Putting Culture First - Fractional C-Suite Retreat - Episode # 026

Growing a business is hard, but it does not have to be. Once a week, we take a break from the hustle and bustle in business to talk about innovations and what's new in the C-suite. This is the Fractional C-Suite Retreat, and I'm Joseph Frost. Pull up a seat at the fire, grab a drink, smoke a cigar, and just join me as we relax, learn, and get inspired. This retreat is sponsored by Your CMO, helping organizations grow with better marketing strategy. Welcome. Today's, today's guest, he's dedicated to helping coaches accelerate their consulting practices. He is the author of The Culture Fix book and founder and actuator at The Culture Fix Academy. Welcome, Will Scott. Will, how are you?

Great, Joe. Thanks very much for having me on the podcast.

Yes, I love having you. I love having our conversations together, and I'm super glad that you're here today on our podcast to share with our listeners. So let's get right into it. One of the questions I like to start with are, um, is around opportunities and opportunities at the C-suite level. And in particular, is there something that you see, uh, as, uh, in your world as working with cultures, uh, that may be an opportunity for other C-suite members, uh, or leaders to consider and think about?

Yeah, well, the first thing that comes to mind on that is the fact that I still experience C-suite leaders often delaying investing in their culture, right? Because they have other priorities. Oh, well, we can't do that right now because we've got to grow revenues and profits. And of course, I try and encourage them to think about, oh, but if you put culture first, revenues and profits are going to come more easily. Because you'll get your team working together better. They'll be more motivated. They will have purpose and meaning to their work that gets them excited. And investing in culture is a really low investment compared to all the other things they're investing in, right? They want new products, new markets, but those all are risky and cost a lot of money. Investing in culture is a really low investment super quick return. We show, we measure these things. We can show improvements like going from scores of 50 on the eNPS scale to scores in the 90s in just 4 months if they invest in culture. So I think that one of the number one messages I want the C-suite to hear is put culture first. We all spend far too much time as leaders focused on strategy. And I like to say that strategy is to thought as culture is to feelings. And when we're all strategy and thought and no culture and feelings, then we're denying really what it is to be human, aren't we, Joe? And if we just embrace that and even put it first, then I think, and I've seen, and we have lots of evidence that these are more heart-forward as opposed to a head-forward leadership style. Pays huge dividends and makes everything else in the company and in the culture easier.

So I'm curious how you measure that. Not being skeptical, but being curious. The eNPS score, that's— is that some sort of employee?

Oh, so yes. So NPS, Net Promoter Score. It's really— I like to use the scale, right? It's just a great scale. And if you remember, there's promoters, passives, and detractors on that scale. Passives are ignored and detractors are subtracted from promoters. So it's a very unforgiving scale and you can actually get a negative number on it. Recently, a client of ours came up with a score that was 13. And within a few months, we're going to show how we can improve that dramatically. So there's a couple of— you can use a number of questions with the NPS scale. A couple of that we like, Joe, are, for example, what score would you give your company for having a great culture? And so if you poll 100 employees and you get 90 responses and they're all assigning a number between 1 and 10, for that, you can get a really meaningful number. And what about— so we like to test that at the beginning, at the end of our project, and then use that as a way of measuring the culture beyond. And so yeah, that's just one. Another great question is, would you unreservedly recommend working at our company to your best friend? Get a score out of 10 on that.

Unreservedly, yes.

Yeah. And so, yes, you can measure culture, Joe. That's just a couple that we use. There's many others. We use CORE Score, which I'd be happy to talk about in the time of this podcast. But also, we actually ask leaders to really measure ROC or return on culture. How much of the increase in the profitability of the company can they assign to the fact that they have invested in culture? And like I said, so usually a low investment, high return gives, of course, a really good ROI.

Yes. So when you measure culture with NPS scores, are you ever looking outward at the client NPS score, customer NPS score as a reflection of their culture investment? Or is it solely just internally with employees? What those questions that you ask from an NPS standpoint?

Actually, we like to teach that there's a lot of value in, of course, measuring your culture from within your population, be it the, be that employees, or maybe even if you're leading an association, or a not-for-profit, or religious organization, why not measure culture within the organization? But yes, I think your question is around, we also like like to have a customer survey, which also is looking for a measure on the NPS scale. And we also have a vendor survey because we believe leaders are not just leading culture, not just leading a company, they're leading a culture which extends well beyond the four walls of the company.

Yeah. And have you been able to quantify causation between raising culture index scores internally and external results or additional revenues or profitability more objectively?

Yeah, I mean, there's a number of things that you get into if you look at that. I mean, for example, yes, we might look at the performance of clients, and we certainly don't just do a quantitative look at that. We do a qualitative look at that. For example, what values do do you, Mr. Customer, see when you're interacting with the employees in our company? That's a beautiful thing for a CEO to know, right? What values do their customers see in their employees? And often that's something that we're not aware of until we ask. And then I like to see that written into the cultural definition so that we can turn that into competitive advantage. But there's other things that we can measure too, to your question, like turnover is a real reflection of culture and we can measure the cost of that. So yeah, there's a number of pieces that can go into it.

