Boost Retention and Loyalty with Culture Branding with Nader Safinya

Let me ask you something that is a little bit uncomfortable. If your company were a person, would you hang out with them? Would you trust them? And better yet, would you hire them? Because today's episode tackles the silent profit killer inside almost every single business. And that is the gap between what leaders say and what their organization actually does. And that gap, it's costing you talent, customers, and credibility. And that's what we're talking about today on Experience Leadership.

Welcome to Experience Leadership, a podcast that challenges small business owners and entrepreneurs just like you to dare to be the exception. Join our host, customer experience expert Marc Haine as he uncovers relevant and timely content to help you script and direct your business and teams to create jaw-dropping experiences your customers and staff deserve. Here is the host of Experience Leadership, author of Lights! Camera! Action!, customer experience expert Marc Haine.

Welcome to this episode of Experience Leadership. I am your host, customer and employee experience strategist Marc Haine. And I'm so glad that you're here today because my guest is culture branding guy Nader Safiyyah. And today, we are going to be pulling back the curtain on the biggest illusion in business. What you think your culture is versus what people actually experience. So, stick around with us. And hey, if this is the first time with us, I'd like to say welcome. I hope you find this episode valuable. Please feel free to check out past episodes if you do. And please, if you haven't done so yet, please make sure you're subscribed to this podcast. We're reaching now about 1,400 people subscribed. I'd love to get to 2,000. I know in the whole realm of social media and online content, 2,000 is precious little, but it'll mean a lot to me if you would subscribe. And that way you'll get notification when I bring you fresh new content each and every week. You know, I have worked with a lot of leaders who proudly show me their mission and vision statements the way a parent shows off baby pictures, right? They're like, look at our values. Aren't they adorable? But here's the thing. Your customers and your employees aren't judging your values by a poster that's sticking on your wall. They're judging them by how your organization behaves at like 2 o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon. And in a world of rising expectations, AI disruption, and noisy competition, the companies that win are really the ones where every message, every touchpoint, every decision feels consistent and intentional. And that brings us to our Question of the Day. So, if your employees and customers met each other for the very first time, Would the stories they tell about your company match up? Think about that for a sec. Go ahead. I'd love for you to be part of this conversation. Go ahead and share a link to this episode on your favorite social media platform. Hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership and put down your comments. I'd love to see you part of this conversation and your contribution. As I mentioned, my guest today is someone who doesn't just talk about culture. He dissects it. He redesigns it. And then, gives it a passport to travel across your entire organization. Nader Safinia, the Culture Branding Guy, is the founder of Black Ribbit and the architect of the Culture Branding Program, a methodology that finally closes the gap between what companies say and what they actually do. He blends psychology, design thinking, and organizational strategy to help leaders build brands people genuinely want to work for and to Buy from. Big one. He's lived the problem he solves applying to 460 jobs during the Great Resignation and comes to this work with a global lens shaped by growing up across continents, cultures, and power dynamics. Nader, welcome to the show. It's so great to have you.

Marc, it's so good to be here, man. I've been looking forward to this. I'm excited to get into it with you.

So, maybe we could start off. Tell us a little bit about what Black Ribbit is and who they serve and how they serve.

Sure. Black Ribbit is the culture branding company. Our entire ethos is rooted in frog symbolism because I misread a tattoo shop's name back in 2017 in Munich, which was called Black Rabbit, and I misread it as Black Ribbit, which incidentally just put me in a sea of frogs and images of frogs and so on. And I learned very quickly that frogs represent empathy, the wisdom to empower oneself, guidance. They represent caregiver archetypes and so on interculturally. And it just so happens that those are the values that through which I try to live my own life and of course conduct business. Ultimately, Black Ribbit turned into, from a traditional branding agency, turned into the culture branding agency after that incident that you just described about me looking for work in 2021 and trying to identify what the hell was even going on there. You know, what is that disconnect all about? Why? If someone like me, after 15 years with a master's program, a master's degree, a linear career path in design and marketing and all things communication with intercultural background, multilingual, can't get a single interview, forget losing interviews. I didn't even get an interview. I got one interview out of 460 applications. Like, what is that about? So that led me down the path to find what, uh, we're talking about today, this disconnect between what companies say and what they do. And that's what we aim to solve at Black Ribbit. That is our daily mission with a vision to make humanity harmonious by lifting our relationship with the workplace.

I love the irony of, you know, the people who are, we're a people-first culture, and the very first thing that they do is they set up some sort of robot to scan through the resumes. And it's like, hmm, how culture people first are you actually? So, we've heard about culture. We've heard about branding. What is culture branding and why is it suddenly so critical for businesses today?

