Former Jamba Juice CEO: How Future-Back Thinking Transformed The Brand

Even before embarking on my turnaround of Jamba Juice, I was already a “future-back thinker” who knew the value of dreaming big. Using this mindset I envision the end point I’d like to reach and then work my way back from that future.

Putting this future-back thinking into practice, I’ve operated this strategy at Nestlé Purina, then at Gillette, Safeway and Jamba Juice. The goal was always to clearly define what strategies would advantage the company, department, or function. Whether you think of it as a foundation, pillar, or enabler, culture always ties back to strategy. Let’s look at Jamba Juice as an example.

My vision—of Jamba as a leading healthy lifestyle brand with strong financial growth—didn’t align with the current state. Friends saw a flagging company, with a limited menu that hadn’t adapted to seasonality, in the middle of a financial crisis, and said “James, why would you take that job?” But it was my future-back mindset that allowed me to design an innovative, cross-functional culture and achieve my long-term vision.

At Jamba Juice, my team also used creative, out-of-the-box techniques to carefully hone their desired future state. This included receiving collective input from the leadership team to create an illustrated plan, which they compiled into a booklet. Creative tools like hiring a live sketch or graphic recording artist (or enlisting an artistic member of your team) can help unlock your thinking. 

For Jamba Juice, this groundwork opened the possibility for a culture of creativity, innovation and cross-functional and cross-level collaboration. As the team was encouraged to dream big and began working together more effectively, they were able to create and execute against my iterative turnaround plan. The first part, called Blend 1.0, included reducing costs, reinvigorating the franchise system, expanding the menu and leveraging consumer packaged goods (CPG) licensing. The next part, Blend 2.0: Strategic Turnaround, continued to refine Jamba’s CPG strategy, began international expansion, and launched JambaGo, smaller format self-serve smoothie stations. By the end of 2012, Jamba Juice broke even and turned a profit for the first time in six years. The realization of this long-term vision wouldn’t have been possible without intentional culture design, and the culture design was likewise shaped by the strategy. They work in lockstep.

At its core, a culture transformation is also a transformation of your business. Designing your culture means designing your future business outcomes. To convert your vision into a strategy, decide on three to four areas to invest in and walk back your milestones from there in two-to three-year increments, as with the iterative Blend plans at Jamba.

The future-back method is not dissimilar to Amazon’s press release method for product development, which I have also used with my teams. With this approach, product teams begin by writing a mock press release announcing the future product to the target customer. This helps them center who they are creating for throughout the product development process. It is also a quick gut check for the product’s viability. At Amazon, these press releases typically include: the product’s name; the intended customer; the problem the product solves; the benefits to the customer; a quote from someone at the company explaining in an inspirational way why they developed the product and what they hope it will do for your customer; a call to action telling the customer how to take advantage of the product right away; and an optional FAQ answering the business or tactical questions about building the product.

To apply this method to your culture design, you might retool this outline to look something like:

• The product’s name. Is there a word, set of words, or a phrase that describes your vision for your culture?
• The intended customer. The employees, suppliers, clients and other stakeholders affected by your culture plan
• The problem the product solves. What gaps have you identified in your culture?
• The benefits to the customer. How will your workplace and business outcomes improve?
• A quote from someone at the company explaining in an inspirational way why you developed the product and what you hope it will do for your customer. Consider including a statement from your CEO outlining why this transformation is important
• A call to action telling the customer how to take advantage of the product right away. What can your employees do today to take part in the transformation?
• Optional: FAQ answering the business or tactical questions about building the product. What doubts or questions can you foresee?

After creating the press release, the next steps that Amazon takes are evaluating the opportunity, discovering solutions and getting stakeholder approval and creating the backlog and assigning tasks. These steps will look the same in your culture design process, which after defining the reality and creating your action plan will follow the progression of implementation, iteration, and bringing culture to life with stakeholder buy-in. 

These processes always require a long-term investment in the success of the project with confidence in a vision, which can be realized with future-back thinking.

Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review Press. Excerpted from Culture Design: How to Build a High-Performing, Resilient Organization with Purpose. Copyright 2025 James D. White and Krista White. All rights reserved.