Ice cream
Introduction
Ben & Jerry’s is an independent ice cream producer based in Burlington, Vermont. Founded in 1978 by two childhood friends, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield had minimal experience in the making of ice cream and started their business by initially borrowing $4000.00 and putting in $8000.00 of their savings. From its start as a simple ice cream scoop shop, Ben & Jerry’s has been steadily gaining market share to where today the little company from Burlington Vermont is considered one of the leaders in the super-premium ice cream market in both Boston and New York City (XXX).
In addition to being involved in the super-premium ice cream market competition against Häagen-Dazs (run by Pillsbury), Frusen Glädjé (run by Kraft), and Steve’s Ice Cream (based out of Boston), Ben & Jerry’s has over 80 ice cream scoop-shop franchises and distributes their product throughout the United States. Ben & Jerry’s company headquarters and manufacturing facility located in Burlington have become synonymous with the state of Vermont. They have become the second largest tourist attraction for the country, attracting over 600,000 visitors per year (XXX).
Ben & Jerry’s organizational culture was initially designed to be very different when compared to any other corporate culture found in the United States. One of the keys to Ben & Jerry’s culture is the belief that a business draws from its local community. Because of this link, the company must give something back to the local community in appreciation of the received support. Ben & Jerry’s support its local community by only using Vermont based dairies as its milk suppliers and it is heavily involved with local charities. Also, when it came time to expand the business, instead of going through venture capitalists for its funds, Ben and Jerry offered and sold stock options by going door to door to local Vermonters. XXX claims that having fun while at work, the feelings of family and social responsibility are a few other components to Ben & Jerry’s corporate culture.
Key Issues
Beginning as two friends just having fun making ice cream, Ben & Jerry’s have now expanded to a business that directly employs over 350 people. In the five years, from 1984 until 1988, Ben & Jerry’s net sales increased from a little over 4 million dollars to over 47 million dollars. This overall increase in sales also generated an almost 14 million dollars gross profit margin. It is with these increases in both sales and gross profits are the board’s actual business mindset has to adapt. Both Ben and Jerry have stated their desire to have an organization that is not only fun but also feels like a family. In their zeal to ensure this feeling of family was implemented, they forgot to add the mother or father authority figure to the family dynamic. A family dynamic does not effectively work in business if there is not someone overall in charge (XXX).
Another issue was the lack of a clear message communicated from the board to the rest of the company. For example, when asked for their opinion, each member of the board had their separate organizational vision of what Ben & Jerry’s is and should be. The board also had serious issues in how they communicated with each other. The members seemingly could not talk amongst themselves honestly and openly about the problems that existed within the board itself. This situation resulted in the board believing that any issues that existed were found within the entire organization and not within their circle (XXX).
A majority of the employees had responsibilities that were beyond their work experiences. Managers and supervisors were experts in their actual technical positions, but the majority of them had no practical experience in being in either a leadership or managerial role. This led to a lack of communication between different departments, which resulted in a constant decrease of the finished products, and organizational sense of always being in crisis mode, long hours spent at work, extreme pressure, and elevated levels of stress. While that case study author believed that the majority of the managers were smart and even had some excellent views of how the company should function, nothing seemed to be in synch. No synchronization existed between each department, much less between the managers, the general manager, and the board. In a sense, all involved were used to working in a more participatory management style. While this can be an excellent way to run a small mom and pop shop, this style of managing could need to be adjusted when dealing with higher levels of responsibility in a larger organization (XXX).
Potential Courses of Action
The first approach to be discussed is the approach the case study author used – Team Building. Team building generally refers to a series of planned activities that help groups improve the way they accomplish tasks. It is also designed to help group members enhance their interpersonal and problem-solving skills while increasing overall team performance (XXX). The case study author decided to start the team-building process by having the senior managers go to an offsite retreat and participate in team-building exercises. Most OD practitioners tend to use team-building activities starting from the bottom of the organization instead of from the top down. Part of the author’s reasons for starting from the middle-top of the organization before addressing the lower-end problems was because of the leadership inexperience within that group. Inexperienced leaders might be more hesitant in the acceptance of the type of ideas or innovations that could be the result of team-building exercises among the lower end of the organizational employees.
