Connect with Rue:

Email: Rue@RueWorks.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rue-patel/

CLASSIC EPISODE! (Originally Aired January 23, 2021)

Show Transcript:

Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. I'm excited to introduce you to our guest today Rue Patel. For 15 years, Rue Patel led General Mills' largest manufacturing site. He was accountable for delivering expected quantifiable results with a focus on employee consumer and environmental responsibility.

Rue is the founder of Rue Works. He works with smaller businesses to define and implement their growth strategy, provide executive coaching to their leaders, and speak at industry conferences. Welcome to the show.

Rue Patel: They said, thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Lisa Ryan: Well, I know that you spent most of your career at General Mills, but you share with us a little bit about your journey.

Rue Patel: Yeah, so my manufacturing journey started at PepsiCo, followed by 29 years at General Mills in various roles, mostly manufacturing, but some Research and Development roles. We had an incubator, a little business where we had a skunkworks factory and did some cool experimental things. I found that my love and passion was in building our brands through excellent manufacturing to driving people leadership, people growth, and development of great talent, driving great processes that deliver great results for General Mills.

And our $2 billion plant was an example of one that doubled in size in the last seven or eight years. And we were able to do a lot of that without capital and without adding additional headcount, so purely through improvement and some great technology.

It was the use of that technology with great planning, so it's been a lot of fun. I then kicked into Rue Works when I retired a few months ago. It's a passion to help smaller businesses - under 100 million dollars thereabouts - and help them improve themselves through the same things: strategy development, people development, and talent acquisition. In some cases, finding ways to improve their processes, streamline their systems, and drive to the bottom line. And that's been just a lot of fun.

Lisa Ryan: Yeah, and it sounds like you're able to easily translate a lot of the work that you did for such a massive company like General Mills into working with smaller organizations. Part of what we're trying to do with this podcast is to show how easily transferable some of these ideas are.

You and I have had many conversations about some of the cool things you did a General Mills. But I was hoping you could share with our listeners some of the different philosophies that you had. And some of the other things you did at General Mills that now you're translating that key the clients you're working with today.

Rue Patel: Yeah, so I'm a believer that General Mills, just a great company, is a company of people. It's a people company that happens to make food. For me, the center of this thing is people and the ability to develop people to see things differently, see themselves differently, and expand different roles.

I have done a lot of work with our minority and diversity groups, as I'm of Asian descent and a first-generation immigrant; and with women in our organization. Mentoring, supporting, leading, guiding, and sometimes pushing and kicking people to do things they didn't think they'd achieve. A third of our General Mills factory leaders who reported to me are now directors. I have worked on my teams at some point in their career. And I'm super proud of that.

So beyond the quantifiable stuff. It's the leadership of people, and then their ability...