#170: Lessons from Land O’Lakes, “Be the iceberg, not the Titanic.”
It’s been a winter in Cape Town, which means wet, very wet.
Joyfully, it means nature glowing green.
As we drove into Greyton last weekend it was as if the valley and its surrounding hills had signed a pact to celebrate green, to be the most green green on the planet. I no longer understood green with envy. I felt greened by nature and was enlivened. As the hills glowed around us, I felt all was possible. It was good for the soul.
Of course, cold wet weather is a perfect excuse for red wine drinking. Over the past few weeks, I have discovered the Blackwater Sophie and Harry Hartman’s Somesay Shiraz, and Finn.
The Finn is a bold but drinkable Rhone blend. An everyday wine but on the refined side of that spectrum. Somesay is an award-winning tongue-in-cheek nod to the wine snobs, half the release is Somesay Syrah and the other half Somesay Shiraz. And the Sophie is just delightful, a Cabernet Franc-Cinsault blend that is both delicious and thought-provoking.
I was introduced to these beauties by Culture Wine Bar’s Sam and Sharrol, two of Cape Town’s nicest sommeliers.
But you’re not here for wine, or maybe you are, in either case, let’s get down to work.
/ strategy
If you have trained with a professional sports coach, a Pilates instructor, or a biokineticist you know how exacting they are. They care little for the aesthetics of muscles, they focus on building deep core strength and stability. Often, they will make you repeat micro movements to build smaller muscles, loosen connective tissue, and reactivate neural pathways, all so you move with greater fluidity and composure.
I often dispatch my executive clients to Pilates. My reasoning is simple. Pilates teaches you to focus on the muscles that you don’t pay attention to, but that make a difference. It teaches you that the muscles that connect and weave deep under the skin are more important than the ones that you can make ‘pop’. It teaches you that strengthening them is hard, takes focus, can be painful, and delivers powerful results.
It’s a powerful analogy for running a business. By going to Pilates my clients hone a type of attention that they bring back to their executive roles.
They pay attention to the less visible, to the connective tissue of the organisation, to the small processes clustered around nodal points. They start to strengthen their businesses beneath the skin and as they do so they become more stable, more confident.
In Pilates, they learn that strengthening all parts of the system makes a difference. They bring that same sensibility to their businesses. We tend to focus on the big labels – sales, product development, innovation – but strengthening beneath the skin is as powerful.
Reid Hoffman introduces his conversation with Land O’Lakes CEO Beth Ford observing that “The Titanic’s visible scale, however grand, was no match for the hidden scale of the iceberg. And with companies, we too often focus on scale that’s visible. Massive campuses, thousands of workers, offices around the globe. But this familiar picture of growth isn’t the only kind there is. There are less conspicuous ways to scale, giving your business not just raw size, but structural integrity.
That’s why I believe when it comes to growing your business, don’t be afraid to be the iceberg. Scaling beneath the surface gives you ballast to help keep you afloat.”
Like with Pilates, strengthening beneath the skin gives stability.
Hoffman goes on to note “Icebergs, aren’t all one shape. Some look like mountains; others more like wide, flat tables. There are little ones and big ones. But no matter what the shape, the ice below an iceberg’s surface provides a very strategic function. Far from dragging it down, the ice below the surface is providing ballast and stability.
Ballast gives a scaling company stability too. It can also provide opportunities to beat the competition.”
What is the ballast in your organisation? What is your core strength and what are you doing to reinforce it?
Land O’Lakes is a food and agribusiness, that Time Magazine named as one of the world’s 100 most influential businesses.
CEO Beth Ford describes them as being ‘farmer to fork’.
One of Ford’s many ballast-building, core-crunching, programmes is their TruTerra Insights Engine.
The insights engine gathers trillions of data points enabling farmers to see their current state and how they could improve their processes and practices to improve sustainable production.
In any organisation, this is a core strengthening. Liberate data, make it consistently available to people closest to the action so that can make real-time, context-appropriate decisions. It worked for Churchill in the Battle of Britain war room; it will work for you.
Farmer Lukas Fricke explains to Hoffman that the data caused him to shift his farm’s tilling technique. The result? Better quality soil, stronger crops and higher levels of carbon captured.
Although Truterra was started to strengthen the farmers, it then gave rise to a carbon credits product, whose first customer was Microsoft.
Whilst adding ballast often seems like a distraction from more pressing concerns, the increased stability and strength very often give rise to new and unexpected possibilities.
Ford reflects, “At the end of the day, we made both money off of the crop and the better bushels and the better productivity. And then all of a sudden we got to participate in a new carbon market.”
// self
In last week’s letter, I reflected that I was writing to you from within the beige corridors of a cardboard box labyrinth, the by-product of having sold our home and still being uncertain where we would be living next.
Many of you emailed to offer words of support and encouragement, for which I am grateful.
Some of you went further to comment that it was a relief that I was sharing that not all was well, that there my transparency helped you be more honest about what you were struggling with and to connect with others who weren’t at their best.
It reminded me of this from Jerry Colonna’s Reboot, “When leaders, parents, lovers choose to share the reality of their heart, it gives everyone in their lives the chance to know them, to hold them—to trust each other.”
Showing vulnerability as a leader is a powerful tool for deepening trust.
However, there is a proviso. You must first build credibility.
Our weekend break gave me space to think. From that foundation I was able to take constructive action, which I will tell you about in due course. Re-energised, I made good on a month-old promise.
In June, I was asked to participate in a conversation about how coaches could contribute to building South Africa’s future. At the end of it, I promised to write down my thoughts. Here they are in How Coaches Can Change The World.
Debra Ogilvie-Roodt kindly commented “What a thoughtfully mapped out manifesto for living a joyful life, and an exquisitely impassioned call to action. I feel inspired.”
If you like it, please share it with others.
/// soul
For this week’s letter, I wanted to find a case study about the importance of operational excellence, which is how I found the Land O’Lakes podcast.
What I didn’t know when I started to listen was that they’re a Fortune 500, 100 years-old CO-OPERATIVE.
Yep, a co-operative, in the Fortune 500.
In simple terms, it means that not only does Land O’Lakes represent the interests of their 1,959 direct producer-members and 751 member-cooperatives, but each of those members also has a direct stake in the business.
By way of analogy, it would be like every Facebook user having a stake in Facebook’s profits.
It is a refreshing reminder that successful businesses do not need to result in billionaires.
I was excited when Uber launched. I had spent too much time shivering in doorways waiting for long-overdue cabs.
There was a brief moment when clean cars driven by proud new owner-entrepreneurs would arrive.
It seemed like the beginning of something magical.
Years later, cars rattle up late, cancellations are endemic, the vehicles are often a patchwork of poorly done spray jobs after countless bumper-bashings, and the drivers are stressed and tired.
Imagine for a moment, that Uber had insisted that it would only allow owner-operators onto the app, that they’d invested in an auto repair infrastructure, that they trained their drivers, that they’d negotiated finance deals with city governments and retail banks. Imagine that impact rippling through society and the economy. Imagine if each owner-operator had a share in the business.
Land O’Lakes helps us imagine a different world.
Much love
Karl
PS: I’m a coach and advisor. You can learn more about my practice here. I’m fully booked at the moment but if this letter intrigued you and you’d like to work with me, reach out. Let’s have a conversation.