Swiss business school IMD has co-developed and supported a one-year programme to develop a transformation roadmap for the Mars Petcare business. This ambitious initiative saw 20 Mars employees, called pathfinders, visit 32 growing companies with the aim of identifying and conducting projects to reshape the Mars Petcare business.

Mars is a confectionery and pet food conglomerate that owns the Pedigree pet food brand and the Banfield pet hospital chain. A family-owned company, it is better known for confectionery such as M&Ms and Snickers.

Pointing to the reason for the existence of the Pathfinder Initiative, Thomas Malnight, professor of Strategy and General Management at IMD, says:

“We have had the pleasure of dealing with lots and lots of leadership teams and one thing that we find is that the hardest thing for many companies is to prepare for the future.”

Gillian Enevoldsen, Global VP P&O at Mars Petcare, offers the company's point of view:

“The reason why we undertook the pathfinder’s work is because the business is operating pretty well today. But we really want to influence the industry and influence the future and this is a huge opportunity to look further out.”

A lot of what IMD does with the pathfinders is challenging their assumptions. The first step is actually to tell them: “You are fired! You no longer work for Mars. Go outside; see what the best companies are trying to do.”

Jeannine Taaffe, one of the pathfinders, admits that it was a really hard concept to get her head around. All pathfinders being pet care experts, it was hard not to go immediately to the obvious solution. But she also admits that it was rewarding to step away and look at the business in a whole different way.

The pathfinders visited 32 companies around the world across different industries. The main goal was to take the lessons from what other successful companies are doing and turn them into concrete proposals that can help transform the organisation.

The last part of the journey was to bring together the pathfinders and the Mars Petcare leadership team for three days. It was a process of exciting the leadership team; a process of showing them what is possible if they really look to the future. Because the critical issue taking this journey forward, Malnight stresses, is how to take ideas that are pathfinders' and make them into Mars ideas.