The week’s readings have especial application in my day to day work
endeavors. I am the sales manager at Amano Artisan Chocolate. Having
invested five years building a brand, Amano’s owners are finally to the
stage where they are ready to build a great business. (I should note
that this is my own observation, if you ask them they likely would say
they have been building a business. That is a story for another day
though…) Building a great business is no small endeavor (Collins, 2001).
It takes the right people, doing the right job, and at the right time;
or as Collins put it, getting the right people on the bus in the right
seats (2001). I view Amano as a brand that directly correlates with
luxury experience. The challenge we face on a day to day basis is
translating the brand into a business, and wouldn’t you know that we
encounter the same obstacles that Taylor, Fayol, Weber, the Gilbreths,
and all the rest of the early management scholars encountered?
Soldiering
is addressed early in the chapter about Taylor (Wren & Bedeian
2009). It may seem crazy, but I see this cutting throughout the entire
organization, myself included. I am guilty of natural and systematic
soldiering, almost on a daily basis. Admitting this hurts. I despise the
thought of being less than 100% efficient for whatever reason. Some
days I am mentally exhausted and the thought of coping with another
client has me kicked back in my chair, daydreaming about the weekend
adventures. Other days I become cross with one of the owners over (and
probably a trivial) issue. Next thing you know I find myself ‘punishing’
them by shirking some of my responsibilities. Further I know the effort
that I put into establishing new clients has a direct effect on how
busy I am in the future. I often find my subconscious systematically
reducing my effectiveness in an attempt to levee future work. It is my
impression Taylor would have addressed this tendency I express (and the
rest of our staff) through proper incentive (Wren & Bedeian 2009).
Coincidently just last month I started establishing a sales architecture
that will do, hopefully, precisely this.
And as a manager, is it any
surprise that one of my Clifton Themes was Strategic? “The familiar
ring of Fayol’s ideas suggests how thoroughly they have penetrated
current managerial thinking…”Whether they admit it or not, it’s obvious
most managers today are fundamentally Fayolists”” (Wren & Bedeian,
2009, p. 227). Fayolism in its essence, as captured by Wren and Bedeian
(2009), is the process of strategizing. Planning, organizing and the
subsequent execution of them through command, coordination and control
equate to the strategy process. For me, strategizing encompasses a good
portion of my work. I think it would be insightful to see how much time I
spend strategizing before approaching a client versus the actual time
of interaction. The same can be said of working with the owners and
subordinates alike. Perhaps it is all too coincidental, but it just so
happens I love metaphors and some of that strategizing time is always
committed to finding the properly balance metaphor to convey my message.
This balance equates to managing the “the paradox of metaphor” (Morgan,
1998, p. 9)
By Paul:
ReplyDeleteNik, you do face some very real challenges in selling luxury chocolate. My hat is off to you for wrestling with both internal and external players on a weekly basis.
The price point of $7-9 for a 100 gram bar sets you in a rarified class. Having spent time in Switzerland and Belgium, two of the leading producers of luxury chocolate, I have experienced some excellent chocolate bars that were less than that. But I have never tried any Amano Artisan Chocolate!
I would be curious who your clients are. I assume you operate at a wholesale level. So I would guess that convincing the buyers at a gourmet supermarket chain, such as Whole Foods, might be the people you would work with.
Finding what motivates them must be a large part of your strategizing time. It sounds like working those motivational elements into your metaphors is part of your process.
Telling a story is a crucial direction in corporate communication these days. I close by including a link that includes several excellent examples of this principle. I would encourage you (and me) to consider this all the time, as we craft our corporate messages.
http://storify.com/communicateasia/storytelling-corporate-communication-series
By Nik:
DeleteIt is definitely an interesting market. The organizations buying the bars comprise what I call our 'branding market.' We have an image to maintain as one of the best in the world (top 5 to be precise, none of which are Belgian or Swiss!) We do this by making the bars somewhat exclusive-which means WholeFoods only gets a portion of the line. The really high end bars are only found in specialty retailers, or at least that is the idea. Most our profits come from selling bulk chocolate to high end restaurants. But, yeah long story short we are always conscience of the message we portray and the impact it has on our business as well as the industry as a whole.
Sounds like you are on top of the game!
DeleteNik, I really enjoyed learning more about your company. Taylor was managing physical labor when he came up with the idea of soldiering. Since you are not working with pig iron (as far as I know), do you think soldiering may have a place in the modern organization? In other words, could being 100% effective 100% of the time cause burnout? How do we allow workers some "me" time while also promoting effectiveness and efficiency?
ReplyDeleteFor starters I have worked production here, and although I am sure pig iron is laborious to work with, chocolate probably isn't much better. It is a lot of heavy lifting (bags of beans can weigh 70kg, which is what I way on a good day!) and way messier than you'd suspect.
ReplyDeleteI think that soldiering definitely has a place in the modern workplace, but maybe under different guises. I mentioned that I am as guilty of this as the laborers of Taylor's day. Since his day, though, a lot of things have changed including our understanding of what we can realistically expect from workers. Being 100% effective is way to subjective to measure, even on an individual basis. Because of its subjectivity it is a little difficult to comment on the practicality of realizing perfect efficiency in the work place. I suppose it's a good place for a metaphor though, much like the perpetual motion machine of physics, 100% worker efficiency may be a bit of a unicorn. Unicorn or not, I have been nurtured into thinking it is attainable (along with a lot of other things...) and will probably keep beating myself up over not achieving it.
As for burnout, it happens, even when we aren't running at our limits. If burnout happened only when we were running at a near maximal level it would be easy to see the culprit: working to hard. We all know burnout can happen even while operating at a less than optimal level, which leads me to believe that burnout is tied into an overarching state of mental wellness. This state of mental wellness is hard for organizations to gauge and manage, especially with out stepping over lines into personal lives. What an organization can do though is promote initiatives that help develop the person as a whole rather than just focussing on the individual strengths that make them great employees. This type of development can make them more effective at work by teaching them to better cope with life generally and subsequently not carrying that baggage to work.
Just as a side note, something that I am interested in is the non-verbal conversation that occurs in soldiering situations within an organization, particularly as seen through an organizational ethics lens.