Introduction Play #1 Play #2 Play #3 Play #4 Play #5 The play in action: Shiseido culture Revolutionizing internal BEFORE: AFTER: THE LASTING ADVANTAGE: Shiseido was one of Japan’s leading In the interest of better reaching its customers, Shiseido This play delivers a lasting operational cosmetics brands, but its local shares revamped its internal culture and its internal technology advantage—one that continually opens had been slowly decreasing year after in Japan. It underwent a digital cloud transformation that opportunities to evolve at the speed of 27, 28 life. Shiseido’s improved internal culture year. The company wanted to shift allowed better data usage and operational capabilities. from mass marketing to an experiential This facilitated broader access to its skin analysis tool on set it up to make faster decisions closer marketing strategy but faced resistance websites and in-store tablets, which grew its websites’ to “the front line,” i.e. at the sites where from long-time partners and internal 27 the company interacts with customers’ reach users to 230 million in just a year. In an effort to processes.26, 27 “No matter how wonderful focus on customer lifetime value, the company moved away lives. Shiseido’s digital upgrades started the strategic thinking and the technical from over planning and risk aversion in favor of continuous to bring basic capabilities up to speed planning is, at the end of the day, people experimentation. It instituted training programs around but grew into a greater transformation have to operate and execute. And if design thinking and project management so employees could of both the customer experience and 27, 29 the company’s overall cultural mindset. their culture and mindset does not meaningfully contribute to a more agile environment. To change, they will always revert to the upend the idea of “chain of command,” Shiseido empowered old way of doing things,” says one its 8,000 beauty consultants with more responsibilities, 26 C-suite executive. emphasizing that not every good idea needed to come from 27 the C-suite. The life centricity playbook 24