The Six Immutable Principles for a Dynamic Culture

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Why am I really working? What's the purpose of what I'm doing? How does it fit into rest of my life? I think in a lot of ways, coming out of this pandemic, we learned a lot about what culture is not. And so now there's this great void. And I think there's six things we could talk about that would fill that void.

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Tony Ferraro is an executive coach. He's been with Floyd Coaching for over six years and has over 25 years of leadership experience in both the educational and business arenas. This is lead with culture. I'm Kate Volman, and on this episode, we're talking about what culture is and isn't. So this episode, since this podcast, is really it's for leaders and it's about culture and creating a dynamic culture so people love coming to work and accomplishing great things together.

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We decided that this first episode, Tony and I wanted to really dive into, look, if we're going to talk about culture, we need to define culture. What culture is, what culture isn't. Obviously, culture is talked about a lot in the media. There's a lot of things that some people define culture and they think it's all of these perks. We see a lot of articles on people being able to have unlimited vacation and bringing their dog to work and all of these perks that companies are offering, and they think that is culture, especially a lot of the tech companies, but that's actually not culture.

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So we wanted to before we delve into really what is the definition of culture, we have to kind of define what culture is not. So, Tony, what is culture not?

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Yeah, that's a great question. We're, what, a week away from elections, so we're in political speech time, which, if you really pay attention to politicians, they never answer the question that they're asked. If someone would ask us, so what is culture? We would be a good politician and say the real question is and of course, the real question is the one we want to answer. So the idea that the real question to start with is what culture is not, like you said. And I think we can go down that laundry list of things that have been perceived as culture.

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What's really exciting here, I think, for us is that if we look at, like, pre pandemic time, post pandemic time, because that seems to be a kind of line of demarcation as people are looking at things in companies. We felt, and still feel that the six immutable principles that we define a dynamic culture are enduring those things that people thought of as culture. For example, bring your dog to work day and sleep pods and all those things that make a lot of get a lot of media attention, but also even less dramatic things like flexible schedule. I mean, before the pandemic, companies were touting that. In our company, we have a flexible schedule.

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So if one day a week. You want to work remotely, we're on the cutting edge, and we'll allow you to do that. And that became like this great sign of culture. The pandemic hits everybody's at home. If you hung your hat on your great culture, being around flexible scheduling and people to be able to work a little bit from home, what are you hanging your culture on now?

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Now it's the exact opposite. People are telling the folks they need to get back to work. We need to have you in the office. What was like a perk is now a detriment to people, and they're viewing it as an inhibitor. So all those things that were extraneous and extra that were viewed as culture, really aren't.

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And I think that's the lesson that was learned. People are really asking some serious questions about their work. Why am I really working? What's the purpose of what I'm doing? How does it fit into the rest of my life?

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So Bringing My Dog to Work day, I got my dog right next to me. Okay, now what? I still don't have any meaning in my work. I still don't know why I'm doing this. I still don't know how long I want to do this or if it fits the rest of my life.

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You're still not treating me people like people. So I think in a lot of ways, coming out of this pandemic, we learned a lot about what culture is not. And so now there's this great void. And I think there are six things we could talk about that would fill that void.

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So Matthew Kelly wrote The Culture Solution and in The Culture Solution, he shares the six immutable principles of a dynamic culture. The rest of this show will be really tapping into a lot of these principles a lot deeper, and we're going to be doing that by talking to leaders, doing the work. They're in the trenches, they're challenged because maybe they can't find great talent or retain great talent, or their people just can't really seem to do the job the way that the leader thinks they should be able to do it. And really that came down to expectation.

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So what is culture in general and just really what we're talking about? It's everything that either increases or decreases an organization's chance to fulfill its mission. And the vision, the values, those things that are lasting and important that either add to or decrease from the organization's ability to fulfill its mission and increase or decrease the people's desire to want to be there.

KATE VOLMAN

That's right. And I will even share the exact definition right from The Floyd Consulting awesome. Which is culture is the vision, values, systems, languages, expectations, behaviors and beliefs that increase or decrease an organization's chances of fulfilling its mission, which in turn increases or decreases how much people enjoy coming to work.

