Susan
More to marketing. Welcome to more to marketing. The podcaster explores marketing, product and all things business. I’m your host today, Susan, and we’re here to talk about the power of company culture. Now. For me, this one is a huge passion topic for me because I really love how you can evolve culture into your business and make it work. For you and for all your team members as well. Today I have a very special guest who’s an expert in this field, Chris Dyer. Chris is an expert in company culture now. He has extensive experience in leading teams of thousands. That’s correct, thousands. And Chris knows a thing or two in this space, his companies. Have consistently been named the best place to work and the fastest growing companies as well. He is an expert and #1 speaker on culture. And I’d love to welcome Chris to the.
Podcast welcome, Chris.
Chris
Thank you so much for having me.
Susan
Susan, thank you. And I just love to know a bit more about you and about the journey of being. On to make culture your your focus.
Chris
Yeah, I mean I if you’ve ever heard me on a podcast before, you may have heard this, you know, this little story, but, you know, essentially I stumbled upon this probably anything I’ve ever done that was worth anything. I did it by accident. You know, it wasn’t like as intentional as I probably should have been, but. You know, I started my business because of 911 and I didn’t know that I shouldn’t start a business after a big terrorist attack. And we were in a recession like it was just, well, opportunity knocked. And so I went and did it. And you know, years later I realised, ah, here we are another problem and my business isn’t right and so. When I looked in the mirror, I said it’s really our culture and it’s also my fault. And so I got really curious about. Sure. I just, you know, I went just head in and said, let’s figure it out. I want to know everything. I wanna learn everything. I want to interview every smart person. And I thought I was just doing it because I wanted to know because I wanted my business to be better because I wanted my employees to. Be. Happier and. What accidentally happened was people started asking me to tell them what I was doing and to help their companies and to come and speak at their conferences and events. And. And somebody sent me an email one day and said, hey, do you want to write a book? And I thought it was a joke. And I’m like, you’re gonna ask me to. Book talk to my fifth grade English teacher. You’ll definitely won’t want me to read a book, have to write a book so you know, like all of these things just kept happening accidentally. Because I was wildly passionate about culture and we were being successful at it. You know, I think if we had been curious, but then the things we did didn’t work, nobody would have cared. But they were working really, really well and that started getting us all kinds of attention. Where? Most of the attention that my company was getting was about our culture and about how we what we did and how we did it and a lot less about like the actual service we provided. If you look at, if you were like type in that company name now, I mean like 90% of the articles are about how we did the work and how we worked with employees and so. I’m really proud of that, that like it was such a force that, you know, people were talking about it. We often hear a lot of negative stuff, right. You hear about what a company did wrong. And so we were trying to be that little beacon of light of, like, here’s what you need to do.
Susan
And I love that because it’s got that return factor of if you bring people on the journey of positive culture and they then leave you because eventually everyone, most people do move on and roles and go to other companies, they take that with them and then they plant that seed there and then it comes around and it grows and grows. So that what you’ve actually influenced goes well beyond your company. So no wonder everyone was contacting you wanting to know more as. Well.
Susan
I love it. Now I’ve got a whole pile of questions for you today. Cause normally I I don’t ask them as direct questions, but I’m so passionate about this topic and I really. Want to know more? What role does company culture play in fostering innovation? Do you have an examples that where culture directly contributed to some breakthrough ideas? I’d love to hear and explore this more.
Chris
Yeah. So when we typically think about a great company culture, we’re not. Specifically talking about innovation, innovation itself kind of has its own separate formula. Yes, great culture can help us be innovative. If you one of my pillars of a great culture is how to deal with mistakes and when we deal with mistakes in the right way, that does end up helping us find innovation. But if you have a great company culture, you can still be not innovative, you can be. Happy and you can have people being wildly productive and high performance and they can end up missing. The next thing right they can keep doing the thing that you’re telling them to do really, really, really well and really, really loving it. Think Kodak think blockbuster think you know, there’s like so many examples of like, they kept doing the thing they did really, really well until, like, you know, Netflix shows up and, like, totally reinvents. The entire industry, so innovation sometimes has to have its own little thing. So. Cultures gotta be good. That’s a that’s. A. A baseline. We have to be dealing with mistakes. We have to be allowing people to try things and to experiment. I I do quite a bit of work with helping leaders thinking about having an experiment mindset that can help foster that. But bad news is, is that the most innovative companies typically do one of two things. They either have a completely separate company consulting firm outside. The group that is providing them the innovation or they’re buying companies and you look at Apple and Google and they’re buying all these companies all the time, they’re buying innovation. And so that’s how it happens. Or they take their innovation team and they literally put them in a different building away from everybody else.
