Ep#26: Why Your Startup’s Culture Sucks (and How to Fix It) - Michael Landers

And so this goes back to a leadership perspective and everyone else is just, like, looking at that mirror and saying, we got to improve our culture. Well, let's take a look at it. What is it right now? And some minor shift to saying, hey, we're going to start treating our internal colleagues as customers. That alone could shift things dramatically.

Welcome to Startups Decoded, where we uncover what it really takes to build and scale startups. I'm Andy Walsh, founder and strategist. Each week we will bring you actionable insights and real stories. Let's dive in. Hello and welcome back to Startups Decoded. This week we're looking at culture, a pretty broad word, so we'll put some definition around that today. Look at frameworks and for us collectively to understand from a founder side, what are the things that are really important, what are some lessons that we can learn and how you roll it out? But I need to make sure that I have some expertise around the table. Today I'm bringing in Michael Landers. Welcome, Michael.

Thanks, Andy. Good to see you, man.

You too. We've done some work together and we'll talk a little bit about that. But today we're digging into your consultancy, which is Culture Crossing. Can you tell us a little bit about what you're doing?

Yeah, for sure. So I've had a consultancy focused on culture for the last 20 years or so, and it kind of started out really helping people navigate national, international borders, going from one country to another, and it grew into more than okay, once I do navigate those borders, how do I start to lead, how do I start to market, how do I start to sell within these cultures that might be different from. From my own? And from there, we kind of built it out into how do I cultivate a culture of.

Right.

So working with a lot of startups. I've been based in Silicon Valley for the last 15 years, and that's kind of what it's grown to. So from helping people cultivate cultures, let's say of high performance, cultivating cultures of accountability, as well as navigating the differences that exist when you cross cultures regionally and internationally. And then also lastly, we kind of focus on organizational transformation.

Right.

And how does culture play a part in that, as well as looking at productivity and alignment.

Great. A lot to cover there, which I'm excited about.

And.

And it's something that I've seen go really well and I've seen really toxic culture roll out and employ businesses. So it's critical and it's something that needs to be like, really Focused and part of early planning with founders to give some foundation today. I really like to spend time giving a backstory to my guests as far as where they came from, from study through to employment. And we don't need the full resume top to bottom, but I'm looking at key beats along the ways. What got you to the place that you're in now?

Yeah, definitely like the key beats. Right. So I'm originally from the United States, from the east coast, but when I was three years old, my father moved our family overseas because he had some work there. So I grew up overseas in Latin America and Colombia, Brazil and the Dominican Republic from the time I was three to the time I was 18. So that kind of was an interesting foundational frame for me to enter new cultures every few years and try to adapt and see how do they do it here and how can I be flexible. And you can imagine as a teenager, let's say, or even, you know, preteen, what do you want to do is fit in. And so I became very attuned to saying, oh, this is how things happen here and if I do it this way, it'll be an easier fit in for me versus trying to stay true to something else or what was cool in the other place. So that was, that was definitely some, some initial kind of foundational beats for me. After undergrad in the States, two weeks after graduating, I moved to Japan. I lived in Japan for several years working for a Japanese company, had a consultancy there and came back to the US and got a master's degree in intercultural relations, which is really understanding your own culture deeply, how you process things, why you do things the way you do. Personality tests, preferences influence all those kind of things. And that's foundational first to help others navigate cultural differences and their challenges that they might have. So that was kind of my, my foundational from, from an educational perspective that masters and then worked international recruiting for a bit and then moved out to California about 20 years ago and started just working with, you know, your yahoos of the world, your apples of the world, Google, helping them initially navigate cultural differences from one country to another and then really getting into the leadership and management, foundational creation of companies and then going global in that.

So it's such a great story. I've lived in a lot of countries, obviously not native to America, and I think even looking back and it wasn't an active experience for me, but just living in different cultures, traveling around the world and immersing in food, travel, communication, family rituals, all of those Things I've observed that a lot. And you become like an amateur anthropologist in observing. So if you're studying that and digging deeper, then it's even one step further to understand a little bit of the backstory behind that too.

Yeah. And you mentioned the anthropology world, so my master's was definitely focused. We did cultural studies specifically around anthropologies. And it's really fascinating when you look at like a company anthropology. Right. And we see that a lot with startups that get acquired.

Right.

Or large companies that are built by acquisition. And you create and maintain a new culture, but you're holding onto the legacy, legacy culture. People, as you know, really hold on to that tightly. And then when you have new executives come in. So if you're a startup and you're 15 to 20 people, then you hit that 60 range, 100, 150. Working with one client right now, and they just change their whole exec staff.

Right.

Which is awesome. But at the other side, people are still. Might have some like. Like fear from the previous one.

Right.

Or feel like, oh, is it going to happen again? And that legacy culture still retains in. Even though people might have left. So, yeah, I'm really interested in that space. To your point, anthropology. And most people don't look at it when it looks like a company, but a company has a history, just as people do and countries do.

Yeah. And what I observed too, and I moved here in 2012, and the time that I've spent here in New York City has been fascinating because, you know, there's even cycles that I see of different people coming through, et cetera, and we're obviously a melting pot of different influence. But I think in parallel to that, what I've also observed is that culture has become a real focus for corporations big and small, where culture, these two beast, token, Taco Tuesday, ping pong table, all the standard things, even drinking and probably drinking to excess as well.

Beer pong.

Yeah, exactly. So I think that those token things that happened historically have changed a lot. And the way that culture is viewed now, as far as thinking about defining your own rituals and behavior and things that are expected across the board, has probably grown at the same time as people's awareness of sort of that global culture. And as we've become a global population where we're leaning into other people's experiences, et cetera, a lot of the time for entertainment, there's a lot you can glean from that as well.