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So there you go. Put that on your wall. And you can simply, if you take that. And we always say do the dinner table test very simply. If the subject of work comes up during dinner, does it the food taste better or worse?

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They'll tell you, is your culture good or not? That's right. So Tony, what is principle number one?

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Well, principle one is making culture a priority. We work with great people. We're at a partial advantage that a lot of the people come to us in our practice understanding that culture is a priority. That's not always the case. I think leaders are leaning that way now because just like we talked about, all those perks they mentioned weren't getting it done even today. Some of the other things that people thought of great companies having all their processes and plans and everything buttoned up and their finances so strong, and their reputation. If you work at this company, it's a great place.

All those different things that were part of that. Our product is great, our systems are super. But now they're realizing with all those things in place, people still aren't happy. People still aren't being fulfilled in their work, and they're questioning while they're doing things, which goes back to this, that it's about the people. And so anyway think most leaders are starting to see that because we've always known it's a competitive advantage.

I think now it's a competitive requirement. If people do have flexibility and where and how they want to work, your culture better be pretty dynamic because it is a lot of things people are considering. So what a leader has to do is make culture a priority. Number one, to say you can't solve a problem unless you know you have the problem, or the expression goes I think Lou Holt said it. Some people don't know what's going on.

Some people don't even suspect something's going on. Leaders right now are getting it because it's right in their face. They told people. So that's good news. That's actually good news. All the challenges, that step one. Making it a priority. I think it's just become a priority by default.

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Yes. And what I find so interesting is that I think lately culture obviously, I think everyone would agree I don't think any leader is going to disagree that culture is important now.

They don't always make it a priority. That's where we're seeing a little bit of a shift, where a lot of leaders are actively searching for programs and initiatives and how can I really develop my people? And that's what's really exciting for us to be able to see, obviously as a coaching company, to see leaders that are actually actively looking for ways to help their people grow.

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Many people don't even believe a good culture is possible. Right. It's just that big a challenge. But I should also say this, this is lead with culture. And we're talking about leaders. I just want to right off the bat, when we're talking about making a culture priority, that everybody leads someone. And so I just wanted to throw that out there.

You might be well, yeah, I agree with you. I'm listening to this. But, you know, I'm a VP and the CEO doesn't think so. Everybody leads somebody in the organization, so everybody's a leader. So culture should be a priority for everyone.

person team or: 1000

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Yeah, and that's a great point. I love in the book where Matthew talks about culture advocates. Everyone can be a culture advocate. And a culture advocate is somebody who believes that they can impact the culture in the organization.

They do one thing every day. Every day, exactly. That's how simple this is. Yeah, that could be as simple as going into someone's office, asking them for help, asking them if they're okay. I mean, sometimes people just need to feel seen and valued. So principle number one, make culture priority.

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Principle number two is mission is king. Mission is king. Now, we see this a lot with organizations in that if the leaders go in and ask everyone that works there, what is the mission? How many people can actually define the mission of the organization?

How many people can actually they know what it is, not only the mission of the organization, but how their role contributes to the mission of the organization. So it's a really fun test to do if you are a leader, to ask your team, what is our mission? It should be very clear and defined. And our mission really is the North Star of your organization. It is.

That one thing that we look towards when we're making decisions, when we're figuring out what it is that we need to be doing as an organization. A lot of times, people will want to make the leader, the CEO king. They will say things like, oh, it's whatever you want, like, Tony, whatever you decide. No, we make decisions based on mission. Not on people, not on preferences, but like on what's best for the organization.

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People will very quickly abdicate the throne when a decision gets made. Well, I don't agree, but it's what Kate wants.

So that's what we're doing. Like you say, just having mission in mind. Sometimes we see companies make really strategic shifts or shifts that may go against their original plan or those things because it's helping them fulfill their mission as opposed to when we see unhealthy companies where they continue to change mission to fulfill their strategy. So they're so locked in on their strategy, which is important, but they're so locked in on that they will change the mission to continue to fulfill the strategy and and so keeping mission king. And even down to, I can work in one organization.

