations implementing these strategies benefit from AI project management software that eliminates routine administrative tasks - just as Unilever automated over 500 capabilities to free teams for higher-value work. The path forward is clear - and it works.
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