And.
And the reason for that is we want to have different you, you kind of get stuck in this like common thinking.
Susan
Exactly. It’s the blinker block. That’s what blinkers on the eyes, isn’t it like. A horse.
Chris
Right, right. And you know, we noticed that when we’ve seen this with like doctors, we’ve seen this with teachers you. If you take a Doctor Who thinks that, you know, at this in working in the hospital and they think that. They should run these certain kinds of tests, so this is the way in which we should go after treating this particular. Fees, if they were to change hospitals and go to a totally different hospital that has a different mindset about how to attack that same illness, that doctor shifts their thinking, they start conforming to what that hospital culture ends up saying is the right way to deal with this. Is it more aggressive? Is it less aggressive? That more you know, Eastern medicine, is it more Western? It’s really interesting how a doctor can go from one place doing one thing, change the location, they suddenly stop. Doing that, it’s like they changed their mind and that’s not because they change their mind, it’s because that’s what the norms are, and that’s what all the other doctors are doing, and that’s what they think. And so when we talk about innovation, it’s really, really hard to get people to think about doing things differently when they’re walking around and everyone’s doing it successfully. One way right now. And so that’s why innovation so tough for companies you know to to get it right so. Maybe you got to do an offsite. Maybe you got to do pull people out of their daily work and get them in somewhere else is by going to conferences and seeing different companies, different ways being inspired by different ways of thinking can help. But if everyone is just hanging out in the same building, and then you put them in a conference room and. You like? Go innovate. Good luck.
Susan
And it’s also about not bringing those new ideas, isn’t it? There’s been so many conferences that I’ve been to that big companies have hosted, and you’re hearing the same thing you’ve heard last year and the year before and the year before that. And almost the same speakers. So you look at it and go well, how am I going to get better or where are my improvements or where’s my opportunity if I’m not? From going to these conferences and I’m not learning anything new or I’m not seeing it in a different light on how I could approach something, I think that’s where a lot of these companies fail as well when they do these off sites is they don’t think to bring in outside. Different industry, even experts, to talk differently to them, so they can try and think a little different as well.
Chris
Yeah. And you know, some organisations, some conferences, do a really good job of trying to bring in lots of different people and more diverse, you know, voices and other times, you know, you’re right, you feel like you’re hearing the same tired stuff over and over again in the same little, you know, jazzy acronyms or whatever and nothing ever changes. So yeah, it can. Be tough.
Susan
Completely agree. Now many companies claim to have a strong culture, but in your experience, what truly distinguishes a good company culture from a great one? Because you’ve spoken about good being a baseline, what is great?
Chris
So in my book, that’s really what I’m setting out to to try to demonstrate or to prove is that what makes a good culture? OK, what are those minimum things you need to do? And for some companies, that’s enough. For some people, like, as long as I could check those boxes, they’re they’re fine. And if you have like the sexiest product or service ever, you could probably get away with that. But rarely is that the case. Rarely are we able to just completely not do much with culture and just rely only on our product or service. So what we have to do to be great is these 7 pillars that I’ve laid out. You have to be very good at transparency. Positive leadership. Focusing on uniqueness recognition being great listeners, positive leadership, and knowing how to deal with mistakes, the greatest cultures get those seven things right over and over and over again. Not 6, not 5. They get all 7 right and and that was what I found in in, in my work for years and years. And studying this and interviewing hundreds and hundreds of of top executives on my podcast and going in and doing research projects with them is that, you know, they scored so high in these seven areas and where we would go to like their competitors who. Were not we’re good. But not great. And they were, maybe they were good at four or three, sometimes 2, you know, they were missing pillars. And that was what was keeping them from being great.
Susan
And I think the the difference between good and great, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think a lot of it’s about the people and making them feel like they’re part of the company and that they’re aspiring to something together. So having from good. To great they. Feel more involved? More likely, they’re not going to leave. They’re going to be happy. To stay longer as well, and then potentially even contribute more with ideas and suggestions as well. Because they have that feeling of it is transparent. I’m not going to get pushed down for voicing something I’m actually valued no matter what level I am within the company.
Chris
So. Where the way in which you have framed that in the way in which you’re thinking is exactly where I started and what I found, what was a big surprise to me was I was wrong.
Susan
Really. Tell me more.
