Former Jamba Juice CEO on Building a Culture for Success

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2:07Be smart. Get WISE. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. Terms and conditions apply. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. Carol, you know I'm from this small town on the central coast of California. Wait, you're from California? Yeah. It's known for a few things. We've got the last operating nuclear power plant in the state. You do? That's why I'm glowing. Yes. Hearst Castle is right there. Oh, it is, right? Yeah. I forgot about that. Also, there's this little smoothie shop when I was growing up.

2:44It was called Juice Club. Ah. and uh for special treats after school i would get to go to juice club my parents would take me there or our babysitter would take us there sounds like you loved it yeah it was uh started by this guy who went to cal poly uh and juice club is what jamba juice was before they did a rebrand did an ipo and became the company that it's known for now i love that so jamba juice it began it began as juice club on like you know in on on foothill um james d white knows all about this He's former CEO of Jamba Juice. He led it from 2008 to 2016. He's also the author of several books.

3:20His new book out this month, along with Krista White, called Culture Design, How to Build a High-Performing, Resilient Organization with Purpose. He's also the chairman of the board of The Honest Company. He's co-founder, chair, and CEO of Culture Design Lab. He's a board member at the fast casual chain Kava. He joins us from Scottsdale, Arizona. Good to have you on the program, James. How are you?

3:42James D. White:Sam and Carl, thanks for hosting me. When you were CEO of Jamba, did you ever get to go to that foothill location in San Luis Obispo? Absolutely. The original. That was the one. Okay. That's amazing. And got to spend time with Kirk Perrin, the fantastic founder who we lost a few years ago. Yeah. Very tragic. Well, I want to talk a little bit about culture design, how to build a high-performing, resilient organization with purpose. But first, I just want to remind everybody about what Jamba Juice was when you were leading it from 2008 to 2016. It's now owned by a private equity firm, but it did have a life as a publicly traded company.

4:24What was Jamba Juice under your tenure?

4:28James D. White:Well, I joined Jamba in December 2008 and led the company through a turnaround and transformation. We're a public company. Market cap over my tenure increased by 500%. We really repositioned the company from a smoothie chain to more healthy lifestyle brand, but had a great run. You know, 28 quarters as a public company CEO. So tell us about like going through your experiences and kind of what you learned in terms of running a company, building a company, going through different cycles, what that has taught you. I think for me, the place I always start and I just go back to really my first week on the job at Jamba is you start with the people, you start with the key stakeholders.

5:29James D. White:And, you know, for me, as I go back to that first week, we asked, you know, four simple questions. What should the organization start doing? What should we stop doing? And what are the things that are working well that we should continue? And then the final bonus question is what advice would you have for me as CEO? And we really leveraged that approach with really all of our stakeholder groups and used that to build a plan to turn around and transform the company. But I always start with people first. The thesis of our book is companies have culture by design or default. So always be intentional in building a company's culture.

6:07So talk about who those key stakeholders are. Uh, and then I have this, this follow-up question that I think Carol will nod because she kind of knows exactly where I'm going. When you, when you started, when you start on a board or when you're, you know, a decision maker at a company, who are the stakeholders you speak to to understand the culture? Yeah.

6:26James D. White:I always start with the employees because they actually know, um, what actually needs to be done to really re-energize or strengthen the company. So I started with the 100 or so employees that were in our support center that supported all our stores. Obviously, the frontline workforce is a source of fantastic input, the board of directors, key suppliers. But also, we talked to consumers as a part of that process as we formulated the original transformation plan at Jamba. So connect that with company performance, because in Zoom, just reported earnings, for example. And when we look at any company that reports its most recent quarter, we talk about numbers like the outlook.

7:16We talk about top line revenue. We talk about margins. We talk about outlooks or we talk about what happened in the current quarter. What we don't talk about is the company's culture. We don't talk about how happy employees are or if they're not happy. We don't talk about customer satisfaction because investors don't necessarily trade on those things. How do you connect those non-tangibles to the actual numbers that a public company reports?