They they've been changing offices, like, routinely for three years now. Four years. Because some of the chart things have changed, and some of the way people are fulfilling what they do, their mission and part of the big mission of the company, and they've done it really well in getting the point across that okay. This isn't your office. This is an office that's been allocated for the mission.

And so if it becomes better for this team to be grouped this way, you may have to go over there. So it's almost like a non factor now. They work wherever people come together. That's really important. I do some work in schools, and, boy, this is my room that doesn't move for a teacher.

So even down the equipment, everything is for the mission. And people want to be part of a mission. They don't want a job. They'd much rather have a mission. Do you want a job description or do you want an admission for what that job is supposed to be?

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People are motivated by a mission, and people are asking, why am I doing this work? What bigger purpose does this work serve? And if you're not ready as a company to have a real mission statement, not the 19 line mission statement that no one's read or understands or was put together, because they just took everybody's opinion and put some verbs between it. But something that really is tangible, that people can relate to without that, when people ask that question, what am I doing all this for when I'm spending all this time there? You better have a pretty strong mission, and people better understand it, and it better involve all of your decision making.

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I love that having our decision making be around mission allows us to disagree and commit. They're making a decision, and someone on the team doesn't agree. Right. We've all been there.

We've all been part of a team where we thought, oh, I don't agree with the decision or where we're going in this direction, but as long as it was made on mission, not on ego, not on someone's opinion. If it was made on mission, then we know. Even if we don't necessarily agree with it, we know that it's best for the mission. And you can only do that when you have that clearly defined mission. Absolutely.

[: 00:13:17

Absolutely. And since we're recording this, I've never disagreed with anything you've said.

KATE VOLMAN

Definitely untrue. Lies. Lies.

TONY FERRARO

I may have disagreed, but I committed.

KATE VOLMAN

It's true. Tony is definitely good at committing. He's a good disagreeing committer. All right, Tony, what is principle number three?

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Principle number three is to over communicate the plan. Over communicate the plan. I have a bunch of kids, right? I know I've said, turn the light off when you leave a room more than twice in the time, and they still don't have it all the time. When I'm talking to executives, and coaching them, they make the same thing. I've said this, I said this at a meeting.

We were going to do this, and then three months later, we do that. Well, obviously you didn't communicate it enough. I mean, there's only two reasons why someone doesn't do something in your organization. They don't know, or they don't feel like it. Right?

So with the first one that don't know, you need to make sure you eliminate number one before you start evaluating people on number two. So part is just over communicating the plan. Think of marketing. People just don't do one commercial, and that's it for the product. Over and over and over and repetition.

People have 25% capacity of listening. So how many times you have to say something to get to 100%? So overcommunicating the plan in every way possible. Saying it again and again and again is part of that. So there's really no ambiguity about what the plan is.

And, you know, we do that even in good things. We'll come up with all these great ideas, and we're good at great ideas. Everyone's good at great ideas. Exactly. But coming back as a leader, say, okay, where's that in the plan? Let's go back to our plan. This is the plan, and let's stick to it.

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And having that simple plan, right? Same thing with the mission statement, right? Not having a mission statement that sounds so great.

And you're using all the big words make you sound important and smart. It's the same thing with the plan. Your plan is meant to be there for your people, that your people can go back to it. I know we were working with a client and they said, what's so great about the plan that they have now versus the one that they had years ago that was like hundreds of pages that nobody read, is now. It's a small plan.

And so when your team gets anxious or they aren't really sure where to direct their energy, they go to the plan. So the person said, I go to the plan now because I know what I should be working on. I know that when I have all these ideas of things that I could be doing, I have to check myself, get back to the plan, and recognize, hey, this is what I really need to do. Which is why a really great tool to be able to provide your team members is an idea book. Give people an idea book every year so that they can write down their great ideas.

