I often wonder how to get my organization aligned to customers and get all employees to have shared goals. I realize that it is far easier said than done. Getting an alignment across the entire organization is what I have to come believe is the key difference between the best customer-centric companies and the worst ones. We read a lot about Starbucks, Whole Foods etc. but what make them the companies that they are?
Transparency amongst employees is what I feel is the most critical. The other one is having a fair compensation across various levels in the organization. The US companies seem to have lost the plot on this. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods has an excellent post on compensation. He writes:
The second part of today's announcement has to do with my own compensation. While it has become necessary to raise the salary cap at Whole Foods to help ensure the retention of our key leadership, this is not true in my case. The tremendous success of Whole Foods Market has provided me with far more money than I ever dreamed I'd have and far more than is necessary for either my financial security or personal happiness. I continue to work for Whole Foods not because of the money I can make but because of the pleasure I get from leading such a great company, and the ongoing passion I have to help make the world a better place, which Whole Foods is continuing to do. I am now 53 years old and I have reached a place in my life where I no longer want to work for money, but simply for the joy of the work itself and to better answer the call to service that I feel so clearly in my own heart.
As you can see from the following chart, the average CEO received 431 times as much as their average employee received in 2004, while the Whole Foods Market CEO (me) received only 14 times the average employee pay in cash compensation.
Most large companies also pay their executives large amounts of stock options in addition to large salaries and cash bonuses. However, this is not the case at Whole Foods Market. As the chart below indicates, the average large corporation in the United States distributes 75% of their total stock options to only 5 top executives with the remaining 25% going to everyone else in the company (actually most of the remaining 25% goes to the next level of executives below the top 5). At Whole Foods, the exact opposite is true: the top 16 executives have received 7% of all the options granted while the other 93% of the options have been distributed throughout the entire company with all Team Members eligible for a grant after 6,000 hours of service to the company
When you have such values and belief in the business that you lead and are willing to share this transparently with your employees, it definitely shows in the way they treat their customers!