Ephi Eyal is the president and CEO of IFP, Inc. a multiple site manufacturing company whose 200 employees are committed to leadership in powdered product innovation for the food and nutraceutical industries. Prior to IFP, Mr. Eyal led the global food business for CP Kelco, a JM Huber company and the world’s largest supplier of hydrocolloids natural ingredients used to stabilize and texturize numerous industrial applications. While at Kelco, Mr. Eyal established a corporate office in Shanghai and pioneered team food, a cross functional business team leading all market facing activities. Mr. Eyal came to CP Kelco from Huber Engineered Materials (HEM) where he led a flame retardant chemical business. During his tenure at HEM, Mr. Eyal led the turnaround of a manufacturing plant, led the acquisition of the single largest competitor and the building of a new manufacturing facility. Immediately after joining HEM, Mr. Eyal led the integration of Noviant, a European cellulose gum company, establishing a team in Helsinki, Finland.
 
Mr. Eyal started his career as an attack helicopter Air Force pilotwhere he was a wing commander and reached the rank of Major. After his service and post-graduation from Tel Aviv University with a B.Sc. in electrical engineering he joined Elbit Systems, an aerospace technology company, where he started as a product manager and continued to manage an R&D group. While at Elbit, he gained extensive international sales experience, operating in more than a dozen countries, mostly in emerging markets. Mr. Eyal holds an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. While at Tuck he became the fourth employee of Mainstay Partners, a boutique management consulting firm specializing in business strategy. At Tuck, he was awarded the Julia Stell and the Charles I. Lebovitz awards for exceptional leadership and community achievement. Mr. Eyal resides in Minneapolis with his two children, three-year old Taliah, and nine-year old Daniel.
 
Health E-Insights: What are the top two metrics to which your company pays the closest attention?
 
Mr. Eyal: IFP tracks a multitude of metrics and is fortunate to have a team that is data and results driven. Various metrics are tracked by each department and by each of our two factories. At the corporate level the two most important metrics are the risk adjusted value of our sales opportunity pipeline and our cash flow performance. The first is an excellent indication as to the effectiveness of the various marketing and product development initiatives we have and how well it is received by prospective customers. It is also the best indicator we have into our future sales growth and the success in our transition to a commercialization company. The second metric is critical to supporting our growth as it reflects our ability to support organic growth through the development of new products and technologies and our ability to attract and retain the kind of talent we need. 
 
Health E-Insights: What new competition will you have in the next 3-5 years?
 
Mr. Eyal: The flattening of the world and industry consolidation are the two main trends responsible for introducing new competition as well as proving new opportunity. We see an ever increasing offering of services and products from the Far East and especially from India and China. We are finding more of our services and products offered directly to our North American customers from other countries and at an increasing level of sophistication and quality. On top of this the continued desire to uncover new revenue streams is pushing some of our suppliers and customers to vertically integrate and offer services and products that compete with ours. Nevertheless, we see these two macro trends as positive for our company as new markets open up and in which the innovation we practice, and the quality of the services and products we offer are appreciated.
 
Health E-Insights: As an organization gets larger there can be a tendency for the ‘institution’ to dampen the ‘inspiration.’ How do you keep this from happening?
 
Mr. Eyal: This is indeed a concern and one which I can personally appreciate having moved from a large global organization to a smaller company. The key to maintaining organizational passion and esprit-de-corps lies in the company’s ability to keep its reporting structure as flat as possible and maintain as many touch-points as possible between the various managerial levels, locations and departments. In a previous global role we did that by forming a team whose membership was open to any company employee who dealt with the food and nutrition markets. This team conducted bi-weekly calls that transcended geography, functional roles and hierarchy and had an evolving agenda that greatly contributed to organizational alignment. By the time of our fourth such call we had more than 200 company professionals dial-in from more than 20 countries, some rising at 4 am and others staying up until 1 am, all with the aim to service our global customers more effectively and drive innovation across geographies and applications. At IFP we engage the entire workforce on a quarterly basis by holding town-hall meetings, which allow us to openly discuss our performance and plans. Moreover, our leadership team is accessible to the entire workforce and we have a number of forums in which employees are free to bring up concerns and opportunities that drive value for our numerous stakeholders. We implemented a management system we call Performance Partners that aims to align companywide Critical Success Factors (CSF) with those of company departments and the individual employees to allow for professional inspiration and meaningful contribution to the organization.
 
Health E-Insights: What trends do you envision in functional beverages and food categories?
 
Mr. Eyal: The introduction of novel food ingredients is becoming a rarity and is being replaced by a systems approach. Application functionality, consumer expectations and economics are the main driving forces behind these ingredient systems. The drive is toward solutions that offer improved economics on the manufacturing and product input side, and enhanced functionality on the consumer side. The consumer, and thus industry are learning to appreciate value while not willing to compromise on performance. IFP has an important role in this trend as we build ingredient systems that transcend clinical efficacy. We look for ingredient systems and food and nutrition formulations that aim at a perfect powdered product. For IFP that means products that taste great, sound great and look great. Our technologies and ingredient systems target flavor masking, enhanced mouth-feel and texture, improved solubility, extended shelf life, controlled interaction and enhanced handling during the manufacturing process to mention a few.  
 
Health E-Insights: What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned over the past few years?
 
Mr. Eyal: Throughout my childhood I heard my maternal grandmother say, ‘man plans and god laughs.’ As a child I had little appreciation for this statement and as an adult my training as a pilot, engineer and MBA did not support true comprehension for its wisdom. The turbulent economy of late and complex business reality we face helped me appreciate the limitations of planning. While important, strategic and tactical planning cannot overcome our inherent poor foresight into the future, and should thus take second stage to overall organizational vision and the passion and talent of the people who are a part of the organization.
 
Health E-Insights: What is one characteristic that you believe every leader should possess?
 
Mr. Eyal: I believe an effective leader must possess introspection that can lead to personal change. We live in challenging times in which the required rate of adaptation is ever increasing. An effective leader needs to have the ability to understand how change will impact the company, its leadership, employees and also possess the communication skills to interpret the change to the various company stakeholders. This requires more than experience and intellect. The effective modern leader must be willing to experiment, accept occasional failure and possess the ability to change not only the strategy and business practices of the organization but also personal leadership and management styles. 
 
Health E-Insights: Is there something about you that people would find surprising?
 
Mr. Eyal: I am a member of a very small sub group of individuals who have grown up in both Bozeman, Montana and Tel-Aviv, Israel. This small group may actually include only my sister and me. These places couldn’t be more different and have provided me at a young age with an interesting perspective into culture, language and humanity. My father was a scientist, university professor and plant pathologist who employed plant breeding and genetic engineering to develop varieties of wheat, which were disease immune. He provided our family with a wonderful opportunity to see the world and explore its diversity. 
 

Sheldon Baker wants to interview you. Contact Sheldon at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @NutraInk and visit his website at www.BakerDIllon.com.