Episode 178: Fleet Culture That Works: How to Build Team Morale Without Breaking the Budget #podcast

This is the Fleet Success Show dedicated to helping you and your fleet succeed using the experience of fleet professionals and Hall of Fame fleet legends. The show that explores how the pillars of stakeholder satisfaction, intentional culture, resource efficiency, and risk management all combine to lead your fleet to success. We're glad you're here. Now let's get into the show. Hey, welcome back for another episode of the Fleet Success Show with your hosts, Josh Turley, Mark Canton.

Hi, everybody.

And we are coming off the heels of our recent Spirit Week. You know, we had everybody was in office. We had Tony and Scott and Steve, Facundo and Sarah were in here doing podcast episodes. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about what Spirit Week is, what we do for Spirit Week here and why we do it. And then maybe, you know, we'll give some fleets out there like, what are, what are some ways they could do something similar? All right.

Sounds cool.

So I guess, Mark, in your own words, what is Spirit Week for those who are unfamiliar with this process that we do?

Yeah, well, in my own words, it's awesomeness.

Okay.

All right. So probably most folks have been part of a company or an organization who try to do something nice to celebrate the people, but we do it better.

There's no hubris here at all.

No, sorry, folks. Sorry. But anyway, what— You know, I, I, I'm fortunate enough to have stepped into it. It had something you already implemented, so I have this kind of awe about it and this kind of childlike view of it because I just haven't experienced something like it elsewhere in my life. And I, I've been— I'm very grateful for the stops I've had before and wonderful places to be. I would do them all over again, but this is pretty unique, pretty neat, you know. So we come in and first off, we get everybody together, right? That's the key, probably the key component. Obviously, like a lot of companies We have a lot of folks here in the office. We have remote employees elsewhere. And, you know, for me, one of the things that sticks out is it's— we all get together. So the whole company comes into town.

We fly in everybody from remote, offsite. You know, our Mexico people drive up. Like, it's the entire company is here in Phoenix, right? Literally.

And that in and of itself is great, right? Because you get to— you get to be with people, you get to bond with people. People maybe you're usually over on a— only on a computer screen or something like that. So just that in and of itself is a huge win. And then what we do is we, we make sure to implement as much fun as we can during the workday, right? And we do that a whole bunch of different ways. We have games and tournaments and cornhole, and some years it's ping pong. Recently everyone's into the escape room stuff, and we set up an escape room. And, uh, you know, we play Mario Kart and all kinds of things like that. And what's great is, uh, the team does a great job, um, you know Spencer and, and a lot of other folks involved, you know, of kind of setting it up so you can kind of— you can still do your call and have your meeting and get your work done, sprinkle in a little 15-minute break and go play around the Mario Kart kind of a thing for the day, right? So it works out really nicely. And, and, you know, we, we follow our, our values, so we have a lot of fun and we're humble, but we're also hungry, so we want to win. We're competitive. Competitive, right? It's cool. Little basketball, we got Enoch over there. Playing his right hand against his left hand to see which one can score more points.

Oh my goodness.

I was like, okay, Nick. Uh, but you know, he did well. A lot of, a lot of folks doing well. So we're playing all the games and, and, and obviously that's a big piece. So we have fun, we're together, we have fun. It's, uh, it's a, it's a very— what's the word I'm looking for? I want to say jubilatory, something like that.

Sure. It sounds fun.

That sounds official. Yeah. You know, environment. And we eat together. You lead the way on that big time, right? And, and it's great.

I eat a lot. No, no, no, no, no.

What I mean is, is you cook. I mean, you literally, like, you start preparing the day before, weeks before actually, right? You get your ingredients and then you start cooking the night before and then the whole morning, and then you're carving. And it's like the, you know, for those who don't know, Josh is an excellent cook. The meal is phenomenal. Thankfully, you're not even the only excellent cook we got in the company, so it's kind of catching on. You kind of started a trend and now other folks are volunteering.

I was doing, uh, Argentina Yeah, which is pretty awesome.