Totally. And I think you're right. I think initially you had those talks about, oh, we Have a foosball table. We do beer pong Wednesdays. So there was like some intentional experiences or actually materials that we bought to kind of create culture.

Right.

Especially in the startup worlds in Silicon Valley. Free foods, free cleaning, all those, those are the culture of abundance. Times that we had where everything was free. And now we're definitely shifted away from that here. But, but I, but I do think now people are a little bit tired of that word. And that word doesn't really resonate with folks culture. And usually you put something in front of it like toxic culture or we have a great culture. And I like your analogy to, or your experience of living and moving and traveling to other places, whether they're in your own country or abroad. But when you do travel to somewhere new, you could read a book about the rituals or the beliefs or kind of what this city's about or what this country's about. But what you feel is when you walk the streets and what you witness, observe, if you are self aware of what you're seeing, right. And you're open to it, that's the culture, right? No one really needs to explain those specifics to you. You just notice it and how people interact and it's almost in, you know, unconscious, right? That's the culture. And so when I enter into companies or work with founders or, you know, whatever it might be, I'm just observing. I don't really pay too much attention to what they tell me their culture is or our culture is this, or we have a problem with that. I listen to it, but I just observe. That's really what I see. And so there's always the gap between the intended and the unintended culture. Regardless of how intentional and how great you are at building a culture, there's always going to be that gap there. Because a lot of culture is not. Is not necessarily coming up in the same way that we intend it to.

Right?

Because there's just side effects. And that might be great stuff. The unintended cultures might be. Oh, that's interesting. I look at it like also side effects of business. So when Airbnb started to become very popular, an unintended side effect of their business was they became the largest holder of interior photos. They had the largest library of interior photos that we didn't necessarily think about that, which created another whole thing, right? Because they had interior photos of all these apartments and houses all around the world. So same thing goes with the culture. We might drive forward with these behaviors and this is what we want to do. Beer pong Every Wednesday. Oh crap. We're having a lot of people have hangovers. Shit, you know, or whatever it is. So, yeah, like that as well.

And I think that as we become a global population as well, people feeling confident to bring their own cultural things into the way that they work. And there's so many things that I've read about and let's start with one, which is the culture of just a really simple small dynamic and the, and the Hippo analogy, which is the highest paid person's opinion. And within that, in a group dynamic, there's a lot of things that come with power. And you touched on it before. Quite often what a lower level employee will tell you about culture would be very different than an executive. Depends on how much they're training, what their social experiences are. Quite often there's age differences, socially, there's a lot that goes into it. So I think what you said resonates with me as far as observing what happens. And it can be a meeting, it can be an email, it can be a whole team event. There's a lot of things where that shows up in different ways.

Yeah, totally. So let's take a look at the culture of. Right, let's look at the culture of learning and development in organizations, which is what do we provide for staff development?

Right.

Over the years, having worked with many, many startups of all different sizes and your large companies and I'm kind of industry agnostic in the work that I do because every company has some form of culture. Good for me. But what we find is that manager training, as companies get to have a number of managers, especially startups, that's where the focus is a lot of development on managers. Then sometimes leaders will be like, oh, we need that too. But very often leaders like, no, we're good. I have a coach, I'm okay.

Right.

But guess what gets left out consistently, individual contributors. And those are the bulk of your company.

Right.

And so what you find if you're trying to build a culture of, let's say, delivering critical feedback, you know, and you train managers how to do it, but then leaders do it their way, there's going to be a disconnect there. And if you don't support your ICs on how to receive critical feedback, same problem, right? So I really find the companies that are looking to build certain aspects within their culture, like we want a culture of. Right, that's. Those are very kind of intentional and they tend to be more successful when you go up and down. But to your point, it's like where do we focus our energies to. And very often the leader will say no, no, we want to build the culture, but we're good up here, but what does it feel like down there? And we don't really ask or find out.

My experience from working in different sized companies, even the legacy culture that can run through new company versus an old company, and quite often people are scared of change so they stick to doing things a certain way, forcing people to follow suit. And there's I guess operational tension that happens around. There's effectiveness, there's inspiration, the flow and effect is quite a lot. So maybe we'll come at this from two ways. So let's look at brand new startup founders, which is a lot of our audience that listen here, if you're starting a business, maybe there's just you and another co founder to start with. Culture at that point, are you defining it at that stage or are you waiting to hire someone? How much does your business strategy and vision, et cetera, then set up your internal strategy from a culture perspective?

Yeah, it's good, it's a good question. I don't necessarily know there's a right or wrong. I also don't believe in one way of doing something right. There's just different ways. So when people are like, no, you have to do it this way. I'm always like, wait a minute, that's, you know, how could you be so certain? It's not. That's always why I push back. So I think having worked as well as I know you have working with like the co founders, right, or the founder who hires their friends or finds people, there's already a culture of dynamic. Like if you're married, if you have a significant other, there's a culture that partnered just as families, you grew up in them all. People here have either hopefully, you know, had had some family or something, or have had a significant other at some point, whatever it is. But there's a culture. So co founders are very similar that way. The dynamic between those two people, the third thing arises when they get together and that's some aspects is, is the culture. So I don't necessarily. I've seen people write a whole cultural manifesto out at the co founder stage. All right, interesting. And I've seen people do nothing until they get to like 50 people, right? And, and I wouldn't say one's right or wrong. I've seen both of them work and both of them fail. So I think, here's what I would say is that I find that co founders and founders, if they are at least aware or start to become aware of the impact they have on others. Just from a personality perspective, that's a good sign of how the culture might form and what to be aware of. Those who don't have a challenge later on, if they bring in a coach and the coach shows them the mirror and they don't like what they see.

Right.

And so that would be my thing of with any co founders, like, do you, you know, whatever you're going to do with your culture, are you aware of the dynamic between you two and also what you hope to build? And you're like, I'm going to create a culture of this, this, this, that's great. But then also recognize is the way you do that, what are some of the side effects that are going to be from that?