Chris
Though what you’re describing is what will make them good. OK, so focused around our purpose, right? Understanding all that. Those kinds of things are really important for us to. Good. But in order for us to be great, it’s not about getting people to do certain things. It’s not about getting people who the right people in the door. It’s not about people specifically, what it’s about is creating the right environment. We are essentially reinforcing the correct environment. With in a good culture with good people that we brought in the door and then we are creating again thing my example with the doctor, you have doctors doing totally the wrong way of doing it goes to a different hospital and suddenly now they’re doing it the right. Way and then like they’re the best of the best. They didn’t change, they didn’t do different school that there wasn’t some extra education. It’s about the environment, so when we really get hyper focused on making the environment right, we’re focusing on. Are we being radically transparent? Are we focusing on what is working first, right and and and recognising people when they do a good job? Are we doing all of these things? 1st. And then what happens is your people do fantastic and your people are awesome and your people are even more attached to you. And they’re even more excited to do the work. But it’s we we make this mistake of saying I need my people to do something different. I need them to be better. I need to go hire better people. I need and that. Is that well, that kind of thinking only works when you’re good. And it so it’s that real environment. If we look at you know, at Olympic athletes. What often is the difference between someone who’s standing on the podium at bronze, silver or gold versus someone who wasn’t? Rarely has anything to do with their physical abilities, their height, or their eyesight or their. I don’t know, like whatever they were born with, right, and what it ends up being is it’s their process. It’s how they train. It’s where they train, why they train, what they do, what they don’t do. It’s the, it’s that culture, it’s that design, it’s that how they do it. That ends up being the slight difference between making them good versus. Great.
Susan
I love this and I love your explanation of it as well because it helps really resonate that. It’s like their company is an Organism and you’ve got to make sure that it is functioning before. Then you start looking at the people and everything else that’s outside of that.
Chris
Yeah, and. And so it can be really hard for people to to understand this. And so when you’re starting a company, we definitely want to start with people. We do want to hire good people. We can’t just like go grab 10 people randomly off the street and say that’s going to make a good company. I mean, people aren’t wildly important. But. There gets to be this point when you have a good enough you have, you know, having the people in there, they’re going to generally whoever you have in there of of certain quality is going to generally do what they’re going to do. Unless you now the next step is get the process right. And that’s what I’m talking about here. We have to have the right process to help them be successful. Help clear. I used to say I have my my virtual machete out every single day. How can I make their jobs easier? How can I clear away the crap? How can I find ways to get rid rid of ridiculous reports and meetings and like old stuff we are just doing for no reason because we have always done it right and that was I took that on my shoulders like how can I identify in any meeting in any interaction with employees of like wait, why are you doing that? Can you really? Do that? Can we get rid of that? Can we do something better? Like how do we help them evolve? And so again, that’s a. Process. Then we think about what are the right tools to help them and then what is the right technology to back all that up? To to to your point of like we think about people and then usually people jump to tools and technology. They’re like, oh, well, I need a great sales team. I hired a decent salesperson, and now I’m going to put them in Salesforce cause I think Salesforce is the best CRM, right. And that’s going to make them magically fantastic. No, no, right. And you forgot all about the process. The process was so important to help make that salesperson successful and and then get them the tools and then get it and then figure out what technology. Because I’ll bet you. Fantastic salesperson would be fantastic in any CRM you give. Right. And that that, that’s not really what makes them a great salesperson. So it it’s people, process, tools, technology.
Susan
So people process tools, technology just so everyone gets that down as well about how you actually can start looking at culture. And going from step by step and don’t forget the book goes into more detail as well for this too. So I will put that in the show notes at. The end too for everyone, so you can grab a copy. Now, how do you balance the tangible aspects of company culture like the policy perks and all that with the intangible ones like trust and value is one more important than the other? Is it a balancing act? Because I think that’s something that a lot of companies struggle with. Is that tangible versus? Intangible when it comes to the company culture.
Chris
Yeah. So when I when I think about culture, it’s like, how do I? How do we pay people and deal with all that stuff in in the right way? That is, that takes it off the table. So that we we we’re paying fairly, we are providing you know competitive benefits and and pay and all of that and that it is so it’s not like we’re wildly under or wildly over or we’re not over compensating either right and and so we’ll take that off the table and then are we being fair. To people. I don’t believe that we can never be equal. From one employee to the next, every employee is unique. They have different situations at different months and so I used to be we were very open and transparent to our employees like we might do a totally different comp plan. We might have a totally different approach with somebody else than we have with you because they have a totally different situation and we’re trying to figure out what is fair so that. Even on the same team, there may be slightly different. It might be differences in pay, but maybe the other person doesn’t work five days a week. They’re only working four days a week. Because they they get, they have their kids on Fridays and they just can’t do that. And so we didn’t want to lose great people because it was like, well, if you don’t fit this mould of what we expect. Then you can’t. Work for us. And so you might have a different situation. Maybe you can only work 6 hours a day instead of eight because of your family situation or whatever. So we would just come up with. Scenarios that were fair. And if you looked at it, you could say well in two different. People who have 222 totally different situations. And if you imagine yourself being that other person you said, well, that’s fair. I understand why they’re doing that for them, it’s not so different to me that it feels unfair because when everything is equal, it’s like, well, you have to work full time and you then everyone gets the salary and everyone gets this thing and then what you ends up happening is you lose fantastic people.
