Johnsonville Sausage Business Overview

Since I am new to this class and I am obviously the first one trying to start a discussion on our 1st week online session readings, I will (try to) just summarize few thoughts about all three of the articles assigned. There is a lot of material to talk about and I am afraid I will not be able to keep it short… Do not be too harsh on me - at least I was brave enough to be the first one to start. (not really sure how deep I should or should not go :-)

First of all, I would say that there are some common notions in both HBR articles provided (Stayer and Hamel). They both encourage the self-management or the uncentralized structure of the company on examples. While Stayer explains the application of this new kind of self-management system on his own family business Johnsonville Sausage, the Hamel’s article is written in 3rd person, giving us an example of Morning Star tomato sauce producer. Even though the Hamel’s article goes much deeper into the step-by-step details of “how” to apply self-management system, nonetheless I found Stayer’s story more insightful and inspiring. These two HBR articles give us a really good overview of how both of these companies successfully implemented the uncentralized management system and still got their profits hit the roof. It was not easy or fast, but they have succeeded. From what I have caught - the both authors agree on four points regarding the managers in the company:

1. They are the unnecessary overhead/cost

2. They bound the most important decisions to the most unimportant/unrelated to the “real” business people (top managers)

3. The more layers exist in the company, the slower is the decision execution (more time to evaluate/approve the decision and more bureaucracy)

4. With too many layers in the hierarchy, the lower levels, which are most important and most informative, tend to lose their enthusiasm, initiative, creativity and, accordingly they do not contribute to the overall well-being or potential of the company enough

On the other side,  Cleveland in his article “Where the action is - is the information” is constantly reminding us of how information is the most valuable and dominant resource of today’s society.  In his article, although somewhat outdated (2000), Cleveland tries to give us a clear distinction between centralized, decentralized and uncentralized society/company. I believe that his intentions were to emphasize the importance of rules, which are, according to him, mandatory (such as ISO) to give people, marketers, brokers, etc. the freedom to play freely and earn profit. However, he warns us that freedom has its boundaries - we can be free as much as we want, but only if playing by the rules provided. Cleveland’s article is giving us more of an overall picture of why we decided to live our lives in some kind of a synergy with other human beings; why do we stop when the red light is on and go when we see the green light. It is because our life depends on it. Each one of us is an individual, but we cannot neglect the fact that we are part of a collective called - society. In the meantime, as much as we respect those everyday norms and values of our society, unintentionally - somehow we think that when it comes to working for a company that we should be controlled by someone - a boss, a manager, a “that someone” in charge.