Right.

So for me it's awareness, self awareness is the thing that really works for both sides. Whether you're going to create a cultural manifesto or do nothing makes sense.

And I think also even at a foundational level, people may be able to give you a definition of culture, but beyond that, as far as structural, that allow you to have the right language to even know how to build out some kind of cultural plan that you can implement. Most founders, if they're a first time founder, it's probably rare for them to have been in a HR function. It's just not a typical founder sort of skill set. Right. So that's one of the things that they're learning on the fly alongside many other skills that they've never done before. So even giving them the right language. So within that, if you're going in and you're doing a consultation, I would assume that there's going to be frameworks and language, et cetera, that you need to educate them on to be able to give them the right language so you can have an objective and structured conversation.

Yeah, there's some that exist. I would say that a lot of people who aren't familiar with the idea of creating a culture, now obviously there's so much data information out there, but a lot of them will do the values exercise early on, hey, what are our values? What are our mission? Which isn't a bad thing. It's good, it's easier to do when you have six people in your company versus when it goes to 20, 40, 50, 60, 100.

Right.

Because then you're trying to cascade these values and they start to get morphed and stuff. But some of the, some of the language that I kind of help people with early on was just Is, you know, if I'm walking around your office now at 6 or at 60, what are some things you would want to hear from people? What are some behaviors you'd want to observe from people?

Right?

And that's really the start of the conversation because that's, to me, what is the culture of a company, right? So if I see people running through an office, if I see people, the doors closed. If I see people withholding information versus sharing, if I see laughter, if I see connectivity, again, if we're a distributed company, you know, what is it like on the zooms? So, but that's really what I like leaders to take a look at and say, hey, this is what I'd like to see. Because then you can build towards that and check in. If it's not happening, why is it not happening? Because I can say what I want. I want everybody to have an open mind. I want everybody to be, you know, included in conversation. Great. But those are words on pages, right? And those are what the values exercise end up being words on pages. So what really happens is when I walk around or you walk around new and are visiting and see. And then let's take it back to an international aspect. If you've been to Japan before and you walk around Tokyo, there's going to be some things you will witness. And if you walk around Kyoto or any other parts of Japan, you'll probably witness a similar thing. And it's in that people are doing it unconsciously, but it becomes deep in the culture. Now you walk around New York City, what are you going to witness? What are you going to observe?

Right?

That's part of New York City culture. Love it, hate it, whatever. And it's not like everyone's like, oh, I'm trying to achieve this, it just is, right? I noticed myself, I lived seven years in New York City, but when I go to New York City to visit and I get on the street, I start walking like I used to walk when I lived there, which is fast, directly straight in the flow. If I do the kind of lower looking, oh, wow, these efforts, I get bumped, move on. What the hell you doing? You know, like, oh, people are so rude. No, they just got stuff to do. And in Tokyo it's like quiet efficiency, right? And respectful and a little more spacious again, from my, from my view. So that's, that's a long winded answer. But that's what I would tell people. What behaviors? What would you want to observe if you weren't part, if you weren't running this company? And you walked in here, that'll start to give you a frame as what kind of culture am I looking to build?

Yeah. And I like the behavior part because people typically model their own behavior off leadership. Right. So if someone is behaving in a certain way, then they feel like that's the way that they can behave as well. So that can be good and it can be bad. And the modeling that happens around that. And if you have something in writing and I had a job after exiting my business, I took a bit of a sabbatical and worked for a publicly listed company, quite large national company, and they had like a full HR team. People and culture they called it. They had all these manuals and training courses, et cetera. But the CEO of the company was straight out of the 90s and was really old school the way that he communicated and treated people, et cetera, which was the polar opposite of their cultural policy. So immediately it diluted totally.

And it goes back to that thing we said before, which is self awareness.

Right.

So if you take me, an initial founder who's self aware or is open to looking at themselves consistently, their culture will be more aligned with what they are hoping to build. If you have someone who's really not worth, you know, not able to look at the mirror because it's hard to look at the mirror.

Right.

Or doesn't want to, then they're going to write some amazing things on the values and it's going to be the most amazing culture. And then in theory, but then in reality, no. So, yeah, I mean, simpler with parenting, it's tough. At least you give yourself a chance, you know. So, yeah, I agree with you.

In your experience, if you don't set the right culture and tone in that early stage of foundational team members and it becomes a little bit of a crazy playground where people do their own thing. Is it too late at that stage to reverse engineer culture and try and change things? Or because a legacy staff, is it sort of done and dusted and there's. You can improve a little bit, but you can never get back to what you actually want.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if again, I wouldn't say anything's too ever too late.

Right.

To do it. I do think it would take more work.

Right.

More energy and more effort. But I think a lot of times when people try to do cultural transformations, they're thinking of doing too much.

Right.

You know, in reality, let's focus on one or two aspects of things. And then I would go back to the behaviors. Hey, we're witnessing that when people come around here, you know, they're doing this, they're saying this, and we want them to be doing this and saying that or take it to the business. We find that we're delayed with a lot of the things that we're delivering, and we need to really get more efficient on that versus doing a whole huge customer transformation. It's like, no, let's focus on the certain things, the little things of why those are happening, like value streams, if you will. And then there's a chance to shift that, which. Which is another thing is, is we kind of looking at it in the work that we do now, which is culture doesn't happen in the vacuum. Right. A lot of people hire cultural consultants to just focus on the. Like focus on this and this behavior and this aspect. And what I've been witnessing over the last couple years is culture connects to productivity, and it connects to alignment, and it connects to customer centricity. And so those are like four components that we work on when we're looking at a culture.

Right.

Not just the culture of what it feels like to work and be at that, but all those other things and how they relate. And we're finding that when you look at those four components, you have a greater chance to either rectify.