Chris
Who don’t fit that cookie cutter mould? You lose out on the stay at home parents, you lose out on people who are physically disabled or maybe neurodivergent. You miss out on people who are maybe married to military spouses who pick up and move every so many months and need that flexibility of like they’re going to move from base to base. We should. We used to hire a lot of spouses of military. And they loved it because we would say you could work from home. Here’s your laptop, you, wherever you need to go. If if you your spouse gets deployed somewhere else. We do not count that time against you like as time off. Like you can go and you can move and relocate it and it’s cool. When you took care of them while they did that and then come back to work so they didn’t want worrying if they got redeployed, they had to go find another job now. Well, we did that for them, but we didn’t pay other people when they wanted to be off for other things like. So it was fair for them. Right. Because they had a different situation, a different family situation, and no one ever bought to that. No one ever said. Well, how come you give them a little extra money to go move? But if I wanted to move once every 15 years, you don’t give it to me. No one ever said that because it was.
Susan
A different situation? Yeah, completely. And I suppose I love the fair and flexible. Because it’s fair, but it’s also flexible, so that, as you said, you’re not losing those employees that you love, that you know can contribute no matter what their skill set, background home life requirements are. So then you gain the most out of it as well. So in return. I’m assuming as well. Then they’re gonna be pushing their own envelope to get better and better and contribute more as well in that positive way.
Chris
Yeah, absolutely.
Susan
I love that. So the balance there would be. Transparency, as you’ve said, is one of the pillars and then also focusing on that. It’s fair so that when you’re balancing it out it. Is fair as well.
Chris
Right, right. And and. This is the thing. If you’re willing to be transparent about it, if you’re willing to say it out loud, then it’s probably going to. Fair. If you feel embarrassed or you feel like you’re doing something that’s special for somebody else that you wouldn’t do for anybody then, and that’s gonna get you in trouble. And it always does, cuz everyone talks and they all know, no matter what you try to policy, try to put in there, they all know each other getting paid and what their benefits are and all of that. So you gotta make sure it’s fair and be willing to have a conversation about it if. If for some reason it does feel out of whack to a team of what some people are getting or not getting, but. Like I never had that problem because we were trying to be radically transparent. We were trying to be as fair as we could. I never had people saying ohh, but what I’m I’m not getting what I want. I it just didn’t happen because we were so. Dedicated to their outcomes and to their well being and to making a great place to work that even if they maybe felt just a 5%. Maybe not. It’s not perfectly aligned. They let that go because they knew we were. Trying to do our best.
Susan
Exactly. And the thing with this you can’t please everybody. There’s always going to be a small percentage or a small percentage of yourself that you’re not going to be 100% happy with. And that’s for any job anywhere. So to be able to. Do it for the. Majority have that complete transparency, flexibility and fairness. It really is a great model for everyone to consider about how you can bring in that into your culture. To to then really have that view that everyone is. I don’t want to use the word equal, but more on the same playing. Field in a. Way where no one’s got anything against them.
Chris
Yeah. And what equals really, it’s it’s a hard word because we’re not equal. We’re all individuals. We’re all have our own stuff and we’re different places. And so we’re equal as human beings, we’re equal as in like some larger holistic thing, but.
Susan
Exactly.
Chris
It’s really I think it’s really hard to look at it from a like well, we’re all equal like we’re all exactly the same because we’re not and that’s why I always.
Susan
We will bring different things.
Chris
Try. To yeah, we and then that’s the other thing is, like, people want totally different things. Like sometimes people will like, I don’t really care if you give me benefits because my spouse has benefits. But what I care about is a little. Bit more salary. And so OK, fine. Well, that’s fair. I can give you the the extra money I would have given you for the benefits I can put in your cause you were getting. So again it’s like how do I be fair or somebody else. I’m paying for your benefits and. If your salary is a little bit different. And right. And so we just having those conversations. But then again just being open and honest about it then it always worked out just.
