It's All About the Beans

THE STORY
Back in the first half of the 20^th Century, A.J. Bush decided to start a business. His first choice was to manufacture hosiery. However, a nearby canning company was trying to get rid of its old canning equipment at a price too good to pass up. So A.J. Bush went into the canning business.

A.J. Bush wasn’t very particular about what he canned. He canned just about every kind of vegetable produced by the farmers of Eastern Tennessee. The following generation kept up the tradition of canning whatever came along. They even experimented with more exotic items, like sauerkraut, dog food and spaghetti. If it could be eaten and it could be put in a can, then the Bush family probably canned it (or at least thought about canning it).

This strategy wasn’t working out too well for the Bush business. By the 1970 and 1980s, the company was getting into serious financial troubles.

As a result, in 1990 the Bush business began a serious and highly involved strategic planning process. After a few years of analysis and thinking, they came to make a number of difficult choices. One of those choices was to focus exclusively on canning beans.

These decisions turned the company around. Instead of remaining a troubled also-ran in the vegetable canning business, they are now a profitable market leader in beans.

In the first picture above, you can see me next to a cardboard cut-out of Jay Bush and his dog Duke, who promote Bush beans in television commercials, another part of their success.

THE PRINCIPLES
So what can we learn from this story? Several things…

1) Strategic Planning is Important

When I am asked what the value is of strategic planning, I often say that it can be the difference between having a thriving company and a bankrupt company. That was certainly the case for the Bush family business. Had they not embarked on a serious strategic planning process back in the 1990s, I doubt the company would be around today. As a result of that planning, they not only survived, but thrived.

What kind of value can you place on the difference between success and failure? It is so large, it is too big to calculate. People would pay almost any price to improve the likelihood of success. This is why it baffles me why so many today are claiming that strategic planning is of little, if any value.

Wouldn’t you rather be a successful winner than a bankrupt loser? How much is that worth to you? If strategic planning can improve the likelihood of preventing bankruptcy and ensuring success, shouldn’t you do it?

Part of the problem is that a lot of what is done today in the name of strategy is not tackling those tough issues which can make the difference between success and failure. During that thorough strategic planning process at Bush during the 1990s, they tackled a number of tough issues, like:

a)     Leadership: The Bush family knew they needed to up the game in leadership, so they changed the board structure to bring in seasoned outsiders to the board of directors for the first time. This was a tough decision for the family members who had to give up some control in order to improve the leadership.

b)     Management: To get the quality of management necessary to win, Bush made the hard choice to move management operations from the little town of Chestnut Hill, Tennessee to the larger city of Knoxville, Tennessee. The larger city made it easier to draw in higher quality managers. But it was tough for the family who liked it back in Chestnut Hill.

c)     Product Mix: Not only did the focus shift from canning any food to canning beans, it also shifted from canning food as ingredients to canning beans that were ready to serve from the can due already having the special sauce. This was very radical and at the time perhaps seen as very risky to put all the future into one type of product.

d)     Sales/Marketing: Once the product mix was established, a professional sales force and marketing program was put in place. This was a significant change from the status quo which they knew.

Compare this to what a lot of companies do today and call strategy:

a)     Set numerical goals (with no details on how to achieve them)

b)     Use metrics and systems to try to do the status quo faster and cheaper.

c)     Have a week-long golf outing surrounded by a few meetings so it can be written off on their taxes.

Great strategies tackle the tough issues. They seek the right trade-offs between options. They challenge the status quo. They move companies into uncomfortable new areas. THEY MAKE A DIFFERENCE. And that difference can mean success rather than failure.

2) Focus is Important

The second lesson from the Bush story is the value of focus. The move from an unfocused “can anything” to the focused “experts in beans” made all the difference to the fate of Bush.  Focus is important, because it allows a company to specialize. And specialization is what it takes to win in a crowded marketplace.

Les Wexner, the genius behind the Limited retail empire (which over the years included such stellar brands as The Limited, Victoria’s Secret, Abercrombie & Fitch, among others), would refer to this as “Best At.” He always wanted to know what his brands were “best at” and then would make sure that the brands were doing everything they could to excel at the area focused on to be best.

The consultants at McMillan Doolittle refer to it as the “EST” strategy. Where have you focused to become superlative? Is it to be the big-est, the cheap-est, the hot-est, the easy-est, the quick-est, and so on.

The idea is that once you determine your focus, you know where to place your bets. You know which trade-offs to make. You know which direction to push your business. You know where to win. And over time, your specialized trade-offs will give you the expertise to excel at your point of focus, and you will win.

Bush was never going to win as an also-ran in canning all sorts of food. But by focusing on beans, it found a place where it could excel through focus, outdo the marketplace and win.

3) Positioning is Important

Focus is not only important to making a difference internally. It is also important to your customers. An internal focus allows you to create an externally winning position in the minds of your customers. By having an internal focus on beans at Bush, the company now had a compelling position to tell the consumers: Bush = The Best in Beans. Consumers were willing to seek out the Bush brand and pay a brand premium because they knew that they were getting the best in beans.

We’ve talked so many times in this blog about the value of positioning. Great positions lead to great success. But if you have not built an internal strategy focused on delivering something special, you have nothing solid to build a position around.

If you cannot deliver superiority on the key point of your position, then your position is nothing but a lie. And consumers will eventually figure out if your position is real or a lie.

That is why the integrated planning process is needed. The internal business model and the external marketing message need to be in sync. And this only comes through serious, company-wide planning. Positioning does not just belong to the CMO. It needs to belong to everyone.

SUMMARY
Good strategic planning is not just some numbers game played in the fall to give an excuse for an off-site business vacation. Good strategic planning tackles the tough topics of focus, positioning and the implications of these topics on the status quo. If done properly, it can be the difference between success and failure. Therefore, if you prefer success over failure, put a high value on doing serious strategic planning.

FINAL THOUGHTS
When a company is operating smoothly, it is difficult to see the need for strategy. It is easy to forget that it was earlier tough strategic decisions which created today’s smooth operations. And if you want smooth operations in the future, you need to make more tough strategic decisions today.