It’s no longer Ben & Jerry’s. Apparently, it’s now just Ben’s.
A few weeks ago, Jerry Greenfield resigned from the legendary ice cream company he started back in 1978.
The short version: Unilever, which bought the company for $326 million over two decades ago, wants Mssrs. Ben and Jerry to stop speaking out on certain political issues. Ben and Jerry don’t want to stop. Social impact has been baked into their personal and company DNA for decades. Something had to give, and in the end it was Jerry.
This rift created tension, lawsuits, and eventually, Jerry’s less-than-ideal exit.
That’s the heart of it.
All boardroom drama notwithstanding, it shows us something interesting that companies have been wrestling with for decades.
Namely, that personal values don’t translate cleanly into organizational values.
You chose your values. They’re yours. You know when you’ve crossed your own boundaries because you own them. They guide you through the grey areas.
But organizational values? They tend to be decided in a conference room, printed on a poster, and assumed they will scale on autopilot, and everyone will understand exactly what they mean in the process. They don’t.
For example, let’s take “Integrity.” It means something different to everyone, but few would argue against having it. Boeing concurred. Integrity was one of their core values during the 737 Max crisis. Integrity, that is, until quarterly numbers were at stake. Then 300 people died.
Don’t get us wrong. Companies can and should stand for something. But they need belief systems i.e. shared convictions specific enough to guide decisions when the easy path and the right path split.
Not vague and polysemic values on posters.
When Jerry sold the company, he sold the factory, the brand and the customer list. What he couldn’t sell was his personal conviction about what mattered. That was never part of the deal, even when he thought it was.