That's a good question. So, let's just go 101 real quick. So, brand by definition is a gut feeling about something, right? It's a gut feeling about a person, place, or thing. Culture is your lived belief system. Both are a consequence of behavior, right? So regardless of whether we want them to exist or not, we have a brand and a culture, right? Like they're a consequence of how we act. So people will develop a feeling or a perception of you and mirror your behavior so long as you're behaving a certain way, because that's what they think is okay. And that's what they feel. Culture branding is a very intentional, intentionally designed model Through which you ensure it's a human-centered model through which you ensure that your fundamental non-negotiable values, 3 to be exact, are injected into every single interaction inside and outside of your entire organization's ecosystem. So that when anyone interacting with your company at any level, from any perspective, and I underline that word any, I mean, if they're using the pens in your office to like seeing an ad on the street, to hearing about you from someone else, they experience the same thing, aka your brand. So that's what culture branding is. It's injecting your culture, which is your lived belief systems, aka your values, into every touchpoint so everyone feels the exact same way through the core instinct of your organization.

I love that.

You know, you're preaching to the choir. You've just hit every touchpoint I talk about, which is, you know, you— it, and it really is, it really is about Living your purpose regardless of what's going on. Because what I find happening too often is that people have one way of believing and people are very aspirational. Like we want to be a people-first company. But then, it's like, oh, but we're getting 3,000 applications. We need a faster way to go through that, right? Instead of hiring more people to go through the resumes or creating a— they're like, oh, let's just get software and let's just put it through the software. And then, there be it.

Yeah.

Lost opportunity because you're scanning through based on a parameter. And yet, had anybody stopped to talk to you for just a second, they could tell instantly what you bring to the forefront, which a computer program could never do. So, from your experience, what's the most common blind spot that leaders have about their own brand culture?

The most common blind spot is that they're not thinking about it through the lens of others. The word that's lacking is empathy. Leadership believes their brand and their culture is being perceived a certain way, and they will tell you so. That doesn't necessarily make it true. I don't even think it's intentional. They're busy doing what they do, running the company and so on, that they tend to either forget or put aside the very important act of checking in. Of just checking with your people, speaking to them, asking them questions. I'm not talking about an annual performance review. I'm talking about a regular check-in to see just a pulse check. You know, what does this place make you feel? How do you, you know, what are you motivated by? What do you believe we even do here? You know, asking people here, how do you think your job actually plays into the big picture? Do you even know what the big picture is? Do you know why you are here? Why do you want to work here? Not why should you work here? Why do you want to be here? Is this somewhere you want to be? Do you enjoy coming to work? Let's say you're still going into an office. If you were in traffic all morning, are you saying, at least I'll be at work in an hour? Or are you saying, now I have to sit at my desk for another 8 hours. How the hell am I going to get through this entire day? Those are 2 very different sentiments. So I think that's the blind spot. You know, it's just kind of being, and again, I don't think it's deliberate. It's just, they're so busy that they don't take a second, just step back and look at the big picture.

It's so interesting because in what you've just said, there are so many different components, so many different value systems, so many different virtues that if we were intentional enough, we could overcome. But to your point, part of it is intentionality. But part of it as well is people just don't know. Like, I truly believe that most leaders haven't been trained to be good leaders. What you're talking about is, and I believe that we need to get away from managers and start looking at managers as being coaches where we sit down. We're on the sidelines helping our people move forward. And to that end, we're having the sit-downs. We're having the one-on-ones. We're having the groupthink sessions. broken out into talking about important things like values and virtues and what we believe, right?

Yeah, agreed. And the whole values conversation is so interesting to me because it's— you mentioned earlier, you know, words on a wall. Most of the time, and I underline most, most of the time you go into a— it can even be leadership. I mean, leadership, we're talking the C-suite, the founders. And you ask them, tell me, list me right now. Tell me right now what your company values are. And they either can't or they'll miss a few. And my favorite is when they actually name them and then you go, okay, well, what do those mean?

And then it's like, well, exactly how they sound.

And I'm like, I don't know what those mean. What do those mean to you? That's when it's very clear that not only is it not a lived belief system, it's not even a belief system. They don't even necessarily buy what is written or whatever. And so to systematize that and create an operationalized culture is not trivial for exactly that reason. How do you create— the question becomes, how do you create intrinsic motivation that intrinsically drives people to live through a very specific lens and live through a specific belief system without thinking about it, you know, in an unconscious manner. So the adoption is unconscious, the learning is inherent. And you and I know very well, you know, change is always met with resistance. And that's why good design becomes inherent. It employs unconscious adoption techniques So that we don't— there's no tension. You know, it's the essence of good user experience where you don't— you just— the thing just does what it's supposed to do. You don't think about how to use this thing. And before you know it, you're just living this new sort of behavior.

It's interesting that you said, because a lot of times we will talk to employees and they will have been assigned something and they're sitting at their desk muttering something like, They won't pay me enough to do this work. And right away, to me, that is an instant indicator that there's a misalignment between culture values of the employees and what the organization is standing for. Because if it was in alignment, the earning wouldn't even come up. It's like, this just feels good. It feels right. It feels like I'm on purpose, right?

Yeah.

And so, the fact that you get paid is like, you know, what is it somebody said that if you love the work you're doing, you're never to work a day in your life, right?

Absolutely. There's a question that I often love to ask, uh, or even think about. If you remove compensation, what motivates— you know, how do you attract the brightest and the best if you didn't— if you just removed compensation? That's a very hard question to answer.

