Chick-fil-A's Dee Ann Turner joins College of Business as executive-in-residence for the day, Jan. 29
Lacey Klotz |
“Businesses are built by growing relationships with customers. Culture is created by the stories those relationships tell.” - Dee Ann Turner, [It’s My Pleasure: The Impact of Extraordinary Talent and a Compelling Culture.]
Dee Ann Turner, vice president of corporate talent for Chick-fil-A, has been a part of its human resources department for over 30 years.
Throughout her experience she said she has learned there are two crucial aspects of a business: talent and culture. Turner explained in her recently released book, It’s My Pleasure, that talent, when energized by a compelling culture, will ultimately drive organizational success and growth.
On Friday, Jan. 29, Turner joined Lipscomb’s College of Business as an executive-in-residence for the day to share her insight and wisdom on cultivating culture with faculty and students.
“As the vice president for corporate talent for the company, Ms. Turner is responsible for understanding the needs of her company first, the requirements for the positions to fill those needs and then developing a recruiting and selection strategy to bring the right people to do the jobs that guarantee Chick-fil-A's continued success,” said Chuck Capps, associate professor of management and marketing.
“Lipscomb’s College of Business recognizes the importance of achieving outstanding results and treating people with respect and dignity, and having 
Ms. Turner on campus as our executive-in-residence, was a great opportunity for our students to see and understand how those principles are being applied in a company as successful as Chick-fil-A.”
During her time on campus, Turner spoke to Lipscomb’s promotional strategies class as well as its human resource management class, and shared that the key to a healthy corporate culture was creating long-term relationships with employees that possess three qualities: character, competency and chemistry.
Capps, who teaches Lipscomb’s human resources management class, explained how as the vice president of corporate talent, Turner’s experience with talent acquisition was extremely enlightening as their class is currently studying aligning human resources with organizational strategy, something Chick-fil-A as a company has excelled in for many years.
“In my course, we have been talking about the importance of human resource professionals developing an intimate knowledge about their company's mission and business objectives,” said Capps. “Students have been challenged to develop a new business idea that would be profitable on Lipscomb's campus, derive an human resource strategy that would facilitate their business success, which specific jobs would be required in the business and finally create a plan to go find and hire the talent they need to make their business profitable. Although Ms. Turner is a recognized expert in the service industry, our first month of class was right in her wheelhouse.”
While at Chick-fil-A, Turner has overseen recruitment, selection and retention of corporate staff and selection of Chick-fil-A franchisees, and explained how she has learned one important lesson through this process.
“People decisions are the most important decisions you make in business,” Turner said, explaining that was an important lesson that she learned from Chick-fil-A’s founder Truett Cathy.
Founded on Biblical principles, Chick-fil-A exists “to glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us. To have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A.”
Turner’s book, It's My Pleasure, tells powerful stories and provides practical applications on how to develop extraordinary talent necessary to build and/or stimulate a company's culture.
While on campus, Turner was also a guest on Elite Team Radio, a new podcast developed by Elite Team Dynamics, an organization co-founded by Bill Taylor, Lipscomb’s men and women’s cross country and track head coach, and his wife, Tabetha, a member of the cross country and track coaching staff and former head of global learning delivery for Cox Automotive.
Elite Team Dynamics is an organization that highlights what it takes to build and sustain high performance cultures, and helps transform low performing teams into top performers, individuals into leaders and cultures into thriving systems that produce amazing results.
During the podcast, Tabetha and co-host Steve Graham, spoke with Turner about how her book It's My Pleasure emphasizes the culture that Chick-fil-A has cultivated, how talent plays into that and how selecting the right leaders is linked to Chick-fil-A’s high performance and a life time of success.
Click here to listen to Elite Team Radio’s podcast with Turner: http://bit.ly/1STGFNX.