Just delicious stuff. And he's spending all day— we have a potluck day where everybody brings in something. Um, so we just eat phenomenally all week for lunch. And, you know, again, imagine the whole company's there, they've been playing games, and now they eat this awesome, you typically home-cooked meal. Um, and it just, you know, there's something about it. I, you know, everyone has read an article or watched the documentary or something about that thing about sharing a meal together and then also that thing about cooking a meal for someone and eating a meal someone cooked for you. There's just a— there's just a bonding that takes place when you do that. And it's just very natural and organic. And when you eat somebody's food who spent, you know, they worked hard cooking for you, there's, you know, forgive me if this sounds mushy, but there's a love that gets imparted there. you know, for the people around you, right? That's what it is, right? Like, that's at the core of what cooking for your family and your friends and your loved ones are, right? So, so there's just this element, you know, and, um, it's phenomenal and you just feel good. And again, we're still working and the people feel it, you know, we're having our meetings with our customers and people are onboarding and long-time customers and, you know, the long-time customers, they know, oh, it must be Spirit Week at RTA.

Everybody's in office. Oh, look, you're wearing a costume today. Yeah. And so that's something that— Oh, that's another one. Yeah. Everybody every day has a different theme.

Yep, yep.

And we got this idea, by the way, so part of like the genesis of this was, I'm trying to remember, I wanna say it was Dad's birthday one year.

Okay.

You know, probably 5 to 10 years after he passed away, but we had, I was like, how do we honor Dad, right? And just celebrate him a little bit. So it was like October something, his birthday's October 21st. And so we thought, oh, let's do something on his birthday. And then it kind of turned into, well, we can't do something on his birthday. What if we just did something like all week? And I remembered being in high school and having spirit weeks in the fall and in the spring.

Okay.

And when you go to high school, like out here anyway, spirit week is like every day there's, you know, it's dress up, it's games, they do field days, they do all kinds of crazy shenanigans, right? And I was like, how do we imbibe some of that spirit into the company that same way?

Cool. Super cool.

And so that's kind of where I got the idea originally from was let's celebrate Dad's birthday. Let's turn it into a whole week of celebration about RTA. And but let's tie in some of these elements that we thought were fun. And it has turned into like its own monster thing. Yes, it's actually a lot of fun. But to your point, like you've had a couple of things, which was, you know, like we still do meetings, but I will tell you, like, we're not productive that week. Not nearly as we try to, you know, like we'll still, we still answer phone calls and things of that nature. But like this year we took everybody out to Topgolf.

Yeah, that was so cool.

Which, you know, I'll talk about that in a second. But like we shut down the office, there's games and all this stuff going on. Well, if people are playing games, they're not working.

True.

And so it does, you know, kind of, it takes a productivity hit, right? So there's some—

Oh, definitely, definitely we're not as productive that way.

There's an investment that we make in flying all the people out. We have to put them up in hotels that week.

Yep.

Even the people that kind of live across the valley, you know, we put them up in a hotel that week. So like there's, and we do a lot of food. It's like the food is expensive. Yeah. Even with me making it, which was originally a cost-saving measure. It's a totally dumb thing to do, by the way. If you think you're saving money by making your own food, stop.

Yes.

The food itself might be cheaper, but oh my gosh, the amount of time it takes to do it.

Exactly.

I will never forget a few years ago I tried doing, I was doing brisket, I was doing ribs, I was doing pulled pork. And let me tell you, there's nothing longer than trying to cook brisket for 50 people.

Yeah.

And you're like 16 hours into this cook and you're like, oh my gosh, I've ruined the brisket, right? It's not something to experiment with.

You've literally lost days of your time.

Oh my goodness. You wanna talk about being unproductive, right? So like, those are the kinds of things that it's a massive investment to put these kinds of things on.

Right.

And people ask me all the time, like, how can you justify that? Is it really worth it?

Right.

