Weekly Roundup - May 18

This is our latest installment in our weekly series on fear in the marketplace and specifically how to be Brave in business decision making. Each week we post a few reads along with a synopsis of a few current business stories and how executives and managers are letting fear play out in decision making.

1. Recently Bud Light ended up with a black eye and controversy on its hands with a beer label with the tag line 'The perfect beer for removing 'no' from your vocabulary for the night.'

Despite using possibly one of the worst ideas ever, (especially in light of recent high profile cases of domestic violence such as Ray Rice in the NFL) what was potentially even more startling was the fact that this label was green lit only after going through 5 approvals inside Anheuser-Busch including marketing, legal, corporate social responsibility division and an advertising code committee.

At Corporate Bravery we talk often about the role that hierarchy and internal compliance teams have on creating fear in corporate decision making and this is a classic example. Even when pressed on how it decided against a recall their response was that the bottles didn't 'pose a health or public-safety concern'. The response shows that the culture isn't strong enough to allow individuals to use their best judgement and instead it is easier to hide behind protocol and layers of bureaucracy.

The article goes on to mention how AB InBev 'spread the blame' first to its advertisers BBDO for writing the label and then to the US Alcohol Tobacco Tax & Trade Bureau. The latter is laughable since the government agency can't possibly regulate stupidity.


2. In the lead-up to the NFL Draft I ran across an interesting take on how teams draft quarterbacks that is an interesting corollary to what often-times happens in our business organizations.

The article in the Wall Street Journal talks specifically about the quarterback position and how the position has evolved tremendously in the past decade but NFL teams continue to want to force those being drafted into the position in the NFL into a certain type of quarterback. To summarize the NFL's track record on innovation the article says, "True aficionados of football strategy would roll their eyes at the NFL game. It was, for all its revenue and viewers, not the place for innovation."



The article spotlights Marcus Mariota as the example in this year's draft of a potential victim of this one size fits all view of the position that permeates the NFL.

"This is one of the many tweaks that college players are asked to make, but it can be a very bad thing. No one is telling Martin Scorsese to direct an episode of "The Big Bang Theory" and no one should ask Mariota to huddle. 

Mariota will be drafted high on Thursday night - possibly as high as the second overall selection. Then comes the hard part: making an "NFL" quarterback. That means huddling, taking a snap directly from the center and running less with the football. None of those are Mariota's strengths. 

But Mariota will not, barring a trade find a home with a team that will run the right offense around him. This square-peg-in-a-round-hole game will continue. Marietta needs [Chip] Kelly or a like-minded coach. Instead, he could get NFL lifer Ken Whisenhunt as a head coach. He's as fine a coach as there is in the NFL but he has never had any experience with the new style of quarterbacks. The NFL will try to NFL-ize Mariota rather than a team letting themselves get Mariota-ized."

Read the article and leave comments on ways you have seen this play out in your business organizations. People in the wrong positions? Marginalized employees contributing only a fraction of their capabilities because of managers forcing them into a certain approach.


3. Now instead of fear-driven decision making, we bring you a good example of corporate bravery - Mars Inc. Last week Mars made headlines by joining support with US regulators regarding a proposal to include measurements of added sugar.

At Corporate Bravery one strategy that we advocate to release fear-based decision making regarding regulators is to get out in front of regulation. That is exactly what Mars has done in this situation.

Sure, the support is self-serving but it beats banging your head against the wall of an inevitable regulation. And why not curry favor with regulators and be a resource for them in shaping the regulation rather than fighting and then reacting to a final regulation that may not be advantageous to your interests over the long-term.

According to the Global Head of R and D in the Wall Street Journal article the reason Mars has taken this position is because of the following,

"It might appear to be counterintuitive, but if you dig down a bit more, we know candy itself is not a diet. It shouldn't be consumed too often, and having transparency of how much it should be consumed is actually quite helpful to consumers."

The result of this position is good publicity like the article linked above, but the impact on regulators can be just as good. In the article an FDA official was quoted as saying,

"The FDA appreciates the support and engagement of Mars and other companies in the important effort to reduce added sugar in the American diet."