Right.

Or continue to build the whole company experience, rather than just going in to do a cultural survey on what it feels like to work here.

Yeah. And that is, for me, sometimes token in that people will roll it out and they'll do some things and they'll try and change, but it's never really truly implemented at the scale that it needs. I'm not sure if you know, any data at all that some of the top reasons why people would leave a job is, number one, other team members or bosses. That's my guess. I don't know if you know.

Yeah, I mean. I mean, those statistics, you know, drove. Driven from Gallup in, like, you know, with a lot of work that Marcus Buckingham did, which was like, first break all the rules and then strength finders came out of those books. A lot of it. A lot of those adages were people leave managers, not companies, and people stay with managers, not companies. So I do think that was the case in the past. I do think, you know, the whole idea over the last couple years of quiet quitting, you know, might have been via people, but also just what it feels like to work there or what work. And also I think we're, especially the younger generation, I'm seeing Now there's a lot of questions about why am I working?

Right.

And what I'm seeking from work, which is different. And a lot of them are, are seeking the job, but that's not, that's it. So I will do my job back to like almost satisfaction. But I do think in order for people to leave, to really leave, you know, and feel strong enough to leave and like that's their best alternative, even if they don't have another job to go to, it's usually in my experience, you know, related to certain people that are, they're having challenges with. So I would agree with you. That's probably one of the number one things I think people stay at work these days even though if they're not super satisfied or passionate about what they're doing, you know, and they can talk, they can have a greater tolerance for that, but it's hard to have higher tolerance for people who are making your life really miserable or you're just feeling it. But I'd also say on the other side, which is we're very quick to say it's a toxic culture.

Right.

And so I think those are, those are kind of two components. But yes, people matter. And I would say I'd see the majority of startups fail not because of business decisions, but because of people decisions.

It's really important. And I've had good and bad and historically I've always tried to hire culture first, skill second. And if they've had skills in the ballpark of where they need to be and we need to do a bit of training, that's much easier than trying to change someone's personality type or how they fit into the team. And if you're growing quickly and hiring quickly as a startup, then like there's a real double edged sword there as far as you want to get someone in. But what are the things you're prepared to compromise? Is the question you need to ask yourself if you don't find the perfect person.

Totally, totally. I have a simple model that we do to help people with performance issues. Right. And it goes, it goes hand in hand with what you just said, which is if people aren't doing their job well, there's one of three reasons in my experience. One, competency. They don't know how to do it well.

Right.

So maybe we mishired them, you know, maybe they were told there was something else or the job shifted, but they just lack the competency, which is okay if I have that problem. Training development.

Right.

The other issue that is working against people, if they're having trouble is, is confidence. They know how to do it, they haven't done it enough. Okay, same similar problem, but similar solution which is let's give you reps, let's give you support.

Right.

And the third one is desire. Don't want to do the job. That usually doesn't start out right away. Like usually kind of fake it at the beginning and then it wanes and they're like, you know, I've seen you do the job, Andy, you can do it, you're confident about it, but also you're not doing it right. And that desire piece is a tough one.

Right.

So I agree with you. Like if you, if, if you seem to be like open and willing to work, but I have to work on your competency and confidence, I'd love, I'd love to have that employee every time. But if you're already crushing it and doing it, amazing, but you don't really want to be there, that's not truly what you want to do. That's not a good, you know, that's, that's a good skill fit at some level, but then it's not a good culture fit.

Correct. I would 100% agree. And I would say too, the people that have the right culture fit align with the purpose of your business and are motivated to do what you do and that's why they show up. That's a really strong place to start. But the irony in that too is that they're the people that will probably go off and do their own thing and take the initiative because they're hardwired that way to do it. So retention becomes a hard thing. But if someone comes in, learns and grows and then goes off to take on a bigger opportunity as a founder, CEO, whatever your title may be, you have to sort of accept that and almost celebrate it as far as that's the success. As much as they've left, like you've done a great job to help them grow.

You should.

Right.

And I think, but that's an anomaly, right. It doesn't happen very often. I think most people that build their own business and bring people in and then find out that their piece people are leaving, they're like, what trader? Like what are you doing? And get angry and upset and then, well, don't forget we have a non compete versus I love the ones who are like, you're leaving, oh man, I'm going to miss you, you know, but good luck and let's stay in touch and let's continue and oh, you're doing A competitive, a competing business. Okay, we have an NDA, but I still trust, like, let's figure this out. But more importantly is it's happening. So once it's happening, why would I spend my energy to hold on and anger and resent versus take the pain a little bit? Oh, it's going to be hard to replace Andy. But you know what? Go fly, dude. And then Andy's going to be like, oh, I love those guys, I'll refer them on. And versus if, like, how can, how dare you, Andy? Then you're going to go do your own thing and you're never going to think about me in a positive way. You're going to talk crap. You're going to not give me business. So it's, it's really interesting when people choose that other side, but 100% right. If you can get people to go. And the other thing is when you hire people on, people forget as founders what they were like. Think of all the jobs you had. When I think of my job in my early 20s, like I wasn't going to, I didn't have a plan to be there for 15, 20 years. No, two maybe. And that's how long I lasted. But as a founder, you're like, what, you're leaving? Wait a minute, you know? Yeah, of course you are. If you can get people to do well within a small timeframe, one year, two year, three or four, and they're productive. Gift.

Right.

But we don't think of it that way. We're like, oh, crap, we have a retention problem. Yeah, yeah.

A churn of staff is a very stressful thing. As a founder, if you're already busy having to navigate workload, the hiring, training, all of that, it becomes a three to sometimes six month process to do that in a seamless fashion and continue where you were. So it interrupts the flow a little bit. So I think to give it some structure. I'd love to talk about integrated excellence. And we've spoken about this before. Can you talk us a little bit about that instrument and what components it has and how you roll it out?

