Milling & Baking News - August 24, 2004 - 6

E D I T O R I A L

Drucker urges focus on opportunities, not problems

n an article in a recent issue of the Harvard Business Review, Peter F. Drucker, who is rightly called "a guru's
guru," sets out practices that ought to be followed by
managers wishing to be effective. One of his "simple"
suggestions among nine presented - that "good executives focus on opportunities rather than problems" - is
especially applicable to grain-based foods at this point in
industry history. Observers of the industry, both those
who bring a fresh perspective and those with long experience, might be tempted to conclude that grain-based
foods has never before been plagued by more problems
than presently. They might conclude, based on comments
by executives of both publicly-owned and privatelyowned companies, that changes in eating patterns stemming from acceptance of many different diets are creating
an array of problems that appear insurmountable.
Mr. Drucker, whose consulting career spans 65 years,
provides advice on identifying opportunities that
sounds almost as if it was aimed at grain-based foods as
an industry, rather than at executives. While acknowledging the need to address problems, he points out that
solving problems does not produce results, that "exploring opportunities produces results."
It is Mr. Drucker's thesis that change, like that sweeping through grain-based foods, should be perceived as
an opportunity for improving business rather than as a
problem that needs solving. He decries managers who
see change as a threat, suggesting instead that change
ought to be welcomed, that it should be carefully studied as "an opportunity for the enterprise." He goes so
far as to list seven situations that offer opportunities,
including failures, in a market, product or even in an
industry; an obvious gap between what a market offers
and what is really demanded; an innovation that arises,
either on the outside or from within; changes in industry and market structures; changes in perceptions and

meanings; and new knowledge or new technology.
Each of these "situations" has occurred in grain-based
foods in relatively recent times. Few have been welcomed by even forward-thinking managers as a chance
for changing the business or for adopting a new and
promising strategy that will achieve the most ambitious
goals. Yet, this is what Mr. Drucker suggests as important, not just to becoming an effective executive, but also
to making a business move in promising directions.
Applying this Drucker emphasis on seizing opportunities to grain-based foods prompts focus on the high-low
carbohydrate issues causing industry-wide turmoil. For
many companies committed to a limited range of products,
consumer attention - the sort of perception about which
Mr. Drucker writes - to losing weight has become a horrendous problem. For a few, it translates into the type of opportunity he describes in the Harvard Business Review article.
And while shifting dietary preferences make for a classic
example of opportunity within the Drucker framework, it
is likely he would see how the industry reacts to change as
convincing evidence of the importance of grasping his recommendations for becoming an effective executive. All too
often, grain-based foods views the many changes coursing
through the industry as threats diminishing future prospects. In reality, many of these changes, ranging from new
and different ways of buying wheat to transformations in
the retail food industry, provide the level of opportunity
that also is offered by sweeping changes in what foods
consumers want to buy and how they are prepared and
eaten. Much is missed in future growth - by individuals,
by companies or by an entire industry - when something that should have been seized as an opportunity is
either swept under the rug or attacked as a problem. Peter
Drucker manages to sound just the right note for grainbased foods in stressing the importance of distinguishing
between problem and opportunity.

Must not neglect convenience as powerful force

n any discussion of major inﬂuences affecting what
Americans eat, particularly those forces that have
caused recent dramatic shifts, the tendency is to focus
on the impact of fad diets like Atkins and South Beach,
while neglecting an array of other forces that might have
just as great impacts. It is almost inconceivable that the
desire for convenience, which has been a massive force in
food demand in the last half century, would be relegated in
anyone's mind to a lesser role by the focus on losing weight
and making a choice between low- and high-carbohydrate
diets. Yet, in the frenzy to counter the negatives from dietary
crazes, a powerful factor like convenience has frequently
been shunted aside, and that is a frightful mistake.
Recent comments by two leading grain-based foods executives underscore just how important convenience is in
developing food marketing strategies. One of these came
from Patrick T. Kennedy, the chief ﬁnancial ofﬁcer of Greencore Group, based in Dublin, Ireland. Mr. Kennedy, discussing the progress being made by his company as "the
world's largest maker of sandwiches," said that a third of
all the meals in the United Kingdom "are now prepared
in less than ﬁve minutes." It is likely that Americans are
not far behind the U.K. in the amount of time given to
meal preparation. It is true that prepared sandwiches
have not gained the same prominence in America as they
have in Britain, for a number of reasons that include difbakingbusiness.com / world-grain.com

ferences in ambient temperature and geography, but Mr.
Kennedy's explanation, that "people don't have time for
cooking," is applicable to both countries.
While scarcity of time is a principal driver of the demand
for convenience, lack of cooking skills is an equally powerful force. Stephen W. Sanger, chairman and chief executive
of General Mills, Inc., made a telling point about time
when he observed that "half of consumers decide after 4:
00 p.m. what they will prepare for dinner that evening."
That neatly relates to the ﬁve minutes cited by Greencore.
Mr. Sanger also noted how demand for convenience ﬂows
from the widespread absence of cooking skills, prompting
him to cite questions and/or comments General Mills has
received from customers. With good humor, he noted that
one question went like this, "I don't have any eggs, but
I've got a peach. Would that work?" And, "Your product
ruined my oven because it said to grease the bottom of the
pan." To which Mr. Sanger noted, "I guess we should have
said to grease the inside of the bottom of the pan."
Five minutes for meal preparation, late-in-the-day
decisions about what to prepare and ignorance of the
elements of food preparation powerfully meld into convenience. Originally seen as capturing for housewives
the advantages of modern-day appliances, convenience
now looms as the all-powerful consideration in the development of food marketing strategies. MBN
Milling & Baking News, August 24, 2004 / 7

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Milling & Baking News - August 24, 2004

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