Lessons in Digital Transformation from Clorox’s CEO

David K. Young: Welcome to C-Suite Perspectives, a signature series by The Conference Board. I'm David Young, the president of the Committee for Economic Development, the public policy center here at The Conference Board, and delighted to be guest host of today's episode. 

In today's conversation, we'll discuss Leadership in Challenging Times, where we feature the outstanding CEOs who are the recipients of CED's Distinguished Leadership Awards for corporate citizenship and business stewardship. Today, I have the distinct privilege of speaking with one of our 2025 honorees, Linda Rendle, chair and CEO of The Clorox Company. Under Linda's leadership, Clorox is championing people to be well and to thrive every day, and just how they do all of that is what we'll discuss today. 

Linda, welcome. We're so very pleased for you to be joining us.  

Linda Rendle:Very happy to be here, David. Thank you for the time.  

David K. Young:So Linda, let's start with leadership, the topic of leadership. You've been with The Clorox Company now for more than 20 years. You began, I believe, as a senior sales analyst, and have gone on to hold numerousdifferent roles, all the way up to when you took the role of CEO in September of 2020. You've led the company through some very interesting, challenging, uncertain times, including the pandemic. 

Tell us about your career. It's really remarkable, the fact that you've been at The Clorox Company for 20 years and moved all the way up to this role of CEO. Just curious about your reflections about your path through leadership to the role of CEO, and what are some of the core values you believe are important to being a successful leader?  

Linda Rendle:I've had a wonderful and interesting career, and when I think about the 25 yearsI've spent officially in consumer packaged goods, it actually goes back a lot longer than that. 

My dad was in consumer packaged goods, and so I grew up doing store checks as a young kid. I always had high school jobs in stores, getting to know consumers, getting to know what retailers wanted from consumer packaged goods companies. And it's an industry I absolutely love. I love being able to be in consumers' everyday lives with products that make their lives better. 

SoI'm very honored to be the CEO of this company. I've had a number of experiences. I started my career at Procter & Gamble. I came over and, as you said, I started as a senior sales analyst at Clorox, and went on to work in every one of our business units. Did rotations in different functions, mainly in sales, but I did supply chain, general management, and ultimately that led to being the CEO. 

But I would say, if I were to look at a hallmark of my career, it was curiosity and being willing to try things and take on experiences that made me a better leader and certainly made it easier for me to understand what really made it work for the consumer at the end of the day. 

And maybe the values that you highlighted, David, the things that I would carry for my whole career, and I say are never more important than being in the CEO role. The first would be integrity. And at Clorox, we call that do the right thing, always, without exception. We want to make sure that our leaders are doing what's right for our consumers, what's right from a business perspective. Of course, following laws and regulations. That's the first, and most important thing I look for in any leader that works for our company or partners with our company. 

And then second, I would say, and never more important than today, would be adaptability and resilience. it is incredibly important that leaders can change with the times, are willing to understand when they've made a bad decision and be humble about it and be able to adapt their way of leading or adapt the priorities of the company to deal with what's going on. 

And then finally, and I think the one that is my hallmark, and most important to me, is having courage. There's a lot of uncertainty in the world. There's a lot of things that, you know, choices that you can make. And I think whatever you need to do, you need to face that head on, have courage, make a decision, and execute to the best of your ability. And I try to have courage every single moment, whether that be at work or at home dealing with my kids.  

David K. Young:Yeah. Courage in different environments. But you mentioned integrity. I love this line, "Do the right thing, always, without exception." You also mentioned adaptability and resilience are then, obviously, courage. Beyond leadership, you have been instrumental in the formation of business strategy and the execution of that. You're the architect of the company's long-range Ignite business strategy. Can you tell us just a little bit more about that, about that strategy, how it came into existence, and how it's evolved through the pandemic to now? And, the major question, has it been effective?  

Linda Rendle:I'm lucky to lead a company that's been around for over 110 years. And so what that strategy set out to do was take the amazing brands that we have—we're in almost nine out of 10 US households today and in households all around the world—and we wanted more growth from the portfolio that we had. And the way we set out to do that was to make sure that we were driving more innovation, and we wanted to enable our teams to drive more innovation and superior experiences for our consumer, through enabling them with data and technology and moving as fast as the consumer in the world around us. 

