Caroline, the customer-centric legal counsel who changed the culture of Innochem
by Tijs Besieux, PhD
To date, this remains one of my favorite examples of why customer-centricity is everyone's job, and can be anybody's opportunity!
A few years ago, I worked for a global chemicals company (headquartered in Germany); let's call them "Innochem". Innochem buys up raw materials from small mines in Peru to produce its specialty chemicals. These small-scale operations, called 'artisanal mines', are often operated by local families for generations.
When Innochem recruited a new legal counsel after the previous one retired, "Caroline", she asked to join the CEO on a tour of the regions. As she sat in numerous meetings, including one in Peru, she was curious to understand how Innochem created value for its customers. There, she heard a US colleague complain that it takes Peruvian mine operators "forever" (three weeks, on average, as it turned out) to sign and return the contracts before they can ship the raw materials to Innochem's production site in the US. Interested to understand why, she asked to meet with the chief of a local mine. After all, Caroline thought, it's also in the mine's interest to sign the contract as fast as possible. In that conversation, she handed him a similar contract, on paper. She asked if he could 'role play' what he would do if this were a real contract.
That's when Caroline was stunned.
She observed how the chief struggled to understand the document. It was fully written in English and filled with 'legalese'. That's technical jargon that lawyers typically use when another lawyer is on the receiving end of the document. He used a hardcover dictionary to look up some words. At one point, he even called his niece to clarify a specific sentence, since she was more fluent in English than he was.
Caroline felt embarrassed as she fully realized how cumbersome this process was for artisanal mine operators. Each time they engaged with Innochem, they had to climb a steep hill of difficult-to-understand, entirely English legal jargon.
Later that day, Caroline took out her laptop and made a contract prototype using her best PowerPoint and Paint skills. She asked colleagues from the local production site for help. Experts might call this a design sprint. But for Caroline, it was nothing more than her leadership mindset: "Do what needs to be done, on behalf of the customer."
The next day, she met with the chief again. Now, she was holding a prototype contract that immediately made the chief smile. What had been an incomprehensible tsunami of English legalese was now a well-structured document. Emoticons and little drawings made clear what each section was about. Paragraphs were in Spanish first, then English (to still meet internal compliance requirements from the German HQ). Legal jargon was cut wherever possible. And, in sections where technical terms were still necessary, Caroline made two great innovations. First, she incorporated an FAQ section at the end of the document, which had now been trimmed from 29 to 7 pages. In the FAQ section, technical terms were defined and illustrated in both Spanish and English. At the bottom of the document was a QR code linking to a video. It presented the working definitions of the technical terms in Spanish.
Caroline saw a friction point in a complex process that slowed down delivery time. While balancing the interests of all parties involved, she quickly developed a prototype that enabled Innochem to do business more effectively. Fast forward seven months, this approach--cutting jargon, adding drawings, an FAQ section, and a video that explained technical terms--became the 'de facto' way of formally engaging with suppliers. That held not only in Peru, but across the globe, wherever Innochem relied on small-scale suppliers who didn't have a top-tier legal team to review contracts instantly.
In this new reality, it took the local mines in Peru, on average, three days to review, sign, and return the contract, instead of almost three weeks. That gain didn't stop at the mine gate. With raw materials arriving at Innochem's production sites weeks earlier, Innochem's customers received their finished products faster, too.
Caroline is a customer-centric hero, in my view. One who does not define her job by the specific role (e.g., legal counsel). But one who always starts with the customer interest in mind, and then works backward to create the best work she can.
Who knew that top-notch legal scholars, with a little help from PowerPoint and Paint, would one day become customer-centric role models?
These kinds of stories change the answer to a fundamental question: "How do we do things around here?" It's leaders like Caroline who carry the company's culture forward to a place where customer value is lived day in, day out. Not just written up in fancy slide decks.