I spent nearly eight years of my professional life working to bring a “coaching culture” to life within the TaylorMade Golf Company. Alongside brilliant product creation, exceptional marketing efforts and flawless sales execution, our ability to sustain a purposeful culture of learning and development led to some truly incredible results. Hardly a perfect science, in the pursuit of a coaching culture we rarely got it all right. But that’s missing the point because culture is always unfinished business. It is a work in progress if ever there was one. But, when a company grows 4X over 12 years you can and should look to many reasons why. If you don’t look at culture you’re missing a huge part of the story.
Here’s a piece from the Wall Street Journal that does a nice job of explaining the measurable elements of TaylorMade’s rise to dominance (How TaylorMade Made Its Move). What it fails to address is one of the most glaringly obvious reasons for this historic growth: a company culture that will knock your socks off. I appreciate that the WSJ lives mostly in the land of the rational, the measurable and the known. I further appreciate that culture, leadership and learning are decidedly fuzzy and definitely “soft.” As such they don’t get discussed in the mainstream business media which is a sad reality that has to change. I know the role that culture played in achieving those results because I was there. But you don’t have to take my word for it since TaylorMade isn’t the only one linking an intentional culture to incredible results.
Zappo’s has been playing this game for a little while, also. And they also have the results to show for it as they have taken the idea of an intentional and purposeful culture to an entirely new level. Zappo’s leaves no room for doubt that it is the squishy stuff like culture that took them to a billion dollars in revenue.
I had the opportunity to visit their headquarters last December and it is obvious from the very moment you step foot in the place that there is nothing “squishy” about what’s going on there. For as much fun as they seem to be having they are dead serious about maintaining a culture that allows them to deliver exceptional business results. Again, it is their culture that allows for the results to follow. This is on purpose for one simple reason: it works.
I appreciate your skepticism. The media never talks about it because they haven’t figured out how to do so. I suggest you go see for yourselves. The good people at TaylorMade and Zappo’s are waiting for your call.
