Ice Cream Social

EIGHT

Leading with Progressive Values

Perry Odak and most board members of Ben & Jerry’s had huge differences of opinion about how to run the business. But Perry also put the business back in gear. Each component of the three-part mission did well under his leadership. Nobody disagreed about the ice cream: it was still delicious, people still loved it, and they ate more and more of it. The social mission was doing fine, too, as employee execution of social initiatives continued to improve.

Perry’s attitude toward the three-part mission was “Let’s make the economics work first. Let’s find the right product and the right format,” he told a class at Cornell in 2000. “And then with that, how do you practice in a caring way to minimize impact on the ...