Herb Kelleher, former CEO of
Southwest Airlines, once said
(with more colour), “Corporate
culture is hard to define, but
without it, you ain’t got nothing.” If you
want to know if working on corporate cul-ture
matters as much as working on the
traditional levers that business leaders
use to make a business successful (such
as products, services, technologies, etc.),
look no further than the 14 years Darren
Entwistle has spent as CEO of TELUS
before becoming its executive chairman.
When Entwistle took over TELUS in
2000, it was a good but unspectacular
amalgamation of two former telephone
utilities in Western Canada. Since then,
it has led the world in total sharehold-er
value creation, returning 304
per cent to shareholders
and outpacing the sec-ond
place incumbent
workplace culture
telecommunications company (Bezeq out
of Israel) by 95 percentage points. It has
the lowest customer churn rate in Canada
and the top customer satisfaction ratings
from JD Powers. The question is: why?
CULTURE IMPACTS BOTTOM-LINE
SUCCESS
From the very beginning, Entwistle be-lieved
that the culture of the company
would be the key driver of long-term suc-cess.
While many other CEOs focused on
the “what” of the business, he relentless-ly
worked on the very personality of the
business. One of his first acts was to in-volve
thousands of TELUS employees
in defining the company’s values. What
emerged were four core
values – passion for
growth, courage to
innovate, spirit-ed
teamwork and
embracing change. Having tapped the
employees for these values, he then sys-tematically
embedded them in everything
from hiring and training to compensation
and recognition.
In a highly unionized environment, he
set out to establish a “business ownership”
mindset, aiming to get every person linked
to the success of the business. TELUS ex-tended
stock options to all employees
(which was almost unheard of in a large,
unionized workforce) to complement a
generous employee share purchase and
company-matching program. He knew if
you want people to act like owners, make
them owners.
Entwistle communicated relentless-ly
with the thousands of team members,
including having issued 347 CEO week-ly,
and later monthly, letters to the
entire TELUS team outlining what
was happening in the business. He
hobbit / Shutterstock.com
Ahead of the Rest
CASE STUDY: A DESIRABLE CORPORATE
CULTURE CAN BE A COMPETITIVE
ADVANTAGE
By Dr. John Izzo
HRPATODAY.CA ❚ NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014 ❚ 33
