Episode 030: Your Culture is Shaped By What You Tolerate, Not What You Preach

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All right. Welcome back to another episode of the Fleet Success Show. Glad to have you guys back with us again. Joining me today, I have Jeff Jenkins. How you doing?

I'm doing good. It's a wonderful 84 degrees outside right now, and it's been in the 80s and the 70s.

This is a weird October.

Serious.

For Arizona, that's weird.

Feels great though.

It's awesome. I'm not complaining. I love it. But normally, you know, like, I'm worried that Halloween we're going to be in the 90s out trick-or-treating, and it's, uh, it's all nasty.

But well, if it's in the 90s, I can still wear my cute little outfit, so I'm pulling, pulling some fingers here. No, saying it's gonna happen.

No, 80s, that's what I want.

You want '80s?

Yeah, no, we need to be done with summer. So today we wanted to talk about a real fun topic. It kind of gets into our intentional culture and what we mean by intentional culture. And it's this concept of what do you preach versus what do you tolerate? And I think a lot of us have been in a situation before where, you know, like we've tried to set a standard or like we've level set and said, hey everybody, this is what we need to be doing, or we set a goal. And then as time's kind of worn on, we've gotten a little bit lax.

You know what a great, like, example of this kind of thing is? Is when you say, hey, this is what we're gonna do, this is our game plan going forward, and then everybody's gung-ho for a couple days or a week or two, and then it just totally falls off the radar.

Yep.

No matter how good the idea is, it just goes.

Yeah. So the same thing happens when you're talking about culture, core values, bad behavior, anything like that. And you could have a one-on-one. Like, we've done this. We've had one-on-ones with people, and then like we'll talk to them about behaviors or issues that they're having, and then we'll hold them to it. You know, you probably do this with your kids too. No, everybody needs to be in bed by 8. And then a few weeks later, all of a sudden it's 9:30 and they're still up, you know, because you're not holding the standard.

No video games on school nights. Guess what my kids do on school nights?

Video games all the time. Right? Wait a minute, we had a rule. And so this concept, I don't remember where this came from. Was this Jocko?

I think so.

And so this concept is, oh, it's not really about what you preach. It doesn't matter what you say. It doesn't matter what you put on the bulletin board. It doesn't matter what you print off and hand out on your flyers. It's not about what you preach from the pulpit. It's about what kind of behavior you tolerate. You know, what kind of things are you tolerating? And that is really what defines the culture. It's what defines the standard. Because the whole idea is that, you know, you've gone out and set a standard, but does your word mean anything? Does your instructions mean anything if you're not really willing to hold somebody to that? I think one of my favorite examples, you know, this This is something you use with Extreme Ownership, but you talked about one of your first jobs, you were supposed to be doing your dispatch and then you had to leave early or you decided to leave early. And I always think about this leader, tell the story real quick. So for anybody who hadn't heard this one yet.

Yeah, so basically I was dispatching trucks and I was supposed to have them all dispatched and committed on their next load before I left for the day. I had 3 of 'em that weren't. So I, regardless, I stood up, walked out and my boss, turned to me and said, "Hey, is your stuff done?" And I said, "Yep, sure is." He called me to his desk and said, "Let's look at it together." We looked at it and obviously there was the 3 not taken care of. And he told me to go sit my ass back down and finish it before I left for the day. I protested and he told me I didn't have a choice.

And so I love that story from a leadership example. I mean, one, it shows, you know, I love your vulnerability. Thank you for sharing that. But I love it from a leadership example from his perspective. Is that he could have very easily said, "All right, there's only 3. Yeah, go ahead, go home, come back tomorrow," you know, if he was really concerned about how you viewed him and, "Well, I just, I want Jeff to like me," right? Or, you know, "I want to— that's good enough," you know. But no, they had a standard that, "Look, we get everything done. We finish our work before we go home for the day." And so in that moment, he says, "No, I'm not going to tolerate this." And so it really isn't about He could have been saying the whole time, "Hey, get your work done, get your work done, get your work done." But then if you had gone to him and he had said, "Yeah, go ahead and go home," how much would his words have meant of "Get your work done"?

Well, how many more times would I have thought it was okay to split afterwards?

Right.

And not taking care of what I was supposed to take care of.

And who knows the downstream effect of that because he let it slip that one time.

Right. Well, it was a lesson for me. I mean, obviously, like, you know, I was pissed when it happened. But I respected that. But not only that, I learned from that, and then I brought it to the people when I became a manager and had that same type of mentality. Yep.

So very quickly you learn it's not about what you preach, it's not about what you say, it's about what you tolerate, what you let be acceptable, right? You know, and it's kind of this idea that everything kind of falls to the lowest common denominator, where whatever the lowest rule is that you're letting slip, like, that's where the culture's at. It's not what you say. It's not the standard you're trying to set. It's really what you find acceptable.

Yeah. So I'm going to bring this up because I know you love this topic.

Oh yeah.

