Dave Lanstein occasionally needs to be reminded
that while the organic food industry is growing fast,
it’s not quite mainstream yet.
And foods like quinoa, a grain
sold by the company, can
seem foreign to some, says the
founder, president and CEO of
Multiple Organics, a supplier
of organic ingredients.
“You can start to feel like the
whole world ought to eat
quinoa,” says Lanstein, whose
company posted fiscal 2006-2007 revenue of $13.7 million.
“Some people just don’t like
the way it tastes; some people
can’t afford it. So the whole
world shouldn’t eat quinoa.”
Smart Business spoke with
Lanstein about how to get
your employees to better
understand your product and
why it might help your company to take everyone on a
trip to Brazil.
Q. How do you communicate
your vision?
Make the path that you’re
headed toward and on very
clear to folks, so that if they
feel that you are a leader
indeed and that you can handle the uncertain future, then
they know where they’re heading with you and they’re willing to follow the lead.
We have a very open weekly
meeting where we touch on
the metrics of the business,
and we make sure that folks
know what those are, where
we’re going and where their
place in where we’re going fits
and why it’s important.
That way, people feel good
about what they’re doing, and
they can explain what it is
they do to their family and for long periods of time.
We also have two off-site
retreats that are very open
forums so that management
will talk through where we’ve
been, where we’re heading,
where things have gone right,
where things have gone
wrong. Then, we open the
floor for questions so we can
see where people are confused and make sure that people understand where they’re
heading and in what capacity
they need to be fully functioning in their positions.
So there is a lot of communication, a lot of, ‘If you believe
in this path, let’s make sure it’s
clearly lit; there aren’t
any street lamps out.’
Q. How do you get
your employees on board
and working toward the
vision?
It’s a small company,
so there is good old-fashioned involvement.
Take people down to
the grocery store one
group at a time and say,
‘This product that you
love and eat in your
house is actually made
with the ingredients that
we sell to this company
and turned into this
awesome organic product that you eat and
believe in.’
You get people involved in
that. Take them; get them to
visually see it. We try to take
every single employee on a
trip at least once per year. We
have a budget that says, ‘OK,
we know this doesn’t have
anything to do with your section of the company, but come
see a processing facility in the
California Valley with us. Or
come to the microbiological
lab and learn about how they
do all the testing for different
ways to see if the food is safe,
or come with us to Brazil to
see the sugarcane farm.
That’s deep involvement.
Some companies won’t [put] a
budget together for that,
because they’ll say, ‘OK, you’re
purchasing; that’s what you
do. That’s not what these other
people do. They’re processing
orders, so they don’t get to go.’
But when you get to see the
full picture, it gets exciting.