Yeah, it's fascinating. It's such a warm and fuzzy topic to most C leaders, culture, but to be able to quantify and objectively justify an investment or focus of even time and resources on culture. Is definitely eye-opening. And I know many people believe in culture and run their businesses with a strong focus. And I know many other entrepreneurs that don't. And I think personally that it's super important, but it's a hard thing to pin down. So what would, you know, you can measure it, but then what goes into creating culture? Like what's the kind of makeup? Is it just core values? Is it knowing your mission statement or your vision statement? Like what, goes into creating or building a framework for culture?

Yeah. Well, so we like to talk about implementing 9 deeds in 90 days. So there's actually sort of 9 distinct pieces that we believe are important. And really, core values are very important. And that's sort of step 1. You need to have a cultural definition. Our cultural definition goes beyond simply being core values. But then we believe that a lot of leaders have core values, or a lot of companies have established core values, but very few actually have a valued culture. And we know this because leaders will often say, oh, you know, we've got a great culture, we've got all our core values sorted out. And then I say, oh great, please tell me what your core values are. And do you know how many times the CEO, the leader of the company cannot even name all the core values in their own company. And then we say, yeah, and then we say, okay, can we poll your employees, you know, and see what they think about your culture? And of course, that's one of the things we look for. And in my research, Joe, I can generally say that only half the employees can name only half the values. So imagine this powerful tool. We're not only not using them, actually we don't even know what they are. So I know, and you know, and I know a lot of EOers have drunk the Kool-Aid around having core values, but what's a valued culture? And so we think there's these 9 steps that you can take to go to really having a valued culture. And the 9th one that we've already covered, which is talking about measuring culture.

Okay.

So look, it's not just about core values, and I could talk at length about this, but let's take the core chart, for example, which is one of the deliverables, one of the things that we believe is really helpful part of our process. And that, yes, that has core values, but it also has descriptive behaviors for the core values, right? What do we mean by that value in our company? And then we believe there should be a core purpose there addressing the why. So we like to see address their why there. And then we have things like a core target and a core date. And that target is a number, but it's not a number of profit and employees and things like that. It's a number of the goodness we do for the world. It's really a count of the why. It's really a count of the why. And put a real date on that so we know when we've got there. And that is hugely powerful for folks, for breeding loyalty within your company. If that is a juicy, thing that people can feel, they want to stick around for that day. You know, I believe we can bring loyalty to that destination and then just make it a great journey by having values that people can really use and describes the, you know, the things like making it safe and where people can really be themselves and can feel, can naturally behave because they are in aligned, they are aligned with those values. Final part of the core chart, Joe, is to make it graphically engaging. Because when we combine images with words, we augment our communal intelligence and increase our human bandwidth. Bandwidth to what? Well, to remember and to recall and to use these values. And that's research done by Robert Horn in Stanford showing the power of this. So we like to— that's covering the pieces, the anatomy, if you like, of a core chart.

I love that core chart idea. I've seen it before, you've shared it. So just off the top of my head, we have a core value, it's elevate your peers. That's the last core value we added. We have 6 core values, which is a lot, but we added that one recently, most recently, because we wanted to have a value that really talked about helping each other out within the organization and elevating the peer group. And so to take your core chart, then like what are behaviors that are associated with that would be what I would start to build out. Like it's showing up to meetings, it's mentoring each other, it's jumping on a one-on-ones when asked, like those would be behaviors, right? But what, and the why might be 'cause we're all trying to build better practices for each other. And there may be a why behind there, but I've not heard enough or nor did I, maybe I heard, I didn't listen, 'cause putting a target to what that good is. In that example, would it be something along the lines like we want to mentor 1,000 people in the community with, or something like that? Is that an example of how you would put a number around that value?

Yes. Now, I'm— so I don't talk about putting a number for every value, right? I think you said elevate your peers is one of the values. But what's the why for the organization overall?

So it's picking one why. Separate from the core values.

Yes, that's right. And of course, the core values definitely support us getting to that why. But that might be your why, is to elevate 1,000 people's lives by 2025. But I would still say, as you actually insinuated, but why? So elevate their lives, Why? So that. And I find the really powerful two words are so that. Because often that could still be what we do. Elevating people's lives could still be a what, but the why might be, you know, so that they can, you know, reach their full potential, as we say in EO, or whatever words you would choose to put on that.

I love that so that. Our why is to build life-changing practices. So that would be the thing that we need to add to our why.

I think so. And I think this is often the case. And the so that starts to touch on something you can feel, right? So it's nice that if we get some sort of emotional tug in there when we've completed that sentence. But I do find a lot of— Yeah, go ahead. Try it.

Yeah. The things that come to mind are so that they can live more happier lives. Or, you know, there's that. And also just talking about it makes it more warm and fuzzy to me. So, yes, that's a great takeaway. Thank you for that. I'm gonna bring that back to my team, like, oh my gosh, Joe's got another idea to share with me.

And, but yeah, I think, well, and yeah, so, and you've already sort of thrown a number out there. And what I find is really cool about that is, of course, being able to measure towards that. And so what we really want is our team members, when they're asked in the pub by a friend, What do you do? That they don't say, oh, you know, we sell software licenses so that people can be more efficient. But they say, oh, you know what? We're changing the world by doing X, Y, and Z, which is our why. And we just happen to do that by selling this software that empowers people to do that.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. So you've got this, uh, 9 deeds you do in 90 days as part of your process to establish culture. And some of that includes making sure they're straight on core values and then making sure it can be measured. Um, you also have decided that to bring this out to more businesses to take it to other coaches and essentially train coaches how to deliver this to their clients. So tell me about how you went through that leap from doing it yourself, maybe within your organization to a few handful of people to, I'm going to turn this into a coaching tool or resource.

