Case Study: Managerial Communications in Dannon
Daniel Caracas was leading Deanne to rapid development In Europe. To accelerate Its diversification and world expansion.
Deanne merged with Gravers, the leading fresh cheese business in France in 1967, and with BBS, the leading glass container and beverages company, in 1973. The resulting company, BBS Gravers Deanne, became one of the world’s largest food manufacturers present in 30 countries worldwide. In 1994, BBS Gravers Deanne took the name Grouper Deanne. ( http://www. Daemon.
Com/ about_company. Asps) “We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.
George Bernard Shaw The Daemon Company is responsible for growth. They are focused on two things bringing health and nutrition to the US consumers through research that touts 1 yogurts a day is going to help in battling the junk food epidemic the nation is faced with. The second goal of the company is to grow the Greek yogurt business, which is by and large an American phenomena. This is the future for Daemon, this ambitious future Is not being realized in a realistic or responsible way from a managerial viewpoint because of two things: 1 .
Daemon relies heavily on low head count and external business partners to drive innovation company initiatives. Roughly half of the employees within Daemon are not native English speakers and were not born in the US. Cultural differences make working with Internal partners challenging, it makes aligning and managing key external vendors extremely challenging as well. 2. Daemon has an incredibly high turnover rate.
There are very few individuals who have been with the company for over 3 years. The Daemon Company is to date packaged goods companies the largest discrepancy is the head count.
By way of comparison Avon Inc. Employs roughly 350 individuals for it’s R&D, Avon currently generates 4 billion in revenue.
Daemon currently employs 28 people for it’s R&D and they roughly generate half the revenue that Avon does. Daemon has by and large a very low headcount, for the entire corporation Daemon employs 270 individuals that collectively manage R&D, Marketing, Sales, Operations, Finance. The way that the company is managed from the C-Suite is an administrative approach to managerial communication. The management of Daemon follows 6 of Henry Payola’s principles of management: 1 .
Division of work.
Efficiency requires that the total task be broken into small component parts assigned to workers who specialize in these limited tasks. 2. Authority. Managers have the formal authority to give orders. However, to be effective leaders, they must also possess personal authority deriving from their skill, experience, and character.
3. Disciple. Workers should willfully obey the rules and leaders of the organization. 4. Unity of command. Each subordinate should receive orders from only one supervisor.
5. Subordination of individual interest to general interest.
The company’s interest is always precedence over the individual’s interest. 6. Call chain.
An unbroken line of authority runs from the top manager of an enterprise to the lowest levels of the organization. For giving orders and reports, this line should normally be observed. (2) The phrase golden tongue or top down management style epitomizes the culture at Daemon. This extenuates one of the root problems that slows Daemon down from realizing their goals. The Executive committee does not represent the goals of the company.
The reason is because 70% of the executive committee who are making the pop down decisions are brought over to manage the business from France and Spain.
Naturally, these executives are not under qualified and they infant are all very smart in their own specialist. No one on the executive committee are what would be considered level 5 leaders. Level 5 Leadership= Humility + Will The two sides to level 5 leadership are: Professional Will I Personal Humility I Creates superb results, a clear catalyst in the transition from good to great. Demonstrates a compelling modesty, shunning public adulation; never boastful.
I Demonstrates an unwavering resolve to do whatever must be done to produce the est. loon term results, no matter how difficult I Acts with quiet calm determination; relies principally on inspired standards, not inspiring charisma, to motivate.
I Sets the standard for building an enduring company; will settle for nothing less I Channels ambition into the company, not the self; sets up successors for even greater success in the next generation I Looks in the mirror not out the window, to apportion responsibility for poor results, never blaming other people, external factors or bad luck.
I Looks out the window, not in the mirror, to apportion credit for the success of the company-to other people, external factors, and goods luck. I The management style and the executive demographic is a representative sample of ten company as a wangle. Roughly anal AT ten company NAS Eden Drought over Trot the Deanne head quarters in France and Spain. Daemon is culturally diverse and from a management communications approach there are certain concepts that must be understood and taken into account for successful communication.
