Sometimes a court case becomes a news item simply because of the parties involved. Such is the case of Bimbo USA filing an injunction against its own employee who wanted to leave his job as head muffin man to go work for rival Hostess. (Makers of Twinkees and Ho Hos)
A news item involving Bimbo and Ho Hos wouldn’t be complete if they weren’t really fighting over muffins, would it? It’s a innuendo parade! Getting past the plastic wrapper, we’re all a little disappointed when we discover the plantiffs name is Chris Botticella and not something more snickerworthy.
The heart of the case is a real Twinkie. It turns out Botticella is one of only seven Bimbo employees who knows the secret recipe to making Thomas English Muffins. And those delicious morsels are a $500 million per year business which would be a cream filling to Hostess’ already lucrative business.
Yes, Mr. Botticella is the $500 million muffin man and Bimbo is afraid that he was buttered up to move Drury Lane from Southern California to Pennslyvania.
The New York Times article documents the fruit pie filling of the case:
After Bimbo bought Thomas’ in January 2009, Mr. Botticella became responsible for an English muffin factory in Placentia, Calif. That March, apparently as a condition for entering the ranks of the nook and cranny cognoscenti, the company had him sign a confidentiality agreement. It barred him from revealing company secrets, but did not prohibit him from going to work for a competitor.
At about the same time, according to papers filed by Mr. Botticella’s lawyers, the company embarked on a broad cost-cutting drive. It involved plant closings and layoffs, and the papers say he found the process painful and became unhappy in his job.
Last October, he accepted a job offer from Hostess to run its Eastern operations. The salary was $200,000 a year, $50,000 less than he was paid at Bimbo.
Some serious questions this case brings up
All jokes and Ding Dongs aside, and you are encouraged to add your own Sno Balls in the comments, this particular case of an employer suing an employee who wants to quit to work for a rival brings up some interesting questions.
- If an employee under an NDA leaves a job to work for a rival, how do you know you can trust the employee under the NDA?
- If an employee leaves to work for a competitor, do the employees at the old company automatically assume that the old employee will share everything?
- Have we past the point where a publicly traded company can keep trade secrets? Certainly, if Hostess really wanted a recipe for English Muffins they have the resources to find out what is in it. Of course, it seems like if they copied the recipe they’d be breaking patent laws which makes this whole thing complete nonsense.
- If they wanted to know how to make English muffins, couldn’t they just ask a baker from England?
- Would it seem reasonable to assume that Mr. Botticella could demand Bimbo’s $250,000 annual salary for life since his employer won’t allow him to work for another baker? (40 years in the industry, no one could expect him to go elsewhere)
- Am I the only one disturbed that an employer could file an injunction (and win in two states!) preventing an employee for quitting?
Photo by fmgbain via Flickr (Creative Commons)
Starting a new organization is an entirely different task than innovating to change an existing organization.
Both are hard. But changing and existing organization is way harder.
For most of my career I’ve been in turnaround roles. Kristen and I have a little joke… My entire adult work life has seemed like one roller coaster ride after another.
Click, click, click, click… up we climb.
Click, click, click, click. My heart races.
Wait for it. Wait for it… Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Arms up. Screaming bloody murder. Thinking of the Tom Petty song, Free Falling.
Down the big hill we go.
Over and over again I’m left to help try to innovate our way out of the mess.
And, so far, I’ve been pretty successful at it by most people’s judgement.
How does one innovate within an existing ecosystem?
- Become Switzerland. There are political factions within any organization. If you want to get stuff done you need to be neither and empathetic both sides at the same time.
- Spike the football. When you do something that everyone is happy with its OK to just look into the camera and say, “Thank you very much. Woohoo! Hi mom!” I’ve seen a lot of people fail in an organization because they were afraid to take the credit for their own ideas doing well. Don’t be an idiot. It’s OK to be the guy to do good stuff. Spike the football.
- Own the data. Existing organizations are horrible at owning their data. I like to look at the results of a long-standing program that has had no results and say, “30 years of VBS and not a single new family? Why didn’t we just light that $300,000 on fire? At least we would have had a good BBQ.” When people are tied to tradition or the way they’ve always done things, sometimes you need to be the person with the frying pan who hits them in the head. Helping people in leadership own the data is the catalyst to getting stuff done in an existing organization.