Yeah. So a couple years ago, I partnered with a colleague of mine who had a lean consultancy, right. Focusing on lean aspects of the business, where they would go in and do six month to nine month transformations on value streams. And within that work, you really, it's a heavy focus on understanding how productive and how aligned teams are. And then you kind of look at all the behaviors that they're having and you start to switch it out and realize, oh, there's you guys. You guys are. There's a lot of miscommunication, there's a lot of steps that don't need to be made. And really quickly, once you make those adjustments, you see a huge increase in productivity.

Right.

And profits. It's amazing the statistics within the first two weeks of the changes. But once you put those in place, something still needs to happen, which is you need to reinforce those behaviors and upskill, reskill or outskill people who can handle those new ways of working. And typically lean consultancies don't spend a lot of time on that. Right. So we work together and started to create and realize, hey, well, culture and the work that I do, productivity alignment have a huge aspect of it, but we don't usually spend a lot of time there because we're just looking at the behaviors. And so we realized in order to do this work, especially to have a successful transformation organizationally, we looked at four key components which were productivity alignment, culture and customer centricity. And that became what we called integrated excellence. And so there was an instrument we created that gave CEOs and founders a quick snapshot of how their company's doing within those four elements.

Right.

And we find it to be really interesting because it's a great, quick, easy way to say, oh wow, here's how I am productivity, here's how I'm alignment, here's I'm customer centricity, here I am a culture. And then recommendations to improve that. You don't have to go through a whole transformation. You can go deeper with us, but you can also just get some quick hits. And what we found is focusing on those four components, you had a greater chance of actually improving the whole company experience. Because culture doesn't happen without productivity, alignment doesn't happen without culture. And they were all interconnected, yet people were separate them out. And that always wasn't something that always worked.

Yeah, My assumption on that too would be that one feeds the other. So if you're able to get alignment happening where people understand five year business plan, internal decisions that are being made, there's a transparency where all aligned on what you're doing all of a sudden with that there's no subjectivity that happens and debate between people other than the constructive conversation as far as how do we get to this point in the most effective way, like time, cost, everything.

Exactly. And so if that's that, then we become more productive. And then if part of our culture is having transparent communication and fearless feedback or whatever it is, there's going to be Ample opportunities to have that if we're aligned. And then where customer comes in is, as you know, this is different groups, especially as startups grow, who is the customer?

Right?

And so if we, if we're not in alignment with who the customer is to begin, we're all doing our work over here and you're doing there, and we're all have different views of the customer, then customer centricity becomes fractured. And that impacts productivity alignment as well as culture. The culture of engineering versus sales, marketing. You know, it's all about differing views of customer. And all those internal battles that you have very often between departments is because of that. And then again, back to your point, impacts productivity, impacts alignment. So in coming up with a tool, we were like, oh wow, this is really interesting because we'll see companies have really higher scores on certain aspects of alignment, but not productivity and customer centricity. And then giving them quick, easy ways to kind of solve for that kind of supports the whole ecosystem, if you will, and the company.

Right.

You touched on something there that I talk about a lot, and it's from a brand strategy, which is part of culture. And there's a lot that happens now when you're talking about mission, vision, purpose, and you're a young company, quite often people will buy into your brand because you're doing something that fills their passions or it has something tangible that's an outcome beyond the product and bottom line. Those things manifest internally from a cultural perspective, but then they also externalize as far as communication. And if it's the opposite, where you have a toxic culture, I feel like that that spreads through into customers as well as far as the experience that they have. And if you have retail or phone lines, email communications, whatever it is, a lot of that sentiment will carry through. And that's not something that you want your brand represented as too. So it's much bigger than just internal relationships and retention. It's actually how, how it plays a role to, to acquire and retain customers as well.

Definitely. We do a lot of work on excellence in customer service and we do it with large companies. We have, we do a lot of workshops around that and consultancy. And the core principle of those workshops in that work is your internal customer service is a barometer for your external. So your external experience, if you have external customers, that's only as good as how the internal experience is going.

Right?

And very often most companies are not looking at their colleagues as their customers. And so when you switch that and start to go, hey, Andy's my customer, I'm going to treat him like, then you can see some consistency. And the other thing that happens is when you have what appears to be good external customer service, sometimes when you really look deeply into it in order to get there, if the internal has a lot of challenges, eventually that'll crumble, in my experience. So you can fake it for a bit, you know, but eventually it'll crumble. And then on the flip is sometimes if you spend more time building your internal customer service.

Right.

Your external naturally will be great.

So, yeah, And I equate it to a family example. You know, within a family group or your closest friends, they're typically the ones where you are most liberal as far as opinions being completely irrational, emotions, et cetera.

Sure.

And that can come to life. I feel in a work situation as well, where you're with someone all the time, you feel there's a mutual trust, so you're probably a little bit more abrupt. But if you were to change that and say, hey, you're meeting the mother of my best friend and you have a conversation, you're going to act and behave differently. Right. There'll be respect, there'll be curiosity, there'll be things that change. So I like that analogy you said there, as far as treating internal team members like their customers. And it flips it immediately.

It does. Because you're certain you're not. You're, well, that's my colleague or even, oh, they're my friend. But more importantly, like, how, you know, why should you treat them any different?

Right.

You are providing stuff for them. They need stuff from you, you need stuff from them in order to provide to the customer. But if we're always focusing on, is the customer satisfaction high? Without really looking at whether our internal customer satisfaction is high. And that's really where culture. A lot of people in my mind, make a little bit of a mistake. We're saying, hey, the cultures, our culture, internal culture is not good. I'm like, well, are we. Let's just step back. Are we treating each other like customers? So back to the Integrated Excellence instrument. When you look at customer centricity, we're looking at it. Are we all understanding who the customer is from an external perspective, but also are we treating people internally like customers? Because like I said, direct correlation between the product that we sell or the service that we offer and the experience our external customers have, you know, connected to what it's like to work inside. And it makes sense.