Because like Tony said, we all come up with great ideas. They just might not be the best idea at the right time because it doesn't support the plan, it doesn't support the mission. But hey, it could be. Hey, look, we've been talking about doing this podcast for a couple of years. It wasn't the right time. Now is the right time. Am I ready to go?

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Sure. Absolutely. Now, we did make an assumption in this whole thing over communicating a plan.

There's an assumption in that statement that you have a plan. You have a plan. Something to put plans together. Again, they go on the shelf right next to the mission statement. But a real workable plan that people people can go to.

And then they know every day they're crafting their day around that plan and that connection. When you're doing work and you feel like it's moving towards something and it's part of a bigger picture that brings meaning to what you're doing yes. No matter what the job is. And then that just builds the culture. So if you're a leader, you say it again and again and again in coaching.

I told him this time, evidently not enough. Not enough or you've got the wrong. People, which is coming up here in the next section. That's right. Principle number four.

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That's right. Principle number four. I feel like this is Tony's favorite principle. Principle number four is higher with rigorous discipline. Yep. You know, it's so interesting. I feel what I love about the principles, too, is that they really build on each other, right?

Like, you have to have all of these things in place and hire with rigorous discipline. This one is a tough one for leaders, especially. I mean, I say especially today, but this is nothing new. Hiring great talent has always been a challenge, right? Like finding great people, keeping great people.

But today we have to be so discerning of who we're bringing on to our team, because every time we do that, obviously we're adding new people. We have to know not only that they can do the role, but obviously that they also fit the culture. So you're looking at it from a lot of different ways, and there's a lot of in fact, in the book, Matthew shares some of the top ten hiring mistakes. People are making a lot of hiring mistakes. And hey, we've all made a bad hire.

If you hire people, you've probably made a bad hire. But getting the right people on the team is crucial. I mean, your business can't run without having the right people. And in order to get the right people, one of the biggest mistakes that we see leaders make is that they don't have a very clearly defined role description and a scorecard. A role description and a scorecard, which essentially is laying out.

Like Tony said, people don't want to have a job. They want to have a role. They want to have a place in the organization where they feel that they're contributing and they're able to use their skills. So you have that role description and then a scorecard. People deserve to know what is expected of them, how they're being evaluated.

And so having that scorecard and being able to share it with the people that you're interviewing and saying, hey, this is what the job entails, this is what it does. This is what we would be expecting if we bring you onto the team so that you know you're hiring the right person. They feel good about it and you feel good about it.

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Yeah, absolutely. Having that scorecard, as you said, about what's my role in the mission takes emotion out of it in some way from a leadership standpoint.

I speak of that as somebody who at times, in running organizations, have had made great hires and made not so great hires. And what I found is I did not have the right system in place or a system in place for the hiring. When you have a system in place where you have a scorecard and you know what the job requires, what the role really requires the person, and you ask them in a conversational way to discuss in their past, tell me what you did and how it went, and you listen, which is huge in interviewing. When you listen, you can identify, have they done the things that you need the person to do? If they haven't, maybe it's not a match.

They may have done great things. It's just not a match. And so it takes a lot of things out of the hiring process to get in the way. But really being disciplined and it's tough now. We'll hear it all the time.

Yeah, how am I disciplined when I can't find anybody? The market is so tough right now. To attract people, I have to make concessions to those things. But what we find on our clients, the ones number one, those people who have really committed to hiring with rigorous discipline, feel so empowered about the people they're letting in their organization that they know that they would rather wait and have to pick up the slack of a job that's not fulfilled than bring on someone who's not a match both professionally or skill, wise and culturally. And there's no angst about it.

It's not the right person yet. There's just a confidence that comes from, we'll get the right person. It'll pay off, even if it takes a little bit of time. But you're exactly right, Kate. The scorecard is so important for the hiring.

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Then everybody knows that there's a process to the hiring which is huge. You get the right people, and then it just so it bleeds into the next principle so well of letting people know what to expect. So often we'll see a job description, which we don't like that term. We have a role description, but people have a job description that they use, that HR uses during hiring, and then their manager has a whole nother set of metrics in which they do their annual reviews or their 90 day, whatever it is, and it's different. And how is that fair to anybody?