Yes. Well, of course, I'm still doing the direct consulting work myself with clients, you know, that just because I love this work. And every time I do one, I have another great story to tell. I have another core chart. You know, we're getting to the point, Joe, where we're going to have so many gorgeous core charts that I think these are great examples to get out to the world. It's going to make another book. So—

A coffee table picture book for your coffee table.

That's right. Exactly. It would be exactly that. Yeah. And so I'm excited for that. But, you know, well, having done this a few times, and, you know, and now I do think I have definitely got a strong passion and maybe, and hopefully, a skill set that does help companies get to a really engaging why statement, and helps them not just have core values, but have core values that are really unique to them and meaningful. And yours, by the way, is a good one. You know, elevate your peers. There's a lot of things I like about that. And I do this with surveys and with interviews. I'll also do some ride-alongs, you know, if they have crews out in the field. And I like to observe and listen very carefully for cool little catchphrases that are a part of their language. And when we put that into a cultural definition, it's not just coming from the leadership. With words like integrity and respect, where you've got cool, unique kind of verbiage that the employees feel an affinity with and are already using. So I think there's some special stuff to that. But at some point I realized too, this is eminently teachable. And I actually asked some of my clients, hey, do you think I could teach other people to do this? And they said, absolutely. There's nothing special about you, Will. Then funny enough, as soon as I had the academy, which is the Culture Fix Academy, is where it's basically an e-learning platform where folks can amend a membership model, can come in and can get all the downloads and videos and scripts and things that they need. All our tools are made available there so they can take it to their clients. But as soon as I had this, folks were reading the book, The Culture Fix, Because this is what happens. This is what I'm experiencing, Joe. A number of coaches, they're seeing that their clients do have culture issues. And they're sort of questioning, well, do I have to fix these? Do I have to come up with these? Or does a solution already exist? And I found that it didn't exist when I went looking. And so that's how I ended up creating one. But now coaches are saying, hey, I love these steps in the Culture Fix because it just takes us nebulous culture thing and makes it something that I can take step 1 and step 2. And boy, after 9 steps and 90 days, wow, you know, we've really transformed the culture here. So it's with great joy that we've created this community of coaches now. And we meet every week and we share. And we are taking this, this out to our, to our clients. And we're growing their coaching practice, and we're doing this really noble work that's having a huge impact on the way people feel in the workplace.

And do you make your academy available to clients that might just want to have one of their team members learn how to do this and not necessarily a coach that's going to do it for outside organizations?

Absolutely. Call it an external— call it a professional coach or an internal coach. Absolutely. Internal coaches. Are also signing up at the Academy and are working this process internally.

That's fascinating. What have been some of the biggest, you know, what are some big ahas to you when you started having other people teach this or coach this to their clients? What were some things you heard back that you didn't expect?

Well, there's a lot of things in there. I mean, one right away is, so, Joe, we're trying to have a billion-dollar impact on the profitability of 10,000 companies and their million employees. Why? So they are loyal and fulfilled and have the freedom to be happy in those organizations.

Love it.

Yes. And one of— so now one of our coaches has decided that He's going to take up the mantle of 10% of that. And he wants to touch 1,000 companies and 100,000 employees over the next 10 years. So that was— imagine how that feels. You know, and we've decided we only need 100 coaches actually in year 5 to achieve this 10-year goal. But gosh, if I have enough folks like that, you know, we're going to really knock this out of the park. But of course, just the creativity that comes from some of the coaches who, you know, there's different passions amongst them, but one of them is sort of a journalist major and loves getting into the wordsmithing of the core values with the client. Others are more visual and so love bringing that, the graphics and the imagery to it. And of course, the stories they have to tell, right? We all love the great stories. One coach's company is— they're in the construction business, and actually for large military kind of sites, you know, where there's a lot of, you know, sailors or soldiers or Marines living on these sites with their families. And so they've got really cool, you know, words to their why now about, The difference is they don't just construct buildings on these sites. They are changing the lives for these families that rely on these resources on these sites. And one of the things that they're doing is stepping into the social media space for the first time. And what are they talking about? They're talking about their culture. And they're showing their core chart. It's a beautiful way to promote your company and what you do is to— is basically around your cultural definition. So hopefully that's an answer.

Yeah, that's—

Some of the things that I've seen, yeah.

Yeah, that's great. I think culture is such a great topic for social media, just switching gears for a bit. I feel like a lot of companies struggle to what the heck do I do or say on social media? And one of the easiest things is to talk about your culture because if done well, it will reinforce it internally.

Yes, that's right.

To highlight internal successes around culture, but you can also use it to attract the right people to your organization, which is a big issue right now for companies. How do I attract the right people or any people for that matter? And then it also will bring the right clients to you. So it's a great topic for social media. But it's rarely the focus. Usually hear about products and services.

And of course, yeah, leading with values is an awesome way to do that. Leading with purpose is a great way to engage, and it's naturally about people rather than about your software or your product or your thing. And so you can have great stories to tell there and just start lifting up employees who caught somebody else committing a core value is another great thing. And engagement tends to be higher with social media when we're talking about those kinds, when telling stories about people, as opposed to promoting our product or some white paper that we've come up with. Yeah.