7:44James D. White:Yeah, the way I think about it is, and I've got a colleague of mine, a board colleague of mine, that says the human capital drives the financial capital. And that directly relates to the people and relates to the company culture. We think about culture being the huge unlock in this environment. And the reason we wrote the book Culture Design is we felt like with the dramatic change over the course of the last five years, the thing that we've not talked about as much as we need to as we look at hybrid work, the influences of AI as the company culture and how that shift needs to happen. the best companies become change savvy in terms of how they lead the companies moving forward.

8:34James D. White:And the book has three pillars. Knowing what matters, that's really about the context that the company operates in. Doing what matters, how do you operationalize culture? How does culture really live day to day inside an organization? And then anything in business that matters, you actually measure it. There are both hard and soft measurements, employee engagement, there's poll surveys, there's net promoter scores, but there's employee net promoter scores that are one of the things that I find incredibly helpful. But the best leaders are thinking harder about this, whether they're in the boardroom or running companies today.

9:17Hey, James, one thing I want to ask you, and I'm just curious, you wrote this with your daughter, Krista. And I was just looking at one thing in, I think it's page 96 here, and how she has kind of taught you that an effective leader actually shares a lot of their life journey, is a lot more transparent with folks at work. And it's interesting, like, I've often heard people like, your personal life is your personal life. Don't bring it to the office. Keep them separate. Like, you just don't share stuff. And yet, you know, your lifeline is in there and like all the things that you've gone through in your life.

9:56And I'm just the importance of like leaders and leadership sharing their life journey with the folks that work with them.

10:06James D. White:We think that empathy is really a core capability. And one of the things that I've learned in my work with my millennial daughter is, you know, kind of sharing more of myself really strengthens the ability for me to connect with leaders and people on a really different level. So this is not really where I started as a leader, but have kind of learned this over the arc of a career. And it's really a force multiplier when we get to know each other as human beings, we can find the things that are common. And what I found from a leadership perspective is that allows you to unlock the full potential of the organization by being more human and kind of humanizing the leader.

10:55We interviewed one leader that describes his version of this as he

10:59James D. White:provides new teams that he joined. Sam Bright, he runs Google Play. He describes a user manual on how to best work with him as a leader. He does some of the same kinds of things where he shares information on his family and background, which is really a shortcut to how we might work best together as colleagues. James, before we let you go, you've written, this is not your first book that you've written along with your daughter, Krista. Back in 2022, you wrote Anti-Racist Leadership, How to Transform Corporate Culture in a Race-Conscious World. We spent a lot of time, Carol and I have been doing this together for five years.

11:38And over that period of time, the conversation around DEI has changed a lot. Most recently, the iteration is these companies getting rid of DEI programs, not talking about it anymore. So there not being a conversation around it. Yeah. I mean, we're talking, we're doing a deep dive on Target in just a few minutes, and they've gone through their own issues with this. I'm just wondering what the state of you, of how you view DEI and anti-racism now in 2025 and how that's different among C-suite executives versus 2022?

12:11James D. White:Yes, I think the conversation has definitely changed, but I think the best leaders, at least the best leaders that I work with, they've got a true north. They're very focused on their values. And they know that if you put people first and you create an environment where all the humans get to do their best work, you're going to always win. And what I always advise companies and the leaders that I work with, the labeling of things I'm less concerned with, I'm more concerned with, you know, really the true north of the organization and how we focused on creating environments where everybody can do their very best work.

12:54James D. White:And that starts with people and it starts with culture by design. I would assume that then that is like if you had to give one piece of advice to leaders that are out there and they get so much advice, but I'm just curious, is that what it would be or something else? And just got about 40 seconds here. It would be, you know, really put the human beings, the people in your organization first and work hard to create and design environments where they can do their very best work and bring their full selves to the organization. And I think it will yield great benefits that will deliver high performance results.

13:30Well, very much appreciate it, James. Thank you so much. James D. White, former CEO of Jamba Juice. He led the company from 2008 to 2016. He is the co-author of a book that he did with his daughter, a second book that he did with his daughter. This book, though, Culture Design, How to Build a High-Performing, resilient organization with purpose. And you can catch that book. It is out now. James, thank you so much.

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