Biscuits Poult SAS: How Can Alternative Organizational Designs Be Successful?

The case highlights an attempt to “liberate” management and employees from traditional business practices at the French biscuit company Poult from 2006–2017. It draws on the reflections of Mehdi Berrada who, until his resignation in 2017, was actively engaged in building an agile culture among the firm’s 800 factory workers, machine operators and technicians. The case offers insight into the matrix of activities that constitute a “liberated enterprise”, from building autonomous teams to driving innovation from the bottom up.

The case offers instructors a rare opportunity to discuss a real attempt to implement agile leadership at a manufacturing plant in France. The leadership was committed to an alternative design to traditional top‑down management techniques. With a neutral voice, the case recounts a 10‑year experiment in organizational design that changed the behaviour of hundreds of factory employees. The protagonist, Mehdi Berrada, ultimately resigned from Poult but never lost the cultural values and management priorities he had been seeking to develop and implement within the organization. The case serves to inspire students to align their beliefs with their career aspirations.