On most Saturday mornings for the past 22 years now I wake up early and I immerse myself in learning and studying and thinking. It has been a joy. This morning has been all that. I walked into Dunkin Donuts in Pleasantville at about 6:30am after dropping my son Tucker off nearby at the farmers market.

The manager of this Dunkin Donuts is pretty special, always smiling, always welcoming, calling every patron "boss" and I can tell he runs a great operation. So today I asked "How long have you been here?"

Seven years... since six months after the store opened.  "I was brought in because something was wrong with sales... way wrong... it took me about a month to figure it out... and then after THAT the sales started increasing and inside six months sales were up 80%... and today they are another 50% higher."

And I am thinking... "what did he figure out??"

What he figured out was that the crew he took over were, we'll, not honest...  the problem wasn't so much demand but rather the sales weren't actually being rung up... honestly.

We spoke for 15 minutes. A lot of things had to happen. MESSY!   He had to get rid of everyone.   He knew what he was looking for... the owners of THAT Dunkin Donuts a couple years later asked him to turn around another store just five miles away and he went through a very similar process.

Why do I start with this?  

I am not sure. 

But I think it is in the realm of "How does business really work?" which has been one of our threads for 6-7 years.?   And how the world works. Messy.

I love the phrase "walking through life's complexity together" when thinking about the power of partnership being contextualized with the challenges up front and center in one's mind.

I think I offer this story because I think we often want life to be simple and easy and instead it is messy and complex and we can lose our way and there is muck and turmoil.

We want to have examples of heroes that make it all easy who never struggle to perhaps offer hope that their doesn't "have to" be complexity you need walk through together.

The cry for "simplicity" in the first world in ways I think has partly been a cry to get rid of ALL the hassle in life such as left hand turns at busy intersections! (thanks to Jonathan Coulton for that realization.

I offer this note in keeping with my work on "north stars" -- the actual specific values that sit under individual organizations whether they are conscious of them or not (usually NOT) or aligned in action  with those north stars or not.

My observation in my studies on culture: individuals and organizations who are aware of their north stars and act in alignment with those north stars are among the most powerful forces on our planet.

So...

...I expected this book to be romp through three decades in a magical ice cream kingdom with some pearls of sage advice and cultural gems of wisdom presented to me in a way that wouldn't be patronizing but rather inspiring.

After all... Ben + Jerry's never struggled, right?

And...   after all I have seen the data that steadfastly and clearly depicts Ben + Jerry's reputation with consumers who consider them the beacon of business? with a social consciousness. These "guys" must be THE real deal.

Perhaps their reputation has been steady but aye ye ye ye ye... behind the scenes what a mess... not a mess beyond normal messes... just a typical mess...

++. The reason they ultimately sold the company to Unilever was because their business strategy was faltering and they were about to lose their critical distribution channel because a larger competitor had bought it!

++ Prior to that they hired a CEO who was clearly out of sync with the social mission.

++ They had eliminated the 7:1 salary ratio in 1994 from highest paid to lowest paid because they were unable to attract top managerial talent.

++ Ben was considered a nightmare to work with as he changed his mind constantly and was prone to yelling at people in a volcanic manner... that wasn't the image I had in mind. 

++ There was a monumental overrun in building a new plant.

++ There was a multi-year period where the quality of their ice cream was steadily allowed to slip (e.g. more air, cheaper ingredients) with board of directors awareness in order to increase profits.

++ Media attempted to craft negative stories about how "Ben + Jerry's isn't as all holier than thou as they make themselves to be!?"

++ Along the way Ben + Jerry had created super voting shares so they wouldn't lose control when they went public --- a real no-no by today's governance standards.

++ Yes... they did create a separate independent board in the process of selling to Unilever but it was largely inactive, toothless, inconsistent, manipulated, divided so the romantic notion of brilliant innovative social-minded businesses keeping their way when selling out to the big bad guys was eliminated.

All of that. I am really just hinting at the on going drama.

Messy.

A struggle.

And at times the company lost its way from its north stars -- it's inherent values that were there all along? even if the day-to-day drama and at times fight for survival had everyone forget really why they were there.

To be clear, this book was not a hatchet job at all!

So...

Why were they really there? To sell great ice cream?

Nah!

They were there because Ben and Jerry had an UNWAVERING belief that business could be "good". They believed business could be the greatest source of social change in the world. The chill that ran through me was near the end of the story when the author notes that through ALL THE MESSINESS and at significant times when the organization had lost sight of its north star (to be a beacon of business being a source of positive social change)? the two of them -- Ben + Jerry - never ever lost consciousness of this north star or abandoned their north star through all the complexity, pain, struggle, loss of control, you name it...

I mentioned members of the media had actively pursued THE negative story... the worst they could come up with after months of investigation was that Ben + Jerry's hadn't been able to fill all the ingredients for a rapidly emerging popular flavor exclusively from fair trade agreements and so they had been filling in ingredients from other sources without clearly stating so on the label... 

...and, here is the amazing part, Ben +? Jerry's response was along the lines of "you are right... we have been trying to get new fair trade sourcing at scale but it is doubtful we ever will... so we are going to shut down that flavor... thank you for pointing this out."

They shutdown a popular flavor.

If for only THIS one thing of keeping true to their specific north star thru all the messiness of life... if for only that... what awesome models if not courageous heroes.

"You're right when you say my father wasn't a businessman. I know that. Why he ever started this cheap, penny-ante Building and Loan, I'll never know...    Well, in my book, my father died a much richer man than you'll ever be".     George Bailey in "It's a Wonderful Life" defending his father's atypical manner in running a business with clarity of his north star.

...pip