{"id":19442,"date":"2026-03-12T11:13:32","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T11:13:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/12\/leaders-at-all-levels-kraft-heinzs-5x-speed-secret\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T11:13:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T11:13:32","slug":"leaders-at-all-levels-kraft-heinzs-5x-speed-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/12\/leaders-at-all-levels-kraft-heinzs-5x-speed-secret\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaders at All Levels: Kraft Heinz\u2019s 5X Speed Secret"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Is 36 months too long for a new-product cycle? It was for Kraft Heinz. So, starting with a pilot project, it was able to cut time to market to just six months by redesigning how people worked. Today, units throughout the company are applying that model\u2019s step-by-step approach to change and are seeing measurable improvements in both performance and employee satisfaction. <\/p>\n<p>In this episode of <cite>Leaders at All Levels<\/cite>, Carolina Wosiack, Kraft Heinz\u2019s global head of agile transformation, shares the playbook behind Kraft Heinz\u2019s five-times-faster product launches \u2014 and the mindset shift it required.<\/p>\n<h3>The Kraft Heinz Playbook: Borrow These Ideas<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Limit the pipeline.<\/strong> Teams were juggling as many as 20 projects. The \u201cgolden number\u201d for Kraft Heinz? Seven. \u201cStrategy is not just what you do \u2014 it\u2019s what you don\u2019t do,\u201d Wosiack said.<\/li>\n<li><strong>One list, locked.<\/strong> Replace disconnected project plans with a single backlog tied to financial outcomes.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Pull, don\u2019t push.<\/strong> Let results create demand.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Grant decision rights.<\/strong> Remove hierarchical approvals. A project team in Canada was able to shift from endless sign-offs to quarterly check-ins with two or three people.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Stop providing all of the solutions.<\/strong> Wosiack\u2019s new standard response to questions: \u201cI know you know the answer.\u201d<\/li>\n<li><strong>Fix the system before it breaks the business.<\/strong> The turning point in a transformation journey, Wosiack said, \u201cis when teams are moving faster than the system.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>How It Works<\/h3>\n<p>Wosiack\u2019s group works with teams that <em>want<\/em> to change; they\u2019re not forced into it. Collaborating with a team in Brazil, for example, they changed employees\u2019 time allocation, expanded decision rights, and increased worker autonomy \u2014 and launched a new pasta sauce in six months instead of three years. Time spent in meetings dropped 31%, while employee engagement rose 55%. <\/p>\n<p>Watch until the end, when hosts Kate W. Isaacs and Michele Zanini share four principles worth borrowing for your own team.<\/p>\n<h5>Video Credits<\/h5>\n<p><strong>Carolina Wosiack<\/strong> is the global head of agile transformation at Kraft Heinz.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kate W. Isaacs<\/strong> is a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Michele Zanini<\/strong> is coauthor of the <cite>Wall Street Journal<\/cite> bestseller <cite>Humanocracy<\/cite> (Harvard Business Review Press, 2020).<\/p>\n<p><strong>M. Shawn Read<\/strong> is the multimedia editor at <cite>MIT Sloan Management Review<\/cite>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is 36 months too long for a new-product cycle? It  [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-graphic-design"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19442\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}