Deeper understanding of community

I was doing on going research on the changes going on at Burlington Chemical as a result of the destruction of the textile industry. We continue our reorganization to creatively adjust the textile segment of our business. Within that analysis, I discovered that from 1955-1995, 90% our business was in the textile industry and the majority of our customer were within a 250 mile radius along the infamous "lint-head highway".

As I look back on the success of the firm during that period, BCC used this geography to its advantage. We delivered weekly or in some cases daily. We were in constant technical conversations and co-development with our customers. We were in constant dialogue with the regulators, the developers of policy that would impact this community. We lobbied these regulators and worked with them to develop policy. We all had a lot at stake. There there was a ferment, a critical mass that developed because of our financial, technical, and geographic immersion in this community.

Many of the skills developed to be competitive within this community, became core skills for the company. Rapid production, rapid communication, logistical readiness, response to policy and regulations, and process and product development as a result of understanding policy, were proudly proclaimed in marketing literature as evidence of our commitment and expertise in the textile wet processing community.

When this community (marketplace) was destroyed by globalization, and BCC was forced to reorganize into new markets, I underestimated the influence of community related effects on the essence of the business. The majority of our core skills were tied to performing within this specific community. Disassembling the structures built in response to fulfilling these specific market needs, were a major impediment on the speed of organizational change. The mental models developed over 40 years as experts and service providers to this regional textile community-based marketplace, created organizational structures that were in fact, the essence of the company. When the community was destroyed, all the relationships built around this community were destroyed. The immensity of that loss destroyed the identity of the company for many of the employees and left a shadow on the capabilities of the company for new markets.

If value is created when companies control complexity for their customers within specific marketplaces, creating efficiency, then Burlington Chemical had numerous legs to support it in the textile marketplace. When the textile community declined, all of those supports were unnecessary for new markets outside of the textile marketplace. This is one of the primary organizational impediments, in my view, to radical change within a paradigm of creative destruction.

As a restructuring strategy, it may be best to develop an instrument to analyze the effects of geography and community relationships on the business, and then perform surgery as quickly as possible on those bits that rely on the community relationships to produce value. Had we been faster in our analysis and approached the analysis in this fashion, we could have been 3-5 years further along in developing our new identify within our new markets.

Instead of rapid radical surgery, we took what we thought was a more humane pace for the change, but we underestimated the costs. It was only after all of the residual effects of the textile portion of the business were eliminated from marketing, sales and technical development, that the non textile business could grow.

This is a valuable lesson.