100 | The Power of Authentic, Measurable & Sustained Organisational Values | Sandy Cross

Welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast, where I talk to leaders about how internal communications, engagement, and leadership all play a key role in creating amazing and successful cultures.

That's been a key factor, I believe, to the success, was those individuals in the working group talking about what does a great day at the PGA of America look like and what makes it great. And then on the flip side, what does a not so great day at the PGA look like and why.

Hello there and welcome to this episode of the Building Better Cultures podcast with me, Scott McInnes. Hope this finds you really, really well. Before we kick on with today's guest, just my usual little thank you for the friendship and support of Workvivo, who have sponsored the podcast for nearly, I think it's 18 or 20 episodes now, nearly. So yeah, So, that's going really well. If you're thinking about or looking at solutions that you might need to put in place in order to maybe maintain that bit of extra connection with your people, particularly as you start to move to hybrid working, then their solution for employee engagement is definitely worth a look. You'll find more about them at workvivo.com, or you'll hear a little bit more about them later on as well. So, on with today's interview. Now, we have spent a lot of time on this podcast talking about values, talking about the power of values, and the fact that for me, they are really key when it comes to building better cultures in organizations. You know, that whole idea of making sure that people know and have a consistent knowledge across your organization of what's expected of them as individuals and what they can then expect of each other and of the organization. They are so critically important. So I'm delighted to have today's guest on to kind of deep dive a wee bit their journey of values, where they are today, and maybe where they're planning to go in the future. So today I'm chatting to Sandy Cross, who is the Chief People Officer at the USPGA. For those of you who are golfing heads, you'll know exactly who I'm talking about. Sandy, good morning.

Good morning. It's great to be here, Scott.

Thank you. And thanks for coming on. Listen, why don't we kick off? You tell me a little bit about where you've come from, about your role today, and maybe for those that aren't golf fanatics, maybe a little bit about the USPGA.

Sounds good. I'd be happy to. I am originally a native of Buffalo, New York, so grew up in some very snowy and icy winters. I played volleyball for 4 years at the University of Buffalo, and during my collegiate athletic experience, I decided I wanted to pursue a career in sport management, sport administration, attained my master's degree at Kent State University in the state of Ohio, and shortly Shortly thereafter, I landed a temporary position at the PGA of America, the Professional Golfers Association of America. And it was a 90-day temp gig. It was a little bit of just temporary work while I was figuring out what was going to be next, where was I going to embark on my career. And I didn't come from a golf background, had never really been exposed to the sport growing up. But this 90-day temporary assignment at the PGA has turned into a beautiful career, and I've had the opportunity over 26 years now to work in a variety of positions at the PGA of America. A lot of my time was in business development and partnership development, and then I grew into our player development and player engagement side of the business with a heavy focus on women's initiatives. And that focus on the women's initiatives was the period of time that really opened my eyes to the broader world of diversity and inclusion. So a few years thereafter, I raised my hand to our leadership and said that I would like to start the diversity and inclusion function or practice at the PGA of America, build the team, set up the strategic plan, and they gave me the green light to do that. And I've been doing that since 2014. And 3, 4 years into that journey, our new CEO came in, Seth Waugh, who is our current CEO, and he had a vision for a chief people officer, someone that would oversee the Human Resources function, or what we now call the People Team, as well as the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion practice. So I oversee both of those areas of the business. There's certainly great connectivity between the two, but DEI, we make sure that we embed that across every line of the business, every function, not just the People Team function. So that's a quick snapshot of my journey, where I am today.

So from that perspective of DEI, is it about— obviously it's really important in, in HR and in the People but is part of your role about making sure that people across the organization see that as a, as a lens through which to make decisions?

Absolutely. The people team and the DEI team, most notably at the PGA of America, we view our role as coming alongside our colleagues across the business and helping them look at their area of the business through what we like to call the lens of inclusion and helping them understand the business case for DEI and the fact that it will help them achieve achieve their goals and objectives in their area of the business more quickly, more effectively, more creatively, more in an innovative fashion or style. So it's, it's absolutely a business driver in every, every area, every lane of the business.