And to that I say, absolutely. Right? There's no doubt in my mind when you talk about the, you know, you say the love, but like the camaraderie, the bond that you get. And we're doing stupid stuff like playing cornhole or Mario Kart or whatnot. Like, it doesn't really have a big bearing, but the competition, the fun, the games, and you get to see people in a different light.

Yes.

They're not the serious business people all the time. They're not just always, you know, Chuck from customer service. You know, they're real people.

Absolute humanizing element to it. Absolutely, yeah.

I think the other people I really love is, it is the remote people. This is a huge way for the remote people to feel connected.

Yes.

We had, there was a moment where this year, we had probably 2 or 3 remote people that had come into the lunchroom and somebody else had come in. And these people had been working at the same company for 6 months. They'd never been on a call together, right? And the only time they would've seen each other might've been at our all-hands, like our staff meetings. And that's only if they put their cameras on.

Right.

Right, but they'd actually never met because they were on 2 different teams. And, you know, normally like you go to an office, you're like, oh, who's that? I don't recognize them. Let me introduce myself.

Right.

Well, you don't get that when you're over a Zoom or over a virtual. And so here we are, we're all of a sudden in the office, it's like, oh, who are you? Oh, well, I like, actually, this is something that happened. Like, Sarah was standing there and she's like, oh, I'm Sarah, I'm one of the fleet success managers. Like, oh, are you new? And she's like, no, I've been here since July. I was like, oh my gosh, so have I. And we just, they had no idea.

Yeah, they had no reason to talk.

It was pretty funny. But I also had this really surreal experience this time, which was I stepped out onto the floor and we have had a lot of growth recently. Like, we've been hiring a lot. But I stepped out on the floor and I was like, I almost don't recognize my own company. There's so many new people and so many new faces. By the end of the week though, I knew who everybody was. I had an opportunity to meet every one of them and just like briefly introduce myself. But especially that Monday. So Monday, this was a, we don't usually do this, but Monday.

Monday was so cool.

We actually shut down the office for the afternoon because we wanted to celebrate RTA hitting $100 million saved just like Grandpa did back in the '70s with UPS. It's a huge moment. And we wanted to celebrate us. We call it our BHAG, right? We wanted to do a BHAG celebration, our Big Hairy Audacious Goal. And so, and I had given them the challenge 6 months ago when we hit this goal, we got to come up with a party worthy of that BHAG. And so they said, well, what about Spirit Week when everybody's in office? I was like, perfect. 'Cause I don't want to leave anybody out. Let's do it for Spirit Week. Everybody's here. And so we said, let's shut down the office. Let's take everybody to Topgolf. And so literally on Monday afternoon, we're all just at Topgolf, just like you would for a Christmas party or holiday party, right? This is a BHAG party, all getting together. We catered in food at Topgolf. We had probably 10 bays going. Yeah, you know, no, no, it was more than that. It was 15 because there was 80 of us.

You know, I've told— you've heard me say this, but it, for me, it was surreal. It was like, you know, something you see on TV, you know? It's like, here I am in the middle of the workday, freaking playing golf, right? Eating chicken fingers or whatever, right? It was, um, you know, like, this is, this is amazing. And I, and I know for maybe some folks in other industries that may be every Friday, you know, I don't know, Friday at the golf course, yeah, you know. But for me, it was just super neat. And like you said, that's not something that's every year. That's to celebrate the party. But even that part was so cool because, you know, I was part of the team that you know, help put together what the metrics would be. And I know how hard that team worked. Yeah, right. And no one expected a party. No one expected a thank you or anything for it. We had tried to do it. I don't know if you remember, we had tried to do it as a, like a couple of trimesters earlier. We failed. We, I think we let it go for a trimester. We brought it back and this time we executed on it and we were riding high just on that. Like it was, felt good to get it done, you know? And you said then, oh, we're going to have a party. You know, okay, great. Sounds nice. Nobody did it for a party, right? Fast forward, and here we are, like, literally having a party celebrating an accomplishment, you know, as a team, as a company for something that's really pretty cool, you know, $100 million. By the way, I think we're at $290 million. Yeah. Save. So super cool stuff. But, you know, I don't know, just for me, it's like, this is the kind of stuff you see in like TV sitcoms or TV shows or a movie. It's not real, you know, not real life for sure. Yeah. So, so that's kind of my take on it, right? It's like, wow, this is really cool. But also you can do it, you know, like that's kind of your point, right?

