Discovering its Core Values helped this franchise deliver upon its promises

On a recent episode of my Culture Czars podcast I had the opportunity to chat with Anthony Vidergauz, the former CEO of California Closets, who reaffirmed all my convictions that cultivating a valued culture at an organization is the shortest path to helping your business and your people thrive.

Anthony grew up in South Africa, and spent his early years in business as a lawyer. While on vacation in California with his wife in 1987, his mother-in-law was keen to show off her new closets. She was so happy with the work - and was also hoping to have her daughter closer to home - that she had set up a meeting for Anthony with the CEO of California Closets, the company that had performed the work. Anthony went on to take the job of legal counsel, which became the first step of a 23 year journey of growth with the company. 

In 1994 Anthony and his business partner had an opportunity to buy California Closets. Guided by Anthony's vision as the new CEO, they turned around the business through a cultural transformation that helped maximize the company's potential.

Today I wanted to highlight a few moments from our conversation where Anthony reveals how California Closets used culture to help turn a struggling business into the leader in an increasingly crowded and competitive space.

As the head of a company that managed a series of franchises across the country, Anthony understood the importance of leadership and living the company's values from the top down:

"I remember actually being at a convention, my first or my second after I had taken over, and I looked out into the audience, seeing this group of franchisees sitting in the crowd there… I knew that if I was a customer, depending on who I chose, my experience would be very different. It would be very different at all levels. So quickly we understood that we needed to put in place a set of core values. For a franchise system (with people) that came from all these different walks of life, from a franchise system who are doing and practicing business the way they understood it - they were independently owned and operated - but what we had in common was that we were all operating under the same brand, and a brand that we had promised a lot, and customers had high expectations on. So we had to underline what those expectations meant to the customer, and how every last person in the franchise system conducted themselves in front of the customer."

California Closets was smartly able to get this buy-in from their franchises because the company's values were reflected in their relationships, from supplier to employee to customer:

"We had a value called ‘We value we.’ Meaning we value each other. We needed to value each other at the corporate office, but we needed to value our franchisees, and in turn we wanted them to value us. And that came from respect and understanding each others responsibility to each other. And we valued our suppliers, because we wanted them to value us too. That relationship was key to how we dealt with customers and the products that we were able to get out, getting them out in time, and so on. And of course we had to value our customers. We wanted them to value us too, for the experience and the way that hopefully we were able to in our small way simplify their home and their lives a little bit. So the values became a key piece of what we did."

I loved hearing Anthony talk about how their CoreVals affected every layer of their business. When you have employees distinguishing themselves for committing acts of core values, you know you're on the right track:

"We got the franchise system to understand that if they were going to be leaders in their own markets, part of the 'We Lead' wasn't just the big shots at corporate were the leaders, but in each individual market we had to own the market. The franchise system had to own the market. And they quickly understood the grand promise, that was communicated in national marketing, and they quickly understood that adopting brand values at the local level became critically important because the customer called them out quickly if they didn't. 

So what we did as a big part of our training was we would use the values as a core part of our training. And you would go to an individual franchise. I went to many  franchise meetings, local franchise meetings where they were using the values to set the major guidelines for the meeting. And employees would get up and talk about what they did with a customer that exemplified how the values were put to good use in their day to day. And it was amazing actually to listen and hear how much part of the heart and soul it became of employees at a franchise level."

Anthony realized early on in his leadership tenure that you must understand the purpose of your organization. Of course this is one of the core tenets of The Culture Czars methodology, discerning your core purpose:

"Going into the most private space in somebody's home, in this private space we needed to deliver an experience that was really second to none. That was one way we were going to differentiate ourselves under the brand...

We needed to put in place a system of core values or core purpose. What was the purpose for this company? What was the why? What would people be interested in buying? What made us special in this world? How were we going to change the world? We had big ideas like that. We were designing closets, but we wanted to look at this as 'how can we change the world in that small piece of the world that we felt we could play a dominant role. And we came out with a core purpose of simplified 'Home and Life.' Obviously just a small piece of the puzzle in terms of what your life is all about. 

But we kept realizing what we did. If we could simplify an individual's day, by when they came into their closet it wasn't this terrible mess, and almost depressing when they walked in, but rather it was this place that they could look: it was organized, it was beautiful. It was a place that we actually strived for customers to say, 'it was a place I actually wanted to take guests on the tour of the house.' This wasn't something that was done previously, you wouldn't take people there. But we found in later years that people were showing off their closets. Just like my mother in law did."

Listen to or watch the full podcast to hear more from Anthony on subjects like hiring for culture, the value of culture to growth, and how culture fed the bottom line at California Closets through repeat and referral business. It was a terrific conversation, so I hope you check it out.