Right.

If you've ever worked at a company where it's not good internally, it doesn't feel comfortable, how good can the product be?

Right.

If I hire an artist to create art, customized art for my house, and they have a certain way that we've learned of how they work best, but I don't provide that for them and I force them to work in a way, they will still produce art. It just will be infused with resentment and anger and frustration. And as me, the final customer, I will feel that. All right, and so this goes back to a leadership perspective and everyone else is just like looking at that mirror and saying, we got to improve our culture. Well, let's take a look at it. What is it right now?

Right.

And some, some minor shift to saying, hey, we're going to start treating our internal colleagues as customers and giving them the ability to do that. That alone could shift things tremendously.

There was an interesting post I saw yesterday from Lucy Woofenden. She's a fractional CMO and has her own agency and she was episode three of this podcast and she talked about how being open to bad feedback from customers is equally important, if not more important than getting good feedback and being able to go through validation. Validation gives you confidence to move forward, but there's also the culture element too. Hearing and seeing what your customers are saying and the influence on the product and the internal team. And there's things that you can learn from customers that fuse. So it's a very two way relationship to be able to be thick skinned enough and pragmatic enough to be able to take feedback on board internally and externally.

Most definitely. I mean, Glassdoor is an example of that.

Right.

But I also think it's like, this is the other thing we talk about is like when you ask for critical feedback from somebody, right? And typically when you say, I was like, can I get some feedback from you on that, even though you're asked. Most people are asking feedback for feedback, but I don't think they're necessarily prepared for what they're going to hear.

Right.

Because if I was like, hey, can you tell me what I did? Well, Andy, that's kind of what people are saying when they want feedback a lot of times, right? Depending on culture. But. But if I say, can I get some constructive feedback? And this is just a tip for founders on the call here, if you ask for constructive feedback first, good on you. That's awesome.

Okay.

But here's what one thing I would say don't do. All right, hey, Andy, can I get some feedback on my communication style? And then let's say Andy says, yeah, Michael, sometimes you're a little bit more abrupt. I noticed last week when I asked you, you kind of clicked in. And then I say, oh, yeah, yeah, thanks Andy. But that's the reason I did that was because I was a little rushed in my head. Okay, don't do that. If you ask for constructive feedback from anybody, and you should, As a founder, 100% in my mind when they tell it to you, you have one job. Listen, don't judge it, don't defend it, Please don't defend it. Even though with all your being you're going to want to just take it later on, process it and you can decide if you want more information, whether you agree or disagree. But in the moment, if you just listen, you are setting up a culture of people asking for feedback and taking it right. And then we can judge later, we're going to act upon it. But the worst thing you can do is say, oh yeah, the reason I did that was that then Andy's not going to want to give me constructive feedback because I keep on trying to defend. So that's my two cents. But you can disagree, buddy.

Oh great. I think there's two parts for that. So I think the ability to be objective. And if you ask any human being who's self aware enough, if they have a tense moment and they respond immediately, they're typically going to regret it. If you catch your breath, go away for an hour, or even better, sleep on it overnight and come back and process through with a clear head, think about what has happened and understand that nine times out of 10, it's nothing personal, it's actually well intended, maybe not well delivered, but being able to get to a point where you understand the feedback and then have a constructive conversation is really important. But the thing for me in that, and I'd love to hear it from you, is the tension is that as a founder and a leader, if you're in that position, you're typically doing something because you 100% believe in what you're doing. You don't want to be proved wrong that what, what you're creating or that there's an issue in there or somewhere. So you have a little bit of the rose colored glasses in that you are the only person who knows best and other opinions are just clouding your vision of what you're creating. So it creates tension between like pragmatism and objectivity, but also passion driving, quick decision making and progress.

No, I get it. So I think there's two things there. One, if I'm going to ask for feedback, listen to it. If someone's going to be open to share it with me, share their feedback, but I'm not asking for it. That's a different processing that goes on. I still would say listen to it, but it'll be harder.

But.

But the big one is if you're going to ask for it, if you're seeking it, really take it.

Right.

If it's unsolicited, then you might have trouble not defending it, all those kind of things. But back to what you just said. I have a strong vision. I believe this is the way to go. And here would be my take on that. You're a leader. You have a strong vision. You know how you want to do things, you want to move quickly, and you have a team that's working with you. There's opportunities in many points of that process for you to ask for information. Naturally, all you're going to get is affirmation if you're a strong leader. They were going to paint the wall red, everybody. Yep. Good color. Great. Michael. I love red. Let's go. Even though red's horrible and you shouldn't paint red because in a week, it's going to make you lose $200, whatever it is. So the real leader is going to be like. So I'm thinking about red, but a team I want to hear. I want everyone to come up with one reason why we shouldn't paint it red and get back to me by the end day. Even though you're still going to go with red.

Right.

That is interesting information. And then you're seeking information, not affirmation. So no matter how driven you are and how much you believe, if you assembled a good team and you assemble the good team because of how they think and what their skill sets are, don't lose the opportunity to hear from them.

Right.

And that's Andy. And you know that because you know that from a previous career. Sometimes it's just hard. You know, you bring people in because they're talented, but yet a founder can be so strong and so driven that they lose the ability to get that amazing data that's around them. Even though it'll contradict their vision, it's still okay. I'd rather hear it.

Right.

Other than that, you can have a lot of people going, yep, that's great. That's great. And then when you end up paying the whole company red and everyone's really angry all the time, too late.