And the cynics would turn around and say, well, nobody would show up to work, which to me smacks of, then you have a bigger problem because you're telling me that none of your employees volunteer For anything. They don't have things outside that they volunteer with their kids' soccer club or the hockey team or the women's club. Nobody's volunteering because they're all driven by compensation, which is false.

That's right. Absolutely. And, you know, then we boil down to the questions that, again, we're talking about here is why would anyone want to work for you? And that's, that's a question that's often missed in syntax. People often respond with why anyone should work for them. It's very easy to say, why should someone work for me? It's just like saying why, you know, why I can tell you why I think you should be my friend. I can sit here and list all the reasons why I think I'm so cool, but I have no idea why you'd want to be my friend until I get inside your head.

Right.

You know, I might, my face might trigger some unhappy memory for you that I don't even know about. You know, like I have no idea until I actually ask you.

Only that you're too darn good looking. And I know when I grew up, it was all the good looking guys took all the girls. That's why you're my enemy. No.

Yeah, you're too kind. Um, the, uh, but seriously, like that becomes the question and most people don't know how to answer that.

Right.

And when they do answer it, it always comes from a place of why someone should. And it tends to start with, you know, good compensation, benefits, and ultimately how job descriptions are written. Which are like project briefs.

Right.

Well, and it's interesting, and we're not downplaying the need for compensation. I, I don't want anybody to tune in and go, wow.

Of course not.

Because we need, we need a livelihood. And our value system stems from, you know, I put in this work. In all fairness, we have this, this trusting relationship. I do this work, I deliver on purpose, and because of that, I'm getting fairly compensated. It's sad that you talk to tons and tons of different industries. And there is a huge misalignment in compensation and gender, misalignment in compensation and class, which I think is really unfortunate. And it speaks again, it speaks to the culture and the belief system of the organization, especially when you see mission statements that say, our mission is to provide stakeholder and shareholder value by— and then they talk about everything else. And it's like your focus is completely wrong.

Yeah. You said something earlier to me. You said, if you're not serving your customers, then you should be serving someone who is.

Right.

And that resonates with me because one thing that I often say that's really interesting that, again, I noticed when I was uncovering this disconnect between what companies say and what they do is companies are designing for 2 experiences. So you have inside and outside. So you have leadership, branding, marketing, sales, pretty much focused exclusively on the customer experience, and then you have change management, HR, and recruiting focused on the employee experience. And these 2 sides never talk. So you have this big disconnect between the employee-employer and employee-customer relationship, and you have a company that says one thing and does something else. Moreover, you have customers basically being treated like dollar signs and employees being treated like dollars spent. And ironically, no one is treated like a human. And you get— it's funny how that works. And you basically have a market that doesn't see what it gets, that is not getting what it sees, and expectations that are broken and missed. And that's most evident in the job application process. You know, you read job description. When is the last time you read a job description that actually addresses how that job's going to impact your quality of life? You know, and so when I bring up this topic that you eloquently posed is you don't act like you're serving your employees as a leader. You know, you're basically telling me that they serve you. And frankly, it's not this or that, it's both. It's a two-way street. You're serving them and they're serving you. And as a result, you serve each other. It's the root of hospitality.

Yeah.

So, you know, when someone comes into your home, In the Persian culture anyway, you know, it's a never-ending reciprocity. Like, if I invite you out, that means I'm going to cover the tab and it's a given, but you're also going to fight for the tab. And then one of us is going to win. And then the next time the other person pays for it just inherently, and then the other one fights for it and it just goes like that forever. And until someone just starts taking and you're like, you know what, this isn't going to work out anymore.

It's almost like a trust test, isn't it? When you think about it. But to your point, this idea of— I find that unfortunately, there's a lot of leaders out there that were brought up with a heavy hand. And it's like, just do what I tell you to do. It's the same thing with, but Mom, why? Because I said so. And so, they figure because they're in a management position, because I said so is good enough. And so, I insist that you treat your customers so well. Now, get the hell out of my office.

Yeah.

And it's like, what's this disconnect? You just told them to respect customers and you disrespect them.

That's right. And that's not how you instill behavior anyway, you know? And to your point, you're going as the employee, you're going to mimic your boss's behavior.

Yeah.

Right. So if he's yelling and screaming at you, you're going to yell and scream at the next person. And that's just how it's going to go.

Like, I can't tell you how many times somebody has been hazed on the job And I'll pull people aside and say, why are you treating him like this? Well, because it's what happened to me when I got here and it happens to all new people. And it's like, do you understand how ridiculous that is? Did you enjoy it when it happened to you? No, but it's a rite of passage. And it's like, what? It reminds me of the— there was a story about monkeys that they put monkeys in a room and there was a staircase going up to the top and they put a banana up the staircase. The monkeys ran up to get the banana, and whenever somebody touched the banana, the whole room would get flooded with water. And after a while, the monkeys learned that if you go up and touch the banana, you're gonna get wet. And so they stopped, they stopped touching the banana. They bring in a new monkey and they put him, and the first thing the monkey does, goes straight up, everybody gets wet. Then they stop. Then they bring in a new monkey who goes for the banana, and then all the monkeys jump on that monkey.