Susan
Fine, I love that. I love it. What are some of the most effective yet often overlooked metrics or indicators for measuring the strength of company culture? So you’ve gone into all these other companies and help them assess it. Whatever you use to actually measure that so that you can see if the yardstick has changed.
Chris
Yeah, there’s some lots of different ways you can do. The obvious is, you know what do your employees say? Are you surveying them? Are you talking to them? Are you listening to them? Are you doing it? And then are you also having an outside group? Do it so that they’re, you know, sometimes those can be different if they feel like they’re being pushed or.
Chris
Maybe they don’t feel they’re being watched, or maybe they don’t trust it.
Watched.
It really is an anonymous survey or whatever, you know, so you know, make sure you have plenty of data as to how they’re doing your your turnover rate is certainly an indicator. Looking at, we used to look at turnover rates, you know, like by manager. And so like, you know, particular manager has a much harder time keeping people or, you know, maybe like. People who hire don’t last very long, and that seems to be happening with one or two managers that that’s another thing that OK, well, maybe that’s where there’s an issue. We need to go deal with. Your client satisfaction scores are a reflection of your culture. So are you actively surveying them and we, you know, we used to. Survey our clients in lots of different ways on every ticket. When we were done, they got a survey that asked them on how we did. That was one way. Then we went back and we also surveyed them. As well, on a larger level with, you know, and that was also because you know the average person putting in a ticket could have been more like the the doer at the company, whereas a larger client survey could be the buyer and the executive who who’s overseeing, you know the the the account or the vendor.
Susan
Very different relationships.
Chris
Right, right. So we were trying to make sure we didn’t have missing data. That’s one of the biggest problems and understanding where you are is what data is missing. And so again, if we were only surveying the people who who who signed the contract.
Chris
Versus the people who use our service and then vice versa, that could cause us a problem. So those are some like really great ways to look at. We also looked at when we put out a job posting, how many people internally referred their friends and family to. Work for us.
Susan
I love that.
Chris
If that dipped down, I used to go ohh no, we’re in trouble. Like if we weren’t getting. I think it was something like if 15% of our employees. We weren’t sending somebody. We weren’t thinking. If we weren’t seeing like some I’m referred by in about 15% of the of what was coming in because we would release it first, like we wouldn’t do. It took some large, you know, job site or something like we would post it.
Chris
More organically, first because we would get so many referrals from our employees.
Susan
And hopefully quality ones as well, because they understand everything.
Chris
And and call on him. Exactly right. And they’re sending us the right people who they think could fit in. The. Culture. But if that number dipped down to five, then I used to go. Oh, OK our employees a little stressed and so something going on, maybe it was for a particular job and maybe it’s that particular manager. And then we also looked at they have high turnover and like.
Chris
Something going on with that manager we need to right. We need to go figure out or maybe something manager. Maybe there’s like some man. That team who’s just not a good teammate and people aren’t referring their friends and family because they know they have to deal with that person. Who’s? Difficult. And so that that’s another little data point that would just help us get curious about what’s going on over there.
Susan
I think I love the point of all of this. Getting as much data as possible and then being curious with it and seeing how it all connects like it’s almost a a giant puzzle piece because it’s not just going to impact one area and may have follow through impacts to other areas as well.
Chris
Yeah, absolutely. And if if you just start following your curiosity, you know. But I said get a lot of little data points we we just sort of like look at this on a dashboard every month. My senior team would be like you know what does this one say? What does this one say? What does this one say? And a lot of months in a row they’d all be good. And so, OK, great. Let’s keep doing what we’re doing. Then there’ll be months when it will go down. What always shocked me is we expected those metrics to go down like things to get worse when we were transparent and telling our employees, hey, we’ve had a few bad months. Our numbers aren’t great. We didn’t get that contract. We lost that that key employee left for someone else like we were delivering some bad news. Two months in a row and we would be like ohh, those scores are everyone’s going to be within and actually they would either hold still or go get better. Because we were being so transparent and saying we we recognise the problem, we know what’s happening and here’s what we’re going to do about it, that they were like, OK, you guys got it handled. Thank you. Like, I can keep doing my job. You understand the real problem you, you. I agree with what you’re going to try to do or you’ve at least. Hear me out if I think I have a better idea. And so it was. It was always when we thought things were like when things were going really, really well is when those scores dropped. Because people were getting stressed, they were getting burnt out. They were having to do too much work because we were winning too much, right? Too many contracts were coming in and that’s when we had to really go back and help them.
Susan
It’s good about that curiosity piece and looking into it. So then you understood that as well and you could attribute it and then try and solve for it as well as a group.