And I love that. And I think that people all too often still think that DEI is very much kind of fluffy stuff that HR looks after, but I love that idea of putting a much more business lens on it. It just makes sense.

Thanks for that.

Let me think about values. And this is obviously the conversation that we started having before we came on the call. Back in 2019, just 3 years ago, you as an organization went from being kind of solely mission-based, I guess, mission-driven, to bringing in values as well and being values-based. Tell me, what does that mean? And what was the driver for doing that?

That's right. What you said is exactly correct. In late 2019, when our CEO Seth Wah came in, he was new in the role. He and I had an opportunity to chat and he asked me, he said, "Sandy, if you had the keys to this place, what would you do?" And I indicated to Seth that I would like to see a shift from being solely mission-driven to values-based as well. And we were nearly, we were 100 years old at the time as an association, and everyone in the organization deeply understood and was driving the mission of the association. But we weren't as a team rooted in any kind of shared values. And I believe that that was a miss because when Seth came in, he was known for, and he talked regularly about the idea of no jerks allowed, which everybody was excited about and believed in. We were excited because we had and we have a lot of high performers at the PGA of America, individuals who are deeply committed to the mission, pushing it forward. But Scott, some of the how, how those individuals were going about pursuit of the mission, their how, or what I sometimes call their bedside manner, was really not great. So as we thought about No Jerks Allowed, we needed a mechanism by which to contextualize or dimensionalize what that meant. We really needed a playbook for our employees of these shared values, and we have 4 shared values, and each of them has 5 supporting behaviors which are visible and observable, and individuals on the team know what it means to show up in that way. What does it mean to have each other's backs? What does it mean to practice gratitude? Get better every day and start with clarity. Those are our 4 values. And again, they each have supporting visible observable behaviors. But that was really the, the driver is being able to interact with each other in a more productive, healthy, human, people-centered way on a daily basis.

And what did you hope that that change would make going away from, obviously, you know, there was maybe an expectation, as there is in many organizations that, you know, just 'cause you haven't got a good bedside manner, doesn't mean that, you know, the organization's not being driven forward really, really hard. If that change to values meant that people were gonna treat each other differently, what was it you were hoping to achieve as an organization?

We were hoping to achieve a more inclusive work environment, and drive greater retention among our employees. And it's interesting, with the inclusive work environment, we were having quite a bit of success bringing talent from diverse backgrounds into the organization. So we were successful from a recruiting perspective, but we were much less successful in retaining that talent because we found, or came to realize after the fact, frankly, that the work environment was not as inclusive as it needed to be. And particularly with the younger generations, that was a point of difference when they're selecting an employer or deciding if they're going to stay with an employer. How inclusive is that environment? How are their day-to-day interactions with their teammates? So that was a— that was high on the list of what we were hoping to achieve, an inclusive environment where people want to stay, learn, live, grow, contribute, and really have fun. We spend so much of our lives in a work environment, and we want people to really enjoy it and be fulfilled. And that's going to beget the best work product.

Yeah, and I would argue that actually, you know, outside of inclusion, people, you know, every organization has an employer brand, whether it's one that you have deliberately crafted or whether it's one that the market and Glassdoor and other places have created for you. And yeah, I think that whole idea of, you know, when people arrive in, they've been sold a particular vision by the website, by television, by the people that have interviewed them or the interview process, and then they land in and that reality is very, very different. That must be tough for new joiners, I'd say.

Absolutely, that's really well said. And it's something that we have to keep top of mind all the time. And particularly as we've navigated the pandemic, we went from being a largely in-office team to obviously 100% remote. 100% distributed and remote. We have since pivoted last week into a bit of a hybrid environment. Our employees, we've asked them to spend approximately 50% of their time in the offices and the other 50% we want to give them flexibility to do their work wherever is most comfortable for them. So these values, these shared values are as important than ever as we try to maintain what I like to call cultural connectivity amongst our teams. Team members across different locations.