And content is so hard to come up with. As a marketer, I know this intuitively. It's difficult to come up with unique content. That will separate you from your competition in the crowded space of social media. But your culture can easily do that because your culture is unique to you. What trust, even if you pick a word like trust as a core value, which is not the best word, but what does trust mean to you is different than what it means to your competition. And you can put a camera on somebody over Zoom and say, tell me a story about trust. And what it means to you in our organization. And in 1 minute, you've got a piece of content that was easy to come by and differentiating and can be shared on multiple social media platforms.

And isn't it interesting and engaging?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've used that as a tactic for a couple of our clients who were struggling with social media. And I developed a very simple to execute script for them.

Oh, that's awesome.

Core value questions, why questions, purpose questions. Yeah, you can do it every quarter fresh. Never gets old.

Yep, absolutely. There's a company in Indianapolis that's in the kitchen space. And actually, a lot of followers on Instagram, huge amount of followers on Instagram. —because of course it's very visual, is their products and services, right? And the things that they do. It's not just kitchens, but it's also homes and so on. And we helped them define their purpose as being about creating meaningful memories. And Think about that. So if they refresh your kitchen, for example, they're not just talking about granite and stainless steel, they're talking about making meaningful memories in the space. Because that's really what kitchens are about, aren't they, for families and neighbors gathering around in there. And so meaningful memories and being a sort of springboard to live your best life from. And when they talk about that and connect that with their followers on social media, it's no longer competing on price around granite and stainless steel. It's about that. And of course, that touches the emotions in the— for the family who's having the renovation done. And it's just— and of course, your close rate goes up when you can connect with people that way. Price becomes less of an issue. There's just lots of great things. So I think what you're doing for your clients is really spot on there. Yeah.

I think culture is just such a nebulous thing. And if you can put any frameworks around it or any tactics around it, it's going to be helpful. Yeah.

And I don't think it has to be nebulous. I think that's a common misconception. And that's really what we're trying to, at The Culture Fix, is to fix, is to make culture less nebulous. And we've talked a lot about measurement, but not just measurable. But what are the real concrete steps that you can take to have a great culture? And things like having a core chart. And I like to say that that should never— a bit like a soldier, that should never be more than arm's length away from their rifle. So an employee should never be more than arm's length really away from their culture definition so that they can actually use it. And so that they're memorialized in their head and they can use them in those important moments. But then the rest of the 9 Deeds, you know, Joe, going to talk about, for example, how to measure employee alignment with values and therefore how to unhire certain folks that maybe are not in alignment and are holding the culture back, how to hire using behavioral interviewing techniques and so on. But really specific tactical stuff that we can take to make sure culture is not nebulous and is a real tool that we can deploy in our organizations.

So let's talk about that a little bit as a— in the context of working with fractional professionals. So a lot of our listeners and my organization, we operate as fractional CMOs, and there's fractional CTOs and CFOs and CIOs, and by definition we're not full-time employees. But we're also very integrated in that leadership team. And I, from experience, I can tell you that if there's not a cultural fit, that engagement doesn't last very long. Yeah. So how can we take what you do and apply it to that fractional engagement to make them more likely to be successful or to screen each other better?

So you're talking about making, applying the culture definition to a more a more fruitful, more harmonious, more productive working relationship between the fractional C-suite person and the company that they're their client. Yeah.

Yeah.

So a great place to start there is, of course, the values. And I would encourage all your fractional folks to be, when they're in that sort of pitch conversation, that they are certainly volunteering and talking about what their values are and saying what kind of clients they work best with, so that we're immediately getting into that value conversation. And I find that can be, you know, really helpful in sort of in getting through the clutter quickly and establishing is there going to be a fit. So I'm a coach, these are my values, and these are the kind of clients that I work best with. And it immediately starts to get— and actually can create a little bit of that amongst the client that you're addressing, a little bit of that, oh, that sounds good, you know, oh, I want that, I want to work with this coach, I want to be one of those companies. So I really encourage that. And I also think on the company side, for them to be clear about their values and the kind of employees, stakeholders, consultants that they would work— that they work best with. And look, use the CORE score to actually put a number on that. And you can find the CORE score if you go to my book, The Culture Fix. And if any of your listeners are actually interested, just please email me or reach out, and I'd be happy to share it. But it's a tool where we basically look at applying a scale to the alignment of that individual with the value. So if you can imagine a spreadsheet and we've got, you know, the candidates maybe down the left-hand side, we've got the values across the top, and then the scale is assign a 3 if we think this person is going to show this value all of the time, 2 if it's some of the time, and so on, 1 for none and a 0 for— you get the idea. And that can take what otherwise can be a sort of a gut feel thing and at least apply a number to it. And if multiple people do this, then I think that number gets more accurate. And if we use this tool multiple times, then we as a group get more accurate about applying it too. So the CORE Score can be a great way to take that kind of gut feel and put a real number to the alignment of those values. And I think that's That's one great way to really make sure there is that alignment between the coach and their client. Yeah.

And in many ways, a fractional professional is similar to a coach in that they have to have a match there. And there's a consulting kind of arrangement that's going on back and forth. Yes.

Sorry, I should have used the term fractional, fractional coaches as opposed to coach. Yeah, in answer to your question.

Yeah, well, that's great. And you can do that CORE score for vendors and even clients, I suppose, right? That's right.

