On this episode of the Brewer to Brewer Podcast Brendan McGivney of Odell Brewing interviews Jason Perkins of Allagash Brewing.
At one point, the conversation turns to company culture and conversation and Perkins, the Brewmaster and Vice President of Brewing Operations, talks about how Allagash has evolved and is always working to educate and learn from employees.
As you noted, you and I have chatted a bunch of times over the years about the similarities in our two breweries and our organizations in terms of how we approach lots of things like beer quality, and people for sure.
Jason Perkins, in his own words
In terms of team building, it’s incredibly important. It’s as important as anything to us here is keeping the team cohesive, keeping the team connected, understanding what the motivations of the company are, what’s important here, getting feedback from the team.
There’s no one thing that makes that all work. When I started here, we were so small. As we’ve grown, we’ve had to continue to evolve the way we do work with team building.
There was a time that doesn’t seem all that long ago that we all worked the bottling line together. Sometimes that day would be six hours, sometimes it would be 14, or 15. And then we all ended at the same time, and we all sat down and had a beer. And that was the company meeting,
That’s probably the way it is at lots of breweries around across the country. Well, as you grow, like, those opportunities become harder and harder to find. And I remember some distinct moments in our growth, where we’re like, “wow, we’re just not able to connect with the team, the way we used to connect to the team,” because those moments aren’t there anymore.
And then you just have to work harder to find new ways to communicate, find new ways to get input from team members, and so on. And that’s, I think, something we’ve not always been good at. Because sometimes there are moments where we’re not doing that very well, we’re not communicating to the team as well as we should. And then you figure out a new way to do it.
One thing I’ve learned on the communication side is: it’s not up to me what the best communication is. If we’re communicating in a certain way and if the people receiving it don’t feel like it’s being delivered to them in the right way, then we need to change it.
So, I guess the best way to continue to evolve is you just have to keep changing and finding new ways to connect with the team. We very much value the two-way communication. We want the team to know what the priorities are for the brewery.
But we have so many talented people here on the team that I want to know what they think and how they think we can do things better.
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The above transcript was condensed and edited for clarity.
This episode is sponsored by:
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