Yeah, yeah, that whole, like, I mean, the number of times in the past, probably 3 months that I've heard the word connection or connectivity is phenomenal. And I think absolutely values are at the very, very core of that. I suppose back to the point at the top, you know, what am I going to be held to account for? What can I hold you to account for? And what are we all comfortable with is a key starting point. So, when I think about about your values journey, getting, I suppose, the values in the first place was the first step. So, what was the process for doing that? Because there's lots of ways that organizations have done it.

The first thing that we did is we sent out a 1-question survey to all of our employees. And the question was, if you were piloting a rocket ship to Mars to build the next PGA of America, and you had 4 seats on your rocket ship, who from the team would you put in those 4 seats based on the values they embody and that they bring to the workplace every day? So really, the, the team at large— and we're an organization of approximately 300 employees— those individuals voted on who would wind up in what we call the Shared Values Working Group. We wound up with about 9 individuals that were voted on by their peers, selected by their peers, and they represented a variety of departments, backgrounds, and really kind of ages and stages in the workplace. And those are the individuals that developed the Shared Values. And two times along the journey of the Shared Values development, that, that working group did have a check-in with our executive management team to show them the progress. How is it looking? Is it resonating? Made some tweaks, made some adjustments. What's missing? What doesn't make sense? But we really wanted to make sure that these were developed by the team versus developed at the top and pushed down. And that's been a key factor, I believe, to the success. And as part of the process, or a key part of the process, was those individuals in the working group talking about What does a great day at the PGA of America look like and what makes it great? And then on the flip side, what does a not so great day at the PGA look like and why? So through a lot of storytelling and sharing shared experiences, the, the values were developed along with those critical supporting behaviors.

Brilliant. And that group of 9 then, were they tasked with going back to their teams to get input from their teams, or did those 9 people just sit in a dark room together and come up with the values as a group in a closed room?

They did get input from their teams, and that was really important. It was important that we had individuals from a variety of departments because the experience is often different in the organization depending on what department you sit in, and maybe even where the geography of that team is across the country. So that was an important step in the process, is not just doing it in a vacuum, one dimensionally, what that individual thought, but getting input from their team respectively.

Yeah, definitely. And you're absolutely spot on. I think that values that are taken away, created in a country club somewhere in an executive offsite, and then brought back and people are told, here are our values. It's just doomed to failure. I do think there is a happy middle ground, which is maybe exec teams going off doing that, bringing them back, and then saying to the organization, "Here's what we think. What do you think?" I think that's kind of, I suppose, maybe a happy middle ground for that process. But yeah, I mean, I think that absolutely the way that you did that is the way that many organizations have, and getting that early input from people is absolutely critical.

And Scott, just further on that point, we made sure that the values and the supporting behaviors were all anchored in action words. Now oftentimes you might walk into a corporate office and you'll see their values pasted or painted on the lobby wall, and it could be 5 static words, maybe diversity, innovation, integrity, and there's no action or dimension or context or shared understanding of what do those words mean on a daily basis. So rooting ours in statements of action has been very powerful.

I love that because it tells you what it is you're expected to do, doesn't it?

Absolutely.

Think innovatively or be one team, or act with trust or whatever it might be. But you're absolutely right. When you just see innovation, trust, selflessness, patience, customer, it just doesn't mean anything, does it?

No, it doesn't. It can run the risk of coming across as empty and borderline disingenuous. I find it falls flat for me. The company kind of just went through the motions of, "Oh, we've got to have some values, so let's throw some words up there, throw some words out there." It frankly raises a bit of a red flag for me when I see that. I'm like, "Oh, I don't know." Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Unless you see those being lived on a daily basis, they are literally just that, words on a wall.

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So, you launched— if I've got my timings right, you launched them just after you sent everybody home due to the pandemic. But I think you, in our last call, Sandy, you described them as the glue that kept us together. What did you mean by that? Maybe give me an example or two.