Yeah. So we've talked about gossip before in here. Yep. And gossip is a huge no-no as far as Josh is concerned. And every time there's gossip that goes on that he hears about it, he attacks it because he knows that he can preach all he wants. We've had staff meetings about don't gossip. So he preaches it and it's very easy if you hear about some gossip to just let it go and just be like, okay, well, you know what? That's not that big of a deal. The gossip wasn't that bad.

It's justified. It's okay that they did that once.

But he doesn't because he knows that if he tolerates it from anybody, then what's going to happen is it'll start to trickle to more people and it'll just start going like a wildfire.

It's like a disease. Yep. And that's the idea is that if you let just a little bit of rancor set in, then the whole thing is ruined.

Yes.

You know, and whatever you're willing to tolerate, just know that that's what it's going to be. And, you know, if you can sit there and complain about it all you want— and I think this is why I love Extreme Ownership, you know, why Jocko talks about this in his book— but you can complain about it all you want that people aren't living up to your expectations, but dude, it's your fault because you're not holding the line. You know, we talk about avoidance of accountability in the Five Dysfunctions, and that's exactly what it is. You're avoiding holding people accountable because it isn't about what you're preaching, it's about what you're willing to tolerate.

Yeah, and it's even harder. Everyone has those people that they work with that they talk in circles. So you go on, you address something, right, because you're trying to not tolerate it, and then they start talking in circles to where you just want to shoot yourself in the head just to get out of that situation, right? I can tell you there's been tons of times where I've just said screw it I'm done with the conversation. I'm walking away and walked away because I didn't want to have that accountability conversation because it was going nowhere. But that was a disservice because I was tolerating that behavior by not bluntly addressing it.

Right. And there's ways to do it. We talk about being nice versus being kind. The third element is be mean. We're not talking about being mean. We want you to be kind still. But the idea is that no, if you're going to let it go on and let people know, oh, if I just talk long enough or if I give enough excuses, you know, that I know Jeff will let me out of it. Or like, if I'm going to Josh and I just bring up family or something like that, like, I know that's his weak spot and he'll let me out of the standard. You know, that's the kind of thing that people know and they look for it and they're like, hey, you're not living up to what you said you were going to do. And I think that's the whole thing with this too, is that a lot of times we don't hold people to that line because we're not willing to hold ourselves to the line. We have to lead by example, and sometimes we don't really want to do that thing, and so we're not willing to hold other people to that same standard.

That's a very good point, and it brings up leading by example. And it's crazy because I think you look back on your career and you think about the things that you've asked people to do. Have you been willing to do all those things yourself as well. Like, one of our things is, you know, we're willing to wash dishes, take out the trash, do whatever it takes. Well, you take out the trash, you wash the dishes. You're not going to ask anybody not to do it. You know, I— we just talked about that story from when I first started dispatching and trucking. Well, when I became a manager, it was the same thing. I held my people to that same standard. But when somebody was off, I felt it was my job, rather than spread out trucks and have other people overworked, to get in and step in and be the dispatcher for that person when they were on vacation or called in sick. And I held myself to that same standard to where I wouldn't leave unless all those trucks were dispatched on a load, were committed on their load for the next day. Because if I didn't do that, anybody could have looked in my board and seen, well, heck, Jeff didn't do it. Why do I have to do it? And then that doesn't hold as much weight. We have to be willing to lead by example. Right? If we're going to preach something and we're going to talk about a certain job or a certain task, we have to be willing to do that exact same thing. Now, we may not be as good as the people that work for us at it, but we still should be willing to do any of that. Like, I can't sit here and say, hey, you know, one of my salespeople, I need you to call this person and talk to them, if I'm not willing to call customers and talk to them, right?

And it's a different thing to be, you know, maybe I'm not good at it, but like, you better be sure that I'm willing to pick up the phone or have an in-person conversation or do anything that I would ask anybody in here to do, you have to be willing to do that.

Yeah, you have to set that tone. You have to be there as that example.

And it goes a long way. Like when people see you, I know we've done this after staff meetings, I'll be in there with a broom and a mop or a vacuum, you're vacuuming up and all of a sudden I'll see people that were originally going to walk out the door. Oh, the boss is vacuuming?

I gotta grab something.

All right, there's gotta be something I could do, right? And they immediately try to think about, okay, this is the standard. I know this is what's expected of us. I think there's a story Dave Ramsey talks about in his book, EntreLeadership, and it's one of my favorite stories about accountability and tolerance. Because there's a lot of times when we compromise our values or we compromise a standard because of something I like to call the halo bias, right? And I don't like the guy, but this is what it's called, is halo bias. It's where somebody does something so well that it like bleeds over into other areas, and so you're willing to overlook some of their other deficiencies because they're just so amazing at this one part of their job.

Isn't that amazing? Like, we have had fantastic dispatchers, like, getting all kinds of revenue on their trucks. Drivers loved them, but they were total assholes to everybody, or they'd come in late.

