Give 'em the Pickle and Change the Culture

GIVE 'EM THE PICKLE AND CHANGE THE CULTURE BY DAVID STUKUS

Who could have thought that a vegetable (fruit?) could change the culture of a team? This is the story of empowerment, recognition and how a pickle led to teamwork and shared leadership. After serving several tours of duty as a General Manager in two urban grocery stores and opening a brand-new store, I was assigned a suburban store that presented an entirely new set of challenges. This was a high-volume location (~$40 million annually) with a small footprint (<40,000 sq. ft.). They literally built the store around an existing adjacent business with a stubborn landlord. Not much different than that bar in Key West built around a tree. The store had a small back room, and a bank, pharmacy, and liquor store squeezed into the footprint. So as, stores go – this was a challenge to run.

The Quest for the “Diamond” Ring.

Our company had an incentive that recognized earnings performance for the top General Managers in the company. Naturally, it was called the President’s Club Award, and those few General Managers that were lucky enough to be recognized did so because their store earned more than $1 million in EBITDA in a single year. In addition to being the envy of their peers, recipients of this prestigious award also received a “President’s Club” ring, which reminded me of the class ring my father wore from the class of ’64. And if a General Manager exceeded $2 million earnings in a year, they would get a diamond encrusted ring.

I took over for a nice guy, who – let’s say his name is George (named after the most famous Grocer of all time – George Whipple) – was EXTREMELY focused on that diamond ring. He was a multiyear President’s Club winner, but George was after the real prize – the ring encrusted with the diamond! Unfortunately, he was transferred before getting that opportunity.

Too Much Cost Cutting Cuts Store Culture

As the new General Manager at this store, the thing I noticed on my first day was the squeaky grocery carts. E – er, e – er… You know how annoying it is to have a squeaky cart as you walk around any store, so you can imagine how the customers felt when seemingly ALL the carts were that way. How do you think the employees of the store felt? Dave: “When’s the last time these things were replaced” Long time Lot Attendant: “I don’t know, George never wanted to spend any money to get them fixed.” The attendant did however have an impressive collection of tools and spare parts to “fix” the really bad ones. It didn’t take long for me to realize that George’s quest for the Holy Grail of Supermarket Managers was going to come via cost containment. I don’t even know that you could call it cost containment – it was more like cost avoidance, as evidenced by the Service Manager approaching me on Day One asking me if she could order pencils from the office supply company. You would have thought my “uh, yeah” response was going to elicit the biggest hug in my entire life! There was a bread crumb trail of similar cost avoidance stories as I made my way around to store getting to meet all the team.

It was ironically around that time that I had read an article featuring the CEO of what was at the time Continental Airlines (now part of United Airlines). He was talking about Continental’s success and that sometimes too much cost cutting was costly in and of itself, and he used an example that has stuck with me to this day. He equated it to a small pizza shop owner that was brainstorming ideas to save some money. “Hey, I know – we’ll take the cheese off the pizza”. Not something I would recommend, but George and the team had clearly taken the cheese off this pizza.

Tools - The Turning Point

This was Greater Cleveland, a blue-collar city with a union workforce including grocery store employees backed by the United Food Commercial Workers Union and Teamsters. If you had to pick someone to put on the union poster, it would have been my Receiver – let’s call him Mac. I could write an entire chapter about the Grocery Receiver position - these were tough, grizzled veterans entrusted with managing all deliveries into the backroom of the grocery store. Most of them would start around 4 am and, the obvious challenges of Cleveland weather notwithstanding, they had unique personalities, specifically designed to repel hot shot college graduate General Managers. I remember my first introduction – “Hi, I’m Dave!” Mac: “And”. I think this tough, gruff demeanor was what they learned in Receiver School. But it was an important position, and aside from his bedside manner, Mac was a great steward of the store’s inventory.

Much like the squeaky carts, Mac didn’t have a single manual pallet jack that worked properly (pepperoni pizza, hold the cheese). No wonder Mac was a little “salty”. All those pallets that had to be unloaded every day with wobbly (and quite frankly unsafe) pallet jacks. Mac didn’t know this, but I ordered brand new jacks (which were not cheap). A few months after I got there, Mac’s new presents arrived via the morning produce truck. I was making my rounds that morning when I heard something over the store PA system (you know, “clean up in aisle 2”) that caught my attention. “Good morning shoppers, I want to thank our Store Manager Dave for getting us new pallet jacks. You’re the best! WHAT!?!? You must understand, this just doesn’t happen and goes against the secret Receiver code that I am sure they all had to sign. They just don’t say thanks – it’s not in their vocabulary! But there it was, the T word for customers and employees to hear. A few of the other hard core “union” guys piled on – the produce guy: “thanks Dave'', the meat cutter, “you’re the best Dave”, etc. This was the turning point – if I could get Mac on board, there was nothing this team could not accomplish! Throughout our time together, Mac and I grew closer with our relationship built on trust, and one Christmas he got me the greatest gift I have ever received – an entire set of golf clubs. Turns out he made golf clubs in his spare time. Talk about loyalty! He also wrote the most heartfelt note when I left that store with his last line “to be treated like a person is rare from a manager”! We also received 300 or so of the most beautiful new shiny (and ‘squeak less’) grocery carts, and my Service Manager was ordering pencils to her heart’s content. I disagree with the “poor carpenter blames his tools” quote – our tools were terrible, and we needed an upgrade.

Empowerment – Give ‘em the Pickle!

