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Bumble Bee Reinvention Relies on Capable Leadership

Jan Tharp, CEO of The Bumble Bee Seafood Co. discusses leadership methods that overcame chaotic months for the company.

Jan Tharp, CEO, The Bumble Bee Seafood Co.
Jan Tharp, CEO, The Bumble Bee Seafood Co.

Packaging World:
Are there things that you can point to during the recent challenging times specific to Bumble Bee and even now in the pandemic, that have really elevated the way that you lead or change the way you think about things?

Jan Tharp:
You’re talking about a crisis and leading through crisis. And essentially when you’re in that state, what you’ve lost is predictability and control. And as humans that’s what we want. Without predictability and control, we all become very anxious.

If you can clearly articulate the plan and explain to your team members how long it’s going to take you to get to your end state, what that end state looks like, and how they can help you along in that journey, well, then you’ve diluted that anxiety and all that energy is moving toward your to-be state. It’s essentially communication. And it happens every single day. And if you can do that effectively, you can manage through a crisis.

Let’s talk about the operations. How have things changed to ensure the alignment, confidence and trust as you move forward in a new strategic direction?
One of the tenants of my leadership style is to listen. And that’s sometimes really difficult because when you’re in a situation and you hear of a problem, you want to solve for that problem, that’s our natural instinct. So being able to take a step back and listen, and don’t filter your ideas through your own head, but to listen with empathy and compassion to what people are saying, certainly helps design the programs that matter to our employees or our team members. And so, we’ve done that. We did a survey to get a pulse of how people are feeling inside the company. We’ve done the exact same thing in our factories. And from there, we’re using that data to give back programs that help our team members. And the difference here is when this first started, everyone jumped to their own conclusions as to what our team members needed. And it went through our own filters of some of the things that we were thinking about. And what we found is that what they really needed wasn’t any of the things that we thought that they wanted. It was heightened communication. It was a few things that we could be doing better inside of our facility. And so, what our team members are feeling is: not only did we listen, but we’re paying back in programs that matter to them. And when you do that across an entire company, the results are actually remarkable.

Sustainability must be a key element of your identity since your company talks a lot about being advocates for fishermen and for the ocean. What does sustainability mean to the Bumble Bee brands?
We came up with a platform that we call Seafood Future. It’s focused on the fish, it’s focused on the ocean, and it’s focused on people. We all need to be thinking about sustainability. When we develop a new product, it can’t go through the entire process and then hit sustainability after it gets on the grocery store shelf. It has to be part of the design process.

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