Transparency, accountability key to great culture, says Jessie Capote

Doral, Fla.-based J&C Tropicals has been certified by the Great Place to Work Institute in back-to-back years, and CEO Jessie Capote said communication, transparency and accountability are among the fundamental components of the company’s culture.  

Ninety-eight percent of employees at J&C Tropicals say the company is a great place to work, compared with 59% of employees at a typical U.S.-based company, according to the institute. Other findings from the anonymous survey include 100% saying that management’s actions match its words; 100% saying that management is honest and ethical; and 100% saying that they feel a sense of pride when they look at what the company accomplishes.

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“We really go out of our way to cultivate a culture of accountability, integrity,” Capote said. “For us, that’s very important, so getting the certification was something that we thought would simply validate a lot of things that we had already been doing for a long time.”

Regular, structured communication has been a vital component for establishing and communicating priorities and for discussing issues.

“The leadership team and the departments, they meet once a quarter for an entire day outside the office before the following quarter starts,” Capote said. “That entire day’s dedicated to flushing out all issues, to putting everything on the table, and to really talking about what it is that we want to do over the next 90 days.

“Once everybody is aligned and on board, we bring that back to the office, and then every week there’s a weekly team meeting that never goes beyond 90 minutes, but it’s really structured to allow for a lot of transparency, a lot of accountability,” Capote said.

J&C has been using for three or four years now a platform called Entrepreneurial Operating System to facilitate those weekly meetings, and Capote said it has been excellent.

“Even before the pandemic it was something that had really allowed us to keep in tune with our people, and then after everything that’s gone on the last 12 months, it was even more relevant,” Capote said. “And so having those meetings, allowing people to come in after they spent that day out of the office talking, discussing ... and then just holding each other accountable is great because, as you hold the employees accountable, they start to hold the senior leadership team accountable, and it just creates an environment of, hey, whether it’s good or bad, it doesn’t really matter because it’s just something we have to handle — let’s do it and then let’s move on.”

Even though the company scored extremely well in the Great Place to Work Institute survey and received many glowing comments about the culture, Capote said there’s always room to improve. Plus, creating a great culture is one thing, but maintaining one is work, too.

“This is not something that you can do once and then put down,” Capote said. “Culture is a living, breathing thing, and just like you go to the gym, if you go to the gym all the time and you’re in shape, then you have to continue going; you can’t put it down, and culture’s the same around here.

“We’re very much in tune with what didn’t get the 100%, how can we address it, and at the same time continue doing the things that got us to 98% because if not, then really, it’ll fade fast,” Capote said.