So I think like that's a great segue is, okay, so for our listeners, right, we're all a bunch of fleet managers. How on earth, hey, how do we get buy-in from the people up top to do this? And maybe you don't. Maybe you just like do it and then ask forgiveness later. Right, right. I'm just, you know, not going to throw that out there too loudly, but Try it.

Yeah.

And maybe you don't do it for a full week, maybe you do it for a day, right? Because that's how we started. We just started with one day, and then it kind of grew into three, and then it grew into the full week, right? Um, but just try it, right? The, the other thing I would say, like, if you're a fleet manager, okay, so what if, what if you can't shut down the shop for a day? Well, maybe you bleed that onto a Saturday or something, right? And we didn't shut down the shop for a day, we just did it for— I think we shut down at like 12:30.

Yeah.

And then by 3:30, somebody came back in the office and, you know, we kind of closed up, but Yeah, you know, we communicated to all our customers beforehand too that this was going on, right? Like kind of plan around that. But at the same time, it was, you know, we had fail-safes in place that we needed if something totally went wrong. We had a series of plans going around standby going like, you know, we had a, what do you call it, an on-call team, right? So if we needed to, we could have stood up really fast, but nothing happened. Thank God. We were able to just go and enjoy ourselves and it all went really well. Yeah. But what are some tips that we would have for like fleet managers? What are some things they could try to implement some kind of like Spirit Day or like some morale building within their entire team.

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Yeah, first and foremost is don't try.

Okay, do it.

That's my first tip, right? Like, don't— it's just too easy to give ourselves the excuses of why we can't do it. Okay, you don't have a budget, like I said, like we do, do a potluck.

Yeah.

Okay, um, you can, you can block off your bays, you can bring in a couple pickleball paddles and have a pickleball contest perfectly in a mechanics bay, right?

True story. You can't—

yeah, easily, right?

Run some tape, run some tape, right? Tape out the lines, it's super fast.

Exactly.

Cornhole, cornhole is super cheap.

Like the greatest game ever, because you can do that in the parking lot. If it's raining, you can do it inside, right? Cost a couple of base. So, you know, as far as like the money, you don't need a lot of money to make, to make what's important about this real. You know, don't get me wrong. I love the home-cooked meals and the brisket, but if you got to do it by ordering pizza from Domino's, so what?

Start there.

Start there, right? So don't let money be the excuse. That's, that to me is not okay. So first and foremost, don't try, do it right. To your point, depending on your particular fleet's operation, you may find it difficult to find the time to do it. Again, don't let that be an issue. Like you said, maybe it's a Saturday, maybe it's stay late a day, right?

If you don't have a second shift, you could shut down a little bit earlier that day and then just, you know, have it go later or something like that. Yeah, we talked about doing that.

Yeah, exactly. You know, again, to your point, you communicate out to your constituents, hey, we're going to be shut down that day. I have a difficult time that to believe, just having been in fleet my whole life. And obviously your sectors are different, but every single industry on the planet has seasonal fluctuations.

Yeah.

All right. So every single industry on the planet has slow seasons. So now they may be shorter or longer depending on, you know, when and where you are. But don't tell me your fleet doesn't have a time period where things aren't really slow, right? Probably is a time when maybe, maybe people, people taking vacation or something like that. So maybe you can kick it off or do it right at the end of that or right at the beginning of that, but you can find the time, right? So those are some tips, some quick tips, but the first and most important—

And on the finding a time, get it on the calendar.

Get it on the calendar.

