Question: Corporate Culture Meets G.A.P Adventures
Bruce Poon Tip, owner of G.A.P Adventures, is one of Canada's most successful entrepreneurs. G.A.P Adventures is a travel company that offers eco-friendly tours with a difference-adventure and adrenaline. Poon Tip has managed to take G.A.P Adventures from a business with 2 employees to one with more than 70 employees and over $12 million in annual sales-in 10 years. Since the company's beginnings, Poon Tip has run G.A.P Adventures as more of a family business than a corporation. He considers himself better at building than maintaining businesses and wants to move on to new challenges in expanding and diversifying G.A.P Adventures' operations. Poon Tip believes it's time to take G.A.P Adventures to a new corporate level. It's the 1990s.
G.A.P Adventures' staff is at the annual spring retreat in Ontario's cottage country. To the surprise of all, Poon Tip announces a new division and the development of a travel TV show, and introduces a new "hired gun." Poon Tip has hired Dave Bowen, an aggressive marketing director with a corporate background, from one of G.A.P Adventures' biggest competitors. He wants Bowen to shake up the company, which he is concerned is not putting enough emphasis on the customer. Bowen's challenge is to bring corporate discipline to the company without losing employee enthusiasm. Bowen uses his New York savvy and southern charm to transform G.A.P Adventures' corporate culture. The inefficient, handwritten reservation system is organized and converted to a high-tech reservation system, and reservation policies are formalized.
The company's annual brochure will include more large, glossy pictures, more exciting titles, and only brief tour descriptions. Bowen insists that it's important to gain the interest of the customer first with the positive aspects of the tour, and then give the details (such as long bus rides) later. How has G.A.P Adventures fared since the change to a corporate culture? Although some G.A.P employees have left the company, others have adjusted to a work environment that is more serious, more controlled, and less relaxed and open. G.A.P Adventures' 1999 sales were $12.9 million, up from just $500,000 five years earlier. The events of September 11 made 2001 a financially challenging year for many travel companies, yet it was a profitable year for G.A.P Adventures.
This year's annual spring retreat is a bit different-the staff is staying in the executive suites of the upscale Blue Mountain resort in Ontario. Poon Tip announces another surprise: The company will be split into two divisions: the G.A.P division and the Real Tours division. The G.A.P division will market the company's own brand: G.A.P tours. The new Real Tours division will market other contracted-out tours. G.A.P Adventures has also partnered with Signature Vacations to market G.A.P tours. The reservation system is also changing, with a new IT company supporting it. Where will G.A.P Adventures' journey in the world of corporate culture take it next? Questions
1. What benefits can come from bringing an "outsider," such as Dave Bowen, into a growing company like G.A.P Adventures? In your opinion, was Bowen a good fit for G.A.P, or should someone more suited to the company's existing organizational culture have been brought in?
2. Did G.A.P Adventures have a strong or weak culture before Bowen was hired? Justify your answer.
3. The impact of Bowen's changes around the workplace quickly caused two key employees to quit G.A.P Adventures. Why do you think these employees were so resistant to the new changes to G.A.P's culture?