James D. White, Former Chair, President & CEO, Jamba Juice and co-author of Culture Design: How to Build a High-Performing, Resilient Organization with Purpose;
Krista White, founder of Kiki For The Future and co-author of Culture Design: How to Build a High-Performing, Resilient Organization with Purpose
As your forthcoming book, Culture Design: How to Build a High-Performing, Resilient Organization with Purpose, suggests, culture is happening whether we design it or not. From your experience, what’s the earliest sign that a company’s culture may be misaligned with its strategy, and what should leaders do first when they spot it?
Keep an eye out for a gap between employee experience – including that of frontline workers – and the company story. Are your purported values showing up in how your employees experience their workday? How are your churn rates and net referrer scores? Do employees know what is required for them to have a successful day, week, or quarter, and do they have the tools and systems in place to do so?
The first step here is to listen. Try to remain open to different possibilities and listen first without leaping into action mode. Some ways to accomplish this are through structured town halls, carefully designed engagement surveys, and building in more roundtable and one-on-one feedback opportunities.
Are there any companies that have really gotten it right from the start?
Few companies get culture right from the start, but one of our favorite examples is Schnucks Supermarkets, an 86-year-old grocery chain where James serves on the board. Their CEO, Todd Schnuck, has carried on his family legacy of “Nourishing People’s Lives” throughout his decade-long tenure by building intentionality around culture into the organizations’ daily routine. Since 2020 the company has had a renewed focus on culture and belonging, and Schnuck has had weekly check ins with several senior operations and HR leaders for the last five years, a meeting that James sits in on every month. They’ve intentionally worked to operationalize culture.
Another company that has baked culture design into the DNA of the organization is The Bay Club, led by CEO Matthew Stevens. The high-end brand of West Coast sports, fitness, and hospitality clubs where James is on the board has had to respond to societal and technological shifts many times throughout its forty-five-year history, all while remaining steadfast in its commitment to improving its members’ health and wellbeing. One of their foundational principles, “Stay humble. Hustle harder,” is a value that illustrates their blue-collar DNA. Matthew Stevens emphasizes this principle by staying grounded with the experiences of their frontline workers and never forgetting where he came from – working at a gym front desk in the then-nascent fitness industry.
Your collaboration brings together two distinct but complementary perspectives. James, with decades of executive leadership, and Krista, with a millennial lens on modern workplaces. What did you learn from each other in the process of writing Culture Design?
Millennials want to know the why behind what they’re doing; employee loyalty has transformed because of the job market and sociopolitical factors; if companies aren’t willing to invest in our growth, why wouldn’t we jump ship?
Identity for baby boomer professionals is work-first: for James, being known as a Black executive isn’t as important as being known as a high-performing executive, and sometimes personal identities seem like they dilute accomplishments. For Krista, her personal identities are key to her sense of self and cannot be compartmentalized; she tends to introduce herself as a queer Black woman. How do we bridge this gap? Together we lived the framework: listen, debate, iterate. Krista learned even more about what a passionate, brilliant, and meticulous leader James is, and Krista pushed James to think about empathy as a core capability that can be learned and practiced, not just a “soft” skill. We are both better for this intergenerational push and pull, and organizations are too.
At CECP, we see many companies striving to align purpose with performance. What’s one common pitfall you’ve seen when organizations try to connect culture to strategy, and how can they avoid it?
People treat culture as an add-on when in reality every activity must be tied back to strategy. One of the most influential leaders in James’ career was Jim Kilts, who was the CEO and Chairman of Gillette when James was an executive there. Kilts was hyper focused on doing what mattered most to the consumers and employees alike. He was able to bring Gillette’s high-performance culture to life throughout the company through systems across every function of the organization. A stickler for process, Kilts implemented rigor around reporting, including a tally every morning of how many razors, batteries, and toothbrushes were sold the day before. The work ethic brought to life by Kilts’ leadership was one of measured, sustainable growth, and each member of the team who embodied those values brought to life one of the most dramatic turnarounds in the consumer goods industry, prior to Gillette being acquired by Proctor & Gamble in 2005.
We also suggest finding low-lift ways to incorporate culture design into your day-to-day. Are there rituals you can enhance or integrate that reinforce culture, like shout outs in every all-hands that celebrate something someone did that embodied one of your values? Bring culture into the 3D world as often as you can; culture is made up of an actions and attitudes over time and culture design is a habit.
The Culture Design Framework is comprehensive and actionable. For leaders who are just beginning this journey, what’s the most important first step they can take to build a people-first culture that drives results? And for those who may be further along, what actionable advice should they keep front and center as they move forward?
Empathy is where we tell everyone to start, whether they are building from the ground up or have been intentional culture leaders for a while. Empathetic leaders should look inwards first and like we said earlier, listen before you act. This includes practicing humility and accepting that you don’t have all the answers. While you have the leadership expertise, everyone is an expert in their own experience, so don’t disregard feedback until you have a chance to absorb it, even when it makes you bristle. We’d also recommend taking up a daily mantra – at Schnucks, it’s “Be Here Now” – and putting it on your desk or somewhere that’s always in your line of site. These things all add up, and “little” tweaks can have a big impact.
For people a little further along, remember that this work is continuous and iterative. Never stop learning, developing yourself as a leader, or staying open to feedback. In that vein, you need to treat culture the same way you would other elements of your business – if it matters, you measure it. With engagement surveys and other feedback mechanisms, make sure you are not stopping at putting out the report – what actions are you taking to address the feedback? There is no end point to this work – it’s about continuously evolving while adding layers of grit and experience to your foundational values.
Looking ahead, how do you see culture design evolving in response to forces like AI, hybrid work, and rising expectations around inclusion and sustainability?
Culture design is the key differentiator for companies that want to make it in the future of work. Culture is a company’s operating system. The complexities, advances, and fears that intersect with AI, hybrid work, and Millennial/Gen Z expectations mean the winning cultures will be both high-performing and deeply human. Intentional, deliberate, meticulous, and ongoing, the culture design framework is inspired by design thinking – it is built to evolve. Culture design puts humans at the center – technology is a force multiplier for what makes us uniquely human. It embeds inclusion and enables sustainability in every sense of the word – including the long-term success of the organization.
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