You're right, Scott. It was 2 weeks after we sent everybody home and admitted Immediately, I had a lot of trepidation about launching. We, the team was ready, the working group was ready, everything was done. We were, we were supposed to launch and then all of a sudden everybody's going home and it's like, oh my goodness, how are we gonna do this now? Well, everybody's not together in a traditional sense. And, and I realized we have to do this now. And it may have been the best thing we could have ever done. And I think about in particular, a couple of the shared values most notably when we talk about have each other's backs. And a couple of the supporting behaviors are, we always support each other, especially in challenging times. We support each other in balancing our lives. Those are two examples of the, the values and the behaviors coming to life during the pandemic in a very vibrant way. They were the most challenging times we ever experienced, and we would talk regularly about about how can we support each other in this environment? How can we help each other balance our lives when people were spread thin and frayed, particularly our working women who are balancing childcare responsibilities, eldercare responsibilities. So being able to regularly turn to our values and have conversations about these challenges through the lens of the values was really helpful. The values, The fact that we have them gives entrée to difficult conversations because the values provide a shared language, a shared foundation, a shared understanding. So when there's a, what I like to call a courageous conversation to be had, it's easier oftentimes for the employee to kind of point to the values or lean on the values to open the door to a difficult conversation because the values belong to all of us. We share them. And when someone says something to another employee through the lens of the shared values, it can make the conversation a little easier, a little less scary, versus people maybe running away or hiding from a difficult conversation. One other example I'll share that was critically important in providing that connectivity during the challenging times was the, the Start with Clarity value. It was critically important as things were changing by the day early on in the pandemic, and then later on relative to vaccines and such, that we take the time to deeply understand needs and that we communicate decisions and reasoning appropriately. Those were two behaviors of the start with clarity value that we needed to regularly remind ourselves of, particularly as a leadership team. We have to listen actively. Actively, deeply understand what our people need and then communicate to the best of our ability what are we deciding and what was the rationale for the decision. And that wasn't easy because the waters we were charting, like for everybody, were unnavigated, uncharted before. So to try to communicate the reasoning behind decisions was challenging, but we worked to hold ourselves accountable and to live those values in the moment.

Brilliant. And I think that probably one of the most challenging aspects of all of that was that your people weren't in the room with you, meant, you know, actually physically in a room with you. And, you know, you, I'm sure have been through it. I've been through it many times in organizations and with clients in terms of that whole, how do you roll out values? And actually often that is, you know, a CEO, you know, she might stand up and say, well, here's our values, here's what they mean, here's where they came from, here's why we have them, here's what I expect of all of you. And then we might ask our people leaders to sit down with their teams and say, well, what do they mean to us? How do we bring them to life? What are some of the ones that really challenge our team? What are we not so good at? What are we really strong at? Celebrate and discuss those. But of course, you weren't able to do a lot of that because you weren't actually physically among each other. You weren't in the office. So, what were some of the things that you did to embed them?

We've taken a very holistic or end-to-end approach of embedding these values across the entire employee lifecycle or employee experience. From the time that we are identifying talent that we want to welcome aboard to our team, we start out with interviewing through the lens of the shared values. For example, we have a shared values interview guide where questions are posed during the interview process that uncover whether or not a potential team member is going to fit with with the values. So we start out at that very front end. We also incorporate the values into the onboarding experience, the development of our talent, and then a critical point along the way, and not only at the annual performance evaluation cycle, but in the check-ins along the way for performance. We are doing performance evaluation through the lens of the shared values. I talked earlier about about the what someone performs as well as how they perform it. We have evolved our performance management to be equally weighted, 50/50 against what is performed and again, how it's performed through the lens of the shared values. And Scott, that's been one of the most powerful things that we've done is to make that shift. And it's a really interesting process Because once the performance evaluations are submitted, the executive management team sits down. It takes about 4 or 5 hours to sit down and go through the evaluations as a team and really talk about— we call it performance calibration— really talk about how the employees did on both sides of that ledger, the what and the how. And the conversations are very rich and robust. At times courageous, where maybe a leader on a team will think, you know, Scott performed really well on the what and the how, but some other people around the table might speak up and say, you know what, Scott's how actually wasn't that great. And let me give you some examples of what I or my team observed or experienced over the course of the period. So the weight of those shared values has become integral in our performance management discussions in a very, very healthy way. And just continuing along that employee lifecycle, I think I mentioned the development, but we also look through the lens of the shared values when there are performance and behavioral challenges, and potentially we are going to get some additional coaching and/or maybe offboard them from the organization. So end to end, we, we are embedding those as the foundation of the employee experience.

