John Gleason

Throughout a rewarding career at Procter & Gamble that spanned more than two decades, John's global responsibilities in operations, international trade, strategic sourcing, and design, touched every business unit and every region.  

During the initial, formative, and critical stages of P&G's transformational journey to elevate design in its business and embed it into its DNA, John was sought as the Company's first executive dedicated to leading and shaping P&G's external design and innovation relationships. In this pivotal role, John ensured that external relationship practices were aligned with the Company's internal and organizational efforts, and laid the foundation for screening, selection, compensation, on-boarding, and evaluation processes consistent with P&G's design vision.  

Atypical of prevalent sourcing practices in this space, John, first, strove to improve internal alignment of expectations and decision-making, and external visibility of plans. Next, John recommended that P&G help its chosen partners become better businesses, as he observed a general lack of "business acumen" throughout the industry – supported by direct interface with more than 400 design firms who sought relationships with P&G… they just all sounded the same, and could not seem to have a "business" conversation with their potential clients.

Inspired by these observations and experiences, the insights from P&G's design journey, and a wide variety of Fortune 500 connections, John saw the opportunity to help both "sides" accelerate their design journey - to be better, better together, and ultimately drive better business results.

Subsequently, in 2007, John founded A Better View Strategic Consulting, LLC  to "enhance the intersection of creative relationships". A Better View was launched with three primary objectives, to help:

• creative enterprises become better businesses and better business partners; 
• brands and corporations elevate and leverage design as a strategic business competence that helps enhance business results; 
• enhance the intersection of these creative relationships – to be better together.

Including John's experiences and impact at P&G, A Better View has now connected with more than 600 creative services enterprises, and more than 60 of the world's leading marketers of consumer-facing products and services – contributing new perspective and opportunities for better organization and business performance. In short, it is John's hope that his vision is providing… well… A Better View.

Click here to get to know John better by reading his speaker interview.

Session: Thursday, 29 April 2:15-3:00 - Global Design Procurement