Giving the team the tools to do their jobs was the first step to changing the culture at this store. The second step was to empower the team to do their jobs whether it was a part time cart collector or a department manager, they all need to feel empowered. A perfect example was this was management getting called to the service desk EVERY time someone was returning something. You would have thought we were at San Quentin interviewing inmates, not customers that were returning milk that was spoiled. George clearly has his fingerprints all over this one too. Part of my need to change this was fueled by my selfish desire to not to walk all the way to the service counter EVERYTIME a customer returned an item. I get it, the grocery store has a long history of being the type of place where little old ladies in fur coats would berate you over a can of beans being 10 cents higher than the store across the street. So, dishing it back to the customer was probably in a way therapeutic for some of these service associates, but my gosh – nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition over returns of spoiled milk, and this was out of control! I needed to put a stop to this fast, but I needed something to drive this point home and that is where Bob Farrell comes in.

Does anybody remember Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour? They had restaurants sprinkled around the country and one of the highlights as a kid was having a sundae delivered to your table as the staff (and other patrons) sang happy birthday. Farrell’s founder Bob Farrell eventually sold his chain of restaurants and they changed hands a few times before disappearing in the sunset along other iconic childhood brands like Howard Johnson’s, Max & Erma’s, and Stuckey’s. After selling his restaurant chain, Mr. Farrell began a successful second career as a motivational speaker, relying on his many experiences in the restaurant business. One of his stories involves a letter he received:

Dear Mr. Farrell,

I’ve been coming to your restaurant for over three years. I always order a #2 hamburger and a chocolate shake. I always ask for an extra pickle and I always get one. Mind you, this has been going on once or twice a week for three years.

I came into your restaurant the other day and I ordered my usual #2 hamburger and a chocolate shake. I asked the young waitress for an extra pickle. I believe she was new because I hadn’t seen her before. She said, “Sir, I will sell you a side of pickles for $1.25.” I told her, “No, I just want one extra slice of pickle. I always ask for it and they always give it to me. Go ask your manager.”

She went away and came back after speaking to the manager. The waitress looked me in the eye and said, “I’ll sell you a pickle for a nickel.” Mr. Farrell, I told her what to do with her pickle, hamburger and milkshake. I’m not coming back to your restaurant if that’s the way you’re going to run it.

From that point forward, Mr. Farrell used the pickle of all things as a rallying cry – “Give ‘em the pickle!” He gave his famous pickle speech to bankers, insurance agents, executives – anyone who did business directly with customers. It became required material for Southwest Airlines flight attendants during their training. The principle remained the same – don’t sweat the small stuff and try to make the customers’ day, and if you do “give your customers the pickle” they will say those three magic words – “I’ll Be Back”. One of my great mentors Ed gave me a video of Mr. Farrell making one of his famous pickle speeches. I knew after watching it that I needed to share with my entire team. I scheduled off site meetings for all 250+ employees – it was important for all of them to see this video if we were going to change the culture and empower EVERY associate. It worked! Before long, instead of me telling people to give the customer the pickle, my team members were calling me telling me what they did to give the customer the pickle. It wasn’t just about no longer hassling customers on refunds though, it was a way of connecting with customers – walking them to the aisle instead of saying “it’s in aisle 23”, making eye contact and saying hello, giving them meal ideas… And sometimes giving the customer the pickle means (at least in my mind) interpreting rules differently, and that is where the story of a famous Western comes in.

The “Rebel” Bends the Rules

My mentor and boss at the time used to call me Johnny Yuma. Johnny was before my time, but it was a popular western television series that ran from 1959 – 1961. It starred Nick Adams as “The Rebel” Johnny Yuma and the theme song was sung by Johnny Cash. Even without the lyrics, you can just imagine what the deep pipes of Johnny Cash singing about “The Rebel” sounded like. In my boss’s mind, he thought that I was being a rebel about certain things, but in reality – I believed strongly that sometimes the status quo needed to be challenged for the betterment of the team, for customer service or for business in general. Every call I received began with “Johnny…” (oh no, what did I do now?). But deep down he realized that what we were doing was changing the culture and winning customers back, so as long as we weren’t compromising food safety or cash integrity, a few interpretations of the rules never hurt anyone. 24-hour notice on deli tray orders? Really? Kicking someone out of the 12 item or less line because they had 13 items? Huh? Refunds can’t be given without the receipt – only even exchanges. If Mrs. Jones hated the item in question do you really think letting her pick out the same lousy item was going to make her happy?

Recognition

The final piece of the cultural change puzzle was recognition. It is amazing what a simple thank you can do to boost morale. And I made a point of leading by example on my daily store walks and in the weekly department manager meetings. Eventually, other team members were jumping in on the recognition. This is where “Dave’s Dough” came into play. These were business cards that were used for associate recognition. I would give this out as currency for jobs well done (customer compliments, going above and beyond, coming up with a new idea, etc.). They accumulated enough Dough to trade in for other rewards (such as lunch on me, pizza party or getting to leave early).

This really improved the morale of the team, which naturally changed the way our shoppers felt when they visited our store. We did some other fun things for the customer like changing the “Muzak” station and bringing in someone to play the keyboard on weekends. But at the end of the day, it was happier employees serving customers that helped lead the cultural change and the increase in sales and profits.

The Real Diamond was the Team

We bought new carts, pallet jacks and enough pencils to fill every drawer, empowered the team, celebrated small wins with recognition, had some fun with our customers and changed the culture. AND we made more than $2 million and I won the coveted diamond ring!! I think my wife wound up pawning that ring before I had a chance to see if it was a real diamond or not. But all kidding aside about the ring, it did mean a lot to me. Not the ring itself, but what it stood for and how proud I was of the team and the new culture that we created. Some simple, common sense things – giving people the tools to succeed, empowerment, recognition, listening, having fun, and bending the rules - changes the culture which built a team with the same focus, the customers. It is amazing how many leaders today fail to see the importance of these tenants. Look at the culture of your organization – what does the culture say about your leadership style? Do you give ‘em the pickle or are you stuck with squeaky carts?