- Be creative. Face it. A fist full of money and a fat belly has never created a single good idea. Have you seen Bing? No budget, no time, no research, shot in the dark… that’s when good stuff happens. That’s when the best ideas pop into your head. Creativity and innovation come out of suffering and frustration. These are your friends and allies, not your enemies.
- Opportunistic eyes. I keep a list of ideas I’ve got on ice. Then, when I’m in a meeting and everyone is scratching their heads looking for something new, bam… I’m pull out my concept. If I ran around screaming about every idea I had all the time I’d look like a mad scientist.
What are some ways you’ve learned to innovate within an existing ecosystem?
Clay High School, 1992 | Welcome to the wayback machine
When someone pitches an idea my mind is running through a matrix of questions. Is this really a good idea? Is the idea even possible? Is this the right person to turn this idea into a reality? Will enough people buy into the idea that it’ll take off? Is this the right time for this idea?
But the overarching question on my mind is simply, “Has this idea possessed this person to the point that they won’t rest– they will just be driven by this idea for as long as it takes?”
90% of the time the answer to that question is no.
“I can teach anyone enough about music to sing in the choir.”
This was the philosophy of my high school choir teacher. The woman was possessed. I’m living proof of this truism. I have no musical ability or talent at all and I was taught enough to perform at hundreds of shows, concerts, and competitions during high school.
This woman was possessed in her belief that anyone could sing and sing well. She convinced more than 50 students per year to take a choir class at 6:30 AM. On top of that she convinced about 25 of us to take an additional music class in the afternoon. Get this, for three of my four years of high school I had two music classes every day. And after school in the Spring almost all of us were also part of a musical.
It wasn’t unusual for me to leave for school before 6:00 AM and not return home from school until after 9:00 PM.
How did she do it? She was possessed by her idea. “I can teach anyone to sing.”
She had that one magical ingredient that most purveyors of ideas don’t have.
Do you?
Photo by whizchickenonabun via flickr (Creative Commons)
The Great Recession of 2009 has created a new breed of entrepreneur– the I-don’t-have-a-job-but-I-was-once-successful-in-business-and I-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-my-life-since-I-can’t-find-a-good-paying-job-that-satisfies-me-quite-like-my-old-job-did-entrepreneur.
What’s interesting about this group is that they have great ideas, limited capital, and a mixed bag of preparedness for starting a business. Honestly, that’s a perfect combination!
Photo by rcameraw via flickr (Creative Commons)
The bad part is that since they don’t have jobs, they need this thing to take off instantly and provide for their families before their unemployment benefits run out.
I have a fundamental belief that people are at their best when up against that type of adversity. But while that kind of desperation can create tremendous energy to succeed– I’ve found that it can also lead to dangerous tunnel vision.
So here are my 6 Questions for Those Starting a Business as a result of getting laid off by the Great Recession of 2009.
- How little capital will you need to start generating positive revenue initially? In other words, how little can you invest to start making money with your idea now?
- What will you do to acquire customers outside of your sphere of influence? Your biggest weakness is thinking you have the contact base to maintain a business beyond 180 days– if you had that strong of a contact base one of them would have hired you by now. How will you grow your sphere beyond yourself in the first 30, 60, 90 days?
- Who are the gatekeepers to your success? Who are the power brokers in your niche and what do you need from them in order to succeed in this space?
- Have you defined the boundaries of your niche? What safeguards have you put I’m place to keep you in your niche?
- Is the product or service dependent or repeat business? If a repeat business, how will you manage customer relationships beyond the transaction?
- Is this a product or service that you need? If you don’t need it what makes you think it will keep you up at night making it awesome or that it will motivate others to evangelize your product?
What makes me qualified to ask these questions? In 2005 I started Youth Ministry Exchange with a small group of friends. We turned a profit on the first day and had positive cash flow every quarter until we were acquired by Youth Specialties in June 2008. In other words, I’ve done exactly what this breed of entrepreneur is attempting.
