The Clean and Green Club

The Pursuit of Something Better: How an Underdog Company Defied the Odds, Won Customers’ Hearts, and Grew its Employees Into Better People, by Dave Esler and Myra Kruger (Esler Kruger Associates, 2008)

Can a mediocre company (whose main USP is dominance of markets too small for others to bother with) transform into something truly great? If U.S. Cellular’s experience is any indication, the answer is a very strong yes. It isn’t easy, quick, or cheap–in fact, as of the book’s publication late last year, it had been an ongoing 8-year process–but under the right leadership, in this case, the remarkable CEO Jack Rooney, a squirmy little company with little concern for either its associates, its customers, or its business practices can actually reinvent itself as a highly ethical, customer-focused company that not only makes its employees really proud to work there, but actually begins to make a positive impact in the family and community lives of those employees. It’s not surprising that it now has twice as many associates and three times as many customers (meaning not only is the company growing rapidly, but productivity has also grown; each associate handles more customers)

This is an insider’s story; Esler and Kruger are the culture consultants that Rooney brought in at the start of his tenure, and they’ve played an ongoing role in shaping the transformation. Yet they don’t gloss over the rough stuff, and there’s plenty of it along the way.

But they and Rooney–and thus, U.S. Cellular–drew lines in the sand, fired people who didn’t share the dream, and made it work. In the early years of this decade, U.S. Cellular was widely expected to be swallowed up. Instead, they’ve shored up existing markets, built new ones, won numerous awards both for their customer focus/workplace culture and the reliability of their technology, and are well-prepared to hold their own even in the current recession.

A couple of core principles dominate:

• How comes before what, and nothing is morally neutral: if you get the numbers you want through the wrong methods, it doesn’t count; go back to the drawing board
• Truth is less stressful than deception

A key insight: marketing is important too. In many companies, the grim reality doesn’t match the sunny marketing/advertising/public relations picture, and that’s a problem. At U.S. Cellular, the problem was in the other direction: the company refused to take credit early for what it was accomplishing (Rooney felt they weren’t ready yet), and so the sunny and glorious reality was vastly better than the public picture; the company could have grown faster, perhaps, if their marketing had lived up to their culture. (This is exactly why I show, in my award-winning sixth book Principled Profit, that the ethical and social commitments must be accompanied by effective marketing that harnesses and highlights these achievements.)

A bonus: this is one of the better-written business books I’ve read recently, as you can see from this passage below, at the very conclusion of the book.

Jack Rooney and his slowly-expanding team of believers challenged the long-prevailing assumptions that business is a blood sport, that the advantage inevitably goes to the ruthless and the greedy, that the only way to win is to hold your nose and leave your values at the door He has proven beyond question, once and for all…that a values-based model works, that it can raise both a company and the individuals who are part of it to undreamed-of heights, to peak experiences that will last a lifetime and change the way those lives are lived. He has shown that there is indeed a better way.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.