卡夫亨氏的组织重组为什么不成功？

快速消费品巨头—卡夫亨氏在今年年初股票暴跌，公司在一夜之间损失了43亿美金。作者从卡夫和亨氏重组时所忽略的一些细节开始。两个公司的重组在一开始被众人看好，但接踵而来的零基预算等激进机制其实在抹杀公司的创新和成长。作者提出了人的两个频道：求生频道（Survive Channel）和求兴频道（Thrive Channel）,处在这两种频道上会激发人不同的反应，从而为组织带去截然不同的影响。

There has been a company restructuring recipe that has worked for decades. Buy a company, trim the fat, then reinvest to facilitate growth, and make lots of money. But sometimes this recipe doesn’t work — and the story of Kraft Heinz is a prime example. Earlier this year, the company suffered a massive loss in less than 24 hours — $4.3 billion, to be precise. And over a two-year period, the fiasco cost Berkshire Hathaway $20 billion, possibly its worst loss ever.

In 2015, Kraft met Heinz through a $63 billion mega-merger backed by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and Brazilian private equity firm 3G Capital. Zero-based budgeting was at the core of the management team’s effort to restructure the company by implementing large-scale cost improvements to boost profit margins and add value. Buffett publicly backed the process, and Burger King had successfully implemented a similar strategy of cost cutting and mergers leading its parent company, Restaurant Brands International, to gains of 20% a year. Most people expected relatively smooth sailing.

Unfortunately, it was anything but smooth.

While investors were hungry for growth, 3G could not change the Kraft Heinz legacy brands quickly enough to meet consumer demand for healthier, fresher and, in some cases, cheaper private-label products. While Jell-O, Kool-Aid, and Velveeta were being stacked onto shelves, the tectonic plates of big-box food were shifting beneath Kraft Heinz’s feet, and they could not adapt fast enough. As Kraft Heinz focused on aggressive cost cutting, they significantly impaired their ability to innovate to keep up with the changing landscape. The accounting irregularities, resulting in an SEC investigation, are arguably an additional outcome of the intense cost focus.

Ultimately, leaders need to understand that the pace of change is accelerating everywhere, not just in packaged foods. In our view, Kraft Heinz’s experience shows dramatically that traditional methods of restructuring are increasingly risky. Any effort that slows down or curtails a company’s ability to innovate can lead to disastrous results.

When Restructuring Kills Innovation

Humans are biologically hardwired to respond to threats and opportunities, through two channels that trigger emotions, neurons, chemicals, and, ultimately, actions. We call these channels the Survive Channel and the Thrive Channel.

For most people, company restructuring initiatives represent a threat, triggering a strong “survive” response in the brain. Fear, uncertainty, and anger fuel distrust in management and narrow all focus to eliminating the threat — leaving no capacity for creative ideation. This “fight or flight” response is directed at protecting oneself, and any attention to the real business problems and opportunities for growth can disappear. In extreme cases, as with Kraft Heinz, an overheated Survive Channel can activate a “freeze” response, fueled by feelings of despair and hopelessness — neither of which remotely fosters innovation and growth.

By contrast, the Thrive Channel is associated with opportunity-seeking and expansive thinking, which is the exact mindset that leads to innovation, creativity, and capitalizing on new opportunities. While both channels can be powerful, when Survive gets overheated, the noise and disruption it creates tend to overwhelm Thrive.
When you eventually stop aggressive cost-cutting, anxiety, fear, and anger dissipate with time, and individual productivity improves. New opportunities activate Thrive and, if you are good, you innovate and grow. But that’s the catch. Returning to a balance between eliminating threats and seeking opportunities takes time and, increasingly, you do not have the time.

Calming the Overheated Survive Channel

So how can you calm a raging Survive Channel while going through a restructuring?

Ambiguity is the greatest source of anxiety, and when management doesn’t fill in the gaps for people during a time of change, employees will do so themselves. It’s human nature, and leaders would be remiss to ignore this truth.

“Why is this happening?” “What exactly is happening?” and “What does this mean for me?” — these are three (of many) questions that might arise in employees’ minds during a restructuring effort. Without transparency and clarity from leadership, self-generated answers can create an even greater cloud of uncertainty and confusion, further amplifying the Survive Channel.

It’s up to leaders to articulate what is happening and why. This often comes down to helping people zoom out to see the picture in a bigger frame. For Kraft Heinz, that could mean focusing on the need to cut costs as a necessary step to evolving as a company, having resources for innovating to excite customers, and staying ahead of the competition.

Any big change is likely to inspire big feelings. When left bottled up, those feelings can magnify in intensity. Giving employees healthy outlets to express their fears, frustrations, and questions can help manage and channel those emotions in productive ways. Ensuring managers create opportunities for front line employees to share these feelings can go a long way in reducing anxiety.

Activating the Thrive Channel

Activating Thrive means filling an organization with much more focus on opportunities — no matter how daunting the challenges may seem — and cultivating a culture filled with positive emotions like passion, pride, happiness, and a sense of camaraderie. In this environment, activity and communication from leaders and managers touch employees’ hearts, not just their minds. Their words inspire people to want to engage, not just have to do their jobs.

Inviting employees, no matter their title or rank, to participate in a restructuring initiative can shift the whole tone of a transformation. The change is no longer a scary event happening to employees, but rather a journey that employees are a part of. One way to invite people to participate is by asking them how they see their responsibilities shifting, rather than telling them how their role will change. Another way is to involve groups of employees in helping to make decisions about when and how people get moved out of the organization — which has the added advantage of enabling better decisions.

The pace of change is rewriting the rules of restructuring. As seen through Kraft Heinz, companies across industries need an approach that calms Survive and activates Thrive, minimizing disruption, and allowing an organization to innovate swiftly, grow, and focus on the future. All who ignore these realities are risking more than they can imagine.