Sustain the change
When you are considering a major shift in how your company
does business, produces products or brands itself, you need to
ask yourself one overarching question: “Is it sustainable?”
Pizzi says short-term shifts might make your profit-loss statements look good for a while, but if you haven’t put the framework in place to sustain the transformation, the chances of a
successful change go way down.
To that end, the Tasty Baking Co. has been successful. The company reported $267 million in gross sales in 2006, up from just more
than $250 million in 2003, and is slated to open a new 345,500-square-foot production facility in Philadelphia’s Navy Yard complex
in 2009.
“What we did when we put together our plan was to put
together a sustainable plan that would provide a long-term
return,” he says. “That comes back to discipline and focus.”
Once you have collaborated with your managers, received
input from employees and feedback from customers, then formulated your go-forward plan, you have to will yourself to stick to it. Communication is a big factor to making a companywide plan take root and grow.
“Once you have your plan in place, you have to be disciplined
in executing it,” Pizzi says. “That means don’t stray, keep your
sights at hand to really make sure you execute. You have to do
that through a lot of communication. If everybody understands
the plan, everybody is going to be rowing in the same way.
“Everyone from our sales distributors on down the line is
constantly updated with where we are in the project. We even
attached a camera to the Navy Yard building site so employees
can see where [we are] in that process.”
Pizzi says that, in the end, a good communicator is a good
storyteller. If you can communicate your company’s story to
employees and customers, where you’ve been, where you are
and where you’re going, you’ll be able to lay out the case for
change in a compelling fashion.
“I find the most effective way is if I can tell our story to our
employees, our sales distributors and our customers, and do it in
on an ongoing basis every step of the way,” he says. “That was why
we wanted to hook up the camera, so that everyone can actually
see the construction of the facility. It is our hope and our vision
that this will really revolutionize our company.”
HOW TO REACH: Tasty Baking Co., www.tastykake.com