MBA1468 Guest Teacher: Chris Meroff – How To Develop A Company Culture That Fulfills Every Employee

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Hey, guys. My name is Chris Miroff. Today I'm going to be talking to you about company culture and how to define that and really how to utilize that so that employees, including leaders, can find fulfillment. So thanks for joining me. Company culture is one of those things that gets talked about a lot. You read it in a lot of books. You have a lot of leaders who, who identify that you really need to have a great company culture. One thing that I walked away thinking was I'm not really sure if I understand what culture is. I think I understand the value of culture, but I can honestly say I don't really know how to leverage it or even how to define it. What I want to talk to you about today is how to do those things. And so what I'm going to start with is kind of defining or giving you a definition of what culture means. To me, culture is the sum of the traits or the worldviews of your employees. And so if you try to identify, well, what is the sum of those worldviews, it really comes down to understanding what a worldview is. Worldview is really how someone shows up and how they think and see the world. It's how they think. It's how they interact. And so what we talk about is that that worldview is made up of five traits. Those five traits are hopes. They are traditions, preferences, experiences, and beliefs. And those five traits really identify my worldview. Any conversation I'm in, no matter what it's about, whether it's sports or politics or work, home life, those traits, those worldview traits really kind of identify how I show up in those conversations. What I'm thinking about, what I'm willing to say, what I'm not willing to say. It identifies how I'm going to say something. It's my worldview. It's how I see the world. And through that lens, that's how I show up. When we define culture, for me, it's the sum of those worldviews of whatever group or team or department or company that you have. As we try to define what that company culture is, first, I think we need to realize that we have a company culture no matter what. There's not a scenario by which you have a company with no culture. If we define culture as the sum of the worldviews of my employees, then by definition, we do have a company culture. So the real question is, what do we do with it? And is it the culture that we want? Would we have created that culture from the beginning if I had understood what that culture was before we got going? If we look at those employees and we think to ourselves, well, is this the definition or is this how we want to define our culture? Then we really have to answer the question, are these the employees that we want working here? And that may seem harsh on one level, but whether you're thinking it or acting on it, that level of expectation on your employees or your team exists. And so what we want to do is we want to verbalize, we want to talk about what our culture is. More importantly, we really want to celebrate the diversity of thought that comes with unique worldviews. One of the things that we focus on in my organization is the fact that when we identify that everyone has a unique worldview, we celebrate the fact that it's unique. We don't try to isolate. We don't try to belittle their worldview. We don't try to identify that their worldview is right or wrong. We celebrate the fact that they think differently about every situation, about every scenario. And when you can celebrate that, now you can identify and celebrate your culture. So what do we do with culture now that we've identified it, now that we've given a little bit more definition? Well, the way that we cultivate that toward the culture that we really want is we focus on two primary levers that help us. One is this concept of purpose. Purpose helps us define where we're going as an organization. I like to think of it as our destination. And some companies have vision statements or mission statements. We use the term purpose. The reason we do that is purpose is something that we can again define as where we're going. And the more detail we can bring to that destination, the better chance we have of making sure that we attract the right people that want to go on that journey with us. The reality of the fact that we have probably some people that are on our teams in our companies that don't agree with where we're going, the destination probably exists. And so we might as well talk about it. We might as well identify that we are going to to that destination. Here's what we're going to do to get there. And do you want to join me on that journey when we talk about the hiring process and really understanding who to bring on board? Well, we need to bring on board people who are excited and passionate about the destination, about our purpose. So purpose really helps us to cultivate our culture.

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Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide, based on the February 2025 Nielsen report. We get to leverage people's beliefs, that part of their worldview that typically results in action. The other traits of our worldview, of course, inform who we are. And it really, again, talks about how we approach every situation, every scenario. But man beliefs, that's the trait that is the most powerful trait. It spurs us to action. You want to know what somebody believes, Somebody see what they're doing, see what they're not just what they're talking about, but see what their actions are that really taps into their beliefs. And so when we're hiring someone, we want to make sure that we're bringing someone on board who believes, who can align their beliefs with our purpose, with our destination, so that we get to join them on that journey. I don't need to leverage authority if I already have an employee or a team member or even a boss that we are aligned on exactly where we want to go and why. See, authority only needs to exist when you don't agree on the destination, the methodology to get there. That's always up for debate. That's the concept of really fighting for the best idea. And you can fight for the best idea within this feeling of safety when you're already aligned and believe in the destination or the purpose of for your department, for your role, for your company, when you already have that defined, when you're already aligned toward that purpose, now it gives you some flexibility to figure out the best way to get there. That's when you really get to celebrate the different worldviews, the diversity of thought, the uniqueness of everyone on your team to really fight for the best idea because you're already aligned on where you want to go. So purpose is a phenomenal tool to cultivate your culture. But the second way that we cultivate that culture is by having guiding principles. Some companies call these core values. But guiding principles are the rules of the game. They are soft skills, character traits that we identify, that we define and we agree to. Not because we want to manage behavior, not because we want to isolate people based on what they do or how they conduct themselves, but that we want to hold each other accountable, to treat each other in a respectful, honoring way. And so these guiding principles really help us to define and hold each other accountable. Again, this isn't a scenario by which we have a guiding principle. Let's say one that states we want to learn with humility. And so when we encounter someone who's proud? We don't want to say, hey, man, you're supposed to learn with humility. No, instead, we need to build a relationship with them. We need to understand, are they signing up by working here, by being. Being part of this team, are they signing up to identify that they want to be a person who learns with humility? And if they are, then they will invite you into that accountability to say, hey, when I show up, and sometimes my pride exists in a meeting, I want you to make sure that you take me aside afterwards and talk to me about that, because that's just not the person I want to be. So you continue to cultivate culture by holding people accountable by their own invitation to guiding principles, a set of soft skills that we all agree, hey, we want to get to this destination, we want to get to purpose, but in the process of getting there, we want to treat each other a certain way. And so we're going to define that way by defining these soft skills, these guiding principles that help us get there. When you do that, you get to cultivate your culture. Your culture will start to shift, and it'll shift away from this kind of individual think to now more of a positive group think, where we get to celebrate everyone's individuality. We get to celebrate who they are, their uniqueness, the value that they bring based on their own worldview. And we get to do that in a safe environment because we're all serving the same purpose. We're serving the same guiding principles, and we're perfectly aligned on that. Once we're aligned on those key elements of our culture, now we get to leverage that culture to understand how we're going to prioritize every single task, how we're going to prioritize every single project, really every minute of every day. And now we don't have to fight with this idea that, man, I'm really unsure what I should do tomorrow. We then get to get together with our team and figure out together what we should work on next, because we understand where we're going, that's purpose, and we understand how we're going to treat each other on the way to that destination. And by doing that, we now can, as a group, as a team, identify what needs to be done next so that we can be on the same team. The next piece is to understand who's going to do what. When we allocate resources based on that culture, it gives us that flexibility to take on tasks that, yes, may be hard, but. But they will ultimately lead to fulfillment because we know it Serves our purpose. So we want to create this culture, we want to cultivate culture toward a purpose, toward guiding principles. That's what we want to leverage it for. And when we do that, we can be perfectly aligned. We no longer have to live in this uncertainty of human relationship. We get to live out at work every single day in the safety that says, hey, we're all in this together. We understand where we're going, we understand we might have different ideas on how to get there safety because man, we're all rowing together in the same boat in the exact same direction. And that just allows the ability to kind of lessen our anxiety that I'm going to put a lot of work and effort into something but nobody's going to really appreciate it. So culture is really, really important. But more important than saying we need culture, we need to define it and then we need to cultivate it. Well, I hope you guys had maybe some new things that you learned. I am. I love the fact that I was able to talk to you about culture and keep fighting for your own fulfillment.

