The Container Store, What We Stand For, Our Foundation Principles (TM)

The Container Store, What We Stand For, Our Foundation Principles (TM):

"Not only was The Container Store built on great products, but it was structured around some very basic and fundamental values and business philosophies about treating employees, customers and vendors with respect and dignity - we call them our Foundation PrinciplesTM.

They were formalized in 1988, when we opened our Houston store (our first outside of Dallas). That store made us take a look at our business a little harder. From the day we opened the doors, we did three times more business than we had ever experienced at any of our other stores, which became quite overwhelming to our employees. We already had a 10-year-old company with strong values and culture; however, communicating this to an entire store of new employees, most who never had been exposed to our stores or our way of doing business, was quite a challenge.

Kip (Chairman & CEO) struggled with how to clearly communicate our culture so that all the employees in the Houston store would act and make decisions using the same set of values and knowledge as the employees in the rest of the company.

So Kip referred back to a file he had started many years ago called his “philosophy epistle file” where he’d put various anecdotes, musings and philosophical phrases that he admired. During his time in school, the things in the file were on a philosophical level and as he started college, they took more of a business slant. He chose many examples to communicate the message that no matter how big the company became, our guiding principles and values would stay the same and over the years these were condensed into our Foundation Principles™.

By understanding and supporting these principles and philosophical guidelines, we can all respond in unison to similar circumstances. In other words, we act as a unit, all working in the same direction toward the same goal. Retail is far, far too situational to attempt to achieve a concerted effort through inflexible rules and policies.

So, instead of using the typical phone-book-sized retail procedural manual to guide our decision making, we use these Foundation Principles™ to keep us on track, focused and fulfilled as employees. With this combination of values-driven business philosophies and a one-of-a-kind product selection, The Container Store’s goal is to become the best retail store in America."

http://standfor.containerstore.com/our-foundation-principles/

Corner Office, Interview with Kip Tindell, chief executive of the Container Store; New York Times, 3/14/10

Corner Office, New York Times; Interview with Kip Tindell, chief executive of the Container Store: Three Good Hires? He’ll Pay More for One Who’s Great:

"Q. How do you hire for a senior position from the outside?

A. I’m going to ask a lot of sort of business philosophy questions. I’m going to try to make sure that you’re capable of understanding that business is not really a zero-sum game, even though a lot of people think it is. I’m going to make sure I like you personally, because I think that’s a good gauge. I’ve spent a lot of time teaching other managers to not be afraid to use that as a criterion.

Q. So what are the specific questions?

A. Well, it’s kind of a discussion more than questions. We’ll go into our heartfelt feeling about the type of business that we are. We believe that we’re trying to build sort of a mutually interdependent group of stakeholders made up of the employees, the customers, the vendors, the community — and all of those people are interdependent and balanced. So we’ll talk about that a lot and just see how they sort of react. Some people will think that sounds nutty or impossible. We’ll also work in a statement that communication and leadership are the same thing and see how they react to that.

Q. Is there anything unusual about the way you run meetings?

A. We’re big on what we call the whole-brain concept, which is simply trying to eliminate silos. So we probably have more people than we need in each meeting, and we don’t believe that’s unproductive. In fact, we think it creates a whole-brain awareness. We get a lot of innovation that way.

There’s a real belief in meetings on our part. They’re passionate. They’re long. They’re frequent. We get tired of being in meetings all the time. I know the whole world feels that way, but I actually think we’re at meetings more than just about any other business I can think of. I think it’s really good for us because of the communicative culture we have.

Also, probably 85 percent of our top leaders are women. I don’t want to get into a generalization here, but guess who tends to communicate the best? So I think there’s a natural tendency for more group communication here than there would be if 85 percent of our top leaders were men."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/business/14corners.html