Chief Culture Officer: How to Create a Living, Breathing Corporation

Citation

Tripathi, S. (2011), "Chief Culture Officer: How to Create a Living, Breathing Corporation", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 28 No. 1, pp. 93-94. https://doi.org/10.1108/07363761111102010

Chief Culture Officer: How to Create a Living, Breathing Corporation by Grant McCracken is an interesting book with the potential to change the way the top honchos look at their corporations. The title says it very clearly: this is, indeed, a ‘how to’ book, aimed at helping corporations become more sensitive and responsive to the world outside.

The author claims that the book is written for the strategic decision makers who want to make their corporations more culturally sensitive and for those who can capture the pulse of the culture and would like to leverage this knowledge for professional and career gains. McCracken exhorts corporations to hire a Chief Culture Officer (CCO), who may facilitate the understanding of the changing cultural space around corporations and to help them benefit from this knowledge.

The book follows a conversational, easy‐to‐read style. The author engages with the reader by citing some well‐known examples, and sharing his own experiences, drawing insights and sharing his views across nine chapters.

In Chapter 1, “Getting Past Guru: Being Steve Jobs”, McCracken asserts that a connection with culture is a necessary ingredient for success. He cites numerous examples to establish that successful corporations and initiatives have had a leader taking the mantle of a CCO. “Jobs wasn't a CCO but certainly he acted like one” (p. 8). McCracken concludes this chapter by suggesting that, rather than relying on the unstructured cultural knowledge and on the “hunches” of the unofficial CCOs, corporations hire professional CCOs.

Chapter 2, “Stealth CCOs”, explains that although many corporations do not have a CCO they might have other people (stealth CCOs) who act like CCOs. He cites specific cases to explain how some of the stealth CCOs have used their understanding of popular culture to the benefit of their corporations. McCracken acknowledges that culture is complex and too important to be dealt with in an ad hoc manner or to be outsourced, and he recommends that corporations hire professionals as CCOs.

Chapter 3, “Culture Fast and Slow”, and Chapter 4, “Status and Cool”, exemplify the complexity in understanding culture as McCracken discusses the various cultural streams; the fast culture, slow culture, disruptive culture, convergence culture, the status culture, and the cool culture. Through these two chapters, McCracken succeeds in illustrating the dynamic and heterogeneous nature of culture, which would be a challenge for a potential CCO.

Throughout Chapter 5, “Producers and Consumers”, McCracken discusses the democratization of culture. The cultural space has undergone a tectonic shift. Earlier culture was created and delivered to consumers who were just passive participants. However, more recently consumers have become active participants creating cultural artifacts (blogs, videos etc.), becoming demanding and even assuming ownership of what they consume. The “popular culture”, earlier looked down upon, has become more acceptable and popular in the right sense. It is imperative that, since producers cannot lecture their customers, they have to understand a culturally diverse set of customers and to converse with them. All these highlight the importance of having a CCO in the organization.

Chapter 6, “Building a Secret Sneaker Store”, emphasizes that the culture has become more diverse, heterogeneous, and dynamic and that a CCO is vital to dealing with this turbulence. For this the CCO has to have his sensors up, reach out and talk to people and monitor the popular culture. The CCO has to provide value to the corporation by not only providing useful information to top management but also by acting as an internal entrepreneur who drives change based on cultural know how. The CCO's job is to also dig out the implicit assumptions that corporations have made and to question it in the light of a changing world.

In Chapter 7, “How‐To”, McCracken discusses how the CCOs need to go about their job. Ethnography is a vital tool for CCOs in understanding culture and consumers. An ability to notice (and conjecture on their observations) and empathy are critical for a good ethnographer. McCracken also advocates that the CCO should embrace the new media (social networking, blogs, Twitter, etc.) to live and breathe culture.

Chapter 8, “Philistines”, strongly advocates that a CCO is essential in a corporation. However, it also acknowledges that the path is not easy and that there might be resistance from various sources such as top management, cultural gurus, engineers, economists, opposition, anthropologists, etc. The resistance primarily follows from a false belief in how well they understand culture, an incomplete/narrow concept of culture, or simply an issue of tunnel vision.

In the final chapter, “Conclusion”, the author puts forth the challenges before a first‐generation CCO and provides some tips on how to go about achieving the objectives. In two bonus features at the end, McCracken provides some likely profiles for the role of a CCO and a “toolkit” that CCOs might find handy in their job.

The book very clearly brings out the author's anxiety that the traditional business assumptions did not incorporate the element of culture. McCracken believes that successful business practices would need to incorporate the cultural aspect and that the time is ripe to formalize the position of CCO in corporations.

Although the author claims that the book primarily addresses organizations to convince them to hire CCOs and to the CCO job aspirants, the book would benefit almost everybody who is involved in the marketing process, whether that of sensing customer value, creating customer value, or communicating or delivering it.

However, some of us may find it difficult to connect with this book. This is less to do with the language or the concepts and more to do with the conditioning over the years, which make it difficult for us to look at culture and business practices through the same lens. That is where this book scores in making us reexamine some of our fundamental assumptions. Even I started this book more as a skeptic but by the time I reached the last page I felt that there definitely is some merit in what the author says and an idea worth giving a try.