A.G.Lafley, chairman, president and CEO, Procter & Gamble, spoke to the company’s share owners at its annual meeting in Cincinnati on October 8th, saying that consumer and share owner value creation are now the company’s top priorities.

Lafley said P&G had met or exceeded its key financial commitments, including organic sales growth, core earnings per share and free cash flow productivity, returning $12.5 billion in cash to share owners. However, he emphasized that the company can do better.

The four areas that will be focused on, to improve performance, are:

…value creation for consumers and share owners, productivity and innovation, significant improvements to operating discipline and investments in research and development and go-to-market capabilities.

“The changes we are making in these four areas – reestablishing value creation as our primary measure of success, investing in innovation and go to market capabilities, accelerating productivity savings and improving operating discipline and execution – are important changes that we believe will improve performance,” Lafley explained.

Lafley concluded: “We have taken a hard look at what we need to do and how we need to change to perform better. We’re committed to do what it takes to get P&G back to balanced, consistent, reliable and sustainable growth and value creation for consumers, customers, and you, our share owners.”

P&G will issue its results for the first fiscal quarter ended September 30, 2013 on October 25, 2013.