Chris
Absolutely.
Susan
One of the the horrible things that I’ve seen when it comes to some. Of these metrics. I’ve seen very large companies where the manager of the area is being scored if their team gives a good score and not being truthful, so going around to everyone saying you better give 10 out. 10 or else you better give 10 hour and 10 or else.
Chris
Yep.
Susan
So that area gave. 10 out of 10 and they the whole company thinks they’re great, but they don’t realise that the manager is just bullying them into a score and it’s not a true reflection of that area. I was in an area once and I’m I I no one can bully me into those kind of things. I’ll be honest. I love culture. I want it to work. I want to get better. So I was honest with my score in another area and. I happen to be talking to my manager and the the person turned around and said to me I know someone gave us 7 and it was one person and I’m going to hunt them down. Not realising I was that person who gave the seven and I’m just sitting going. Oh wow. I am not going to own up to this one because. The fury of just seeing this person so cranky that their markings looked a bit.
Susan
Not perfect when it’s a true reflection of how for myself in that moment is how I felt for that score that I provided.
Chris
Yeah. And he used. We used to really focus on we. So we never gave bonuses or rewards or whatever to like managers for their scores. What we wanted to see was that did the team meet its goals. So that’s how we judge the managers.
Susan
It was, yeah, I just.
Chris
There. How their team performed? Did their team meet their goals? How many of their team members met their goals right? That was a reflection. As a company, we wanted great scores and we wanted people to be happy and all that, but we understood that putting people in this Direct Line of fire to like, you know, it’s like doing a 360 like, you know, we could do those things. If we’ve identified those a problem we we think there could be improvement, then we might go do that stuff where there’s going to be true reflection and then being honest with each other and hoping that manager is gonna be curious about how to get better. But not as like the regular thing of like, well, everything must be OK if everyone isn’t saying their bosses you know is great, we would see that sometimes on the outside companies coming in, they they would do some of that questioning of the boss and all of that. And that was fine because it was an outside. It it was good to kind of see that data sometimes, but we really tried to focus on. You know. If that if. Was that boss a good boss or? Not but like. Did the team meet their goals? So the team is like doing great. We think the manager is probably doing great too, and if they’re not meeting their goals when the manager is probably having a hard time, there’s probably some misalignment there and you know, sometimes it was even like we had to reshuffle teams. It wasn’t like, oh, we’re gonna go fire the the manager. Sometimes personalities just didn’t work out and was like, better to shift the teams around a little bit and then all of a sudden that manager was a hero because. Maybe they’re more Taipei and that a bunch of other people on their team that was Taipei and like, you know, just a better fit. So we just got curious about that as much as we could.
Susan
I love that. And what is the most surprising lesson that you have learned about company culture in your career and how did that shape your approach to leadership?
Chris
The most surprising lesson happened to me early on. I remember. For some reason I got fascinated with this idea that basically everything I was reading and everybody was telling me like I need to get better at my weaknesses. And as a company, we need to get better at what we’re weak at like. That was the messaging under the subtext of what I was. Getting. Early in my journey here, and for some reason that kept bothering me, there was like this this itch in the back of my skull telling me there’s something not right with that messaging. There’s something. Not there. And and I couldn’t describe it. I didn’t know why I just started asking really, really smart people at conferences like the speaker and this, the mega billionaire and like the whatever, like, the people who everyone’s trying to get 5 minutes with. Conference I could get one or two questions from them. I always asked them this one question and it was. Should I try to get better at my weaknesses? And 99% of the time. They would say yes. And my follow-up question was, but do you do? That. And they always said no. They never. They would. And you could see like I had helped them realise something about themselves at the same time, like they thought they. That’s the answer society tells you to give. That is the the you know the the the recognisable answer you’re supposed to have is that you’re supposed to get better at weaknesses. And they were like, well, no, I guess I hire people who are good at the things I’m not. And I outsource the things I’m not and like. So I have an assistant to do all this other stuff because I’m not good at that or I don’t want to do this and. Give me energy and passion and it just seemed like. Like so incredibly obvious that the people who were focusing on what they were really good at, and that’s what they were doing most of the time, were wildly successful people. Right? So this goes back to. It’s not about trying to be better at something. It’s about that environment that we’re creating. And so for those people, they’re creating an environment where they were doing the things they’re really good at most of the time. And so therefore they were having success and people were counting on them and relying on them and asking to do stuff and wanting to buy more of their crap because they’re good at. They’re just doing this stuff they’re good at. And and so when I I remember that just sort of like when I finally, you know 20 people and I’m getting the same answer. I’m like that’s it. I’m not. I’m not doing any of the stuff that I’m not good at anymore. I. Will. You know. Refuse to do any of that stuff that I hate doing. I’m not good at. I will hire other people. I will. And I just started going to my team and saying, hey, I hate doing this thing. And someone else would raise their hand and go. Are you serious? I love doing that. I was like, OK, well, why don’t you do that? Is there something you hate doing and they would, I would love to do that and we would just, you know, flip flop tests. And and so we would just talk to our people and drive that home with them. Like you should if you’re going to do this job and if you come here and you like it and you. Start taking on tasks. Please don’t ever take on things that don’t give you passion that you’re not good at, that you don’t want to do that, make you want to, you know. Take a long walk off a short pier like we do not want people doing that stuff and that was a big surprising.