Jump on him.

And say, no way, you're not touching that banana. And then after several generations of changing the monkeys over, the banana goes out. Nobody, nobody is touching the banana because they learned that they're going to get beat up if they touch the banana, but they don't know why.

Right.

I think a lot of our culture is like that, right? We have all these kind of secret policies, the unwritten rules that we don't do, even though it says a whole bunch of stuff on our thing, but it's like, no. You can't do that because Ethel will get mad at me, or you can't do that because Steve will get mad at me.

Yeah.

Right?

Someone gave me a similar analogy recently. It was about, you know, like, I don't know, a way you cut the pie after baking it, like in the home, your mother teaches you this thing. And then, you know, you ask her, well, why do you, why do we do it like this? This doesn't seem like the most efficient way of doing it. She's like, well, your grandmother taught me how to do this, and her grandmother taught her, and her grandmother taught her. And then, you know, the last person, the daughter is sitting there going, but why is it like this? Well, because we've always done it like this. It's a tradition, you know, and there's no reason to change it because that's what it is. And that's the irony of tradition. And sometimes tradition and culture can sort of overlap and one might sort of overtake the other one. Tradition is an interesting one because tradition is rooted in rituals. It's rooted in In family, in a lot of meaning, in something that's deeply resonant and so on. And a lot of tradition, as we very well know, is incredibly inconvenient. It's not necessarily simple or even designed to be simple. It's because it's the ritual itself that is part of the tradition. It's something that we either say sacrifice together if you want to go heavy, or that we enjoy together if you want to go light. Or otherwise. Culture, again, is a lived belief system. It's not an activity by itself. It's the lens through which we behave based on very specific and simple values, simple rules, as it were.

It's so interesting because as you were saying that, I was recalling a conversation I had with a supervisor once. I was running a hotel and the supervisor came to me and said, oh, the bartender swore at a customer. And I said, oh, what did you do about it? She goes, oh, I did nothing. She never did this before, so I'm sure she's not gonna do it again. And so I had to point out that, you know, bad behavior will always escalate. It will always evolve into worse behavior later on if we don't address it. The fact that she didn't address it right then and there with the bartender gave the bartender permission. And so I pulled her aside and said, if you don't address this, Yeah. it's gonna get worse. You've just said it's okay to curse at a customer. And you're going to see it get worse and worse and worse to a point where it's just going to blow out. And so our culture then gets redefined because we decide that we didn't want to rock the boat or we didn't want to cause bad feelings or we didn't want to have a confrontation. Essentially, we're not allowed to live our values.

Yeah. And right there, I love that example. Right there, the fork splits, the fork emerges, like with that one incident that seems so minuscule. And then the next person comes behind her, that person trains that person, and then they say, oh, you know, it's fine. It's okay. You know, no worries. You know, are we allowed to swear here? Yeah, no problem. It's fine. You know, no one will, it doesn't matter, you know? And then that just keeps, that just, that domino effect takes place.

And then 3 months later, when you have your staff, when you have your staff meeting 3 months later, you're standing up in front of people going, I have a new policy. From now on, nobody's allowed to swear. And it's like, but we've been swearing forever.

Yeah.

And that's actually why, and I know you're a big advocate for this, it's your culture, the training of the behavior needs to be injected into literally every single behavior, no matter how big or small. And my model is actually the Culture Brand Program. reveals what I call the culture brand statement.

I'm so glad you said that because I want to get to that right after this.

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I am speaking with culture branding guy Nader Safiyyah. Nader, I cut you off. I did the one thing podcasters aren't supposed to do, but you were getting into my next segment and I'm so glad you were such a good Segue. So, bless you. So, tell us more about Culture Branding Program.

What I was getting at was basically just a quick reminder. The Culture Branding Program is a human-centered model that connects your fundamental non-negotiable values to every experience and behavior across your entire ecosystem so that when customers and employees meet for the first time, they actually tell the same story. In essence, it merges your operations with your communications. And the single most effective power tool that comes out of this program is called the Culture Brand Statement. And it's different from the vision statement and the mission statement in that the vision statement is your change-the-world statement that everyone can get behind. Your mission statement is your tactical, how do we achieve the vision statement, statement that is actually different for employees and customers. So you should Technically have 2. And then you have the culture brand statement, which is a product, an offspring, if you will, of the culture brand program, which is the foundational why you do anything you do. And it's very elegant in its makeup. It actually has no fat on it. It just says, we do everything we do because we value 1, 2, 3, and we want people to experience X. It's that simple. And it's 3 fundamental non-negotiable values, not 5, not 7, not 15. 3 easily, easy to remember, accessible, very simple fundamental values that when honored all the time will elicit a very specific response. And that specific response is a feeling, and that feeling is your brand. So that's why it's called the culture brand statement. And to our earlier point, you can break an entire culture with one menial act of sort of, let's call it defiance or An act that is counter to the culture you're trying to instill, like swearing at a customer behind a bar. And the culture brand statement then goes into what I've created and called the culture brand filter, which is the ultimate decision-making litmus test that is increasing decision-making speeds by a factor of 56, which is insane, which I didn't even expect. It was just a consequence of this tool. And so what this does is that it doubles as what we were talking about earlier as an unconscious adoption tool and technique. So your employees are acting through this litmus test that's so easy to follow because it's just 3, just 3. And you basically say, am I honoring 1, 2, 3 every single time? And the 3 values act like a 3-legged stool. If you're not honoring one, Then you're not honoring any of them and you break the experience that you're trying to elicit. So that can be used in decisions as tiny as what kind of office pens are we going to buy and how am I going to set up the room and is my garbage bin going to be full or empty every time people come in here or is it going to be half empty? You know, what kind of an environment am I trying to create? What are my hiring and firing policies going to be? What is our model going to be when we go to market to try to sell our company? If we want to look for an acquirer, it can answer all of these questions and it answers your fundamental why. Does it honor these values to elicit this response? Yes or no? If it's no, then you adjust your behavior until it does. Then you will elicit that response. If it's yes, great, get on with it and move on. And the only question that remains now is operational. When, how much, and how? So, and that's a much easier decision to make because it's like, do we do this? Yes or no? Because we know why. And then it's just, well, can we afford to do it now?

