Great by Choice

Game Over

100

A large flavor order with an inelastic timeline is shipped to a customer. After shipping, it was revealed that a line operator may have contaminated the order with COVID-26 after failing to wash their hands. Mane can avoid going below the death line by doing this

What is 

• Notify the customer of the potential hazard
• Have it shipped back to be tested for contamination 
• Run new batch immediately
• Increase Litmos trainings on SOP's for line operators 
• Place signage at every station

200

A developer sends a flavor over double the cost in use constraints to an important customer on a 5-Star project, jeopardizing the relationship with the customer and the likelihood of winning the business. Mane can avoid project loss risks like this by

What is: 

• Fixing the system so they can see pricing while flavors are being developed
• Retraining chemists to avoid more than a 10% premium on cost in use guidance 

300

A flavor was sent containing multiple items from a customer's Do Not Use list. Mane can avoid making this mistake by

What is 

• Making sure the Do Not Use list is visible in every brief
• For strategic customers, load and update the DNU lists into GPMS and automate a flag when flavors are pulled with prohibited ingredients

400

A top-selling beverage flavor relies heavily on a single-sourced, natural extract that comes from a volatile harvest region. Mane can avoid going below the death-line by doing this

What is any of the following:

• Identifying additional sources
• Capping annual sale volume
• Establishing a reserve quantity
• Explore ‘replacement’ technology to stabilize supply

500

Of the following, one of these behaviors was not found to be correlated with successful outcomes:

• Hypervigilance, constant worry about changing conditions
• Risk mitigation, avoiding taking chances with unknown outcomes
• Adjustment of decision speed to pace of events
• Deliberate, fact-driven decisions
• Focus on superb execution 

What is risk mitigation

Risky Business

100

A drought in Brazil suddenly reduces the supply of a key citrus oil used across multiple beverage flavors, causing prices to spike and availability to drop

What is Uncontrollable Risk?

200

Marketing puts a project in for the lab to make 6 demos in two weeks, all with unique and challenging technology plays, built around a niche flavor profile that Anna saw mentioned in a Love Island TikTok

What is Asymmetric Risk?

300

A flavor performs perfectly in lab demos, but due to timing constraints, the team skips testing it under the customer’s UHT process before commercialization

What is Death Line Risk? (not to the company, but to the project)

400

A customer too small to meet MOQ’s has been designated as strategic due to their growth potential. Marketing and applications service the account, even though orders may not materialize

What is Asymmetric Risk?

500

A GPMS outage lasting weeks results in the loss of critical project information and effects on-time project completion and submissions

What is Uncontrollable Risk?

SMaC Talk

100

What are current examples of how we use SMaC recipes in our daily work?

What is

• 5-Star Process
• Marketing program playbook
• Annual strategy

 

200

A new 5-Star project came in and it seems straight-forward, so the lead decides not to have a kick-off call. Ultimately, the project deadline was missed due to miscommunication. The team failed to execute on this core pillar of SMaC

What is being consistent?

300

10x companies didn’t distinguish themselves from the comparison companies by having a SMaC Recipe, they did so by doing this

What is adhering to their SMaC recipes and carefully amending them using empirical creativity and productive paranoia?

400

These would be examples of what NOT to do when creating a SMaC recipe

What is:

• using vague language
• over-adjusting the recipe
• overloading the recipe with too many points

500

Southwest strategically used this many types of aircraft as called out in their SMaC recipe 

What is one, the 737

Productive Paranoia

100

An account manager sets up a meeting with a customer where marketing and applications presence is requested. A SUB and INFO are put in, but the brief gives no guidance on what the customer is looking to see, and the meeting is in one week. To employ productive paranoia and avoid a disaster meeting, one would do this

What is

• Set up an immediate kickoff with the Account Manager
• If they don't have necessary information, get a pre-call set with the customer to gain direction

200

A category director reviews customer sales data and finds one customer has an outsized share of the segment business. While the business is good, a fluctuation or decrease in sales at this one account could impact growth across the entire segment. The category director responds by 

What is 

• Analyzing best existing opportunities for immediate account growth and allocating resources to those accounts
• Investing in relationship building with prospects and existing opportunities
• Analyzing the segments customer set, their strategic aims, and beginning development of materials and programs that align with the customers focus areas 

300

A flavorist's customer is known to 'cost-optimize' through an RFP process every few years. Ever worried about losing one of the customer's major SKUs, the flavorist proceeds by

What is any of the following:

• Finding ways in spare time to reduce the cost of the existing flavor 
• Leading an effort to begin sensory work on the critical flavor's new match 
• Staying alert for any signs of competitive pricing information on comparable flavors
• Developing a relationship with the customer's procurement/development teams

400

Early discussions from the incoming 2029 administration seem to indicate there may be increased regulatory scrutiny on an important ingredient that's used across Mane's SenseCapture portfolio. As an ingredient researcher or category/product manager, one would do this to manage the situation with productive paranoia

What is:

• Begin research on potential regulatory changes
• Begin research on alternative materials not under regulatory scrutiny
• Develop customer list using existing at-risk materials
• Do NOT roll out communications or changes - wait to see if indications are executed (Stryker approach)

 

500

When winds and weather struck, this number of people died summiting Mt Everest in the 24 hours after David Breashears turned his crew around.

What is 8?

GbC Concepts

100

This concept is put into practice when Mane experiments with several beverage concepts at trade shows before investing heavily in scaling the most successful one

What is firing bullets then cannonballs?

200

This concept is put into practice when instead of relying purely on intuition, a beverage innovation team uses consumer testing and sensory research to refine new flavor concepts

What is empirical creativity?

300

When a new Mane technology is developed that a majority of customers have been desperate for, management decides against a major release and selects a targeted list of customers to take the product to. They run a pilot first with two accounts and build a plan to slowly and consistently ramp up production to ensure on-time delivery, operational execution, and quality control. This represents the Great by Choice concept of  

What is the Twenty Mile March 

400

David Breashears employed this concept when in clear weather, while others continued to summit Everest, he turned his team back to base camp rather than move forward to accomplish the goal of filming from the highest point on earth. 

What is productive paranoia?

500

In his 20's, Roald Amundsen traveled by bicycle from Norway to this country to earn a Master's Certificate in sailing.

What is Spain?