Baking & Snack - November 2013 - 16

ELDC panel explores lessons learned
International leadership and lessons learned emerged as hot topics during the American Bakers Association (ABA)'s "Executive
Leadership Development Committee (ELDC) Baking Industry
Leadership Forum," held during IBIE 2013 in Las Vegas.
Top executives from The Bama Cos., Tulsa, OK; Bimbo Bakeries
USA (BBU), Horsham, PA; Dawn Food Products, Jackson, MI; and
McKee Foods Corp., Collegedale, TN, participated in the highlevel panel.
They included Paula Marshall, Bama's CEO; Fred Penny, BBU's
president; Miles Jones, Dawn's co-chairman; and Mike McKee,
McKee Foods' president and CEO. The panel shared their knowledge about the industry, current trends and the leadership skills
needed to successfully navigate their companies in these challenging times.
As co-chairman of Dawn Food Products, Mr. Jones is the second
generation of his family to lead the company. As a global company,
he noted, Dawn Food Products must deal with a number of multicultural issues that require special skills to handle appropriately.
"International leadership is not for everyone," Mr. Jones told attendees. "It's very demanding. It's challenging. It can also be a very
rewarding personal experience."
Specifically, international leaders need to delve into local cultures and understand the customs and mores. "They've got to be
able to discern what aspects of their leadership style they're going
to alter to fit the local culture," he said.
However, he added, Dawn Food Products is not willing to compromise on the company's core principles, including its mission
statement, ethics and the way it conducts its business.
During the wide-ranging discussions, panelists were asked
to describe a "learning" they gained through their experience as
bakers. Mr. Penny, who's been in the baking industry for 33 years,
described the period when he led the company's Entenmann's
sweet goods business. He forthrightly shared an episode he called
a "mistake."
"When I was running Entenmann's, many of you will remember
there was this thing called the Atkins diet that came along," he said
wryly. "It was not too dissimilar from things going on today in our
industry. It was a really big deal for the short time.
"Many consumer packaged goods companies aggressively went
after Atkins types of reduced-carb, carb-free, sugar-free products
and so on," he recalled. "There was a lot of noise in the trade.
Business customers wanted it. Consumers wanted it. We decided
to jump in and come out with Atkins-endorsed products.
"Obviously in retrospect, it was a huge failure because most of
the companies that went in ended up writing off millions of dollars
in product that never sold as the Atkins fad went away," Mr. Penny
said. "It's easy to second guess the decision, but to me, the important learning out of that was, 'Don't be too quick to jump on the
next fad.' Be thoughtful and thorough about what you see happening in the industry.
"It's easy to chase a fad, but it can be very painful," he observed.
16

/ Baking & Snack / November 2013

A star-studded panel of executives from Bama, Dawn Food Products, McKee Foods and
Bimbo Bakeries USA prepares to discuss critical industry issues during the American Bakers
Association ELDC forum at IBIE.
American Bakers Association

"I will tell you that for our company, in that year, it was financially
extremely painful. It was a point in time in my career when if I had
thought about what it might have been, we might have said, 'We're
not going to chase this one.' "
In 2013, separating fad from sustainable trend has its own challenges, but certain patterns are emerging, according to Mr. Penny.
"There is clearly a greater focus on health and wellness," he said. "It
is expressed in different ways."
Human nature factored into what Mr. McKee shared with the
audience as a learning made from a mistake. In his case, it was a
bad hiring decision.
"[The choice] seemed good at the time and turned out to be a
bad deal," he said. "In diagnosing how that happened, two things
[occurred]: One was group think. Very clearly, there was group
think going on. And second, on my part, my mistake was not to
listen to my intuition. I rationalized it away. That's a learning for me
- the danger of group think. I can identify a number of mistakes
we made I would attribute to group think.
"Intuition is a form of pattern recognition, and it gets better over
time certainly," Mr. McKee added. "It isn't error-free. Sometimes
your gut is not right, but just develop the ability to listen to it and
make it part of your decision making. In hindsight, I wish I had
done that."
Ms. Marshall believes firmly in taking a methodical approach to
management, including conducting consumer research and focus
groups before launching new products.
"Moving forward is great, but sometimes, jumping in with all
fours too soon has been very costly," she said. Likewise, she added,
when opportunity knocks, often the right decision is to keep the
door closed.
When evaluating critical business decisions, executives should
ask the tough questions. Will a major transaction or a partnership
with another business mortgage the company's future or put the
business at risk by placing too many eggs in one basket? Making
the big bet is not necessarily the best thing for a business like The
Bama Cos.
"Sometimes my best decision is to have the courage to say no,"
Ms. Marshall noted.
For more extensive coverage on the ELDC panel, visit the digital
editions of Milling & Baking News on www.bakingbusiness.com.

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Baking & Snack - November 2013

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