I share part of my story and the journey to transform culture at Franklin Building Supply by focusing on employees as human beings with C12.
I join Brett Thorne for an episode of his Building the Future podcast to discuss how I got into the lumber and building material industry, practical advice for building culture and how to win over employees in a competitive environment with equity. We might get a little passionate about a few topics and share some laughs about our St. Louis/Idaho connections…
I joined Bryce Butler of Access Ventures for a fun discussion on leadership, culture and employee ownership. I make the case that businesses, employees and society at large would all benefit if we moved on from long held assumptions that the only people who should participate in the benefits of ownership are those who contribute capital. Everyone wins when some portion of ownership is shared with the men and women who invest their time and labor everyday. Start treating employees as more than just people whose time you rent. Resources: National Center for Employee OwnershipEmployee Owned Companies of AmericaESOP AssociationRutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing Listen on your favorite podcast player.
What if you walked into your business tomorrow, tossed the handbook and told your employees that from this point forward they should simply mimic the behavior of their supervisor or manager? Aside from giving HR and Legal a heart attack, would this shift result in better or worse behavior? Better or worse performance? Probably depends on the leader. If your company is like most, you have a least a few managers or supervisors that you don’t want to replicate. They may be high performers on paper, but they don’t align well with the company’s mission, vision and values. They don’t improve the culture, they undermine it. People make excuses for them because of their output or legacy, but you don’t want anyone to follow their lead. Having an exceptional culture and team is an all or nothing proposition. It’s impossible to accomplish if you’re unwilling to hold everyone to the same standards. Personalities…
Seth Godin, bestselling author, blogger and speaker, let me interrupt his Monday morning to ask a few questions around the intersection of organizational health and culture and themes in his books The Icarus Deception and Linchpin. I think you will find Seth’s ideas and advice thought provoking and practical. Both video and audio of the interview are available below. If you are not currently subscribed to the It’s Worth Noting podcast, I invite you to do so and catch-up on episodes you may have missed. New episodes will go live about every two weeks. The focus will be interviews and conversations with business and thought leaders on organizational health and culture. Listen below or on other podcast players.
I recently had the opportunity to get a few minutes with Gary Vaynerchuk to get his take on organizational health and culture. For those not familiar with Gary, he gained notoriety expanding his family’s wine business into Wine Library TV. Building on his wine and social media hustle, Gary became a best selling author of Crush It! and The Thank You Economy and launched VaynerMedia, a brand consulting agency with a focus on social media. Gary’s enthusiasm and energy is contagious. I hope you find the thoughts and ideas he shared with me helpful for your organization. Listen below or on other podcast players.
What if the following could be said of your team meetings? They help us focus They help us get exercise They help us think more clearly None of these benefits could be said of a typical meeting around a desk or table, or even standing. If you want to improve your one-on-one and small team meetings overnight, insist that they take place while going for a walk. Walking meetings are obviously impractical for larger groups or if there is no way to avoid needing to look at a computer screen or document. Setting those two situations aside, here is how walking meetings can make a big impact: Without documents, slides and the like, attendees are forced to master their material and talking points. The result is more focused and engaging conversations. People are more apt to look forward to meetings that get them out of the office and moving around.…
Life in business and at home presents an endless array of problems to solve. Probably due to this relentless volume, it’s easy to get stuck in a routine of implementing solutions that will simply solve the immediate problem. It’s uncommon to routinely take the time and energy to identify good long-term solutions that will be scalable and flexible enough to handle growth and other changes. Unfortunately, the effect of routine short-term problem solving is that problems reoccur and accumulate. As the volume of reoccurring problems increases, it gets harder to have the time and energy to work on long-term solutions. It is a vicious cycle and it’s easy to get stuck. One easy way to either avoid getting into this mess or to claw your way out of it you’re already there is to start solving problems using what I call a 10X test. The next time you have a…
You probably trust most of the people around you. You trust their character, morality and ethics. You would leave them alone with the cash register or let them watch your kids. This is what most of us have in mind when we talk about trust. There is another type of trust that is just as important although rarely distinguished or discussed. Where we frequently lack trust is in someone’s competence. We do not have confidence in their skills or abilities. We are not concerned they would steal or act immorally, but we are worried that they would mishandle the task or responsibility. Whether you are the delegator, or the one being delegated to, we owe it to one other to actually talk through why there may be a lack of trust. Unaddressed, the assumption tends to be that there is a lack of trust in character, morality or ethics. If this…
You see them everywhere. Plaques up on the wall emblazoned with the company mission and values. They are even in many homes, lists of rules, values or platitudes to live by. There is nothing wrong with the plaques. Most of them look nice and communicate important messages about why a group labors together and invests in relationships. They communicate a set of standards to get everyone on the same page. The plaques are not bad. They are just not very effective on their own. What if instead of plaques, you put up pictures of people, historical or even better, coworkers in the office, with relevant captions to communicate the desired message? An easy example would be a picture of Lincoln with a caption such as, “Be honest like this guy” or “When life required him to fight a war, he went to the library and learned how do it.” A…