Empathy with their stores, people and customers

"How a bleeding orange culture can change everything" is the subtitle of your book, and "culture" is the key word of your, let's say: retail philosophy. What exactly is culture?
Jim Inglis: Culture is the feeling that the entire people of the company feel about the leadership of the company, but also about their relationship within the company. The culture derives from a certain leadership that exhibits behaviour, that creates culture, and that culture defines a mission. And when people buy into that mission, ordinary people are able to perform in an extraordinary level.
Independently owned company versus stock exchange listed company: Which one has an advantage when it comes to implementing a company culture?I have worked for both, for big public companies like Home Depot, and I had the pleasure of working with companies like Hornbach that are family controlled. The biggest difference, of course, is in terms of long range planning and long range thinking. The public company is very driven by quarterly results, and it can be very easily tend to an investor centric view point as opposed to a customer centric view point. You certainly learn the discipline of optimising those numbers. They can often lead to profitable growth opportunities. One of the advantages of a privately owned company is that it is easier to continue and to keep focused on being customer centric and thinking in long term phases. Another advantage is the tendency of private companies to have a more cohesive long term management team over time.
Can you identify any typical difference between countries when it comes to adopting a culture approach? Do American companies typically act in a different way than retailers in Chile, Germany, Australia or Japan? You know these countries very well from your activities in the industry.
Yes, they do, they are very different. They all have the same needs, they have the same principles: What do the customers want? And what do you have to do to satisfy them? But the tactics change a lot. In the United States, we have a saying: You should measure twice and cut once. What I found in Germany, is: you measure five times and cut once. There is a lot more preparation before expediting a plan, but once the plan is in place, it will work.
If you present the same idea to the people in South America, they would say: wow, what a great idea. Why didn't we think of that? We'll do it tomorrow. And there will be a lot less evaluation.
My experience with the Japanese is that…