In this short motivational monologue, the speaker reflects on a recent three‑day trip to Richmond and Washington, D.C., and his return to St. Louis. He recounts extended conversations with a school and an athletic department about how to build and nurture organizational culture. The central argument is that trying to convince people to adopt a culture is the easy, superficial approach; lasting, transformational culture requires patient, compassionate relationship‑building with those outside the core group, even without any guarantee of change. He explains that this difficulty is why few transformational cultures exist, yet the process is rewarding. The talk concludes with a weekend call‑to‑action: consider whether you will try to persuade or focus on deepening relationships as your "moment of yes" today.
Chapters
Good morning, everyone. Here is your moment of yes for Friday, August 11th. Back in St. Louis after being in Richmond and D.C. for 3 days. Grateful to be back. Great trip. Had an awesome time. Met with a school yesterday, an athletic department, and we got talking quite a bit. Long 2-3 hour conversation about culture, how to build culture, how to nurture culture, how to— and this is the same conversation I had with the Richmond women's the leaders of the team, kind of the senior leadership group. This idea of like, how do you get someone on board with what you're doing, with what, you know, with what you're passionate about? How do you get people to buy into your culture? How do you get them to buy into what you're about? And both conversations turn to kind of this idea of like, how do I convince these other people that this is what they should be doing? Which is always— that's the easy direction, right? How do I convince someone That they need to be like us, right? And so the answer is the same, and it's not sexy, and it's also not simple. And the reality is, the onus is always on us to nurture and strengthen the relationships with the people that are actually, quote unquote, on the outside, if we ever are going to have them join us on the inside. And that's always us. Going and being more compassionate, more patient with them, and with no guarantee that they're ever going to change. But in the process of doing that, we are building, fostering, and nurturing stronger relationships, which have better odds of them seeing that, oh hey, this, this thing that we're trying to create, or this thing that we're a part of, hey, I want to be a part of that too. And so The reason that there are so few transformational cultures out there is because this is really hard. This is really difficult, and it's super rewarding in the process. So for you today, Friday, moving into the weekend, you know, is there a desire to have someone on board? Are you trying to make a deeper connection with someone? Is your tactic to try to convince them that you have better information, or is your tactic to just go and create a better relationship with them. That's your moment of yes for today, everybody. Have an awesome weekend.