Truth.
You know, I I’ve I’ve told people. There’s one small caveat to this rule and that is. You still have to kind of work on your weaknesses with with a spouse. There are. That’s the one place I I that that this little formula didn’t work.
Susan
Yeah. Nice try trying to like offload that to the neighbour or someone else.
Chris
But in yeah.
Chris
I’m just terrible at picking up my clothes off the floor. Honey, I’m so sorry. I’ve never.
Susan
I’ve brought in this Air Tasker person to do it for me.
Chris
Right. That’s right. I’ve just hired a maid to walk around all day and and follow me around and pick up my stuff. No. So but in business, it works fantastic.
Susan
And I think that’s a a key thing is you understand what your gaps are or your weaknesses or your opportunities and then identify after self discovery, is it worth the effort to invest in it or are there better ways to approach this? That I’m going. To be more meaningful and more beneficial.
Chris
Yeah.
Susan
I think I’m going to have to apply that to myself. As well, so thank you. What excites you the most about company culture?
Chris
I think what excites me the most is that. There is this way to ensure that everyone is actually can be happy. Now. We can’t make everyone happy. We can’t, like, do things. But, you know? But ultimately, like everyone can. When they look at their work, ultimately be happy with the job they’re doing and the company they work for. And and there’s different levels of what that happiness is and how much can a person be happy and versus another person that that’s a whole separate topic. But it’s it doesn’t have to be that just management’s happy or just you know, the average employee’s happy. It can be that everyone can show up and do great work and be happy and satisfied with that work. If we get the culture right. And so that that that really. Fascinates me. And and how we can continue to learn more and more things as I work with more and more companies and finding, you know, more ways that they are able to do this and make this happen. But again and again it keeps coming back to those same 7 pillars. Of being really good at those. That this can be a place for everyone. Not everyone. We don’t necessarily want to hire everyone, but once you’re here, it can be a great place for everybody if that makes sense.
Susan
It does, and I think everyone else can understand that as well because not everyone’s going to want to work for this particular company or for another company. Everyone’s got their own unique needs that they’re wanting to satisfy as well. Now I have a final question. I ask everybody. What brand? Any brand in the world best represents you and why?
Chris
What brand? That’s a tough one.
Susan
You can have multiples.
Chris
That is so tough a brand. Let’s see. I’m probably missing a really, you know, cool answer here. But. Yeah, I feel like I’m. I feel like I want to tip my tongue that I really should know that. Would be a. Much better answer, but I would probably say Patagonia is a pretty good. Brand. I mean, I feel like. They’re very clear what they stand for. People like they make a great product. They donate a tonne of money to charity and to causes and things, and I just think they’re a really good example of how do you have an authentic company and have people work for you where it’s like totally clear about. This is who we are, and this is who we’re not. Yep. And if you like that cool. And if you don’t? Fine. You don’t like what we what we make and who we are and who we stand for? Cool. But like, it’s so very clear. And then I’ve just appreciated everything that they’ve they’ve done over the years since I’ve been following them.
Susan
Wonderful. And I can see how that can reflect upon you and everything you shared about yourself today, too. So thank you for that answer.
Chris
Thank you. And I also like climbing mountains, so it’s a good it’s a good. Brand to follow.
