The reinvention of Le Creuset (and what you can learn from it)

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Here's what every leader eventually discovers.

People don't resist change because they don't understand it.

They resist it because they understand exactly what it threatens.

In 1988, Le Creuset, the French cookware company, was dying. For nearly a century, this French foundry had been crafting colorful cast iron cookware in the same small town of Fresnoy-le-Grand, but by the late 80s, the family-owned business was drowning under crushing debt and paralyzed by bitter family feuds over direction and control.

Enter Paul van Zuydam, head of Prestige cookware, with what seemed like a logical solution: buy the struggling company.

The deal was approved, and the lawyers were ready, until the workers discovered that Prestige was owned by American Tobacco.

What followed was a complete strike and shutdown.

These craftsmen, people who had spent their lives perfecting the art of enameling cast iron, would rather watch their life's work crumble than submit to foreign corporate control.

The very rescue that made perfect financial sense felt like cultural annihilation to those who lived and breathed the brand.

The rescue had become the threat.