Leading culture change at Seagram
The Seagram company was founded in 1924 with a single distillery in Canada. The company has been a major player in the beverage industry for years. Seagram has been able to develop a loyal consumer following with premier products and premier brands such as crown Royal, Chivas Regal, Glenlivet, and Mum Champagne. The company has also owned an oil company and 25 percent of DuPont. In 1988 it acquired Martell S.A as well as Tropicana Products. It was in 1995 that the President and CEO of Seagram, Edgar Bronfman told senior managers that his vision for the company was to be the best managed beverage company. The statement was made when the company was going through some major changes and transformation.…show more content… Liquor sales spiraled down, and it was predicted that the decline would continue for several years. This is the reason why Bronfman and Seagram executives saw the need for strategic repositioning and a redefinition of the company’s competitive advantage. They knew that they were not going to be able to achieve to receive the same results with this happening, so they took some actions. They expanded its spirits business into other countries. Acquired the global fruit juice business from Dole Food Company Inc. Redeemed $156 million of its DuPont shares for $8.8 billion. They also purchased 80 percent of MCA. They managed to gain success from this very different portfolio and a more global…show more content… Not only were they trying to effectively mange Seagram and reduce cost. They also tried to identify future growth opportunities. The reengineering task involved hundreds of employees, who worked in teams to redesign different aspects of the company’s processes. The new processes required people to change how they behaved and interacted with each other, truly a new culture. They would have to learn how to be more innovative, cooperative, communicative, and customer-focused. While learning a new culture they would have to unlearn or forget about the old culture. The company implemented some new values. A personalized communication cascade. A 360-degree feedback process for the senior executives, and a training program for equipping the top 1200 managers. These three steps helped launch Seagram’s new culture change. They implemented these new values, but faced numerous issues, trying to ensure that the new values were needed. (Jick & Peiperl,