Bernick described what was essentially a closed, paternalistic, but extremely caring, culture at Culver. Her mission was to change that to one in which the employees had a sense of ownership and urgency around the business, to welcome innovation and take risks.

She notes that Alberto-Culver is not a family business, but rather a family controlled, publicly traded company. “But whether I was in a family controlled company or not, I believe everything relates to the culture and the way it affects the people,” she says. “Brands don’t sell themselves. People do. Everything we have done to this business to change performance—which has been so dramatic in the last 12 years—has been directly related to our people. It’s about how strongly they value our values and how they implement them.”

Unlike some companies, where the values are implicit, Culver managers must memorize its 10 cultural imperatives: honesty, ownership, trust, customer orientation, commitment, fun, innovation, risk taking, speed and urgency, and teamwork. To implement them, Bernick created a Growth Development Leader (GDL) system, in which one manager mentors about a dozen employees. Bernick has a GDL team of about 90, from various levels of management, with whom she meets every six weeks. “They are the catalysts for change in the culture,” she says. “We draw up a list of priorities for change. We then act on those and get results.”

Ten years after laying the groundwork, Bernick says Culver has hundreds of people involved in decision-making rather than the 20 executives in charge when she first took over. “Our people are far more engaged than in ’92, turnover is way down, and we have a much higher-caliber team,” she says. “We went back to the values my parents started with—openness in communication and a can-do attitude—and it has paid off.”

The numbers bear that out. In 1995, her consumer products division had sales of $475 million. By 2003, sales were up to $915 million, with pretax profits up 16.8 percent over the previous year. “It was so successful that we’ve merged our international unit with the North American division, and that has helped us improve sales abroad,” Bernick says. “Everyone gets our 10 values, and frankly, if they don’t, they don’t stay with the company long.”

Poza points out that the key to passing the family firm from one generation to the next is that the culture must be strong but flexible. “The younger generation must be uniquely capable of respecting the past success that the business enjoyed, but also be the agent of change if the business is to succeed,” he says. “It’s a judgment call, but there are plenty of companies that have done it successfully.”  

Illustration by Lisa Franke