Durk Jager is a man on a mission

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Durk Jager is a man on a mission. As the newly appointed CEO of Procter & Gamble, he is determined to make P & G a more conflict-friendly organization. Jager has some ambitious goals for P & G. At the top of the list is to significantly boost sales volume. In 1997, he said he wanted the company, best known for products such as Tide, Crest, and Crisco, to double sales to $70 billion by the year 2005. But the company’s strong cult like culture tends to “Procterize” people, says Jager. P & G people are too insular, risk averse, and slow to make decisions. According to Jager, the problem has a lot to do with keeping people isolated inside P & G’s twin-towers’ headquarters in Cincinnati. The company recruits job candidates from a variety of backgrounds, puts them through a relatively standardized training program, and then insulates them at company headquarters. After a while, they begin to sound alike, think alike-even look alike, he says. Jager’s career path is unusual for P & G. While he’s been with the company for nearly 30 years, he’s spent most of his time outside Cincinnati. A Dutchman by birth, he joined P & G as an assistant brand manager in Holland. After 12 years, he was transferred to Japan as an advertising manager and was later promoted to general manager. He grew up totally removed from Cincinnati’s central bureaucracy. So in spite of all his years with the company, he has an outsider’s perspective. Asked to describe Jager, those who know him describe him as a “loner,” “hard-driving and a person who “doesn’t mince words.” He has a reputation for shaking things up. As such, he might be just the right man for his new job. P & G is a company in which managers have a passion for memo writing and dissent is rarely tolerated. Employees may be wasting up to half their time on “non-value-added work,” such as memo writing, he says. During a recent talk with employees in Japan, for instance, one worker complained to Jager that he had to continually create new management review charts, often with the same information in several different forms. The employee thought he was wasting a lot of his time. Jager is determined to change P & G’s culture. He wants to make the company faster on its feet, more innovative, and more conflict friendly. “Great ideas generally come from conflict dissatisfaction with the status quo. I’d like to have an organization where there are rebels.”

Questions:

a. How was the P & G culture shaped?

b. Using the four-culture typology described in the session notes, what type of culture do you think P & G is currently? What type is Jager trying to change it to?

c. If you were Jager, what would you do to change this culture? Outline specific steps.

d. Do you think Jager will succeed? Explain your position.