Change Is Sweet

So when Riso pitched his new Net strategy to the leadership team, back in 1999, he found a keenly receptive audience. Weller and his colleagues saw the new approach as a way to throw some accelerant on Nestlé's smoldering change effort. Instead of creating a separate e-business division, they would make e-business an integral part of every division and every department of the company.

Today, each operating division has an "e-business catalyst" who helps its managers develop its Web presence. Chao, for example, works side by side with brand managers in Nestlé's confection-and-snack division to create a Web-based strategy for marketing products like Butterfinger and Crunch. Riso works with similar catalysts in each staff area -- hr, communications, purchasing -- to build out Nestlé's B2B, B2C, and B2E functions. The goal is to infuse the entire organization with people who are steeped in the Net.

In the end, big competitors like P&G didn't force Nestlé to embrace the Internet. Neither did the herd of Internet startups. The push for change came from within. People like Weller and Riso, Manion and Chao saw that e-business could extend way beyond the Internet, way beyond technology. E-business could change everything about the company: change the way it markets, change the way it sells, change the way it relates to its own employees.

And at Nestlé, change begins literally at the top -- on the 21st floor of the Glendale office tower. Early this year, workers could be seen rolling up Oriental rugs and removing mahogany desks from what had been the company's executive suites. They were making way for employee meeting rooms and for temporary offices to be used by telecommuters. Weller and other top executives moved their offices down several floors, in part so that they could work alongside people in the trenches.

"If our initiative is successful, e-business will permeate the company's DNA and all of our thought," says Riso. "We won't need e-catalysts. In the end, the term 'e-business' has to disappear. I have to work myself out of a job."

For now, at least, Riso's job seems to be safe. Case in point: a recent attempt by Rich Vincent to follow Weller's lead by busting up a Friday meeting.

"It was 10 AM, and my team was just coming out of a meeting," Vincent recalls. "There was another manager with his group waiting to use the room, and I half-jokingly told them that they couldn't come in, because there are no meetings after 10. And this manager looked at me as if to say, 'You've just embarrassed me in front of my entire team.' "

So did the group turn around and walk away from the room?

"No," Vincent says with a frown. "They marched into the room, and they went ahead and had their meeting."

At Nestlé USA, change is still a work in progress.

Bill Breen (bbreen@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior editor. Visit Nestlé USA on the Web (www.nestleusa.com).