Agriculture

Organic growth

By Matt McClellan

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Dave Lanstein
president and CEO, Multiple Organics

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Dave Lanstein occasionally needs to be reminded that while the organic food industry is growing fast, it’s not quite mainstream yet. And foods like quinoa, a grain sold by the company, can seem foreign to some, says the founder, president and CEO of Multiple Organics, a supplier of organic ingredients.

“You can start to feel like the whole world ought to eat quinoa,” says Lanstein, whose company posted fiscal 2006-2007 revenue of $13.7 million. “Some people just don’t like the way it tastes; some people can’t afford it. So the whole world shouldn’t eat quinoa.”

Smart Business spoke with Lanstein about how to get your employees to better understand your product and why it might help your company to take everyone on a trip to Brazil.

Q. How do you communicate your vision?

Make the path that you’re headed toward and on very clear to folks, so that if they feel that you are a leader indeed and that you can handle the uncertain future, then they know where they’re heading with you and they’re willing to follow the lead.

We have a very open weekly meeting where we touch on the metrics of the business, and we make sure that folks know what those are, where we’re going and where their place in where we’re going fits and why it’s important.

That way, people feel good about what they’re doing, and they can explain what it is they do to their family and

We also have two off-site retreats that are very open forums so that management will talk through where we’ve been, where we’re heading, where things have gone right, where things have gone wrong. Then, we open the floor for questions so we can see where people are confused and make sure that people understand where they’re heading and in what capacity they need to be fully functioning in their positions.

So there is a lot of communication, a lot of, ‘If you believe in this path, let’s make sure it’s clearly lit; there aren’t any street lamps out.’

Q. How do you get your employees on board and working toward the vision?

It’s a small company, so there is good old-fashioned involvement. Take people down to the grocery store one group at a time and say, ‘This product that you love and eat in your house is actually made with the ingredients that we sell to this company and turned into this awesome organic product that you eat and believe in.’

You get people involved in that. Take them; get them to visually see it. We try to take every single employee on a trip at least once per year. We have a budget that says, ‘OK, we know this doesn’t have anything to do with your section of the company, but come see a processing facility in the California Valley with us. Or come to the microbiological lab and learn about how they do all the testing for different ways to see if the food is safe, or come with us to Brazil to see the sugarcane farm.

That’s deep involvement. Some companies won’t [put] a budget together for that, because they’ll say, ‘OK, you’re purchasing; that’s what you do. That’s not what these other people do. They’re processing orders, so they don’t get to go.’ But when you get to see the full picture, it gets exciting.