No.

Okay, then let's start allocating funds so that we can do it because it's going to help us in whatever our mission is. So it's critical and is changing the playing field, as it were, in decision-making and really injecting your fundamental core values into every single experience across the board. It's pretty amazing. The adoption rates of the Culture Brand Program and brand strategy and brand language and culture language is increasing significantly because of this little tool.

So, I get a sense that foundational to all this then is defining your values upfront. What happens if somebody doesn't know what their values are?

Yeah, that's a great question because they usually don't. And Let's go big. Let's talk about, like, let's, in the, in this landscape of business, it's lower middle market, but let's talk about a 200-person company.

Sure.

So how do you begin to distill down the values of this organization with 200 people? You know, and then is it the values of the founder or is it the values of the organization? And then what if the founder leaves? Like, does, yeah. Or is it the values of the customers? Or is it the values of the geographic area in which the company exists or was founded? There's so many different variables that you can question and consider when developing your values. And so, again, the only way to really understand this is to start asking questions. And our model is built on top of a design thinking model. So we start with empathy. We just go and ask everybody the same kind of questions. In essence, how do you perceive this place? We ask about operations, we ask about processes, we ask about feelings, we ask about problems they've had, points of contention, how those were solved, if they do, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's pretty in-depth. We interview a proper sample size. It's a scientifically driven model. So at the very least, 30 to 40 people, if not more, when the company passes a certain threshold. And we're not just talking to leadership. This is where we're also pretty different. We're talking to everyone from the founder to the door guy, and then we're talking to customers. We're talking to, in a perfect world, this is much harder to accomplish. We're talking to former employees and former customers and You know, asking them what happened and how did that go down and all this stuff. And when you ask anyone, it's like asking your community about you. You know, if I ask the world about Marc Haine, they're going to tell me something. Everyone's going to have a response. Some people may have something negative, some negative things to say, but everyone's going to have something positive to say. So it's like a SWOT analysis. There's always a strength. Always. And even someone who doesn't like you will say something nice about you because there's something about you that's consistent and that consistency builds some sort of trust in that behavior. So they'll be like, well, you know, he's kind of an ass, but at least he's this.

Oh, you found me out. It's interesting that you say that because then, you know, I'm also like, I also have a talk to your suppliers. Talk to the people you're doing. Talk to all your stakeholders. It's interesting because what you've said kind of is seeded in like the first chapter of my book. I talk about experience expectations. That every single time that 2 human beings come face to face with each other, there's an expectation as to what that transaction is gonna look like. And we either live up to people's expectations or we don't.

Right.

Sometimes we can exceed the expectations. It's like, I can't believe he did this for me. Or we can also create like the utmost in disappointment based on what— and it's all like leveraged around this idea of trust. And so, to your point, talking to people and then because ultimately, that's how we understand what the expectations are. If somebody turns around and says, well, I didn't think I'd have to work 60 hours a week. Well, what did you expect? Well, when I got hired, they said 40 hours a week. Oh, so your expectation is that you'd be okay with 40 hours a week, but 60 hours a week is way too much. Right? Now you get into conversations. And to your point, this goes back to the very first thing that we talked about is if people are talking to each other, we're able to understand what those expectations are and be able to say, well, you know, we want this organization, we want this culture to be more balanced, and we need that input from you. And we didn't realize we were messing up.

Exactly right. Just every nail on the head. Yeah, that's it. Because otherwise you're just speculating, man. Like, there's, there's So many agencies or consultants will come in, which is why there's so much resistance to what we do, to our field, because of— I often say I feel like an insurance broker half the time because I have to clean up the mess behind me and tell them, well, this time it's going to be different. Trust me. And you never use the phrase trust me. That's the first rule of communication. You don't say that. You just do.

Yep.