Susan
Definitely works well there. Now I’m just gonna do a quick wrap up here. So one of the things that I love so much about companies is evolving culture and seeing how it works. So today we spoke about culture and we learned that there’s two types of cultures you can just have the good baseline blah getting things done, you’re. Just you’re there. Or you can actually invest and have great culture. And definitely get a hold of the book, which I’ll put in the show notes about the seven pillars that can help you get there, and having the high scores in each, because that’s how you can become great. Good is OK if that’s all you want to invest in. But however, when you aim for greatness and achieve greatness, you’re more likely to have the happy employees across the board in their own way and their unique way, and also more likely they’ll be satisfied as well in what they’re doing achieving and contributing, which helps ultimately with the culture. Because the culture isn’t always about the people to start with, they’re very important. They’re one of the biggest stakeholders involved. But it’s about making the right environment and making sure that culture is getting reinforced there and being really hyper focused. That’s where those 7 pillars really help and having the right processes in place. You can then look at the people, the process, the tools and technology to make it all happen and have hopefully. An ecosystem that works for you and then you’re going to have the people that are going to be happy and also satisfied as part of that process. Now, innovation is important when it comes to culture, but it isn’t the be all and end all. Some companies rarely go into innovation because of what they produce or how they work. But when you do go into it, it’s it’s its own formula itself. But it’s very important if you’re wanting to be innovative and bring that into your culture, take the blinders off. It might be something as simple as doing off sites, but bringing in experts from other industries to share their knowledge or their different insights or different mindsets. It could be. Opening up that you have a team that might be specialised in doing the different types of inspirations so that they can bring back ideas and that could be, as some examples we were given, they don’t naturally have to be within the business building, they could be in another building so that they can truly be innovative. And not within the box of every day and seeing things different and bringing that in. So some major opportunities there to be able to help with. Culture and those aspects. Now one of the key ways to make culture work is being fair, and one of the key pillars that I took out of today was transparency. So being transparent when it comes to talking to all your employees and that’s that fair metric. Are you being fair and flexible to everybody so that they feel? That they’re being fair and flexibly treated, and if you’re getting that right, you’re gonna have that team that will help and build that culture and continue that transition that you’re going to have a great culture with those pillars. Now companies we all like to measure things, and there’s many ways that you can actually measure if your culture is contributing and how it’s actually working towards your business’s success. So some of them is very simply, what are your employees saying to you? Now you can do those internal surveys, but there is a bit of scepticism in there about. Is it really? Not gonna have my name against it. I’m a bit worried here. I’m going to be truthful. So it might be worth actually getting external surveys or external companies come in to do those cheques for you. So you know there is accurate as they possibly could be. Other metrics that you could look at is turnover, but be curious, go down to different levels and go is it turn over to a certain manager is it survey results that come from a certain manager and see if there’s any dots that you can put together that might help you to contribute to a more fair. Happy and satisfied group of people within your culture. Now client satisfaction is one that many of us do out there. But what I loved was what Chris spoke about was there’s two ways to measure this. One, all the tickets that go in with your everyday team member, that puts it in. Get those to have scores to be put. On. Them but then also have the other score which goes against the account manager to see how the account is satisfied. Have a look. At that big, curious and see if there’s actually any differences or gaps that you need to actually explore to see if it truly is, how you’re how it’s being represented. Most companies I’ve seen have only done the top level 1, where it’s the account manager. Most account managers are happy they’re making money, they’re in quotas. They’re not seeing the troubled below. So this is where you can really understand and help and improve your team. And then ultimately we go back in that big circle of having the happy and satisfied team members as well, which helps your culture. Which all brings everything around happily. We love that. I also love that using internal references for jobs, so if you’ve got jobs and you want to go out and try and get some new employees, that’s awesome. You’re building the teams. But instead of going out to the big companies first, why don’t you test and see about putting it onto your website and going to your staff and saying, hey, do you know anyone that’s great for this and use that over time as a metric to see if there’s organic growth within your business or people wanting to bring people into your culture? It could be an interesting metric to start to explore. Ultimately, culture. It’s an Organism. It’s big, it’s brutal. For me, it’s exciting. I I love talking about this. I love our discussion today as well with Chris, and I think that there’s a lot to learn, particularly about what good and great could look like and how these 7 pillars can help. Anything I I missed out there, Chris, that you love to add?
Chris
No, I think you did a fantastic wrap up.
Susan
Ohh, thank you and thank you so much again for your time today too.
Chris
Thank you so much.
Susan
Now there are many ways to get in touch with Chris. I highly recommend following him on LinkedIn and also check out his website aswellchrisdyer.com. As he mentioned, he does have books and they’re available on Amazon to buy today. I’ll have the links in the show notes. If you want to try and remember this guys, it is the power of company culture. How any business can build a culture that improves productivity, performance and. Profits and his second book is remote work redesign processes, practises and strategies to engage and our remote workforce. But don’t worry, I’ll have that all in the show notes for you. Thanks again for tuning in to more to marketing. Don’t forget to subscribe so that you can hear some more fabulous guests in the future. Other than that, it’s more to marketing. More to marketing.
