BUILDING A CULTURE REQUIRES ACTION AND REINFORCEMENT
One of my favorite CEOs to work with was the head of a large restaurant chain. Meeting after meeting, the executive team said that we needed to bring the customer’s voice into the room. We would all fiercely agree. We studied the customer experience. We played videos of customers waiting for their tables, at the cash register, ordering carryout, and using the restaurant app. We documented customer priorities with rich data and compelling descriptions of core archetypes and day-in-the-life insights.
And yet, all too often, we’d acknowledge that we needed to bring the customer experience into our strategy sessions, but then—when it came time for our planning meetings—we’d launch into our ritualized reporting of financial performance, projections, operations updates, and marketing plans.
With the customer’s voice suspended on mute while we addressed the issues of the day.
BRING THE CHAIR TO THE TABLE. EVERY TIME.
To quote that CEO, “To build a customer-centric culture, we have to pull up a new chair to the table. Every single meeting.”
It worked. And the customer-centric culture served the company so well that they moved into new service models like delivery and drive up, opened new concepts that served unmet needs like fast-casual, and created frozen options to extend customer convenience from the restaurant to the grocery store.
The culture changed partly because of awareness and structure. We knew we had to include our guests more deeply in our strategy and we inserted the topic, “Customer Voice” into our meeting agendas.
But, the most important ritual we instituted to reinforce our awareness was that chair we pulled up at every single meeting. An action that was ritualized in our leadership meetings brought our innovation intentions to life.
I’ve just spent months collaborating with Jim Euchner and Christian Crews on a deep immersion in corporate culture with four divisions of a large global company.
Each division had a distinct challenge: one was looking at telecommunications infrastructure, one was focused on manufacturing, one on building a new ecosystem, and one was building a B2B e-commerce capability. We were charged with instilling innovation into the culture of each division on an ongoing basis. We had to shift the focus from day-to-day operational concerns to give new opportunities more of a fighting chance.
We built on the restaurant CEO’s insight that making a culture stick required new actions, repeated consistently.
ToolBox
HOW TO REINFORCE A LIVE, ACTION AND INNOVATION CULTURE
🔷 Example: To bring a diversity of thinking into the room, institute monthly virtual field trips to customer sites
🔷 Example: To reinforce psychological safety and inclusion, every agenda needs to include 3 new voices
🔷 Example: To groom leaders with an appreciation for co-creation, establish a job rotation system
🔷 Example: To expose teams to untapped opportunities, institute learning into meetings. Proactively raise the level of insight about new technologies and inspiring business models to keep perspectives fresh.
What is a new action you could repeat consistently that would reinforce a culture of innovation with your team?
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