There's some incongruency there. So this way we're actually saving people time. There's time up front in doing a scorecard, but once you have that, you can go into the next principle of building a culture that's letting people know what to expect. You've got the scorecard. This is what we expect you to do.

And then we're just going to check in on that every 90 days and see how that's going for your reviews. So the next principle, if we were segwaying that way, which I thought we were, is to let people know what to expect. And there's no better way to do that than to have a written scorecard that's shared by both the manager and the person. It's the same one they looked at when they were interviewing. It's the same one you used to interview the person and that you have those meaningful conversations with people on a regular basis.

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We recommend no more than 90 days. You can hear the people gasping, how am I going to have time to do 90 day? Well, a 90 day review done well shouldn't take very long and I guarantee it will make up for all the time you have to do for getting rid of somebody.

[: 00:22:23

Absolutely. And what I love, what Matthew talks about in the book is the expectation gap.

What you're doing with this role description of scorecard is you're eliminating the expectation gap. And the expectation gap is essentially what we expect, right? And then what actually happens? And then there's this big gap in between those two things. And that gap needs to be filled with something.

And it's filled with usually it's filled with disappointment, resentment, anger, frustration and loss of trust. And so we want to eliminate that gap. And the way to do that is by having those role description scorecard and those reviews that you're able to just have a dialogue with someone. It should actually be a fun conversation because if you're over communicating the plan, people know what's expected of them. There should be no big surprises at these things and it just allows them to really come to you with some ideas of what they're thinking about.

What are they challenged by? What do they need in their role? How can they grow? What are they doing well? Can they improve all of these things?

At the end of the day, when you have the right people, they want to do good work and they want to grow, they want to get better, they want to develop. And so we've got to eliminate those expectation gaps. And one exercise that we share with a lot of leaders that you can do today is to ask your team members, hey, I want you to take out a sheet paper and write down everything that you think is expected of you. Like what is your role entail? What do you believe your role to be?

And then you write down what their role is and what you expect of them. And then you come together, you sit down, you look at those pieces of paper together, and especially if you don't have that scorecard already. You're going to find some gaps. You're going to find some ways that you can close that gap where you're going to be a happier leader, they're going to be a happier team member, and obviously you're going to be able to grow a lot quicker.

[: 00:24:33

Yeah, 100%.

Now, hopefully you can see the point when these things, they go linearly, although you can start anywhere on these six principles, but they're all connected. When you're doing that review as a manager or leader, what's the point of doing a review? Are we on track for this person to fulfill the mission of their role? And if so, the mission of the organization is going to get fulfilled and then we all win. That's what we're here for.

That's what we're here for. Sometimes we just get off where we're just misaligned. So not only the 90 day check ins, but even just weekly check ins like the ones we do, where you're just checking in with the person and saying, these are the three most important things I'm working on this week. And we all need that voice to go, why are you working on it? Is that to maybe we shouldn't focus on that or what's up with that?

Simple as that. Is a way just to overcommunicate and definitely let people know what to expect?

[: 00:25:28

Yeah, absolutely. And then to round everything out, we've got principle number six, grow your people by creating a coaching culture. Love this one.

Hey, I love all of them. They're all great. I mean, we need all six of them. The number one role of a leader is to help your people grow. That is what we are here for.

We cannot grow businesses unless we are developing our people. The Floyd philosophy is that your organization can only become the best version of itself to the extent that your people are becoming better versions of themselves. And that's what you get to do. You get to coach your people. I mean, what a gift that you're giving when you're not managing, you're coaching.

You're helping them develop. You're letting them know what they need to those areas where they can really improve. You're giving them acknowledgement. It's crazy when you look at all the statistics of how many people feel like their leader doesn't even acknowledge the work that they do. So as leaders, we want to empower our people.

We want to empower our people to grow, to get better, to help them not only in I mean, look, coaching is so incredible because you're not only helping them grow in their role, but you're helping them with skills that allow them to become a better person, like better communication and more strategic thinking, more strategically. I mean, how would the world be different if people thought more strategically, not only in their roles, but in their life? In their lives?