I love the simplicity of that because there's two things at play. One, you're giving your team members A chance to give feedback without being put on the spotlight within a group situation gives them time to think about what they're going to say. It also drives constructive feedback. So if you're asking a very specific question about reasons why it doesn't work or supporting reasons why it does work, you're able to give that in a way that's not personal. And I've heard so many examples and my background's in advertising, as you know, where I've had a client say, well, I asked my daughter and they don't like that song. Or you have someone going, I don't like green. And it's like, okay, you don't like green. But in context of the brief strategy, everything we're doing, green is definitely the best color. So can you leave your personal opinion aside and put your brand hat on and do that? So it's, there's lots of things there as far as being a team and that behavior and that model of that one sentence, feedback, it gives the team confidence to speak up. But it also means that other times that they interact with team members, you'd hope that they'd pick up the same kind of approach. So they're very specific with what they're asking rather than having an open ended question that can get a little bit ugly.

I definitely agree.

Right.

And I think, and you're also starting to build, if you do that regularly early on where you're asking for information, you're asking for people to challenge what you're thinking and then that's going to be part of the culture. Especially if in their challenges, one, they don't get their heads chopped off, they don't get yelled at like, no, I really want to hear, you know, that's stupid. Why'd you come up with that? That doesn't happen because that's going to be a bad, that's a bad culture that gets normed. But also if you start to take some of those ideas, like you thought you were going to go red, but then you came up with the idea of maybe purple and here's why and you go with it, then next time you ask Andy or team, guess what, you're going to get information. But if it's just kind of like, just to kind of placate, then eventually they'll pick up on that and that'll be the kind of culture they're like, what's the culture? Well, we always get asked our opinion, but we never, it never gets used.

Right.

Which is better than never being, never being asked 100%.

Yeah. There's a book called Blind Spot and they reference a NASA example of failed missions. And there was a story of a young engineer and they called out something that they could have done and it wasn't taken at the same level as the more senior engineers that had longer tenure just because of the age. And there was an issue and I feel like that the rocket wasn't successful and some astronauts died in that. And the book talks a lot about those kind of examples where it's things that people do and have done for a long time. Like that established process of a way of doing things is a cultural thing and can hold you back in so many ways. But empowering people to have fresh ideas and challenge things in a way that adds value. And right now, because people are having to work longer, we've got five generations in the workforce for the first time. Again, you're talking about people from 18 to 70 and just like where they grew up.

Crazy, right?

Yeah. Their life, what they're exposed to. Technology shifts that are happening. There's so much change and they all deal with that in different ways. So you've got not just different personality types, you've got different ages that you have to put in the mix as well.

A hundred percent.

Right.

The whole cross, cross generational workforces. And especially it's interesting this happened, you know, earlier on with millennials, where younger people are managing older people and not just like a few years older, like sometimes generations. And that's a whole different dynamic.

Right.

But that's the shift with technology. People who are more digital native.

Right.

I was saying I, my, I have a daughter who's 15 and like you have younger kids, right?

How old are you?

Yeah, okay, so 11. And I have a friend who has like a seven year old and a five year old and I'm like, those are AI natives.

Right.

And so I'll give you an example. My nephew's 20, was out in San Francisco with me last week and he was so excited to take a Waymo.

Right.

Automated text. He was like so excited to take away. You can't get me into a Waymo. I'm not ready for a Waymo.

Right.

I won't even use a self driving function on my car. No, it's not a Tesla. Okay, but, but I won't.

Right?

And I won't jump in the Waymo. But he's excited to it. And then I was thinking about maybe your 11 year old who's gonna only know Waymo.

Right.

So when you look at AI natives, it's gonna like people like, I can't believe that. How, how could you go to a doctor that wasn't real person? Well, if you're, if you're, if that's all you've known, it's very easy. And that's kind of how I look at with working through generational difference is what have you always known? And that's why it's hard for older generations to adopt some of the younger and the younger to adopt some of the older practices. But when you look at it, that frame tends to open up and go, well, that's all they've known. Okay, I get it.

Yeah.

All I've known is reading a Kindle. So a real book is going to be really weird. How can we not read real books? When I was young, that's all about that, right? It's all you've known. So I always find that fascinating when people push up against it, but then when they see it, that's it. And the same thing goes with culture. That's all we've known. That's how I grew up. That's how I was programmed. So I might be resistant to other ways or I might be seeking them out because I didn't like those ways.

There's definitely a lot at play in that. And my wife was just in San Francisco and she did the same thing. She saw the Weibos getting around and she was curious, but she didn't have the confidence to get into a car without a driver, so she called an Uber instead.

Which is really weird because in San Francisco if you ever go to the airport, the AirTrain is all self driven and I'm okay with that. And in Japan too, I rode many self, you know, or you know, no, no driverless trains without a problem. But there's something about the car, you know, that's a block for me at this point. I'll get there. But it's really interesting in terms of what one is excited for. But also that's all one knows, right? That's really huge. So I always look at when, when I do work with, with larger companies and growing ones, even startups though, but like in their 50 60, the 150 to 200 range, I'm always interested in talking to the people who've only been there a few months. So another thing there for, for founders here, as your company grows, the people who've only been there for a little bit will always tell you a clear view of what your current culture is.

Great insight. I could see that because the longer you're there, the more you take for granted things that just exist in a certain way. It's kind of like, well, that's how it's always been done. Whereas fresh people will see the grating much clearer.

Yeah, they'll get pushback from trying to do things differently or also they'll find out that people say they don't do it that way or they do it this way, but they don't really know why.

Right.

But people from a legacy will necessarily will know that. But yeah, you just get a real good insight. It's like when you have a new customer and you say, what's your experience been like versus someone who's been through the ups and downs with your company, who's a loyal customer. The new customer is going to give you those eyes, those fresh eyes. And the new employees I always like, typically we don't spend a lot of time talking to our new employees. We just get them onboarded and let's go.

Right.