And you let them get away with it.

And we let them get away with it because of how great they were at their job. Yeah, you know, but all that does is just— it just sours everybody else because you're holding them to a different standard you're holding these other people.

Well, and that's just it, right? Is that because of that— so Dave Ramsey tells a story and he says we had a really good sales rep who was just crushing it, but he could never show up to work on time. And so, you know, one person that he would come in late, his manager would say something to him, and it just wasn't getting anywhere, right? They didn't fire him because they were like, hey, you know, he's just such a good performer, we're not going to do it. Well, then it kind of trickles up to that manager's VP And that VP is trying to get it corralled. You know, he's just such a good star performer that we're just gonna try to keep working with him. And they all knew it was wrong, and they're all like trying to hold him to the standard, but they're just like, I don't know how we get through to this guy. And so Dave finally had enough. Dave's a very direct— he's a high D personality, if you guys are familiar with the DiSC system. Very direct, like just get to it. And he gets in with him, he's like, look, look, Mr. Sales Rep, You understand that, like, we have to be here by 9 o'clock, and that's the standard. Oh yeah, yeah, I got it. All right, well, I'm going to tell you what. He has this thing called the bring a box letter. He's like, basically on this letter is an understanding that if I show up late again, I'm going to bring a box and pack up my stuff, and that's going to be my last day on the job. And so he understood, he signed it, says, yep, this is my bring a box letter to myself. It's basically my resignation letter that if I'm late again, I'll turn in my resignation. And, you know, for a long time he wasn't late until one day here he comes in at 9:30, but at least he's got his box in his hand, you know. But that was that kind of thing. But because they were tolerating that, that's one of those things that it starts bleeding into all these other areas. Well, how can you fire this guy or, you know, reprimand this person or put them on a written warning or put them on a PIP for being late when the boss shows up late. I'll tell you, that's one thing like, yeah, we have shifts and we have things like that, but that's one thing I would have a hard time holding people accountable to because I've never been on time to anything in my life, I feel like. In fact, I probably should have been terminated several times because I wasn't on time for things. But because of the halo bias, it just comes through and it they weren't willing to, they were willing to tolerate it. So it wasn't really about what they were preaching, it was about what they were tolerating. And I think as leaders, we don't realize how damaging that can be to the people around us. One of the things I think about when we talk about core values is this idea, we talk about intentional culture and core values are a huge part of that intentional culture and how core values are really about who you are. And a lot of people, the reason why core values don't work or you don't really feel like, ah, the core values are baloney, is because what's probably happened is they've created aspirational values, where these are things we wish were true or we want them to be. The problem with doing that is a preach versus tolerate problem, which is that we can preach one thing, but as long as we're not all that, or I as a leader am not that thing, I can never hold anybody accountable to be that same way. Because I'm demonstrating that this isn't important to me, or it's important but it's not true. And it makes me a hypocrite. And as soon as I'm a hypocrite, I lose all credibility. I lose all authority. And how on earth, you know, if I were to have a core value for something like— I love using the Enron example. Maybe I'm going to switch that up for Theranos. But Enron had these, you know, these core values of, you know, respect, integrity, communication, honesty. And just clearly blew all those up. How on earth could they ever have let go of somebody who wasn't being respectful or having integrity when they themselves weren't being respectful or having integrity?

Yeah, so I told a story a while ago. It's the one that was explicit about the CEO that—

Maybe today we could just do FFFF.

We'll just do F. I'm not— I'm not— I will— Virgin ears in this room, apparently. But one of their core values was kindness.

Huh.

Right. So it's the antithesis of what he was as a person. So, and no one was kind to each other because he was that way. And so he allowed and tolerated other people to be that way. I mean, I guess that's good. He wasn't hypocritical, but that was aspirational, right? We want to be kind as an organization when it's convenient.

When it's convenient or when it suits me. And honestly, if that's not part of who you are, it's not true to yourself, then you'd never be able to say, yep, this is what we're all about. You know, you'd walk in there and you'd say, wait a minute, you're one of your core values is kind and nobody's nice to each other. Like everybody's just a big jerk. This isn't one of your core values. It's because you threw something up on the wall, you preached it, but then you tolerated something totally different.

I could just imagine if I had brought that up to him, he would have motherf'd me through Roof.

All right, well, uh, that's going to wrap it up for today. Uh, thanks again for listening. And one of the big things that, uh, we're pushing right now, just want to let everybody know, we are creating a Fleet Success Summit where we're blending together all these ideas from fleet leadership, business, technology. We're bringing together thought leaders from different industries, different disciplines, all on one stage for 2 days Go to fleetsuccesssummit.com to learn more, see if it's something that you'd want to be interested in, which I can't imagine anybody listening to this show, they'd be interested in something as awesome as this event.

I can't imagine no one would be interested. Like, this is gonna be— I mean, hold on, this is gonna be the shit. I'm gonna throw it out there.

It's epic.

Yep, big time.

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Love ya long time.

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