jelly beans and then selling them for a handsome profit at recess. The fame and profitability of William and Walter’s jelly beans spread through the schools across the city and within a few months a small manufacturing plant was created at a site that has since grown to accommodate the nearly 500 employees of O’Donnell’s Jelly Bean Company.
When you bought ‘the real McCoy jelly bean’ (as Walter loved to call it), you could choose from the three colours (red, blue and black) that O’Donnell’s now manufactures in a gleaming, state-of-the-art factory. The enormous jelly beans (about the size of a bird’s egg) were sold in clear cellophane packs of five, ten or fifteen containing the one colour of the customer’s choice. The first jelly bean ever sold by William and Walter was red, so the teams on the red production line were suitably proud that not only did they produce the lowest cost jelly bean but also that theirs was the original ‘real McCoy jelly bean’. The blue jelly bean has always been the most attractive, with its sky-blue coating and light-blue inside, giving it what the blue production teams called ‘the sapphire look’. Last, but never least, was the black jelly bean, which, if you asked the black production teams, was the most popular choice of customers, the source of much media coverage and clearly a ‘better jelly bean’.
O’Donnell’s never sold a pack of jelly beans with the three colours combined.
Why? There were three simple reasons and they had all stood the test of time.
First, to sell them separately enticed customers to buy more than one pack, and the sales figures supported this view. Many a shopkeeper would tell the story of a mother and her children engaged in passionate debate over the need to buy ‘a packet of each’ so that the full range of O’Donnell’s taste sensations could be enjoyed.
Second, William and Walter always believed that the unique flavours of the three beans would be lost if you put them together in a sealed packet.
Finally, there was no need to put those jelly beans together because year on year the company grew in revenue, profits and employees.
Until, as they have a habit of doing, things changed.
They say that Sydney has the most beautiful harbour in the world and it sure looks like it from the left-side window seat as you fly into Kingsford Smith International Airport from the west. The Opera House and ‘Coat Hanger’ bridge are closer than I’d remembered, and more boats are now sprinkled across the sparkling bays and inlets.
As a part-time surfer I always think ‘sharks’ when I see that harbour. Did you know that more people have been attacked by sharks in Sydney Harbour than any other place in Australia? With nearly five million people living under our flight path I guess that’s a lot of potential swimmers and shark bait.
Five years on the road is a long time. Last year I flew the equivalent of twenty times around the planet – mostly New York to London return, spiced up with increasingly frequent trips to Shanghai and Dubai. Leading a consulting outfit is exciting, but it’s also high demand on everyone and everything.
My focus is big teams. Not those little departmental teams, but whole organisations and alliances: corporations, governments, universities, not-for-profits and even symphony orchestras. If they really want to unleash the phenomenal power that comes from being one big team, then my team can help to create the teamwork across boundaries that will make it happen.
Australia is home. Best place in the world to live. I’ll be spending six months there writing a new book and creating tools and collaborative software in readiness to take on the greatest of challenges – disrupting the way enterprises across the world implement change.
I’m Nick Fox. I love jelly beans, Indian food, beaches and the awesome power of big teams.
This story is my way of sharing a few insights from the road about what might just happen to you and your organisation when everyone from the boss to the newest employee lives and breathes the mantra ‘think one team’.
chapter 1
real conversations
Tuesday, 8.58 am. The Executive Team of O’Donnell’s Jelly Bean Company assembled for what promised to be anything but the usual 9 am executive meeting.
Walking to the boardroom from their plush offices, the team members crossed a foyer dominated (tastefully) by two identical displays of three two-metre-tall crystal cylinders on either side of the automatic glass entry doors. Each cylinder was full to the brim with those monster O’Donnell’s jelly beans – red closest to the street, then black, then blue.
As you enter the O’Donnell’s building, those jelly-bean cylinders escort you like a guard of honour towards Susan, the ever-smiling receptionist. An inconspicuous glass lid sits firmly atop each cylinder to ensure that no-one samples from the display. Floor lights project upwards to complete the striking effect.
By 9 am everyone was seated and attending to final emails on their phones and tablets. Cups of coffee and bottles of water sat on coasters to protect the lush, wood-grained table, the compulsory three dishes of jelly beans in the middle of the expansive table and papers at the ready.
Like most businesses, the O’Donnell’s Executive Team was made up of the heads of each of the six key divisions:
• Operations (manufacturing and logistics)
• Sales and Marketing
• Research and Development
• Human Resources
• Corporate Services (finance, information systems and administration)
• Customer Services (currently without a division head).
The other member of the team, Charles Enright, was appointed Chief Executive fewer than three years ago after two decades with one of the world’s leading strategy consulting firms. The position had become available due to the sudden death of the previous CEO, and Charles had convinced a former colleague turned headhunter to recommend him to the board, which was impressed by his CV, but – in hindsight – missed his glaring lack of people leadership skills.
A highly experienced consultant – who for some reason had cultivated an English accent without ever having lived in the country – Charles had a reputation for providing brutal feedback to company boards on the quality of their business strategies and leadership. He was rumoured to have confirmed more than once to his Saturday golf colleagues that ‘O’Donnell’s is extremely fortunate to have me’. No-one needed a rumour to confirm Charles’s arrogance.
Since Charles had arrived, O’Donnell’s executive meetings had been unpleasant and unproductive, with each leader giving an update on performance in their division followed almost automatically by a flurry of sharp, critical questions from the CEO.
‘No excuses, no surprises, just results’, was Charles’s mantra, and it effectively smothered any strategic conversation and caused everyone to fall into line like compliant children.
Despite the CEO’s uncompromising need for control, things started to unravel last year when the multinational Jellicoe Candy Corp parachuted into O’Donnell’s most important markets, dropping O’Donnell’s sales by more than 25 per cent in just six months. Now, twelve months later, the sales graphs were still heading south and only the cost savings from the first round of bitter redundancies temporarily halted the slide in profitability.
Everyone sat impassively as Charles opened the meeting in his typical threatening tone, with eyes fixed on the wall ahead of him, addressing the air in the room rather than his team members in person.
‘Yesterday’s board meeting was the most difficult in all of my time at O’Donnell’s. The board is clearly of the view that the attempts to resolve the downslide of the past year have not been successful and unless this quarter’s budget is achieved we will be compelled to cut 20 per cent of costs right across the company. I’m deeply insulted by the situation and have never in all my years in business seen a team that’s worse at executing the business strategy.’
He paused to glare at the executives, one at a time.
‘Find answers or heads will