Meanwhile, they can be very insightful in what's happening in your company.

And my example with my business, we had, call it five people and then we grew to 15 pretty quickly. And within that 15 we had one of the team members and she nominated herself as Cultural officer, which was not a HR role. It wasn't designed, it wasn't delegated to her. But she took it on because she wanted to take ownership of the culture. As my two co founders and I were, were very busy so doing those things. And what we ended up doing was having an allocated budget and we allow them to do certain experiences over a period of time. And it was all very team based. So rather than us go and book something token because we thought it would be interesting, it was very much driven by the people who would probably appreciate it the most. And it was the best thing that ever happened. And it wasn't by design, it was by accident. She loved to be able to do it. She was a very much a social person and was tapped into lots of fun experiences. And with a budget they felt like that they had access to mum and dad's credit card, so to speak, to do things. And I think that it allowed us to have amazing retention. Like we had people stay with us all the way through.

Yeah, that's great.

Yeah.

So again, it doesn't have to necessarily be so, so thought out deeply or, but, but I hear, what I hear you more is saying that maybe those things that'll mean stuff to people, coming from your individual contributor level might be more powerful than from a leadership level that says you need this or we're going to do this.

Right.

Versus what should we do and what do we want to do? And those are experiences.

Right?

Those, those impact culture.

Right.

100% and make people feel certain ways. And then I think behaviors can be bred out of those experiences. 100%.

Right.

And Vice versa. If they don't have them or if the experiences aren't super positive, then other behaviors will be a result of that.

Yeah. There was one, I remember that we ultimately shut down because we thought it might be a little bit too much, was they pitched this idea. There was a group that had doggy daycare activities. So you basically get a bunch of someone else's dogs in the office so you can play with them for the day. And I just thought that's just.

That might be a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

Just. Just one.

That's right.

Yeah.

Bring your dog to work day. So but all those things, and I think those are, it's funny, like little simple things can make a big difference to people. Right. So they don't have to be huge things too and they don't have to be massive budget things. But I do think, you know, what we're seeing now with a lot of startups is a lot of Async distributed ones. And so that creates another whole challenge of building culture. Because I don't see you, I don't. I've never met you. Example for those of you, Andy and I have known each other for like, but over almost a year and a half. I've never met Andy.

Right.

I never met you in person. So which we have to do in New York at some point. But the point is, is if that's the norm for folks, I'm finding a lot of fully distributed companies are really kind of leaning into the once a quarter meetups and not just to like make pizza, but have sprints where we're doing work together, but we're also bonding and having some development time. And that seems to be a pretty good solution to the challenges of always working distributed, assuming you have budgets to do that. But I find a lot of CEOs and founders find the budget for that because it's vital.

Yeah, it definitely drives effectiveness. My experience, and it was a Covid experience where I didn't meet my team for maybe one year to 18 months. And once we all met in person for a few days, it was so much easier to get things done. It changes the dynamic of relationships with team members. Whereas on a call, like we're doing now, like, it's easy to be to the point functional, there's no real moment for small talk. And that sort of dissipates, I think, a little bit of the ability to scale and do things at a greater rate. Because when you know the people around you, their strengths, weaknesses, et cetera, and how you collaborate, it just empowers everyone at a much higher level.

Yeah, no doubt. And there's, there's, there's something about trust when you connect in person as much as you can.

Right.

There's just something else. I would argue that even though we can connect virtually pretty well, I think when we're in person with each other, it's really not about what we're doing or saying or the work we get done. I think there's probably a cellular connection that exists.

Right.

And then the. Yeah.

So people might be like, wait, what?

But like, I do. I really believe that. And then it's like, that's what's going to go on later. And typically we're like, oh, yeah, we had beers together or we did that together. But really it's just being in each other's presence for extended period of time that impacts how we can actually work together.

Love that. So nice. So, to finish up today, Michael, I'd love to have you talk about Culture Crossing and how folks can work with you. You're a public speaker, a consultant, and you're also an author. You have a book out. What are the things you're prioritizing at the moment?

Yeah. So if you want to reach out to me, these are things just Google. Culture Crossing, that's my consultancy name, will come up pretty, pretty quickly in your Google searches. But Our website is culturecrossing.net don't play a lot of roles on social media, so LinkedIn is probably about my only place you'll find me. But what am I prioritizing right now? I'm really into transformative work. Right. So I do get booked very often to, you know, work speak at off sites and help people with all different things and different events and things like that. But I'm prioritizing more transformational work. So looking at working with people who really want to shift and change and are committed to doing that, one of the things that we do a little differently than other consultancies in my experience, is our goal is to not make you dependent on the consultant. Our goal is to empower companies and founders to do the work themselves without me, which some people might be like, well, that's a crappy business model, Michael. But it's, it's what I believe. And really what works because, you know, if you're consultant heavy at some point, it's just, you know, we have to do the work right, especially when it comes to this kind of thing. So that's kind of what I'm after. But, but thanks for, for bringing me in, Andy. It's good to chat with you and I hope your viewers got some, some tidbits out about what we shared and happy to send information along as needed.

Perfect. Yeah, it was so informative for me and I've been fortunate to have a few workshops with Michael and I've done plenty of workshops and I can genuinely say that what I got out of that was really fascinating. In looking at me, looking at team dynamics, how people perceived each other, it was a valuable lesson to be able to evolve and be more effective. So I think it's worthwhile. And I'll definitely put all the links, contacts, etc in show notes and there'll be details on my LinkedIn as well. So it'll be straightforward to find Michael. But Michael, thank you so much for making the time. Today was absolute treat.

Cheers, Eddie. Thank you, man.

You're listening to Startups Decoded. My name's Andy Walsh. Follow subscribe, Give us a nice 5 star rating. Always appreciated. We'll keep coming back with more great guests, so stay tuned.