Brilliant, brilliant. And I actually want to come back to that performance management idea, because I do agree with you. I think that that is one of the most powerful ways that you can really bring values to life, because it brings it into very sharp focus. Because, you know, one minute they are words on the wall, possibly being, you know, acted out and lived by people around the organization. But suddenly, half my bonus bonus might depend, or some of half my bonus might depend on me actually living the values. And not only that, but being able to tell a story or give examples about how I've lived those values. And my manager being able to question me on that from a kind of an educated perspective around the values too. And that's really, really hard to do because what is really simple. Did I do 100% of my target, 80% of my target? Did I meet 7 of my objectives and exceed 3 of them? That's simple. But the how, the story piece is much, much harder. So I wonder, from your perspective, what did you do to make that a little easier for your manager cohort and the people in the PGA?

It's happening a bit organically with every additional year and every additional performance cycle we collectively get under our belts, it's become more understood and more known and frankly more visible across the team of what the shared values, someone living the shared values really looks like. And we can point to people and point to examples of things that individuals did. And we also encourage people to, in a respectful way, share when the values weren't lived. And particularly, you know, I'll use myself as an example. As a leader in the organization, if I'm able to articulate in a public way to my teammates where I personally am struggling with a value or where I came up short, and I own that and I talk about it, Those are the types of things that advance the culture and the embedment of the values in the way that you just inquired about. I hope that makes sense.

Yeah, it does completely. I think there's an opportunity as well for growth among those managers that potentially do it really well, to use them as mentors to go out and work with some of your management team, whether it's yours or anybody else's, that actually aren't maybe as good at it, are a little behind the curve, isn't something they're massively comfortable with, or maybe they're just new to the organization. So that whole idea I've seen work really well of a mentoring scheme can, can be brilliant for both sides of that, of that relationship.

I think that's an excellent idea. And that's the very type of thing I'm excited about doing now that we're in more of an in-person setting. I think that could be really, really powerful. I love that idea.

At Inspiring Change, we help our clients to implement sustainable change change and drive business performance by putting their people first. We do that through a focus on strategic internal communications, employee engagement, and leadership consultancy. If you're struggling with change or getting your people aligned behind your purpose, vision, or strategy, then get in touch. Simply visit our website at www.inspiringchange.ie for more. Tell me a little bit about weaponizing values, because that was a term which I, I, I, I really liked, and, um, it was something you on our pre-call. What do you mean by that and how do you stop it happening?

Yeah, I touched on that because, you know, we're just coming through a very challenging period where we were wrestling with vaccines and vaccine mandates and masking policies and how things were going to be when we returned to the office. And there was a period last fall, most notably it was right before the Ryder Cup, and we were in the thick of— I think it was the Delta variant at that time. Time. It all seems so blurry now, uh, where we were rolling out a vaccine mandate, and we said if you are going to travel on business for the company, you're going to need to be fully vaccinated. And that applied to a whole bunch of people, but most notably those individuals that were preparing to travel to, uh, the domestic Ryder Cup at the time. And there was a lot of consternation. Vaccines are, are very personal, deeply personal, and they should be, and we want to respect everybody's decisions that they make for themselves. However, when rolling out a policy like that, just as one example, individuals who maybe didn't want to get the vaccine or couldn't get the vaccine, whatever the reason was, they would at times turn to us and say, "Well, you don't have my back. You're not living the values." And that would be an example of where I felt the values were being used as a weapon against us. The idea of have each other's backs is not intended to mean that the employee is going to get whatever they want, whenever they want it, however they want it. And it's been challenging for our people team, the people team being our human resources function. You know, sometimes someone will come to the people team and ask for something. And maybe it can't be delivered or it's gotta be delivered in a different way than the employee wants. And more often than I would like, Scott, people will turn that into, "You don't have my back. You didn't give me what I asked for. You don't have my back." And that, that's the one value where I think we've struggled with a bit of that weaponizing. And it's going to take additional education and conversation and maybe some of the mentoring that you suggested. To have people more deeply understand what have each other's backs means around collaboration, actively listening, supporting each other, assuming good intentions, and again, helping each other balance our lives. Those are things we want and need to do, but it doesn't mean you're always going to get a yes every time you ask for something because we've got to maintain a balance and equity and parity across the team. So there's a— there can be a friction there, a tugging pushing and pulling.

