Culture, Toilets, and Tortillas: Lessons from a Grocery Guy Who Gets It ( TPL Insights #269)

By Rob Andrews with paraphrased content Scott McClelland’s Talk to our Leadership Breakfast Group April 9, 2025

I didn’t walk into the talk by our guest speaker, Scott McClelland, expecting to get schooled on the psychological significance of a clean gas station toilet. But by the end, I found myself nodding like a bobblehead and laughing more than I expected. Scott, the former president of H-E-B Food & Drug Stores—and self-declared grocery guy—delivered what was certainly one of the best no-BS talks I’ve heard on leadership, culture, and the very real business of causing people to give a damn. And if you’re building anything, a company, a culture, a case for your next promotion—you want to pay attention to what the grocery dude said.

The Four Levers That Matter (And They’re Not on a Spreadsheet)

Scott kicked off by reminding us that the reason people choose any business boils down to four things: location, price, quality, and people (i.e., service or experience). Nail two of those and you’ve got leverageable differentiation. Anything less and you’re just playing defense with coupons and hashtags.

To illustrate, he brought up Buc-ee’s—a Texas-sized example of a business winning on location and people. They’re strategically placed just a bathroom break outside of every major city, and their restrooms are so clean, Scott joked, “you’re proud to sit down.” Yes, proud to sit. On a gas station toilet. That’s culture, folks.

Then there’s Spirit Airlines, which Scott gently described as a budget travel experience requiring contortionist skills and a PhD in fine print. But you can fly with your entire family somewhere for about the cost of dinner at Chili’s. That’s a price play, pure and simple.

Product quality? Scott’s a pizza snob. And when he splurges, he doesn’t mess around with the chain stuff. He’ll drive across town for perfect wood-fired, hand-pulled mozzarella. Why? Because when a product is truly different—or better—people will go out of their way for it. And then there’s the hairdresser example. Scott’s not loyal because of the haircut (his words, not mine), but because his stylist is part hairdresser, part therapist, and full-time storyteller. It’s about the experience. The kicker? His mom used to stand in longer lines at the grocery store just to check out with her favorite cashier. If you think loyalty is just about loyalty cards, you’re missing the point.

Strategy Without Culture is a Bad Stand-up Routine

Culture, in Scott’s world, is the fletching on the back of the strategy arrow. It gives stability and velocity. Yet most companies review strategy quarterly and never even think to review culture. That’s like checking the GPS but never asking if the tires are still on the car. He offered one of the best definitions I’ve heard: Culture is what happens when the CEO leaves the room. Amen. And while most companies let culture evolve like some prehistoric moss—organic, messy, and undefined—Scott made it clear: the best companies cultivate culture with intention, not inertia.

When Culture Gets Toxic (And How to Smell It Early)

Scott called out some infamous corporate flops like Wells Fargo, Uber, Boeing, and the OG culture-crash cautionary tale: Enron. The root cause? A shiny strategy disconnected from a corrosive culture. The warning signs were all there: leadership chasing numbers over people, suppressing dissent, and worshipping short-term wins. Sound familiar? The takeaway: when the means stop mattering, the end will bury you.

Culture is Built Through Stories, Not Slogans

Let me say this louder for the folks in the back of the room: no one cares about your mission statement if all it does is hang on your wall. Especially if it was cooked up at a fancy offsite, runs 27 words long, and could be about any company from Thunderlin Paper Co. to Skynet. Scott broke down how KPMG shifted from a vague, forgettable mission to something real by asking a simple question: Who is served by the work we do? They launched the “We Shape History” campaign and gathered 42,000 stories from employees. Real stories. No jargon. No filters.

That move transformed KPMG from a cubicle-and-spreadsheet wasteland into a place where people felt proud to show up. Why? Because they weren’t just “doing accounting.” They were shaping history. We remember stories. They define us. They connect us. If you’re not collecting and telling them, you’re not building culture—you’re building a PowerPoint deck.

Make It Real: Hurricanes, Homemade Canopies, and $2,000 Bonuses

Then Scott dropped some gold from his H-E-B years. During Hurricane Harvey, when Houston was drowning and power was out, H-E-B’s partners (employees) volunteered by the thousands to reopen stores and serve the community. Why? Because they knew they mattered. They weren’t cogs, they were part of something bigger.

He told the story of Francisco, who walked to work with his uniform in a bag to help customers. Or Mark, the Conroe maintenance guy who built a shopping cart canopy at home so people wouldn’t get soaked while loading groceries. He spent $220 of his own money. Scott gave him a $2,000 bonus. That’s what happens when culture is alive. People don’t wait to be told what to do; they take ownership, solve problems, and lead from where they stand. Scott’s rule: “Everyone has four ideas. One is really good, two are terrible, and one’s kinda meh. My job is to find the good ones.” Amen again.

Hire Curious People. Fire the Assholes. Celebrate the Good.

One of my favorite lines: “You can’t be an asshole and run one of my stores.” HEB didn’t just put that in a handbook, they promoted the people who lived the values and cut loose the toxic high performers. You know the type of people who hit their numbers but leave a wake of burnout, bitterness, and bad vibes.

Scott shared a 2×2 matrix that I’ve seen in high-performance orgs: results on one axis, culture on the other. The hardest call is what you do with high-results, low-culture people. H-E-B made the call. They cut them. Not because they couldn’t perform, but because the long-term cultural cost was too high. He summed it up simply: “I spend more time at work than with my wife some weeks. I better like where I work.” That’s not just practical. That’s leadership.

Scott said H-E-B hired 25 MBAs from Harvard Business School over five years. Only two made it. Why? Because 23 of them couldn’t talk to people in the back room. They didn’t know how to connect. Culture isn’t built in a boardroom—it’s built in the break room. At H-E-B, they boiled their values down to three simple adjectives: trust, curiosity, and community-focused. That’s it. No word salad. No “innovative ecosystems of stakeholder-centric excellence.” He said it best: “We sell groceries. But the who we serve are our partners, customers, and communities.” That’s clarity. That’s culture.

If Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast, Storytelling is the Fork

The throughline in every point Scott made was storytelling. Culture doesn’t live in policy binders or laminated value posters. It lives in repeated, personal, emotional stories. H-E-B even runs a class called “The Spirit of H-E-B,” where veterans tell stories that define the company’s ethos. And it works. Because people don’t just learn what to do—they feel why it matters. Scott called himself the “chief reminding officer.” That’s exactly right. Leaders don’t just chart direction, they repeat the things that matter until the culture sings it back.

The Wrap: Don’t Let Culture Drift—Drive It

Culture isn’t set-it-and-forget-it. Even Starbucks and Southwest have drifted as they scaled. When your values are vague or your actions stop aligning with your story, people notice. Customers feel it. Employees disengage. And soon you’re slapping band-aids on symptoms instead of fixing the system.

So here’s your prescription, straight from Scott’s playbook:

Define your Who. Who do you serve? Not just your shareholders, your real people.

Speak Plainly. If your front-line team can’t understand it, rewrite it.

Make Cultural Decisions Visible. Promotions, hiring, and strategy should all scream your values.

Tell Stories. Lots of them. Then tell them again.

Ask for Stories. Your team has gold—you just have to dig.

Get Curious. The best idea is one question away.

Fire the Assholes. No exceptions.

Scott said the highest compliment H-E-B ever got was, “Your people are just nicer.” That’s culture. That’s strategy. And that’s how you build something worth building. Apologize for the length. Just too much good stuff to fit into one blog post.

Warmest, Rob

Rob Andrews

Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

Celebrating 28 years of Executive Search, Executive Coaching & Culture Shaping Excellence

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