Page 187 - Successful Onboarding

6

“LIMITED UPSIDE

IN FLYING BLIND”:

DRIVING STRATEGIC

INSIGHT AND IMPACT

During college, one of the authors of this book, Mark Stein, was fortunate
enough to land a summer internship in the corporate headquarters of pre-
mium ice cream company, Häagen-Dazs. At the time, with an account-
ing degree in hand, Mark was planning on a career in finance, and this
internship working with numbers seemed like a great opportunity—not
least because every day four tubs of ice cream were delivered fresh from
the factory line to the corporate headquarters’ office kitchen. Water cooler
breaks are far more satisfying with ice cream! Most certainly, it was not a
bad gig for a college kid in the summer.
After a few weeks on the job, though, Mark’s enthusiasm waned. His
main assignment was to measure and build by 2 PM each day a 28-page
report on the corporation’s fulfillment of customer orders. This report con-
veyed the daily performance and weekly, monthly, and annual trends
around product count shortages, flavor shortages, and damaged product
count. It contained graphs showing the highest and lowest performing days
broken down by distribution center, customer, ice cream flavor, and SKU.
The strange thing was that the daily range of performance—for all of these
factors—never dipped below 98.20 or rose above 99.40.

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