Right, so we do, when we do this, we do a PTO blockout, which is nobody's traveling that week. We look for a gap in the calendar for like, there's no trade shows, there's no travel, like nobody's doing anything. Okay, block it out now. We try to do this months in advance, like anywhere from 3 to 6 months. So that people can plan around and plan vacation around it.

Right.

And they know that any PTO request during that week, right, unless they had a baby or there's some kind of medical emergency.

Right.

Which obviously they're expected to be here.

Right.

You know, and so that's—

well, that's a good point too. So there's an expectation to be here, right? There's no, oh, that's nice. I don't—

it's an option.

I'd rather— I'd rather have the time off. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no. We're all coming together. We are a team. We are a group.

And this goes back to the investment. We're making an investment in everybody else. And if you choose not to invest your time with us, like, it's kind of just self-serving. We don't want that. Yeah. Like, we're, we're putting a lot of money down to make this successful, and you're part of that success.

Yeah.

Be here.

Right.

So we block out the PTO for that reason.

Yeah, exactly. So to your point, get out in front of it. Like, if you're listening to us today, you know, it's fine. Schedule it for 12 months from now if that's what you need to schedule for the following year, if that's what you need to do. But schedule it. And let everybody know, you know, this is, this is where you're going to take time off. And even again, going back to the money thing, I just know because I know fleet people, I know how they think. Yeah, they don't have budget. I don't have budget for that. Um, you know what, Tony Yankovich did this once. He, he convinced an organization to just, just talk to a couple of the local food trucks. Yeah, right. And you just brought in several of the food trucks at the same time into the, to the little lot there, and so that they had like a bunch of different options that they could get food for lunch, and then they stuck around, they came back, and they did it like after the day, right? The folks bought their own lunch. It didn't cost the fleet anything, right? But you just added so much convenience to them, and it was so neat to be able to have all those. He did it like, um, you know, like a, like a— what's that one— like an Epcot style where it was like, like, you know, like Mexican and Greek food and, you know, all that kind of a thing, right? Super cool stuff. So it's just a matter of like Putting some thought and time into it and, you know, being creative and coming, and coming up with, with a way. And I'm— and probably in your shop, this is another thing I know, you know, in all likelihood there's some commonality of things that people like. Yeah. So for example, I mean, people find this in the world of work here. We got a lot of big basketball fans here, right? Basketball is a thing. Not everybody, but we got a lot of big basketball fans. Maybe it's just a matter of, you know, maybe that first attempt at this is, is organizing a game or a weekend thing or You know, but whatever it be, you know, you can find it if you truly try and look for it. And it'll go so far for you. It'll go so far for you, you know.

People will talk about this for months.

Yes.

They'll be like, oh man, that was so awesome when we did that, right? Yes. And the more I will tell you that you put yourself out there as a leader and, you know, and I haven't done this the greatest, you know, like this last year I didn't do great at this at all. But the more you can put yourself out there as a leader, like they will remember that.

Yes.

You know, just like your kids remember, you know, if you remember, when your dad acted like a goofball, right? Did something, you're like, man, can you remember the time our old man did that?

Yes.

They will say the same thing about you.

Yes.

Remember that time that Billy went out there and, you know, got himself in the dunk tank?

Yes.

Because we've done that in years past, like all the executive team was a part of a dunk tank and people got to go out there and dunk us. They have so much fun with that.

It's hard to properly articulate how valuable that is.

Yeah.

Making yourself a human being for your people, being open, being vulnerable, just showing them you're, you know, You're just like them trying to get by, trying to enjoy your life, trying to make a living. I don't even know the word, the right words, but it just goes so far, you know. Um, and it's— and, and of course what's implicit here, we haven't said it yet in this podcast, we talk about it a lot. What's implicit here is we're building culture, right? Um, and, and so if you're asking the why, it's a, it's a key, it's a key— what's tactic, let's say, or key as part of this, the, of the main pillar here of having a culture, right? You want to be a place where People want to be together. They feel like, that's the person I want to be in a foxhole with. That's the person I'm going to run through a brick wall for, you know, that kind of a thing. And building that camaraderie, building that closeness, and it goes so far. It creates openness. It makes people comfortable to ask questions they would never ask. It makes people comfortable to make— to suggest ideas they would never suggest. Yeah, you know, even just to your point about the line of communication, You know, I've seen it. People will come up to you and talk to you about things that otherwise they never would have. And then it will oftentimes kind of live a life. It will continue then, right? Someone never talked to you because that's the boss, right? I'm not going to talk to them.

