Hershey CEO Michele Buck on Empowering Internal Change Agents
Give the disruptors within your own company the freedom to drive change.
April 29, 2022
Summary.
Michele Buck is the first female CEO in The Hershey Company’s history, and the company has been recognized as one of America’s most female-friendly corporations. One of her most interesting innovations involves tapping internal change agents, sometimes bypassing normal leadership hierarchy. She identified employees who had shown “an ability to see where trends were headed.” She put them in small groups to tackle big initiatives, pairing them with people who had strong executive skills. “I made sure that we listened to their thinking on this, because I think a lot of times those really disruptive thinkers can get shut down.”