This weekend in Lake Bluff, the Shriners are selling sweet Vidalia onions to raise money for its charities. As I drove by where they were sitting I was reminded of a speech I wrote in 1999. It was about David Burrell, the innovation he brought to the onion growing industry and the resistance that innovation encountered.
I shared it with my Canadian organization because I was on the front end of making significant organizational changes, and it struck me this story was pretty relevant.
The story is about onions - Vidalia onions - sweet, mild, easy-to-eat Vidalia onions and about an inventor named David Burrell. Most important it's a story about change and how people respond to it.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Vidalia onion, it was popularized when then President Jimmy Carter made gifts of one of his home state's most famous products. From Georgia to Georgetown and around the world, President Carter made the Vidalia onion famous and made millionaires of Vidalia onion growers. In spite of that success, all was not as sweet as it might have appeared in Vidalia.
Over time soil variation was causing some Vidalias to not be sweet but rather hot - quite hot. (An onion's hot taste comes from elevated sulfur content in the soil. That sulfur overwhelms the sugar content.) Onions delivered to retailers often were hotter than advertised. In the words of one grower,
"We're killing the goose that laid the golden egg with all these hot onions."
Enter David Burrell. He developed a laboratory test to measure the sulfur content of onions. He then used GPS technology to map a field's sulfur content. Finally, through his work, there was a way to avoid the soil variation causing the problem. And if that wasn't heroic enough, growers selling certified sweet Vidalias - certified by David Burrell's laboratory - could get an extra four cents per onion. Spreading that four cents per onion over a thousand-acre farm would generate an additional $500K.
Mr. Burrell's certified sweet onions, distributed in bushels stamped "Certified Sweet" were soon in hot demand by major grocery chains throughout North America.
"We had been getting complaints about hot onions," said a produce buyer for a large chain. "This test is a way to validate sweetness and tell our customers that we are going out of the way to make sure they get the best onions."
An incredible story, right? A product performance guarantee for an onion - actually a performance guarantee for an economy - the Vidalia onion economy. And the outcomes were as sweet as those guaranteed sweet onions. Customers would line up to buy - nay! - demand the Certified Sweet onions. There was increased value at every step of the distribution process. The value equation having shifted to the retailers over the years, shifted back to the growers.
The onion was re-invented, quality control was insured and a potentially damaging trend was averted. Everyone in Vidalia celebrated, right?
Wrong.
Seven days after the tested, certified sweet onions began to ship, twenty growers filed suit claiming Burrell was confusing customers over what a real Vidalia onion was. A state judge issued a restraining order stopping testing. The state agricultural commissioner promised to do whatever possible to prevent Burrell from ever again testing onions.
As I read about Burrell in a Wall Street Journal article I imagined how my customers would respond were I able to offer a guaranteed outcome but couldn't sell the product because it threatened the status quo.
Change is threatening. Even when it's a change that offers better outcomes and value to customers.
"Why change what we're doing?" your employees will ask, "Things are going great."
On that day and maybe some others, they're probably right, but the Vidalia onion growers were ignoring a growing problem, an erratic supply of sweet onions mixed with hot onions. Their product promise was being diluted.
Your employees who think everything is fine are ignoring a reality as well, the one that demands organizations constantly change to improve.
Successful organizations are always being watched and pursued by others who want to share - or supplant - their success. If you choose the status quo, you're doomed to fall behind.
The good news for Vidalia onion lovers around the world came in 2005 when a Georgia Superior Court ruled in Burrell's favor and in favor of testing. Today you can buy Certified Sweet onion from Vidalia, Georgia.
Be on the look-out for the David Burrell's in your industry. They may not be popular but they could well be the difference between success and failure.
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