That's right. And it's a beautiful thing. This is 100% of the times that I've done this, and I've done this live in workshops, is apply the CORE score absolutely to customers. And hey, you know, Mr. X, who's your best customer? What are your values? What score would you give your best customer with those values? And of course, they're giving them, you know, high scores across. Oh yeah, you know, Absolutely. And then let's take your worst customer. And I don't like to apply the term worst necessarily, but, you know, it helps the exercise. And of course, they score very low. Which customer has a lot of friction for your team? This low-scoring customer. Which customer has very low friction, is easy to work with? Oh, this high-performing customer has a high alignment for us. Where are you making money? With the great customer. Where are you losing money? With this customer. Unhire that customer can be just the greatest gift you can do for your team. And everyone goes, oh, you know, thank goodness for that. And the revenue probably wasn't worth it because we were losing money anyway. So yeah, CORE Score, applying that to clients, you can do it for vendors. But I think, Joe, it's funny you should say this, but I think very, very few companies are actually looking to measure their stakeholders, their customers, and their vendors and others against their stated core values. But it's a beautifully simple tool and can be just huge when it's applied, including with customers, as you said. Yeah.

One of the things I've been thinking about a little bit is how employees' individual core values sync up with the organization's core values? And have you done any work along that with like a core score or like a match or a sync? Because I feel like that's something that we take— we assume that the core values of the company are the core values that drive individuals or should drive individuals. Really, it's their own core values that are likely to drive them within the organization. And having a fit there is super important. But we don't spend it— I'd say we— I have not seen many people spending time asking their employees, so what are your core values and how do we align or not align on some of those? Have you done any of that work or seen any of that?

Well, I think that's a tricky field to get into when we're sort of asking the employees what their values are. But I do certainly believe this is helpful, of course, is to talk about what the company's values are. And when we do the core score, and let's say someone's getting like an average or even a low score in terms of alignment with our values, it's definitely giving them feedback, Joe, and specific feedback where they observed a real story. So you can't just say, hey, you just don't score well on teamwork. Is not helpful. But to say, you know, we've noticed that one of our team members noticed that you seem to like working alone, for example, and you're less collaborative. And remember last Wednesday when we were doing this thing on the whiteboard and you sort of broke away with your laptop and came up with your own solution? You know, that's a great example of when we saw you, your preference being, and perhaps it's one of your values, is to work alone as opposed to work with a team. That— and then they go, oh yeah, that's true. When I pulled away with my laptop and kind of dove in, in my own little world, into a solution, that wasn't collaborating. And so you have a real conversation about that. Yeah, and we find it's better when everyone's ideas are coming together and we're all at the whiteboard or all using whatever technique we use to work as a team, that when you pull back, that doesn't look like teamwork to us. That's helpful. And so maybe that individual then can actually buy into and see what we mean by teamwork in our company. So yeah.

Yeah, I think I like that example. I want to just dig deeper though. I feel like individually, I know what my core values are. I know what drives me, what motivates me, what's important to me. And I am also in a leadership role and in a founder role. So I can create a culture and a company around me. Very much what entrepreneurs do is their company culture is essentially an extension of their culture. That's at the beginning. But I think equally important are each one of my employees has something that drives them. And I'm not suggesting that I need to change my culture to fit what's important to them, but I do think there's value in understanding those individual values and then trying to see, you know, are there some areas that sync better than others? And are there some roles that more importantly are better for people with different values within the greater organization? I just think there's something there that's worth exploring that I've never seen really. Yeah.

Well, I remember one time a couple of years ago, and this individual was the leader of— was like the plant manager, right? Managed the factory floor. And I remember this individual saying, oh yeah, well, I know the company's got values, but I've got my own values, you see. And And then went on to say about how, you know, that's what they live by is their own values. And it was a little bit of an alarm bell for me. And so when we took the core score and applied it to that individual, you know, we did actually see a bit of a mismatch there. And this person was always going to be putting themselves first and wanting to lead with their own. And that individual did not work out, actually. They ended up leaving. Because they weren't feeling, I think, really in alignment with that. But of course, I think that our team members in diverse and hopefully represent all the diversity of humans on the planet can be represented in an organization. But there is a common set of core values that they do still align for. So they might have additional values, but hopefully they at least which is why I like the number 4. I think 4 is a great number, and maybe 3 is even better, and 5 is okay. You said 6, Joe. I think, you know, getting to 6, we sort of— folks find it hard to remember once they get beyond the fingers on our hand. Yeah. So I often find too that you can actually— a couple of them can usually be combined. But yeah, so anyway, I still think that For leaders, a safe leadership practice is just reiterating what the values of the organization are, showing people, and lifting up the stories where those folks are actually demonstrating that value, correcting folks when they are not in alignment with those values, giving real stories that show them, perhaps they could align better. I think in the end, that's when the real power starts to happen. And we often refer, don't we, we're talking about teams to, let's say, Navy SEALs, where there's a very strong code of conduct there. And look, that team is just more successful when those folks are really bought in to what that code of conduct is for the team. Yeah.

Yeah. It'd be an interesting study to map out individual core values on inside of a large enough organization within teams or divisions or departments with the corporate core values. And just take a look and see how much of those are complementary or common or competing. And then go back and say, okay, let's map out the problem people or the problem areas or the problem divisions, or the underperforming groups, and see if there's alignment, if having real alignment with the core values amongst individuals and company showcases success or higher degree of success than when there's less alignment. I think it'd be fascinating to see that. I agree.