Great lesson by Chris Miroff again. Check out his work over@chrismiroff.com that's M E R O F F. I learned a ton in his lesson today. But one of the things that really stood out for me in my business at this time in my career is the concept of sitting down with your team, going over those values or what Chris called them guiding principles, making sure everybody's on board. Do you guys agree with this stuff or should we change it? Should we modify these values? Should we modify these guiding principles? We recently did this in an all hands meeting in our company about three months ago and we just shared with everybody, hey, this is what we believe our team is all about. This is what our goals are. This is what we're trying to do here. Do you guys agree? And we got some feedback and people commented on certain things and we made some changes accordingly. Why? Because we realize we can't make them believe in anything that they don't believe in themselves. You got to get buy in. You got to get people to say, yeah, I agree with that. That's something I want too. And basically what Chris is teaching here is how to create a work environment that people enjoy, that people actually feel fulfilled. At the end of the day, everybody wants to enjoy their job. They want to enjoy what they do every day. You spend so many wakeful hours at work, you might as well enjoy that time. And guess what? It has nothing to do with the tasks. Yeah, there are going to be some mundane tasks that you're going to have to do in your job sometime. But if they're backed by values that you can believe in, values that you can really get behind, there's a why behind all your actions. I'm making these sales calls because of this, because this is what we believe in. I'm helping these customers out with an issue they're having because it's aligned with this value that we agreed on. The one thing I would like to remind you of, because I have to remind myself all the time, is you can't just set it and forget it. One of your jobs as the leader of your company is to remind your team members what it's all about, what the values are, what the guiding principles are, why we're doing this, the mission. People forget. People get busy. People sometimes don't see the forest from the trees. So your job is to regularly remind them. And this is my job. Every time we do an all hands, every month, we have a one hour call with everybody in our team and my job is to remind them in a new way, in a different way, in a fun way, in a playful way, why we're doing this, what we believe in, what our mission is. If you don't do it as a leader, no one will. No one's going to go there and find your mission and your vision and your values and just recite it to themselves every day or remind themselves every day. You need to do this on a regular basis. You don't have to throw it down their faces every single morning, but you should at least remind them of the why, why they're doing all this. What's the big idea? What do we believe in as a company? What are the things that are important to us, those guiding principles, those values, at least once a month. The problem with CEOs is we have that inside of us. We know what we believe in. We are driven. We have so much on the line, so we have so much fire under us. But everybody on our team has different levels of fire and you need to make sure that you give them some fire on a regular basis. Thank you so much for listening and thanks, Chris Miroff for the amazing lesson. If you love what you hear, leave us an iTunes rating and review. We'd love to hear what you think. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button on whatever you use to listen to podcasts, whether it's Spotify or Stitcher Radio, Overcast, Apple Podcasts, or on them all. By hitting subscribe, you have access to over 1400 business lessons in our archives. That's the only way to get access. So make sure you hit subscribe. It's absolutely free to subscribe, but you have to click the button Before I go. I want to leave you with this. So much of a business is mental. So much of it is emotional. And as a leader of your business, not only do you have to get your, you know, mental game and your emotional game to a level where you can succeed every day, you got to pass that on to everybody on your team. You have to constantly make sure they understand why we're doing this, to motivate them, to praise them, to make sure everybody's rowing in unison, right? Everybody's rowing in the same direction. It's very hard to move forward in your business when you have fragmented efforts. When people are trying to do different things for different reasons in different directions, you got to use all the energy that you have and push it in the same direction. That's not going to happen by accident. You have to orchestrate that. You have to be the conductor, so to speak, and get everybody singing from the same song sheet. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. Can't wait to deliver another business lesson for you tomorrow. I'll see you then. Take.

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