And so, you don't have to say that. And so, in the case of distilling the values, it's amazing what's revealed through that process. My favorite part, the nerd in me comes out because I love the research phase for exactly that reason. The first phase is you find so much truth. There's so much objective truth that you find when you talk to so many people. And when I tell people to trust the process, that's what I mean. I go into meetings with prospects and they'll say, so I guess you're going to do this and you're going to do that, and maybe we could do this. And every time I say, I'm not going to answer any of those. I don't know anything right now. I don't know anything. For me to tell you anything would be a lie. So I'm controlling myself because everything I say is just going to be speculative. And so I need to go do the work. We need to go ask the questions. We need to go look under the hood, cut the guy open, whatever, for me to actually know what's happening. I can't just tell you by looking at it. I have no idea. And that's not an easy answer for a lot of people to swallow because it's not tangible. They're like, but I want to know what you're going to do. I'm like, I don't know what I'm going to do.

It's interesting because again, That to me just gives me a sense of what that culture looks like because it's like, why are you talking about what the process is? Why don't you talk about what the objective is?

Yeah, exactly.

Nader, for people who are tuning in, for the people who are that like their gears are going right now and they want to reach out to you and connect with you, how could they get in touch with you?

I'm very easy to find online. Even if you Google me, you'll find me. But I'm very active on LinkedIn, Nader Safinia, just full name, easy to find as well. You can also go to my website, blackribbit.com, reach out to me there. The, uh, the company email will get to me. Otherwise, yeah, LinkedIn is the best way.

I love that. You know, a lot of what you're talking about is this design thinking component supporting culture branding. How does a regular Joe apply these principles? Because it seems like there's still a lot of foundational work that needs to be done, and I would probably hazard that the best way to do this foundational work is to bring somebody like yourself on board to help make it happen? Because I don't necessarily think that people would have the skills where they are today to define where they messed up or where they need to rock the boat or where they need to kind of shave off some behaviors.

Yeah.

Is that fair?

Yeah, it's definitely fair. My program is very complex in its makeup. So, you know, it combines 5 disciplines. It's got Brand strategy, communications, operations, organizational psychology, and design thinking. And so when certain people like finance guys will be like, so what am I actually getting? What is this? Return on investment. I'm like, it's a question of vocabulary. I can give you 5 books and you can go learn what I've been doing for the last 20 years and figure it out. Or you can sit here and ask yourself a very simple question. Because again, the first step of design thinking is empathy. So why don't you empathize with yourself for a minute and just ask yourself, would you work for you or would you buy from you? And then you'll understand what I do because no matter what the answer to that question is, you want to get to the bottom of that. And then you want to create a narrative around answering that question more readily and more confidently.

It's interesting because I do secret shopping reporting as well. And so, it's interesting when I sit down with operators and I get— I had a pizza man, a pizza restaurant guy get really mad at me. He sat down with his report. Why do I care that there's fingerprints on the window? And it's like, well, that was just an observation. Why are you getting upset by it? Well, because the people— And it's like, I make good pizzas. And I said, so just out of curiosity, how do people know You make good pizza when they walk in. Like, doesn't it make sense that the touchpoints that they experience help build that trust? That if the place is clean, if the doors don't squeak, if the bathrooms are clean, if the menus aren't sticky, all these things add up to equating to you have a quality product in your kitchen, right? And so, I think we stopped thinking about that because again, to what you said earlier, we're so busy working in the business that we stop working on it. And that culture shift really hurts us in the long term, doesn't it?

Absolutely. It absolutely does because it's silent. That's the point. It happens silently and happens gradually. Just like, look, design is neither good nor bad, right? It just is. It depends on the hands of the wielder, whether it's It's used for good or bad and— or for good and evil, rather. Bad design is felt more readily. Good design, you can't even tell. You know, when you ask someone like, what is wrong with this product? When they don't like it, they will give you a laundry list of items and it's all functional, which is amazing. That means you can fix it quickly. When people like something, it's very hard for them to describe why they like it outside of an emotional response. They'll say, I don't know, it just feels good. I just like how it works. They don't really understand why or how it works that way. They just know that it does. And the thing with brand and culture is that because they're emotional outputs and they're felt, you don't really notice the break until it becomes of a larger magnitude. Interestingly enough, To your point with the bartender example, if you're paying attention, if you're very observant, you'll start seeing the breaks very quickly, like early. You'll see them in very minuscule sort of the minutia of people's reactions and behaviors and so on. You might notice something in your own department of 5 in a company of 500 people. You're like, whoa, something just happened. Someone new came in or— Someone who's been here a while came back in pissed off because something happened somewhere else. Okay, I need to get to the bottom of this like quickly before it spreads. So that's why training people, training an entire organization through, for example, this culture brand filter is so effective because it instills this unconscious adoption of the culture, the lived belief system, and the brand, the feeling you want people to have. And so now they're living through this and they start to recognize when something is not working because it inherently goes against their own belief system, which is now the culture of the company.

Having said that, it's all about that intentionality. I guess, you know, one of the challenges I had when I was— because I became a fixer within the hospitality industry, that is a company who's been around for 20 years, have tried everything. They call me because they don't know how to do it anymore. They can't, they can't think of what to do next. And what was interesting was I would walk into it and the definition, the rationale behind it all was, you know, I've been doing the same thing for 20 years. I just don't understand why it's not working anymore. And it's like, well, because the world has evolved around you.