Intimidating.

You know, after Spirit Week, now it's, hey Josh, how are you? What's going on? What did you do this weekend? Oh yeah, I've been trying this new recipe. You know, it's amazing.

Have you smoked any meat lately? Yeah, right. Like, what are you doing now?

You know, it's amazing the doors that open.

You know, yeah, everybody keeps hitting me up for my rib recipe. It's nothing magic, man. Honey and brown sugar, a little bit of hot or, uh, sriracha. There you go. So I would— yeah, I'm with you. Just do it, you know, even if it's just a day. Maybe it's not a full week, but just try taking a day, right? Or a couple afternoons or something like that.

Yeah.

And look for— just bring in some fun. Yes, you know, bring in some fun and let the guys just take a break.

Yeah.

You know, and run the interference if you need to with the rest of the departments. It's like, hey, you know, Friday afternoon we're gonna shut it down for 3 hours.

Right.

And just see how it goes.

Yeah.

You know, like the odds are is that it can go, or you know, things can go a little bit slower during that week. Like you said, find the slow season, find something during the slow season, but just, you know, get out there and do it.

Yeah. And to your point real quick about the week, like, yeah, again, even if it's just a day, but you know, we do a pretty good job here. It's like, I don't want to give the wrong impression. Yeah, we're playing those games, we're not missing the whole day. And you know, if you just, you know, if you get a, get a few ping pong matches in on Monday afternoon.

Yeah.

And then on Tuesday you can have like a semi-final, and on Wednesday, you know, and then that's something that I'll do. Yeah, right. You know, whatever. It doesn't even, you know, here's a wrench, you know. Yeah. You know, like it, it's, it's more the fun of the experience of it, you know. And so I encourage you to try to think, even if it's like an hour after work, of having that build up to that sort of, you know, that— what's the word I'm looking for— like that culmination there of having, you know, it's all for fun, but it's something neat about following it through the week kind of a thing, you know. So something to think about for folks.

Well, if you guys want any suggestions or have questions about how you can implement a spirit week at your shops, you know, hit us up. Mark and I'd be happy to offer you some feedback. Just email us podcast@rtafleet.com. I would love to hear from you, answer any questions you have about it. It truly is worth the investment.

It really is.

If you talk to anybody here, they will all tell you it's like they get a lot out of Spirit Week. It sounds, you know, silly and it sounds trite, maybe a little trivial, right? But the goodwill that it generates between all the team members is you can't overstate it.

Yeah.

So it's worth the investment. Yeah.

And if you're a fleet manager out there and you're doing this kind of a thing, you know, share in the comments.

Come on, guys.

Yeah, for sure. What are you doing? What are the kinds of things you're doing? Let your fellow fleet managers know.

I know there's a lot of fleet managers out there that do like, oh, we did barbecue or something like that. Right. And some of them smoke it themselves, others they just cater it in. Right. You know, they're still trying to do something.

Right.

What's your next thing? How do you make that even bigger?

Right.

Right. How do you turn it from just a, hey, we brought in barbecue for the guys for lunch, which they appreciate. How do you turn that into the next thing? Yeah. Right. And really turn it up. Yeah. So.

Could even be a cooking competition for that matter, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Cool stuff.

All right. Well, with that, that's going to do it for us for this episode. Love to hear from you on podcast@rtafleet.com. Otherwise, if you want to hear more about setting up an intentional culture and some of those plays, you can go down to fleetsuccessplaybook.com. As always, feel free to share the episodes with your friends and colleagues. We'd love to hear from them. Until next time.

Take care, everyone.

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