I think that would be fascinating. And I believe, I haven't used them myself, but I believe there are tools that try to do that. You know, there are survey kind of tools that have got quite a bit of data on this sort of thing. And I'm not sure how much they talk about values, but they definitely are, of course, looking at personality types.

So you see a lot of that. Yes. And I think those are wildly predictive of success when you have a match to the roles and personality types. I agree.

I really love some of the tools that are doing that, whether it's Predictive Index or Culture Index or those kinds of things. For using that as part of the hiring process, not exclusively, of course, but using that as part of the hiring process. Very, very informative. Yeah, that's—

it's just that it's an area I'm studying as I, as I'm going through this journey of trying to discover this decentralized leadership concept where leadership does not need to be centralized with an organization. And fractional is one step removed from that, right? So fractional leader is a decentralized leader. But if you go even further down the chain or away from the center, you can have leaders at every level of your organization. And I think there needs to be some shared characteristics of what makes somebody a leader that can be applied at every level of the organization. And I think values is one of those. I think good leaders know their own core values and make sure they surround themselves with, in areas of commonality with others, and that's, that they can lead. But I don't know that as I dive into that, I just think core values are such a fundamental leadership characteristic that I think it's got to have some application within the larger organization too, just like a personality. Test or assessment, I should say, has the same significance. Yes.

And as hard as it is to kind of really get this right, because there's some art, isn't there, as well as some science, is when you see the opposite happening. When you see someone that has these stated values or a company has these stated values, but actually the company is really stomping all over their own values because they behave differently. From what they wrote. And what they wrote was something that they thought would sound good, and they put on the website and they put on the walls. But if the leaders are not acting in concert with those, then of course everyone's just cynical about it and they have no value. And people end up following what the example they see the leader setting, not what the values are. And that's when in big companies you see a lot of scandals, and you can I've blogged about some of those, but—

The one that I think is worth exploring a little bit is this concept of a culture of accountability. You hear that term a lot, but what does it really mean? And how is it created? What does a culture of accountability mean to you? Yeah.

Well, I think so many of the systems that we try and put in place are trying to establish or enforce accountability, aren't they? Whether it's EOS or scaling up or any of these things, they've got a lot of tools in there, such as accountability charts or goals, KPIs, weekly metrics. These are all just trying to get people to do what they say they're going to do or to have some kind of accountability that we can lead against.. And I think those are important and helpful, and they tell a picture. And of course, we need to have data and all those things as leaders in companies. But what I think is even more powerful is if we have people that are naturally wanting to do what they say they're going to do, because it's in their heart, because it's just truly a value that they have, where they were raised with it or decided it was important, wherever it came from. If somebody says, yeah, I'm going to get you that report by noon on Mondays every week, that they just do it. Yeah.

And how do you build that culture? Because a spreadsheet or a scorecard doesn't build that culture. There's something deeper that builds that culture.

Yeah, that's right. That's why I say I think it helps if I know I'm going to be measured or I'm going to be held accountable at noon on a Monday. For having got that report in in time. But what if there's just— it's really in my heart, as I say, and I naturally want to do that because there's a joy to doing that, because I know that this report has value to the people I'm serving. And I want them to have the information that's in there because they're going to make better decisions. And that's why it's so helpful if it ties back to the why. Do I have a why? Yes. This report is not just a report on Mondays. This report is helping make decisions which help us fulfill our mission of doing goodness for the world. And, you know, so I think, yeah, I think values are hugely helpful to a culture of accountability.

Yeah, I think so too. Let's switch gears a little bit. So just, you're around a lot of good leaders or successful leaders. What would you say are some of the characteristics of a successful leader?

Well, in today's world, I think some of those skills are definitely some of the things we're talking about here, Joe, which are the softer side of leadership skills, right? You know, there are people that have spoken and written far more about this, Valerie, than me. But I'm thinking of vulnerability is one of the first things that I think— and that's a changing skill set. I think baby boomers were sort of raised with a different mentality about what leadership looks like. But some of the best leaders I've seen are definitely ones that can show vulnerability. Now, why do I think that helps culture? Well, if a leader's willing to be vulnerable about it, maybe a mistake they made, or will stand up in front of people and say, Joe, I want to come back to a conversation that we had in that meeting yesterday with the leadership team. And I said something to you which I imagine might have hurt you and which I'm not proud of saying. And I want to apologize to you. And I certainly want to say that that's not in keeping with our value of X. Gosh, you know, and that's just a sort of a simple example really, but I think that parlayed frequently and across the company makes everybody treat each other better, maybe more with more kindness, and makes everybody feel safe adapting that sort of softer side of a leadership side. And that's really the beauty about if a leader is vulnerable, now I can be vulnerable, and I can step into that conversation around feelings. And I can also, of course, feel I can be my whole self at work. And if I'm my whole self at work, I'm much more likely to be loyal and find joy of work there and bring my best creativity. Think of the flip side of that, where if somebody's kind of, you know, if our culture is to sort of talk over people and put people down, what happens? What happens? I mean, I shrink, you know, and I'm not going to take a risk and say that. And therefore, I'm not going to bring my best anymore. I'm not going to be my most creative. I'm not going to feel fulfilled. And I'm going to start looking at jobs elsewhere. And so there's such a great opportunity today for, I think, for leaders to to have this more heart-forward and less head-forward leadership style that really sees people, makes people feel connected, makes people feel good. And that's where loyalty will come in. And why would they risk going somewhere else if they really are happy and feeling good where they are?