Yeah.

And you haven't evolved with it. And what I found very easily, I found that I really had to do assessments before partnering up with any operator because I found what a lot of people were looking for were kind of the bandaid solutions, right? And if I wasn't changing them at the top, the minute crisis hit, everybody reverted back to the bad behavior.

That's it.

And so, this intentionality piece. So, when you think about it through your systems and so on, how do you maintain that intentionality?

Through repetition, honestly.

Is there a check and balance somewhere within your system that will let— because you mentioned something about the North Star measuring against it. But is there something more immediate that people can do to keep that intentionality?

Again, it's a behavioral shift. So the intentionality comes from wanting to be intentional, to caring about the bigger picture. I mean, we can talk about metrics, we can talk about measuring systems, we can talk about measures of success. What does that look like? What's important to who? And what does success look like in the eyes of different people? You know what, that's an interesting one as well. Like, you, the CFO is going to care about one thing, the CEO is going to care about something else, the middle managers are going to care about something, the CHRO is going to care about something else. You know, like, what does success look like? And ultimately, if the goal is collective harmony, which is the goal actually, is making a place, a place everyone wants to be a part of.

Yeah.

You know, that's where the intentionality comes from. The intentionality comes from feeling the consequence of a systematized organization, a place that elicits a branch of joy. The beauty of joy is that it instills intentionality inherently because you inherently want to create that feeling over and over again. Mind you, I'm not talking about happiness.

No, no.

Happiness is fleeting.

Yeah.

You know, I'm talking about a sustained feeling because I guarantee, I can tell you this with the utmost confidence, both from my own experience, from speaking to people and my clients. If someone is feeling joy from their work and that joy lasts even 3 months or 6 months, or let's say a year, 2 years, 3 years, and then something disrupts that joy, they're going to know it instantly and they're going to go, deal with it instantly. Like, something changed and I don't like it and I want to know what happened. And it doesn't matter where on what rung on the ladder they're on. They're going to be like, because they're coming from a place that allows for that kind of feedback. The only reason they feel that kind of joy is because they're in a place that allows for that kind of feedback. So they're going to go to whoever they need to go to and be like, look, Marc, something just happened. Like, I'm going home pissed off every day the last 30 days here. And I don't know what happened at what point, but certain interactions are not going the way that we've been talking about for the last year. And now my wife is pissed off every time I go home. Like, I need to know what's going on. That is intention. That's coming from intentionality.

Yeah.

You know, that's why it's, it's, I can't put like a, this is how you instill intentionality because it's, it's an emo— it's a behavioral shift that comes from an emotional response.

And that emotional response becomes— I mean, when you think about what Gallup says that like 76% of the working population right now is disengaged. There's 15% of your population that's actively disengaged. So, they're the cancers in our organization.

Yeah.

And so, when you're thinking about this, people who are 3 months going, I don't know why I'm so pissed off every single day. Well, why is it taking 3 months to figure that out, number one? But at the same token, that is what is forcing us into this idea of disengagement of, you know, I'm not gonna step up and out because there's no reward for it. It just causes me grief if I do. And so, all this is just like a kind of melting pot of dissatisfaction from many different areas. Because let's face it, you know, I love Stephen Covey's trust bank account analogy, right? That, you know, we have a level, you and I, we have a level of trust. If I do something, That defeats that. Okay, there's going to be a withdrawal. But it's not going to kill the relationship until it goes into overdraft. And you just feel, I'm being taken advantage of so I don't want to play anymore, right?

Correct.

And so, this idea again of intentionality I think is just being aware first and foremost of our feelings and what it feels like to be around, right? If the minute you walk into work, you feel this thing on your shoulders that you have the weight of the world on your shoulders as soon as you walk through the threshold, Something's wrong.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Exactly right. And I think what's happening with the, with the culture brand statement is because it's so damn simple.

Yeah.

The 3 values, like, so mine is Black Rivets is we do everything we do because we value reliability, compassion, and deliberate action. And we want people to experience compassionate design. So this is the other rule I didn't mention. So of the 3 values, The third one has to be action-oriented because without execution, nothing matters anyway. So you have to be— 2 of them are mindsets and one of them is action-oriented. With those 3, I can be like— the best example is using this. So I go, I can be compassionate and deliberate, but if I'm not reliable, then I'm not even there to hear you out. If I'm reliable and deliberate, But lack compassion, I might do something wrong because I didn't even give you a second to talk to me. I mean, if I'm reliable and compassionate, but I don't act on it, then again, who cares? It doesn't matter. I can sit here and say, I understand, I understand, I got you. And then you're like, so are you going to do anything about it? No. You know, and so because of that unconscious adoption and the simplicity behind this model, I can— you and I could be having an interaction. We could just be talking in the hallway or on the phone or whatever. And when you learn to live through that belief system, you can challenge me and be like, Nader, right now you're not honoring compassion. You're not being compassionate. Like, I know you're here and you're always here. I love that. Thank you. And you want to just go and you want to go and you want to go. That's fine. But you're not hearing me. And I need you to just like take a beat and listen to me for a second. And as part of my culture, we allow for that kind of feedback. Like, you're allowed to give the founder that feedback and be like, hey dude, you're not honoring our CBS right now. And because when you start instilling that belief system and that sort of grounded approach to living out that belief system, then you can use that word. It's not dorky at all. You can be like, Hey, Marc, you're not honoring our CBS right now. Like, you keep telling everyone that you're hearing them and that you're gonna do this thing, and you keep saying, yeah, okay, but it's been 3 days, man.