Yeah, for sure. And I think one of the things I've seen work really well in that regard is just storytelling, people giving examples of how they live the values day to day. How when I did a project with Sandy, she lived this value and here's what it looked like. And I think that can be incredibly powerful just to get those people nodding and going, oh yeah, that makes more sense. Yeah, for sure. But I suspect, as in any organization, there will always be a cohort of people who will take an opportunity to perhaps weaponize a value if it's in their favor. So, you know, whilst it's important to get on top of, I guess we can't beat ourselves up that we're not getting to 100% of the people 100% of the time, because that's just never going to happen, is it?

I think you're right. Now, one other thing I forgot to share in the employee lifecycle is, and part of performance management, which is critical, is goal setting. We also evolved our goal setting process to where each individual on an annual basis with their supervisor, with their leader, they have to identify identify one of the 4 shared values that they are going to prioritize for the coming performance period from a, from an improvement perspective. Not that the other 3 values get to fall by the wayside, but what is the one that you really want to work on? And also they have to articulate what would success look like if you do in fact improve in that value. So that's been powerful as well. And it's been challenging for people to really have to sit down and think about, oh my goodness, Which one do I really want to commit to getting better at? And what is that going to look like if I actually do it? So, I'd just love to share that with the listeners because I think it's powerful as well.

I think it's really powerful. And I think probably what I could probably summarize everything we've spoken about over the past 10 or 15 minutes as just keeping them front of mind. For values to be successful, they have to be kept front of mind, whether that is via intranet stories, whether it's videos from colleagues, whether it's performance management, whether it's whether it's onboarding or L&D or performance improvement or whatever it is, it's just critical to keep them in front of people all the time so they keep seeing them. And I can't— there's that stat, I think, that, you know, when you tell people something 8 times is about when it starts to sink in. And I don't think the values are actually any different. I think we have to just keep reminding people of what they are, showing them what really good looks like in terms of living them every day until they become just common parlance in the way we do things around here. So, yeah, for sure, you know, So, it's definitely that idea of keeping them front of mind is absolutely key. Sandy, listen, we're coming near the end of our chat, but I've got one final thing that I wanted to ask you. Just based on your experience of the journey that you've been on with values, what would you say would be the best first step for maybe a listener listening to this or another organization that's thinking of going on that values journey, maybe to create values or maybe to redefine or relaunch their existing values? Existing ones?

I think a critical first step is talking to the leadership team within the organization to make sure that they are ready in every sense of the word to embark on that journey. Basically, if we are going to do this, it has to be supported at the highest level— not created at the highest level and pushed down, but supported at the highest level lived at the highest level and agreed to be embedded across that employee life cycle. Because I think it would be terrible if team members went through the exercise, created the values and behaviors, they were published, announced, and then everybody just went about, you know, their day-to-day business. The organization as a whole and the leadership, you have to have that conversation and make sure that they're ready to commit to the journey and sustaining what is developed. And without that deep, authentic commitment, if it's not really there, I would discourage embarking on this journey. Journey.

And I would absolutely agree with you 1,010%. If you're not going to do that, just don't start. It's better not to start the journey than to start the journey and for that to happen, categorically. So, I love that. So, unless your senior team isn't bought in, don't bother starting. I think that's a great message to finish with. Sandy, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. I've really, really enjoyed the conversation and appreciate you taking the time.

Oh, Scott, I did too. It was such a pleasure. Thanks for having me. Me on.

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