Hostess officially announced they are shutting their doors. There is a crisis looming in the software world. How will the coders we feed pizza, Twinkies, Coke and energy drinks survive? They will now have an unbalanced diet. What's a software Project Manager to do?. For that matter, what will we do while watching football, baseball, or have for that afternoon pick-me-up? I'm going to miss my Twinkie, Ding-Dong, and Ho-Ho's. I really do love frozen Ding-Dongs in the summer. Chocolate, cold and tasty, what's not to like? But it's true the Hostess company is calling it quits after roughly one hundred years of existence.
The recent changes in culinary tastes have been the final nails in a coffin housing a continental baking giant of our culture. All because they failed to meet the market demand. They failed largely, because they failed incrementally, in small ways, hardly noticeable to those in the company, much like the frog being boiled alive in a warm pot of water. It feels so good, until it's too late.
I have attached a link to the AP article by J. M. Hirsch, one of their food editors and I suggest you take a few minutes to be cajoled and entertained while being informed. But the issue here really isn't that I won't be able to get the gut-busting calorie-charged Twinkie, it's that a perfectly good company will go out of existence, throwing 18,500 folks out of jobs, all because, a few knuckle-headed owners, managers and labor leaders were blissful frogs in a warm pot of change. I'm not here to lay blame and any single set of feet, all have some responsibility to bear in this debacle.
Chaos in markets is a bear. It is messy, confusing, hard to think about and even can make your head hurt. But that is no excuse for those in the wheelhouse of Ownership to to quit thinking and just give in. This isn't something that just happened. Hostess brands have been steadily declining over the past five years, but looking at the brand and products released in the past few years, does nothing to inspire confidence. No real change in Hostess or Wonder white bread for the past 20 years. No image makeover to bring the hearty full grain goodness to Hostess brands, anywhere. The image of a highly processed food products company, never responding to the changing perceptions of new mothers and fathers concerned about gluten intake, high fructose corn products and industrial dyes being ingested by their little darlings.
Why no change? I'm not sure. I haven't been invited to look at the insides of Hostess, but by outward appearance they were stuck on digging a hole with a "Stupid Stick" as a friend of mine so eloquently puts it. They just kept on digging, without knowing why or when it was time to stop. They knew how to dig, it was comfortable, it had worked in the past, why not now? They hadn't noticed that the stuff they were digging in had changed from easy loam to hard rock. They continued to use shovels when they needed air hammers or a little blasting powder.
So if you find yourself digging and it seems you are working much harder than before, maybe it's time to put down the " Stupid Stick" you have in your hand, crawl out of your comfortable hole and look around. You might find you are digging in the wrong hole. You might find you will need new tools to dig your new hole. (That is if your business is digging holes.) The important thing is to interrupt what you are doing and look around, look hard and long and see if there is something you need to change, then leave the old behind and embrace the new and move ahead.
Do it together. No single person can survive in this mad, mad, mad world we live in today. One final reminder, 'Collaboration is the Glue of Success."
This is a continuing series of articles on the current change and chaos our business work world is experiencing. How we can navigate the treacherous waters and succeed when we are observant, open minded and innovative.
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