The Real Secret Ingredient to Ben and Jerry’s Success.
Hint: It’s Not in the Ice cream
In 2019, Ben and Jerry’s was one of the most popular brands of ice cream in the United States. That popularity brought the brand approximately $700 million dollars in ice cream sales in the US alone. Ben and Jerry’s sells around one billion dollars of ice cream worldwide annually. In the same year, Ben and Jerry’s issued a statement titled “We Must Dismantle White Supremacy: Silence is NOT an Option.” This was in response to the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, by a white Minneapolis police officer. Ben and Jerry’s addressed systemic racism directly in the statement saying: “The murder of George Floyd was the result of inhumane police brutality that is perpetuated by a culture of white supremacy.”
The ice cream company didn’t issue the statement because it was trendy. Rather, social activism was already ingrained in the company’s structure. The statement was an intentional extension of their own internal culture that cultivates open conversation about values. It was a manifestation of their commitment to taking consistent action.
Four years prior, Ben and Jerry’s issued a statement supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, which aims to eradicate white supremacy. However, the ice cream company’s commitment to activism goes even further back and spans issues beyond racism. For three decades, the company has partnered with Greyston Bakery to make the key ingredient in Ben and Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie flavor — brownies. Greyston Bakery is unique because it operates with an open hiring model. That means anyone who shows up can work. People considered “unemployable” by most companies — ex-convicts, disabled, homeless, illiterate, and addicts — can all join the team. With such diverse perspectives and life experiences, the potential for conflict along faultlines is high among bakery staff.
However, the CEO of the bakery says that there’s actually “minimal risk and significant return.” Return to the tune of $20 million in revenues in 2018. Greyston Bakery is so successful that other companies visit to learn ideas about systems and practices — including Ben and Jerry’s. Greyston’s CEO explains that employees “need structure and support along with care and compassion.” Inspired by this model, Ben and Jerry’s implemented “values led hiring” at their Vermont factories. While not the same as the Greyston’s model, it meant the ice cream company no longer conducted criminal background checks. The director of the Vermont factories said of the shift:
“it starts with a lot of education and it starts with a lot of conversations with our employee base and our teammates to make sure that they understand why Ben & Jerry’s and Unilever want to go down this path.”
Diversity and difference amongst team members does not mean that conflict and division will necessarily result. Yet, it’s a reasonable fear if you do not know which strategies to implement. Leaders at those two collaborative companies explained that structure, support, care, compassion, education and conversation are all key. The science backs up their lived experience.
Researchers Ernst and Chrobot-Mason at the Center for Creative Leadership compiled 2,800 survey responses, conducted 300 interviews with leaders worldwide and with 128 senior level executives from the world’s most recognizable companies. They wanted to learn how leaders organize “across groups of people with very different histories, perspectives, values or cultures.” Only seven percent of the executives interviewed believed they were “very effective” at working effectively across these differences. The rest didn’t know which tools to use.
In an increasingly globalized workplace, leaders are faced with deep faultlines: “residual bitterness between historical enemies, culture clashes, turf battles and generation gaps.” Yet an overwhelming number of the leaders in the study didn’t know how to build strong, diverse teams across these differences. Differences are not only demographic, but also include hierarchical boundaries and separations based on areas of expertise. Ernst and Chrobot-Mason note that people feel “strong emotions’’ based on identities associated with their self identified subgroups, emotions like “loyalty, pride, respect and trust.” Humans want to both be unique and also belong — identity serves those needs. But identity is also “[t]he emotional force that serves both to separate and connect us…”
Thankfully, there are remedies. Ernst and Chrobot-Mason offer six strategies for leaders to implement to bridge these intense, emotional boundaries. These practices create connections, healthy relationships and high performing teams.
First, team members need to feel safe. Leaders can create this psychological safety for their team by shielding members from threats “so they can develop and maintain a clear group identity.”
Second, differences need to be discussed openly and experienced in a way where all members feel seen, heard and understood. Ernst and Chrobot-Mason explain that this practice helps groups “to see common ground in goals and objectives, and the way is cleared for intergroup respect and collaboration.”
Third is connecting or forming one-on-one relationships. Ernst and Chrobot-Mason say this can happen when there are “neutral zone[s] where people can interact with one another as individuals.” Away from group level faultline environments. Neutral zones are communal spaces, like cafeterias and libraries, where people can meet and mingle at random. New relationships form and “boundaries that created rigid borders between groups become more porous and intergroup trust may grow.”
Fourth, mobilize a group towards a common purpose. At Ben and Jerry’s, their internal value to advance “issues of social and racial justice” motivated the team to collaborate with Colin Kaepernick, the former NFL quarterback and current activist. The collaboration resulted in a new flavor called Change the Whirled. All of the proceeds from the flavor’s sales go to Kaepernick’s Know Your Rights Camp (KYRC) whose mission is to “advance the liberation and well-being of Black and Brown communities.” This collaboration was a joint effort of multiple teams at the ice cream company that took years of effort to come to fruition.
Fifth is called “weaving,” which Ernst and Chrobot-Mason describe as integrating different groups with unique skill sets to work together toward a common goal. This respects identities of groups built around specific areas of expertise and builds more cross-group, or bridging bonds. Per Q theory, we know that having strong cross-group bonds allows information and resources to easily flow amongst groups. This cultivates creativity and innovation and, as a result, group performance improves. With weaving, group differences are seen as opportunities instead of hindrances.
The sixth, and final recommendation, is called “transforming.” Ernst and Chrobot-Mason explain that leaders need to give group members time and space to “open themselves to change.” People are in the process of forming new identities that are aligned with overall group goals. This happens when team members feel safe and supported in their reinvention.
When all six of these boundary-spanning strategies are practiced, then “safety, respect, trust, community, interdependence and reinvention” will result. This reinforces Q theory, which asserts that interdependence arises when groups have the right mix of experience levels and the right balance of bridging and bonding relationships. Those types of groups are the most successful.
All of these six strategies have an underlying quality — people are valued and feel a sense of belonging by leadership and fellow teammates. In other words they felt Included.
Teams don’t fail because of their differences. They fail when those differences are used to divide rather than unite. But with proper care and practices, those same differences can bring people into deeper relationships with one another. An interdependent, creative and innovative network can form that extends from Ben and Jerry’s factory floor and beyond.
The real secret to Ben and Jerry’s success is not the ice cream, but rather the perfect blend of bridging and bonding relationships that result in the optimal amount of social capital.
What differences on your team feel insurmountable? Do you think you can implement some of the six strategies presented here to create bridges between those differences? Let us know in the comments.
