April 16, 2008
Back To The Cottage
Chapter 11
Curve Ball
by John Sipple
In this chapter of Back To The Cottage, John Sipple describes how the Foley pulp mill organization demonstrated their resilience after Procter and Gamble's unexpected sale of the mill. Here's an excerpt:
About the time we got the business really humming, Procter and Gamble threw us a curve that, frankly, felt like being hit by an emotional freight train.
Finally, just as we were making the kind of return on investment other P&G divisions made (and that's tough in a company that produces soap, toothpaste and mouthwash), they decided to sell the pulp business. The Foley organization was shocked, then angry - then numb. Our people had never known another company.
It was at this point that I took the morning walk I described at the beginning of this story. I came awfully close to throwing in the towel that day but the values and principles I learned in my family‘s Cottage business made it impossible for me quit. I had to keep on keeping on.
Here is where we would learn the true capability of our Foley organization! Here is where we would learn what we were really made of. This was how we would determine the real result of our work system. Now we would see how it worked.
Click here to read the rest of Chapter 11
Back to the Cottage — More PDF Downloads
Back to the Cottage unpacks John's numerous leadership experiences and traces the development of the values that made him an effective leader. These are the lessons learned not in a high powered educational institution or a corporate leader development boot camp, but in the family's cottage business of his youth.
Preface
Chapter 1: Field Tested
Chapter 2: The Cottage
Chapter 3: Cottage Principles
Chapter 4: Shuttering the Cottage
Chapter 5: From the Cottage to the Corporation
Chapter 6: The Case Study
Chapter 7: Searching for a Strategy
Chapter 8: Design Team
Chapter 9: The Design
Chapter 10: Walking The Talk