Yeah, I think I hear you loud and clear. And that's a common— well, I hear that answer quite a bit when asked the question. Vulnerability is one of these traits of a good leader, a successful leader, for sure. And it does create an atmosphere where others can be vulnerable and feel safe and heard and voiced.

Yeah, I think perhaps some of those other sort of leadership skills are certainly here, the people-first kind of a leadership style and caring. Now, to some of your listeners, I'm just going to show this sounds like the soft side of work. What about getting work done and all that sort of thing? Well, I think that comes too. Both can exist. And it's better when they exist together, accountability and people will absolutely. They feel cared for and they feel like there's opportunity and they can bring their best and their whole selves. I think we're only going to get more productivity and compete better and all those things are going to come too. For sure.

For sure. What about the concept that everybody in an organization can be a leader in their own way? How do you feel about that idea?

Well, again, I think it depends on the culture. But I've seen many cultural definitions. In fact, one came up yesterday. California Closets, the franchise company. I don't know if it's still true, but years ago, one of their values was we lead. And they absolutely were intentional about everybody being able to be treated like a leader. Everybody was a leader, right down through to the franchisee employees who are going to someone's home and, you know, leading them through a design maybe, or leading them through the project and leading with the values. Another one of their values, by the way, was we value we. So now if you put we lead And that example I just gave with we value we, you can get leaders, but also valuing each other and that sort of community feel. And I love that when two values actually might seem juxtaposed, but when brought together, we're really starting to capture what I really think a cultural definition is, where we've got these multiple values, making sure that we're not extreme in one way or or the other.

Yeah, I hadn't heard that story about California closets, right? I like that because I think that mentality of that everybody's a leader at any level in the organization is powerful conceptually, but how do you bring it to life? Because that's the hard part.

Yeah, which is where it's important to have descriptive behaviors. And what do we mean by by We Lead in our company and put a bit of meat on those bones. Right. Makes it much more usable and providing a language that employees can easily recall when they want to step into that role of being a leader within the company.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Any other thoughts on leadership? What's— when you think about a leader, what's the main job of a leader?

Oh, perhaps— gosh, what's the main job of a leader? I don't think there's a simple answer to that, but I do believe that if a leader puts people first and leads with values, then that's a really good start to being, you know, the main job of a leader. And then of course, having a goal or a destiny, a vision is probably the best word, a vision, what we call core purpose. And going back to my core chart, a vision that says, what are we about? And and have that core date and that core target about what we're about. And that's why I love the core chart, because I think if a leader can convey and answer all the strategic questions that an employee cares about in one engaging image, then that's a lot of their work is done. Because now I know what we're trying to do, when we're trying to do it by, who we do it for, what we do, and how and why and all that. I think that's That's a great start. Yeah. And then having that, now just live by example every day around those values and vision. Yeah.

Yeah, I've been thinking about that.

People will follow and you will achieve what you're setting out to. Yeah.

Like a leader needs followers, right? That's almost fundamental. Yes. And you can lead yourself, but— Outside of that, you need followers. And so is the job to attract followers, inspire followers, set a direction for people to go? There's just so many things that come with that question. And it's always a fun one to ask, because it's hard to describe what a leader's job is, what a leader does. You kind of intuitively know what it is. You know a good leader when you see one or you're around one. A bad one. But they need to inspire, somehow influence.

Yes, I'm trying to remember the name. I think the name is McGregor, is a very well-known and very established leader that has a leadership book that dates back a while. And I remember when I was diving into that, and sometimes I flash this on the screen in workshops and so on. And he talks about the number one job of a leader has actually been to lead, understand the values of the people you're leading, and lead with values. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, that gets to the idea behind understanding individual values as well. If you know your values, you know the corporation value, and you know the values of the people that you want on your team and have on your team, you can help, you can utilize that knowledge to lead.

Yeah, and I think you've talked earlier about how important is that the leader, the CEO, the founder, and, you know, a lot of sort of clients that you and I and your fractional professionals have is this idea of at least their— the company values need to be in alignment with the leader's values. So of course they can lead with that. And I know I've I've got at least one example, and it's actually from a company based in Asia, where the leader thought they were doing the right thing in delegating the discernment of the values to their team. So their team had buy-in. But what they came up with, the leader didn't love. And so I think that is absolutely a no-no, and that the leader should be very much involved with the process of discerning values. Include the team for sure. But what we want the values to come out of that exercise is certainly values that everybody, the leader and the team, can run with.

Yeah. And it is certainly okay to have values that are somewhat exclusive. I feel like that could be lost in this idea of building values together. It's okay to have values that some people don't align with and they're not probably good fits for your organization. It doesn't mean they're bad people. They're just, they have a different set of values individually, and they need to find an organization that they can align with more. I think that's okay. That's an okay outcome of these conversations for sure. Absolutely.

