Leaders of Change: Laura Hyland

LAURA HYLAND leads US eCommerce at Henkel for their Laundry and Beauty care consumer businesses. Over her 17-year career in CPG, she has held many roles from brand marketing to category management and shopper insights to analytics. She is a lifelong learner and enjoys new challenges, so it was only fitting that she expanded her scope to include eCommerce upon returning from a 3-year assignment with Henkel in Germany in 2016. Laura joined Henkel in 2005 after starting her brand marketing career at GlaxoSmithKline in 2001. She holds an MBA from UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School and is a native North Carolinian which makes her a passionate Tar Heels basketball fan and an avid golfer. 

Why did you choose to pursue eCommerce in your career? If I’m being honest, it chose me more than the other way around (although tough to admit because I’d like to take the credit!) I was lucky to be asked to manage our eCommerce business when it was still very small – in fact, I was asked to manage it in addition to leading our US Catdev and Shopper Marketing groups. Very quickly, I realized that Henkel needed a leader that could solely focus on eCommerce given the opportunity and strategic importance to the company. Within one year, I handed over the other departments to colleagues and set to work on truly building an eCommerce practice at Henkel. 

What is your biggest strength, and how have you used it for your success in eCommerce? The fact that my career has taken a crooked path with twists and turns both locally and globally has really positioned me nicely for this role. In eCommerce, all of these elements come together yet in a distinctly different way with new opportunities and obstacles which makes it fun and tough at the same time. Henkel’s categories are still quite under-developed so in addition to focusing on our brands’ growth on eCommerce, I’m also keenly focused on how to grow the categories while keeping an eye always on profitability. To do this I’m bringing all these areas of expertise together. 

How have you most successfully influenced change within your organization (or with your clients)? Success begets success, so in the beginning, you’ve got to get a few of those wins, collect data, share it back in order to get more support. It also helps a lot to have high-level leadership advocacy – and we have that at Henkel – but change also must come at all levels of the organization. Finding advocates throughout the organization – in Supply Chain, Finance, R&D, Marketing, etc. greatly improves the influence over change because you cannot do it alone. Find those people and work with them to build change from the inside out!

In the last five years, what new belief, behavior or habit has most improved your life? Transparency about challenges and failures, combined with increased willingness to ask for help from a broader group, even external, to find solutions. In eCommerce, being comfortable with failure is critical and with that also comes being comfortable with enlisting others to help you with solutions. I used to be very self-reliant in my career, but in this dynamic space where things are new and changing every day, more often than not, I don’t have the answer. That’s ok. I remind myself and my team all the time that we’re not in it alone – not having the answer is par for the course and reaching out for others to help and input into the solution is the best way to break through stubborn issues! Sometimes eCommerce takes a village. 

What are you learning right now? I continue to hone my talent and organizational strategy skills – we are in the midst of an exciting growth spurt, but hiring 12 new team members at the same time can be overwhelming.  

What are the 1-3 songs that would make up your career soundtrack today?

• Empire State of Mind by JayZ and featuring Alicia Keys: I packed a few suitcases and moved to NYC 3 weeks after graduating from college – no job but I had a temporary place to stay and idea of what I wanted to do. I was always inspired by the city and by 18, I knew that’s where I’d start out. Whenever I hear this song, it takes me back to the early days and reminds me how important they were to my career, even today.
• Learning to Fly by the late Tom Petty: To me this song is about learning to do something you’ve never done before and doing it before you’re completely prepared. And the goal (and life) is constantly changing and so reaching it is almost never-ending.
• Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow by Fleetwood Mac: This one’s kind of self-explanatory. Yesterday’s gone. 

If you could have a gigantic billboard for the world to see with anything on it, what would it say, and why? “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.”

Popularized by Voltaire and Shakespeare – this is a quote I’ve used a lot over the years and in eCommerce, it becomes even more relevant. Speed is much more important than perfection. In fact, we need to follow some of our partners and sometimes be ok to put the plane together while we’re flying it.

What are the worst recommendations or advice you have heard related to eCommerce? "eCommerce is still so small – you should think about doing something different as your next role."

What advice would you give to a future leader of change about to enter business, or specifically the eCommerce field? Be curious, learn something new everyday (you won’t have to try!), stay positive, and above all, know that no one has it truly figured out – you have just as good a chance as anyone to be successful if you are open to change and hard work.  

What specific, industry-related change do you believe will happen that few others seem to see? Wow, that’s a tough question. And one that may be impossible to answer and here’s why – this is such a dynamic space that if my only job was to read all the speculative articles I could find, and talk to every expert I could regarding the future of commerce it would be a neverending job – but that’s what makes it such an exciting space. So each of us may think that we have an original thought or idea, and all of us are thinking about the future, but the cool thing is that we don’t know. Here are some of the speculative questions I have: Will Amazon become old-school and be abandoned by the next generations for something that hasn’t even launched yet? Will Ocado or someone like them enter the US and totally disrupt grocery delivery by truly solving the last mile problem? Will some sensorial, impulsive categories face accelerating declines as the shopper moves on line? What will be the merger that no one sees right now? Can Google catch up and challenge Alexa with something even better? I can’t wait to look back in 5-10 years and see how wrong and right we all were. 

What is the last thing you bought online, and why? Wireless Airpods but not by Apple! I about fainted when the guy at the Apple store quoted the price at check out – I knew I had to check Amazon and sure enough there are so many less expensive alternatives – this is a great example of what amazon is great for. 

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Leaders of Change is a weekly interview series featuring select industry pioneers who are driving the evolution of commerce, the consumer and everything in between. If you would like to recommend a Leader of Change for consideration, please reach out to me on LinkedIn.