Week 1: An Innovative Office Setting and Chatter

In my first week at Brown-Forman, I shadowed two on-premise sales leads when the met with different customers, worked in the office with my supervisor, and attended an event that Brown-Forman sponsored. I learned very quickly that this site is very different from a traditional office setting. For instance, being an office that is primarily focused on sales, both retail and on-premise, every week is different. There might be some days when lots of employees are in the office because they are organizing events that are going to take place in the coming week. There are also times when the office is very empty because many of the sales leads are out talking to customers about events/sponsorship, setting up marketing displays, or preparing for said events. Because of this, Mr. Bazeley, the national on-premise manager, does not need to check in face-to-face with his employees every day. He says that he uses a “hands-off” leadership style so employees do not need to check in at the beginning of the day and review what they did at the end of the day. To be able to still see the accomplishments that the employees made, Brown-Forman uses an application called “Chatter.” Chatter allowed employees to post pictures of the events that they helped create or the displays they set up in on-premise locations. Usually, at the start of every day, Mr. Bazeley reviews new Chatter posts. This way, when he visits a different office in Australia, he can congratulate a sales lead for the work that he has seen them post, despite not seeing this employee every week.
This type of structure is not ideal for every person, which is something that could be considered a weakness. However, I believe that this works best for a sales office so that employees can have creative freedom while still allowing the manager to review the work being done in a noninvasive way.

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