That's our strategy, simply stated. In order to do that, we also had to create the fuel to invest in those innovations, to invest in those superior experiences. and that builds off a long history the company's had of removing any waste that we have in our system and investing that back with the consumer, back with our retailers. to grow our brands. 

I would say in large part, this strategy's been very successful and helped us navigate not only the pandemic. but a round of or multiple years of incredible inflation. We also experienced a cyberattack, unfortunately, about a year and a half ago, and that strategy helped us make the choices to ensure that we could win, even in a time when our company was incredibly challenged. 

In that period of time, our strategy was able to recover almost a thousand basis points of gross margin erosion from inflation. We increased the percentage of our portfolio deemed superior by consumers significantly during this period of time. And I would say the one thing that we're still trying to get is more regular growth. We've had periods over these last five years of great growth, and then given some of the other dynamics we have, we just want to make that more consistent over time. But feel terrific about the progress the team has made, getting closer to the consumer, implementing a digital transformation, which I think we'll talk about here in a minute, and ensuring that we know the consumer better than anyone.  

David K. Young: Interesting. So, 110, did I hear this correct? 110 years old.  

Linda Rendle: Yes.  

David K. Young: Amazing. You mentioned innovation and transformation. You've obviously led or are leading the organization through a period of significant transformation as an organization, especially in terms of kind of a new operating model and your digital investments. 

Can you share a little bit more about why it is important, but also why it's important for shoring up long-term growth and aspirations?  

Linda Rendle:Yeah, as we reflected upon what we could do better, as we were writing our strategy, we had highly relevant brands that consumers loved, but we needed to move faster in the marketplace to be more competitive. And frankly, we needed to enable our teams with the data and insights as fast as those consumers were moving. And we knew we needed to take on a pretty big transformation to do that.So we fundamentally redesigned our data and technology from the ground up, rebuilding all of our data to have it harmonized and be able to take it from different sources. 

And then implementing a new version of our ERP, as well as technologies that support all of the functions across the business to drive innovation, et cetera.That's been a five-year process. At the same time, we put an operating model in place to be able to leverage that data and technology investment that we were making. And at the same time, continuing to invest to ensure that our culture is a place where all people can thrive and do their very best work. That's incredibly important that we get the best talent. 

And we're at the tail end of that digital transformation coming up here. We're actually implementing the final big part of our technology implementation here in just a week, which is an exciting thing for our team and an exciting milestone. And what'sreally great is to see our people moving withthe speed they haven't moved with before. And the reality is everyone at Clorox will work differently than they have a year ago, three years ago, and we are ready for AI because of these investments we've made. We didn't even foresee that five years ago to the degree it would help our business, but because of those investments, we are ready for the AI revolution and using it in areas across our business.  

David K. Young: And do you, Linda, do you see that as a continuing process of investment and evolution moving forward to just keep up with the pace of change?  

Linda Rendle:Yeah, so we had to make a big one-time investment to get caught up, but now it is just the way of doing business. I think everybody is thinking about that: How do we make sure we continue to invest in technology and data and our business as a way to win? But that will be more of an ongoing process, like you said, David, than a one-time event like we did over the last few years. 

David K. Young: And well-received by employees and colleagues? 

Linda Rendle: Yes. You know what? Everybody loves the idea of moving off of Excel spreadsheets to manage our business and actually having data and insights at their fingertips. it's a terrific thing, and the team has been wonderful embracing it.  

David K. Young: Lovely. Sowe're going to take a short break and be right back with more of my conversation today with Linda Rendle. 

Welcome back to C-Suite Perspectives. I'm your host, David Young, the president of the Committee for Economic Development, the public policy center here at The Conference Board. I'm joined today by Linda Rendle, the chair and CEO of The Clorox Company. Welcome back, Linda.  

Linda Rendle: Thanks, David. Great to be here.  

David K. Young:So before the break, Linda, you alluded to and mentioned a little bit about the consumer. And I want this second half of today's conversation just to focus on the state of the consumer. This series is about leading in challenging times, and these have certainly been some challenging times since you took over as the CEO of The Clorox Company. And this is especially challenging environment for consumers, both from the macroeconomic environment, but also the geopolitical environment that we find ourselves navigating through. 