Third-Party Intervention is another alternative approach that could have potential. As stated by XXX, Third-party Intervention tends to focus on any conflicts that are noticeable among two or more people within an organization. Another way of looking at this approach is a simple conflict resolution. This approach may not be an excellent option for a large group because it tends to pit one side against another, but is better suited for smaller groups. In Ben & Jerry’s case study, third party intervention could have been a valuable resource in resolving some of the board member conflicts. This conflict seemed to exist mainly between Ben Cohen, one of the organization’s founders, and Fred “Chico” Lager, Ben & Jerry’s general manager (XXX). It seems that the conflicts between Mr. Cohen and Mr. Lager were becoming legendary in the company. The source of the battle seemed to be that each person had different priorities when it came to the running of the business. For example, Mr. Cohen tended to push for better quality, faster flavor development, better, funkier advertising campaigns, and promotion. Mr. Lager instead tended to be more conservative in his approach by asking for a more pragmatic approach, watching the outlays and expenses more carefully, and acting to be the mediator whenever tensions would arise. Both of them tended to be the hot button issue problem-solvers for the organization. While they both seemed always to make the correct decisions, none of the lower-level managers had an understanding of who the solution was generated (XXX). This could be attributed to the lack of communication between both men, plus the added fact that neither board member had effect communication skills that allowed them to pass along their institutional knowledge to the lower level of managers. This occurrence also showed that neither person nor the board was reluctant to delegate authority to their management teams.
The results of a successful third party intervention approach could help members of the board to examine their differences and positively change their perceptions and behaviors. This could be the beginning of using a mutual motivation approach to help resolve the conflict, plus establishing equality of power between the disagreeing parties. By identifying the differences between the disagreeing parties, it can allow for more integrative solutions, begin the habit of using more open, transparent, and honest forms of communication. This will then, in turn, allow for the ability to turn tension and stress into positive productivity. This would, in turn, cause a better focus on solving the company’s problems instead of setting every board meeting being drag down, out and out war (Kern, 2016).
An additional potential alternative approach could be the Large-Group Intervention method. This method is an approach for organizing with the active involvement of all of the stakeholders throughout the organization. Large-Group interventions have been successful in managing change in organization development, organization redesign, restructuring, strategic planning, visioning, values and principles clarification, process improvement, customer/supplier relations, global learning and development, and formation of collaborative alliances (XXX). The advantages of this method are that the final vision is shaped through the involvement of the whole system, which builds the actual capacity for change among everyone involved in the organization. Because it is entire group collaboration, People feel and are responsible for the organization’s effort as a whole. The need for change is self-determined, and the process is self-managed. Also, because the strategy is developed and communicated in real-time, there are no layers for employees to go through to understand the company’s goals. Plus, the Large-Group Intervention enhances communication among the organization as a whole (XXX).
The main advantage of a large-group intervention is that it brings together large numbers of organization members at a location outside of the work environment. Large-group interventions can last over days as the participants work together to identify and resolve organization-wide problems. This is also an excellent time for the participants to design new approaches to the structuring and management of the organization, and propose future directions for the organization (XXX). Additionally, because any product that would come out of a large-group intervention would have the input of the organization as a whole, this would meet Ben Cohen’s and Jerry Greenfield’s insistence that all employees feel like they are family.
Recommendations
The first recommendation would be to ensure that any proposed plan would have full support from the board. The case study author wrote that some of the board’s responsibilities that were supposed to be released down to the managers did not happen. It seems that some members of the board have problems letting go. The board has to be 100% committed to any proposed changes. It also has to be the entity that communicates its commitment to the rest of the organization. If the board refuses to express their commitment, then the employees will not buy into the proposals. Without this employee, “buy-in,” not only will any planned change fail, but it is also more likely that any type of change will be impossible to execute (XXX).
The second recommendation is precise as the case study author executed – Team Building for the managerial level employees. At the same time, I would also try to implement a confrontational intervention with the board members only. In this way, albeit using different approaches, both groups are resolving their issues. One – we are addressing the conflict that exists between board members and two – the managerial workers are learning to be managers instead of being subject matter experts being thrust into administrative duties. As a bonus, both groups should be better able to communicate amongst themselves, which will result in an increased communication flow between each group. This way, the board is communicating with the managers, and the managers will be communicating with the board.
The final recommendation would be for the whole of Ben & Jerry’s to go through a large-group intervention. The only caveat would be because large-group interventions can and do involve a combination of different approaches like open systems thinking, active participation, some social interaction, and self-awareness & self-management. It would be best for Ben & Jerry to resolve some of their current organizational issues before they face significant problems as a large group.