Every company eventually hits a ceiling.
You have a product that works. You have a sales team that knows how to sell it. But then you decide to pivot. You want to move from selling "widgets" to selling "enterprise solutions." You want to move from transactional sales to long-term partnerships.
That is exactly where O.C. Tanner found themselves in the mid-2000s. They were the industry leader in employee recognition (think class rings and service awards), but they wanted to become a strategic partner for large enterprises.
The strategy was sound. The market was there. But the execution was falling apart.
Why? Because their culture wasn't built for the new model.
When O.C. Tanner tried to make this shift, the internal friction nearly broke them.
On one side, you had Sales. They were out there trying to sell these new, complex solutions. But when they brought deals back to the "Home Office" (Operations and Manufacturing), they hit a wall.
Sales said: "The Home Office never listens. They are bureaucratic and slow." Operations said: "Sales has unreasonable expectations. They are promising things we can't build."
This wasn't just office politics; it was costing them money. During the rollout of a new ERP system, their on-time delivery rate dropped below 70%. Customers were angry. The internal teams were blaming each other.
This is the Inward Mindset at an organizational scale. Sales was focused on their quota. Operations was focused on their efficiency. Neither side was focused on the collective result: the customer's success.
The leadership team, including Tim (an executive at the time), realized they couldn't just "process" their way out of this. They had to change the fundamental way their people saw each other.
They trained all 2,000 employees in the Outward Mindset. But they didn't just hold a workshop and call it a day. They operationalized it.
1. The Shift in Sales They asked the sales force to stop pitching. Instead, they were trained to "lead with listening." Sales reps were told: Do not propose a solution until you are certain you understand the client's perspective.
This sounds simple, but it changed the dynamic. Instead of trying to "win" the deal (inward), they were trying to solve the client's problem (outward).
2. The Shift in Operations Operations stopped seeing Sales as "annoying interruptions." They started asking, "What does it mean to WOW the customer?" They realized that Sales was their internal customer, and if Sales failed, the company failed.
Here is the part most companies miss. You can't preach "collaboration" while paying for "individualism."
Previously, O.C. Tanner’s commission structure was skewed to reward new sales. This encouraged reps to close a deal and move on, often leaving a mess for the account management team to clean up.
To support the new culture, they changed the system. They began rewarding sales reps for retaining customers.
Suddenly, the sales rep cared about whether the product actually worked. They cared about the delivery timeline. They cared about the relationship after the contract was signed.
When the mindset shifted, the metrics followed—and they were massive.
On-time delivery skyrocketed to 99.7%.
Employee satisfaction surged, landing them on the Fortune "100 Best Companies to Work For" list.
Deal Size Exploded: Because the internal teams were finally collaborating, they could support massive, complex implementations. They moved from servicing average programs of less than $50,000 to selling and retaining global programs worth up to $50 million.
You can't support a $50 million client with a siloed team. O.C. Tanner proved that culture isn't just "nice to have"—it is the engine of your business model.
You might not be selling class rings, but you likely have the same friction between your Sales and Ops teams. Here is how to fix it:
1. Audit Your "Civil War" Where are your teams blaming each other? Look for the places where one department says, "If they would just do their job, I could do mine." That is your bottleneck.
2. Align Incentives with Reality Look at your comp plans. Are you paying people to be inward? If you want collaboration, you have to reward collective success, not just individual activity.
3. Train for "Curiosity," Not Just "Closing" Equip your sales team with the mindset to understand the customer's struggle, not just their budget. When a customer feels seen, they trust you with the bigger deals.
Q: Did they really train all 2,000 employees?
A: Yes. Culture doesn't stick if it’s just for the C-Suite. By training everyone—from the manufacturing floor to the sales field—they created a common language. When a machinist in Utah understands how their work impacts a sales rep across the country, you get alignment that no policy manual can create.
Q: How long did this take?
A: It wasn't overnight. It was a multi-year journey of embedding the mindset into hiring, onboarding, and strategic planning. But the operational metrics (like delivery rates) began to improve as soon as the teams stopped blaming each other and started solving the root problems.
Q: Can we do this without changing our comp plan?
A: You can try, but it’s fighting gravity. If you tell people to "be a team player" but pay them to be a "lone wolf," the paycheck usually wins. Mindset drives behavior, but systems sustain it.