Noisy Sustainable Efforts

     I had recently read an article from Envrionmentalleader.com which had a very interesting story.  All of the stories that I have currently been reading have entailed successes in businesses sustainability initiatives.  To the contrary, this article reveals and analyzes a sustainable initiative that a very well known company has introduced but has been heavily criticized.  The company, Frito-Lay, had recently introduced the first 100% compostable chip package.  This package is made out of various polymers and glass particles that are recyclable and compostable.  Although this is a great effort to rid of the wasteful and polluting regular potato chip bags that we are so fond of, people heavily criticized their efforts. 

What Happened

     After Brad Rodgers, Frito-Lay’s North American manager of sustainable packaging, had helped develop and implement the bags, he began to here all sorts of concern (EL Daily).  Sun Chip consumers were reporting that the bags were too noisy.  One may say that this is a ridiculous comment considering that they are potato chip bags. I can’t remember when I quietly ate potato chips, but one is entitled to their opinion.  Rodgers and Frito-Lay decided that they had to fix this “noisy” bag and re-distribute a bag that was both eco-friendly and “quiet” in the mind of the consumers.  In addressing this problem, they created a new bag that was less-noisy but yet ultimately resorted to the old packaging except for their original flavored chip.  They stated that they would use the regular chip in order to save face and allow them to still use their marketing campaign.  Although a lot of consumers reported disgust with the noisy bag, most of the comments on the article are positive and aimed at the need for sustainability efforts, no matter what the noise. From this, we can see that Frito-Lay tried to initially move towards a rapid sustainable effort, while consumers put them back into their seat and made them slow down.

Linking the Concepts

     We can see that Brad Rodgers and Frito-Lay were encouraged to lead a change not only for their industry and business, but for our environment that we live in.  Although their ultimate plan did not pan out exactly the way they had anticipated, they are still considered leaders of sustainability.  Lets face it, they are the first people to introduce a sustainable approach to potato chips, and that my friends is awesome. 

     Although Rodgers and Frito-Lay are leaders of this initiative, I will also say that they have managed the situation that they had found themselves in quite well.  To put this into practice, I would conceptualize this situation in the Functions of Management and Leadership.  In our text, we can see that Frito-Lay and Rodgers both had to lead and manage this introduction of sustainability.  For example, they had to lead the project by establishing a direction.  The direction is clear that they wanted to provide their product by being responsible to the environment.  Thus, this would then entail that they would communicate their vision and goals to the entire organization and then motivate their employees to carry out the initiative.  Though they lead this change, they still had to manage it.  This meant that they had to plan.  This plan was to incorporate the new bag to all of the Sun Chip line.  They then had to organize and set rules and procedures to produce the bags which are explained in the article.  Lastly, they would control the implementation of the bag and effectively solve problems as they arrived.  This is where Frito-Lay stood out.  Because they were able to effectively solve the noisy bag problem, they were able to overcome the criticism of their consumers.  Thus, they generated a creative solution of leaving their main flavor, original, in the 100% compostable bag.  This act is known as a “corrective action.”  Ultimately, I would suggest to model the skills approach to leadership.  After reading the article, it seems like the leaders of Frito-Lay and Sun Chips were able to use their attributes and competencies in order to reach great outcomes of their leadership.  We can see this in their ability to motivate their organization to follow the sustainable approach to potato chip bags.  Then they used their competencies to judge the social need of the bags while also obtaining knowledge and problem-solving skills.  Lastly, they had to use these attributes and competencies to adjust their overall decision in order to effectively solve the problem and reach the desired performance after it had been implemented.  To reference, you can visit the chart on page 44 in our text and relate it to the situation.

To the Reader 

     Since Frito-Lay and Rogers were able to be effective leaders and managers, they were able to save the company’s “face” and also establish a new standard for the industry.  As some may already know, other chip and food producing companies have followed Frito-Lay down the path to a sustainable future.  If you haven’t seen them, look around in the chip isle next time, and you might notice some bags looking like they were made out of construction paper.  Then do us all a favor and buy those chips.  With that being said, do you think that more and more food manufacturers will resort to compostable packaging?  If you read the article, do you think that they made the responsible decision to only case the original chips in this bag, or do you think that they should have followed their original plan?  Ultimately, do you think that Frito-Lay would have been negatively affected had they continued their original plan?   

Let me know what you think.  If you want to read the full article and some of the consumer responses visit: 

http://www.environmentalleader.com/2010/10/04/frito-lay-yanks-sunchips-compostable-bag-to-fix-noise-level/

...Jeffrey Parrish