Individualism vs.. Collectivism: managers who come from individualistic and collectivist cultures conflict in many ways.
In negotiations, managers from collectivist cultures do not want to make decisions. They must first collaborate; consensus must be reached.
Managers from individualistic cultures have trouble collaborating and will ask to talk to a decision maker. This is even more apparent when majority of the head count of a departments are comprised of French or Spanish individuals. Language within the society plays a key role in the success or failure of the business communication. French and Spanish can Jeopardize a business discussion when asked a question by responding in different ways verbally and non verbally.
French are quite formal and a slang greeting when entering into a room of French business men and women is unacceptable. Good communication and relation avoid ethnocentrism.
An ethnocentrism person generally experiences denial, defense and minimization when attempting to communicate and integrate them into a new culture. Three stages of Ethan-relativism is acceptance, adaptation and integration. These three stages are the cultural “development” stages that an individual must experience to become integrated within the culture they are working with.
It is with the understanding and knowledge of these concepts that Daemon as a company can help to foster cultural sensitive managers. The less ethnocentric the manager, the higher the likelihood is that manager’s direct reports will not misunderstand no matter the message.
This miscommunication as a result of ethnocentric and language is what causes many issues within the organization. An example would be that as a result of ethnocentrism communication from a manager the ingredient supplier was insulted with the absence of verbal communication which was more a result of the Daemon employees’ Chinese culture than anything else.
When it comes to effective intercultural managerial communication it is most important to approach all discussions with respect and humility. What happened many times in Daemon with the employees who are not familiar with other cultures is that they do not acknowledge cultural differences and as a byproduct have ineffective communications with their colleagues. During the hiring process one way for solving this communication problem is to screen potential employees for cultural awareness by asking such questions like, have you ever managed or interacted in a business setting with someone outside of the US.
People spend too much time finding other people to blame, too much energy finding excuses for not being what they are capable of being, and not enough energy putting themselves on the line, growing out of the past, and getting on with their lives. J. Michael Stravinsky Daemon as a company is able to move quickly. From a business perspective they are in its essence a reactive company. With the resources available there is very little innovation that can realistically be produced given the time and resources allocated to an innovation pipeline.
The small head count and the fact that nearly half of the many is comprised on individuals who are not American puts a great strain on each individual employed. The relationship between the companies’ expectations Ana ten resources available can De Keenan to attempting to extracting Trot a stone. Employees are pushed to their limits with a clear a totalitarian direction from upper management. Given the managerial communication as they are, from the top down it can be assumed that the scope of the projects within the company can be changed quickly.
This is the nature of a reactive business, it is one which caters to hanged rather than remain steadfast in its beliefs. The turnover rate of employees is incredibly high.
There are very few individuals who have been with the company for longer than 3 years; this statistic is deceiving as an overwhelming majority of the individuals who have been with the company for longer than 3 years have had previous experience in Deanne. To recap the situation is as follows; among US born citizens employed by the company nearly 70% leave the organization after 2 years.
In the last 6 months 5 out of the 28 individuals within R&D have left the company, al of them came into the organization from other US CAP companies. Retention of employees is not as much of a culture problem as it is a managerial communication problem. This problem initially stems from intercultural managerial miscommunication starting from the C-suite.
The communication from the management team is not conducive to the structure of the organization. The miscommunication accentuates many other problems such as poor managerial listening, conflict management and managerial negotiations.
As a result, a tremendous stress is put on the employees and there is an abnormally high turnover ate. The solution for solving the high turnover rate is such; get the right people on the bus and get the wrong people off as soon as possible. The interview process at Daemon needs to be revamped with managers not asking Just questions but the right questions.
During interviews managers must consider their audience, objective, physical setting, types of questions and the order in which they are presented. Overall when considering best practices for structuring an organization should be considered. 1 . When in doubt, don’t hire-keep looking.