From where you sit as the CEO of a company with essential household brands, and I think you said before the break, your brands are in nine out of 10 households, if I recall correctly. You are also the chair of the Consumer Brands Association. So you have a unique perspective on the consumer right now. What are you seeing in terms of consumer behavior, given all the uncertainty that we're living through?  

Linda Rendle: David, I think you nailed the important point, which is uncertainty. So if you look back over the last number of years, consumers have been under incredible pressure, from the pandemic to experiencing inflation, to your point, the geopolitical environment. 

But what we see that is marking this period specifically is uncertainty. They just don't know what to expect one day to the next. And sothey're making decisions without having full visibility into the impact it will have in their lives. And that is really what we're seeing: A still fairly resilient consumer. We're continuing to see them shop, but they're making different choices depending on the news cycle and to ensure that they can meet all of their household needs.Sowe've seen pretty dramatic changes in categories that are fairly consistent, as consumers hear news on what's going on and may decide to pull forward a purchase that they think is going to be impacted. 

it's a really unique time to watch their behavior, but I would say overall, if you kind of take a step back from all of that, consumer spending in aggregate has been fairly strong. Again, they're making choices to deal with the day-to-day news of uncertainty and not knowing exactly what impacts them. And they're still always looking for a superior experience. And that's what we're focused on, is making sure they have the right value. And we have found, if you give them a great value, they're willing to pay for it. They're willing to pay for products that area premium. That hasn't changed. They're just doing the very smart things they need to in the short term to deal with a pretty big amount of volatility and, to your point, uncertainty.  

David K. Young:Yeah. It's interesting, you mentioned, when we look at the consumer making different choices, but also looking, you have this great line, "looking for a superior experience." Just given all the uncertainty, are there ways that you are seeing how consumers can thrive despite the kind of the economic and financial challenges and just the global environment of uncertainty?  

Linda Rendle: We've seen some really interesting trends emerge.And one of them that I love, because it really impacts our portfolio, is that consumers want to control what they can at this moment in time, when there's such uncertainty. And so they're looking to spaces in their home to be able to provide that control and certainty that they like. 

We've seen trends emerge about how they might be taking care of the inside of the refrigerator because that gives them a little bit of joy. Perhaps they're using a product that has a more effusive scent experience because that gives them that joy and that control at home. Sothere's so many opportunities for brands to delight consumers and, to your point, to help them thrive in a time when it's difficult for them to navigate. 

And that's what we found is reconnecting to what brings them joy, what helps them thrive, and what they think is important at the moment. And each one of our brands are always looking to say, what combination of things can we do to make sure that we are giving consumers that superior experience and help them have a little joy and a little control in their everyday life?  

David K. Young: Could you elaborate a little bit, and this is my final question for you today, but just I was going ask what Clorox is doing to meet those needs, to provide this superior experience? But how are you able to do that? 

Linda Rendle: We look at all aspects of what consumers consider to be a superior experience. Do we have the right brand, and does it promise the consumer and deliver on the promise what it says it's going to? Is the package that the product in delightful? When you spray a trigger to clean your home, does it spray nice? Is the product experience—does it kill the germs it says it's going to? Does it clean the messes? Does it keep your cat litter box from smelling? All of these things is what our brands are looking at today to say, "Are we delighting the consumer at every turn?" and therefore, we know they'll reward us in the end, and they'll choose our products. 

But those are the things we're focusing on, making sure we're getting all of those small things right, to delight them. And our brands are, as I said, more of our portfolio is deemed superior than it was before. And then that's because we're focusing on those little moments that matter to the consumer. 

David K. Young: The Clorox Company. I've got your new slogan here. Are we delighting the consumer at every turn?  

Linda Rendle: I love it. 

David K. Young:It's a heck of a challenge that you have, but it is, been an absolute delight, Linda, speaking with you today. And thank you so much for joining us. And we, as I said at the beginning, we very much look forward to celebrating you and the entire Clorox team at CED's Distinguished Leadership Awards this October. Thank you, Linda.  

Linda Rendle: It was great to be here, David. I really appreciate it.  

David K. Young: And thanks to all of you for listening to C-Suite Perspectives. I'm David Young, and this series today has been brought to you by The Conference Board.