Do you want to sponsor this newsletter with over 370,000 subscribers, my podcast, or other content? Reach out to me directly and we can explore some options Jacob[at]thefutureorganization[dot]com.
Join over 45,000 other subscribers who get Great Leadership delivered directly to their inbox each week. You’ll get access to my best thinking and latest content. Sign up today.
If you’re a Chief Human Resources or Chief People Officer, then you can request to join a brand new community I put together called Future Of Work Leaders which focuses on the future of work and employee experience. Join leaders from Tractor Supply, Johnson & Johnson, Lego, Dow, Northrop Grumman and many others. We come together virtually each month and once a year in-person to tackle big themes that go beyond traditional HR.
Ask any CHRO what’s keeping them up at night, and you’ll likely hear the same challenges: How do we attract talent that truly fits our organization? How do we scale culture across distributed teams? And how do we turn engagement and purpose from abstract ideas into measurable results?
For most, culture remains an expensive, well-intentioned program. But a rare few have cracked the code.
Few leaders have answered those existential questions as clearly as Richard Fain, former CEO and current Chairman of Royal Caribbean Group. Under his leadership, Royal Caribbean didn’t just explode into a $16 billion enterprise; it became the ultimate living case study for one simple truth: culture, when done right, is the single most powerful form of performance management you have.
In this episode of Future Ready Leadership, Richard Fain shares how the company embedded culture into hiring, development, measurement, and leadership behavior—creating what he calls a “Culture of Wow.” For every CHRO who wants to make culture not a “program,” but the company’s operating system, this episode is your roadmap.
Listen to the episode here on Apple Podcast & leave a review!
Redefining Culture as a Mindset
Richard Fain’s definition of culture cuts through the typical HR clutter and speaks directly to performance:
“Culture is really a mindset… the mindset that we share as a common set of values.”
This wasn’t a poster on the wall or a feel-good slogan. It was the daily operating principle that steered a $16 billion global enterprise. Richard focused on creating a non-negotiable alignment around a simple, unifying North Star—a purpose that seamlessly connected ship crews, corporate teams, and executive leadership.
For every CHRO striving to move beyond “HR programming,” this insight is crucial:
Culture isn’t what’s written in a handbook; it’s what’s repeated in daily actions. It’s how people make decisions when no one is watching. Royal Caribbean didn’t enforce culture through rigid policy—it inspired it through crystal-clear purpose and radical accountability. They proved that when the mindset is right, the behavior follows.
Fit Over Fitness: The Talent Strategy That Changed Everything
In a tight labor market obsessed with certifications, specific skills, and technical “fitness,” Richard Fain revealed the strategy that fundamentally changed Royal Caribbean’s trajectory: He hired—and aggressively promoted—based on fit over fitness.
This wasn’t a minor tweak; it was a wholesale flipping of the script. It meant focusing less on technical brilliance and more intensely on cultural alignment. Every single candidate was evaluated not just on what they could do, but on how they would show up and internalize the “Culture of Wow.”
For modern CHROs, this approach shifts the entire focus from transactional acquisition to deep-rooted belonging. It demands being unapologetically selective—creating a workplace that doesn’t try to be everything to everyone, but instead, attracts people who align deeply with the company’s non-negotiable purpose and values.
And the results speak for themselves: high retention, stronger internal pipelines, and a culture where people thrive because they believe, not because they’re simply employed.
Building Leaders, Not Just Roles
Royal Caribbean’s talent philosophy didn’t stop at the front door. It was built into their leadership development model, which was fundamentally cross-functional.
Richard didn’t just promote people up a ladder; he intentionally rotated leaders across the entire enterprise, from Finance and HR to Marketing, Ship Operations, and even international assignments. These weren’t random job swaps but a deliberate design choice, engineered to build empathy, business acumen, and true system-level thinking.
For CHROs tasked with designing resilient succession pipelines, the message is undeniable: future-ready leaders must be contextually fluent, not just functionally narrow. The best leadership programs don’t produce narrow specialists, they produce sense-makers who can connect the dots across the entire business.
As Richard observed, these lateral moves often created exponential growth. In the “Culture of Wow,” exposure—not elevation—became the real accelerator of leadership maturity. They proved that understanding the whole machine is far more valuable than simply mastering one gear.
Listen to the episode here on Apple Podcast & leave a review!
Transparency as a Cultural Strategy
Richard Fain operationalized culture by making it impossible to ignore. Every ship, every department, and every employee could see their performance data—guest satisfaction, team engagement, and operational excellence—through one shared “culture dashboard.”
“Simply giving them the information and making it clear what our goal was was amazingly successful.”
For CHROs, this is the ultimate hack for cultural accountability. When everyone sees the same information in real-time, alignment becomes automatic. Transparency creates self-correction.
Royal Caribbean didn’t waste time with quarterly reports that disappeared into slide decks. They built real-time culture metrics that instantly drove behavior and rewards. The commitment was total: every executive bonus—even Richard’s—was tied not just to money, but to Employee Net Promoter Scores, safety, and guest satisfaction. Culture wasn’t a department; it was the entire company’s accountability system.
Continuous Improvement and the Courage to Experiment
Royal Caribbean’s mantra of “Deliver the WoW” extended beyond guest experience—it became an internal rallying cry for continuous improvement.
This philosophy changes how CHROs should view people innovation. Richard built a culture where experimentation was encouraged, even when it led to spectacular flops.
The company’s Innovation Lab allowed teams to build and test ships in VR before any steel was cut. And when the famous “cruise blimp experiment” literally floated away, it became a company legend: the cost of innovation is occasional failure, but the cost of fear is stagnation.
That’s the critical difference between an organization that improves and one that simply repeats the past.
What CHROs Can Learn from Royal Caribbean’s ‘Culture of Wow’
Richard’s leadership playbook aligns perfectly with the modern CHRO’s agenda: turning culture into a measurable, scalable driver of performance. His lessons transcend industry and size—they’re principles any people leader can apply:
- Hire for alignment, not convenience. Culture fit creates velocity.
- Make data everyone’s business. When culture is measured transparently, behavior follows.
- Develop leaders through exposure, not titles. Cross-functional fluency is the new leadership currency.
- Reward cultural outcomes, not just financial ones. What gets measured gets made.
- Encourage curiosity and courage. Innovation thrives where psychological safety exists.
Why CHROs Are the Stewards of the Next Era of Culture
What Richard Fain built is the ultimate proof that culture is the hard engine of performance. This is the future of human-centered business.
His ability to blend purpose, data, and accountability offers a glimpse of where HR is headed: toward an era where culture is as quantifiable as profit.
For CHROs looking to build a “Culture of Wow,” there’s no need copying Royal Caribbean, but applying the same principles in your own organization will make a huge difference.
Anchor performance on purpose.
Hire for fit.
Make transparency your management system.
And above all, never stop improving.
To hear the full conversation and explore how these strategies can help you build a culture that scales, listen to the complete episode of Future Ready Leadership below.
Because the future of leadership isn’t about managing people. It’s about mobilizing culture.
Listen to the episode here on Apple Podcast & leave a review!