How to fix a broken culture
Posted on 05. Dec, 2011 by Adrian in Blog, Orange
When you think of the Home Shopping Network (HSN), what comes to mind? Maybe Thighmasters and cubic zirconia? A few years ago, perhaps, but not now, thanks to CEO Mindy Grossman, who wrote a great feature in this month’s Harvard Business Review.
Grossman came to HSN in 2006 at a time when the channel had stopped growing and was a distant second to QVC. She came to quickly realize the business was broken, and “To fix it, I needed to dramatically alter the company’s culture.”
That might sound like an obvious realization, but how many senior leaders come into such an ailing company and instead of fixing culture look to improve product mix or marketing or pricing or the supply chain? How many? Exactly seven, the number of CEOs HSN had had in the decade before Grossman arrived.
While Grossman certainly made some savvy business moves—shedding brands that were not profitable or not aspirational, for instance—I was most intrigued by the creative things Grossman did to get her people enrolled in the culture.
- She assembled an executive team that included some who were already there—who were “inspired”—and some talented people from the outside. But I loved this point: Grossman wrote that she was looking for partners in her executive ranks, people who had vision and who understood their audience: women.
- She worked to improve employee engagement below the executive level too. Smart leaders realize simple things can have a big impact. For instance, the office was dirty and most office chairs were in disrepair. Grossman had the buildings pressure-washed and painted white, then she bought every employee a Herman Miller Aeron chair to show she cared. She received 100 emails of thanks the first day the chairs arrived.
- She conducted town hall meetings at all locations and started to divide employees into “evangelists,” “blockers,” and “wait-and-sees.” She embraced the evangelists, got rid of the blockers, and explained to those on the fence that they had a finite amount of time to get on the wagon.
The bottom line. Employee engagement scores at HSN rose from subpar levels to 73 percent in just the first year—10 points higher than the industry norm. And most importantly, during Grossman’s reign, the company’s stock price has risen from $1 a share to $35. Impressive? You betcha.
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About Adrian Gostick
Adrian Gostick is a global thought leader on workplace strategy and the author of several successful books on employee engagement. The Carrot Principle by Simon & Schuster has been a regular New York Times bestseller, and 24-Carrot Manager has been called a “must read for modern-day managers” by Larry King of CNN. His latest book, The Orange Revolution, was a #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller."
The Carrot Principle
Human performance accelerated? Is this book about the work place or the human race?
With breakthrough research of 200,000 people over ten years from The Jackson Organization, and massive, new global data collected by Towers Perrin, The Carrot Principle demonstrates how constructive praise and meaningful rewards powerfully motivates people from every walk of life and inspires employees to excel, engage, and bring their best to work every day.
The Orange Revolution
Following the enormous popularity of their bestselling The Carrot Principle, Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton return with a groundbreaking guide to building high-performance teams. The powerful research reported inThe Orange Revolution reveals that the true driver of exceptional success for great companies is not a genius CEO. Breakthrough success is driven by a particular breed of breakthrough team that generates its own momentum.
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