• Good Jobs Transformation at Mud Bay

    Mud Bay is a chain of 44 pet stores in northwestern U.S. In April 2014, the CEO of Mud Bay Lars Wulff discovered the Good Jobs Strategy by Zeynep Ton while holding his sleeping daughter on his lap. He immediately devoured the book and decided he had to share it with his entire executive team. He then organized a company-wide reading group, using a curriculum created by Lars to discuss the book (in six person, cross-functional conference calls) over a period of eight weeks.

    See the effect of Good Jobs Strategy on Mud Bay's customers, employees, and performance.
    Read the case here.

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Co-CEO Lars Wulff on Mud Bay's Good Jobs Transformation

Approach - Mud Bay's 5 Pillars

Their next step was to create a strategic planning team that was composed of people from all levels of the organization, including six store managers elected by their peers, six home office staff elected by their peers, three district managers and the five members of our exec team. At the first meeting of the group (which became called "The Twenty") the executive team transferred authority to set Mud Bay's strategic direction to this new strategic planning team, reserving only the right to prevent Mud Bay from making any highly risky decisions.

Staff begin taking a GJS training with the goal of 100% completion by all staff before the annual meeting. The training was also subsequently incorporated into new muddies’ initial 90-day curriculum.

people_outline
#1 Invest in Our Staff
#2 Deliver more by offering less at everyday low prices
#3 Cross-Train and Operate with Slack
#4 Standardize our processes and empower staff through continuous improvement
#5 Partner with organizations that contribute to the welfare of animals

Impact

Effect on Customers
  • Yelp, Google and Facebook reviews now average 4.8-4.9 out of 5
  • An increase in "customer love letters" with people being astonished by their customer experience
Effect on Employees
  • 32% increase in average wage (2013–7)
  • 29% increase in starting wage (2014–7)
  • 26% increase in portion of employees working >30 hours a week (from 65% to 82%)
Effect on Mud Bay
  • 35% reduction in employee turnover (from 48 to 31%)
  • 3-year average (pre-post 2014), comp-store sales increased from 6.5% to 9.3%
  • 12 bp decrease in profit margin from 2014-2017

 

For us now, that is a constant stream - of these love letters, people being just astonished by their experience. We did not have that level of customer love just three and a half years ago

–Lars Wulff, CEO

Tools & Links

Good Jobs Strategy Book Club Discussion Guide

Sample tool from Mud Bay

Good Jobs Transformation

Launch Your Transformation

Investing in Retention (Article)

Pet Business, 2015