You're missing this one component.

Yeah. And you're missing this one component. And that's why it's— because it's so simple, it's easy to follow. And I think that also speaks or drives intentionality. Yeah.

Brilliant. I'd like to talk about some pitfalls and cautionaries because my fear has always been that there are band-aid managers out there who will say, oh yeah, this makes sense. I'm going to do this now. And I want to talk about pitfalls and cautionaries as people want to make the change in their culture. And we'll get to that right after this.

Attention meeting and event planners! Is your company or association planning a live or virtual conference, seminar, or staff retreat? Are you looking for a fresh, energetic perspective? On what it takes to put on a jaw-dropping experience for your customers or staff? Book customer experience expert Marc Haine for your next group event. Past participants have said, Marc kept us in stitches while teaching us how important and powerful actually designing our customer experience can be. Read more testimonials and find out how Marc can serve you and your group.

Welcome back! I hope you're getting tons of value from today's episode. As you can tell, Nadhira and I are passionate about today's topic. And if you belong to an organization that could use our help, or you might be planning a leadership retreat or a conference, drop us a line. We'd love to explore how we can be of service to you and your people. So, Nader, band-aid managers, cautionaries. It's fine to talk the big talk, and we've talked about how that is incongruent a lot of times. What are some cautionaries and pitfalls as people want to start shifting into a more productive culture brand?

I love the band-aid analogy too. Band-aids on bullet wounds, right? Like, I think, uh, I know everybody, it's, it's, this is very, very challenging, and I And I empathize with that. Everyone wants a quick fix. Everything wants things to be done quickly. And it's just the nature of our world. Web2 completely ruined patience. Like we got, we were able to get instant feedback and that changed everything. You have marketers that don't even know what strategy is because of that. They're performance marketers and so on. So it's just that, take a beat and think about What it is you actually want. You said so yourself earlier, Marc, that think about the objective. Stop thinking so much about process. What is the end goal here? What are you trying to do? How do you want to leave this world behind? I mean, think, ask yourself the big questions. How do you want your children to grow up? Really go big and then think about, okay, in order for that to happen, we need to do this, this, and this and this. Then you can start thinking about process and planning. And that becomes a strategy. And then though, that develops into tactics, which is short-term goals that will ultimately lead you to your larger fix and your foundational repair that will help you grow into the oak tree or the redwood that you want to grow into. The big questions are what's going to save you. You have to— what is the other book? The Big Impossible Scary Hairy Goal or whatever.

Big Hairy Audacious Goal.

Yeah. Yeah.

I think that's what it is. And You know, the purpose of the impossible goal is that the more impossible you make your goals, the more likely it is you'll reach them because you'll reach the bigger goals on the way. Because the only way to get to that impossible goal is to do impossible things.

Right.

And I think the biggest pitfall is just impatience, man. It's just this, like, we want to get there now, we want to get there yesterday. And, you know, To hell with what breaks on the way.

Again, it's like, you know, I have a potbelly. It took me years to get this potbelly. It came slowly. And one day I'm looking in the mirror, seeing video footage and going, what the heck happened to this guy? Right? And it's not going to go away instantaneous. It's the same thing with our culture. Our culture has been defined over years and years and years of behavior, of complacency and so on. It's not going to go away like that.

The way you worded that sounded like your goal was to get the potbelly, and you were like, "It took me years, years, years to get to that accomplishment." I accomplished something big.

It took so long to get to that.

Yeah. So, Nadir, this has been such a great conversation. Could you just remind everybody one more time how they can get a hold of you?

Yes, absolutely. Nadir Safinia, full name on LinkedIn, is the easiest way to find me. Otherwise. Otherwise, go to blackribbit.com and just email us. Thank you so much, Marc. It's been such a pleasure, man. Seriously.

It has really been a great conversation. I appreciate you doing this. This has been just absolutely brilliant. And we've had a lot of fun too. So I appreciate it. Made the time go by so much faster. Thank you.

Agreed.

Thanks, Marc.

If you have any questions about today's episode, or you'd like a complimentary 30-minute brainstorming session with you and your team, feel free free to book yourself on my online calendar. The link is in the show notes. It's the one that's marked meetwith.marchaine.com. And of course, if you need Nader's help, his contact information is also in the show notes. Make sure you reach out because this is a really important topic. We laugh, we joke, and we have a good time with it, but it is a very serious topic because ultimately your legacy and your future depends on it. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm at your service. And if you haven't done so yet, please make sure you subscribe to the feed. Follow me on social media. I do a lot of big posts. I loved having you here. Thank you so much for investing your time with me. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you dare to be the exception. Bye for now.

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