[: 00:26:52

Oh my gosh. Absolutely.

And it's such a great way and everything. I just sent you an. Article too long ago. Just today, actually. You're listening.

People of wire employees. Languishing that's one of the new words I'm languishing in my jobs. And one of the four recommendations was to use coaching to help employees build key mindsets. You're giving a great gift to people by coaching. As we say in coaching, you don't have to have all the answers.

The people that work for you have the answers. Most of the time, they just need somebody to ask the right questions. And so it's not extra weight on you as a leader. It's actually easier because you don't have to have the answers. If you've hired good people, they have the answers, and they'll work those problems out if you help them be strategic.

But we all do. We get our head down so much that we do and say and look, and we just lose sight of where we're headed. And to have that voice that's asking questions is just invaluable. And I'll also say this as a manager, I still remember coaching a really bright young woman who was managing and was just getting overwhelmed. And I asked her, how much coaching are you doing?

She said, I'm not doing any coaching because I'm trying to help everybody solve their issues. And that was at the heart of the problem. People were coming in and just leaving their issues with her. And so we kind of changed that mindset to where she was going to coach people when they presented a problem, she was going to coach them through that problem. And so when they left, they took their problem with them, even if she had to say, hey, wait, you've left your problem on my desk here.

You need to make sure you take that with you as you leave as a visual. But she did a lot less managing and a lot more coaching, and then things get done, and then it's less on you as a leader. You've hired good people, let them work, but coach them through. You're a manager or a leader because you have some insight. So you should be able to instead of telling people what to do.

We all know when it's our idea, we value it more. So if you can get people to come up with the answer themselves, that's what great coaching does. And everybody needs a coach in their life. I am amazed. People at the tops of organizations have no one to talk to that doesn't have an agenda in their lives.

There's nothing you can do more for your people than be a coaching leader.

[: 00:29:18

Yeah, absolutely.

You know the person in your life that has done that? There's someone in your life that you're thinking, oh, this person really coached me. You learned so much from them. You might not have called it coaching at the time. You probably look back and think, wow, that person was a really great leader to me.

And they absolutely were coaching because that's what great leaders do. They're coaching their people up. We'll be talking all about culture hiring and coaching, and we're really going to be able to dig into a lot more of these six principles in each of these episodes. And so we're really excited about the show and hope that you took some things away from this first episode. Tony, anything you want to share before we head out?

[: 00:30:10

oing to cost you a minimum of: 1000

But when you jump into a technical skills, you're looking at somewhere between 100 and 150% of the person's yearly salary to replace them. That's the total cost of the organization. And if you're trying to replace a leader or someone in the upper levels, gets up to about 250% of their salary in cost of turnover. So, look, the investment and we haven't talked about anything that's costly, the investment of taking the time as a leader to put your time, effort and energy into these six principles pays off in a real tangible way, because sometimes people want to talk about culture in a soft way. If you're one of those people, those are hard numbers, and you save your company 250% of somebody's salary, you're a culture advocate and a culture hero right away.

[: 00:31:14

Well, we would definitely recommend that you read the Floyd Consulting. Obviously dig more into these six principles and there might be one of these six that really resonated with you most. And that would be a great place to start and see how you can leverage some of the some of the things that we talked about today to really start to shift your culture, help your culture and your people. We are so excited about bringing you this podcast and we look forward to seeing you on the next one.

[: 00:31:36

I hope you enjoyed this episode of Lead with Culture. If you are wondering, okay, now I know the six principles of a dynamic culture, but I wonder where we rate in culture. What is your company and what are the people in your organization? How would they rate your culture? Well, we have a really incredible resource to help you with that.

We designed a free culture assessment so you can take this assessment and what's really unique about it is once you take it, you're not only going to get an overall culture score, but you're also going to get a score under each of the six principles. So you can decide and figure out where you need to focus your attention first. So if you want to take that assessment, you can go to Floyd Consulting Culture to get your free culture assessment. Thank you again for listening. And until next time, lead with culture.