By the way, I think it's okay. And thanks for reminding me about this, is that some companies might have a value that is a stated value of what they don't want. That's okay too. And like I know at least 2 companies that have got as a value, no assholes. Maybe that's an obvious one. I've heard that one. I love that one. Yeah. But your value might be what you also state what you don't want. But I remember one time in one of my companies, we were kind of having a reset and a refresh. And actually, I bought into the company. So this was done with the founder of the company. And we announced what our values were. And there was an employee there who resigned, like within an hour of coming out of that meeting resigned. And clearly just didn't like the direction, we didn't like the definition that we put up for our culture. And, you know, we were kind of feeling some issues with that individual. So I think values can really be helpful. And yet, Maybe they'll even vote with their feet sometimes. And that's actually probably a good thing. And it certainly wasn't in that example. They were going to go on. In fact, instead of working within a company, they were really going to go and have their own practice as a 1099 software engineer. And probably a much better thing for that person to do, given their values and their desires and so on.

Yeah, I mean, if you, if you as an individual value independence and innovation and creativity and you find yourself in a very regimented role within an organization that doesn't give you any of that, that's, that's, that's, you know, that's a painful experience every day you go to work. You should leave. It doesn't mean that organization's bad or that job is bad. It's just not a good fit. But if you like that structure and that cadence and that discipline, you value those things, you're a great fit in that role.

Those are both okay outcomes. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's right. That's right. And that's why I like using the word unhire instead of fire, Joe, because I think firing is, first of all, very bad for culture. Yeah. Right? And yet people talk about hire and fire, and they'll say, well, you know, you're fired and sort of point the finger at them. I think that's just— and I like unhiring because— and especially using the core values for that unhiring conversation can be really helpful. And this is not about me saying you're bad. This is not about me simply saying that, you know, you're not working out. It's really an uncoupling that says, look, and because wasn't I probably the person that hired you? So I messed up as well, you know. And I think that's a much better conversation for that individual when they go on to a culture that is a benefit. And when we turn around and explain to our team members within the company, it's also a lot— a much better conversation where we can simply say, you know, so-and-so has moved on. We had a conversation and, you know, we agreed to part ways. And there was really an unhiring and uncoupling as opposed to us, you know, putting all the blame on them.. And now we don't have that language of firing. We don't have fear in our own company. And we know at least it's going to be a conversation typically around values, even more than performance, right? Performance may be a factor too, but most importantly, a conversation around values.

Yeah, values is an easier, I think, conversation to have around hiring than performance. Yeah.

Especially if you and I sit on the same side of the table. And we've got our core chart up on the wall with our values, and we're able to simply have a conversation to a standard that's not between you and me, but it's a standard that we're— that's agreed to. It's like our code of conduct, our true north, you know, that's there. You can't really argue with it. So yeah, I've done that many times, and I think that is a very healthy way for everybody involved to have that unhiring conversation. Yeah.

Well, let's switch gear one last time.

What do you like to do for fun, Will? Oh, well, gosh, I just, I mean, it's rather a broad statement, but I love being outdoors. Right before this podcast, I've been sitting here a few hours and I just stepped out actually with my daughter to go walk around the block and immediately had that feeling, oh, you know, just fresh air and being out. And so that— and I pursue that in a number of ways. I mean, I have binoculars right by my desk here. I love watching, you know, the birds that are coming through. I live on a lake, and so there's a lot of migratory activity. I enjoy that. I enjoy being on the lake, whether it's, you know, skiing or kayaking or paddleboarding. So it's a lot of that. And of course, that means I love doing that in new places too. So I love being outdoors combined with traveling and being new places exploring like that.

But what's, uh, what's a place you're looking forward to visiting soon?

Anything you got planned? Um, what have I got planned coming up? Uh, well, you know what, I'm going to be camping in, um, on, on near a lake. I always like being near water, uh, with EOers actually. With EO, that's the next trip. Next week, uh, I am going to be, uh, taking the RV into the woods near, um, near Birmingham, Alabama, and, uh, doing that with a number of EOers. It's going to be 91 degrees, and there, uh, there's going to be some, some boats. By EOers, for everyone there, that's the Entrepreneurs Organization. It's an organization that Joe and I are both members of. So that's coming up. And that's going to be outdoors on the water in the woods. That's where I like to be.

How did you pick that destination of all places? Alabama? Nothing wrong with Alabama. I've only been there once. But a guy from Wisconsin going all the way down there.

They got some pretty fabulous country. But no, I mean, I have friends there first, right? I'm actually I go there every 90 days to do their— I'm their accelerator trainer, Joe. You know what that means. But so I have friends there. And this has been in the works for a while.

Well, that sounds exciting. I'll look forward to hearing your adventures in Alabama. And yeah, we can connect more on that later. If somebody wants to connect with you, what is a good way for them to reach out? We'll have some show notes so they can get direct links to different things, but what's the best way?

Yeah, so thanks. I mean, email is always a great way and I've got a rather long email address, but I think it's easy enough to remember. It's will@theculturefix.academy. Otherwise, just Google it and they can find me on all the social channels. But yeah, check us out at theculturefix.academy. Great.

And thanks again to all of our listeners. This is a fascinating conversation, Will. I really enjoyed it. And I love putting you on the spot because I can see your brain churning like mine. We had a great conversation. It's fun to explore culture. It's a topic that's probably underserved by many. So thanks for sharing your time.

Yeah, no, you're welcome. Love it.

Thank you very much. And that's a wrap. There's another successful episode of the Fractional C-Suite Retreat. See our show notes and more episodes at fractionalcsuitretreat.com. This podcast is sponsored by your CMO. Helping organizations grow, save time and money with better marketing strategy and fractional execution. Visit them at yourcmo.com. Your CMO dot com. Spelled wrong on purpose.