Proven Podcast - Culture That Fuels Revenue - Chris Dyer

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

Chris Dyer joins this episode to share his transformative journey from a self-proclaimed "crap boss" to a renowned expert in building exceptional company cultures. With decades of experience leading teams and consulting for top organizations, Chris offers invaluable insights for leaders looking to create workplaces where employees thrive. Through candid stories and research-backed strategies, Chris reveals the pitfalls that leaders often face when trying to improve culture and provides actionable solutions to foster collaboration, innovation, and engagement. He explains why culture isn't just about slogans or perks but about intentional leadership and aligning organizational values with daily actions. Chris breaks down his Seven Pillars of Culture framework, detailing how transparency, recognition, and positive leadership can turn any workplace into a powerhouse of productivity and growth. His no-nonsense approach demystifies the process of cultural transformation, empowering leaders to address challenges and drive lasting change. Whether you're a leader looking to turn around your company's culture or an entrepreneur aiming to build a thriving organization from the ground up, this episode is packed with actionable takeaways. Chris's practical wisdom and relatable delivery will inspire you to rethink your approach to leadership and culture. Key Takeaways: * The Seven Pillars of Culture and how to implement them effectively. * Why transparency is a game-changer for engagement and performance. * How to cultivate buy-in from employees at every level. * Real-world examples of turning culture into a competitive advantage. Head over to https://provenpodcast.com/ to download your exclusive companion guide, designed to guide you step-by-step in implementing the strategies revealed in this episode. KEY POINTS: 2:01 - Common Culture Mistakes: Chris explains the most frequent culture-related errors leaders make, including assuming culture is strong without evidence and neglecting to align actions with values. 4:14 - Employee Buy-In: Chris discusses the critical role of involving employees in shaping culture, highlighting strategies to engage them in defining shared values and goals. 9:54 - Weekly Employee Surveys: Chris introduces the concept of replacing outdated annual surveys with weekly one-question check-ins to gain real-time insights and foster a culture of continuous feedback. 14:39 - Seven Pillar Framework: Chris breaks down his Seven Pillars of Culture framework, detailing how transparency, recognition, and positivity can transform organizational culture into a competitive advantage. 17:03 - The Power of Recognition: Chris emphasizes the profound psychological impact of recognition in the workplace, showcasing how celebrating achievements boosts morale and engagement. 19:57 - Sharing Financials with Teams: Chris outlines how radical transparency in sharing financial performance with employees can reduce anxiety, foster trust, and encourage collaborative problem-solving. 22:14 - Creating a Positive Environment: Chris explains why positivity is essential for innovation and productivity, debunking myths about "toxic positivity" and showing how supportive workplaces drive success.

Welcome to the proven podcast where it does not matter what you think, only what you can prove. Everyone treats company culture like touchy-feely nonsense. Today's guest, Chris Dyer, proves culture is cold, hard science. The show starts now. All right, everybody, welcome back to the show. Chris, I'm ecstatic for you to be here with me. Thank you so much for joining. Hey, thanks for having me, man.

Absolutely. So we were talking about a couple different things about businesses and how to scale them, but one of the things you do better than everybody else is culture. So for the people who don't know you, which I can't imagine there's many that don't. For those who don't know you, can you give us a little bit of debrief on who you are and what you do better than everyone else? So I'm a serial entrepreneur who, you know, had a big company that I sold the end of 2021. And along the way during my journey in managing thousands of people, I realized I was a crap boss and doing culture totally wrong and had to figure out what we were actually supposed to do. I thought I was doing it great. And then, you know, one day you look in the mirror and you're like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like,

saying, oh, I'm really healthy. And then you look in the mirror and you're fat. You know, and it's like, huh, I need to change. What I'm saying and what I'm doing are two different things. And so I realized they needed to change culture. And we did it. We did it really successfully. I worked a lot of other big organizations to take it to them. And now I spend my time speaking and writing and, you know, helping companies make work not suck for people. So, so when you go into that and people, hey, I'm actually not as healthy. I shouldn't probably be eating McDonald's and fast food. What are some of the things in culture that are the McDonald's fast food version of

that is just catastrophic mistakes that people are making? Yeah, I mean, one of their really big mistakes that they make is that, first of all, believing they have good culture just because they say so, right? That's not how it works. You can't manifest a great culture. You can manifest many things in our lives, but I think you have to be far more intentional about culture. That's the first one.

And the second one is that they believe that if they just tell people, that that is enough. Right. Right. We need people to be a part of this process. It's great for the CEO or the senior leaders to create the vision and to ultimately say, people like us do things like this and don't do things like that. You know, what was it? Google's theme used to be, don't be evil, right?

That was sort of like a baseline thing. but beyond that we need like our people to be a part of that process and so usually companies leave them out right right they completely ignore they just say this is what our culture is and you are lucky to be here and that that doesn't work so a lot of that happens because of buy-in right and getting the people underneath the command or the people above your command wherever you are in the chain having that buy-in because simply writing down core values is not effective so how do you if going into this and you're starting to redesign your culture, what are some of the ways that you can get your employees or you get the people you work with in your culture to buy into everything

that's going on? Well, first step is to ask them, ask them what they care about, ask them what they value, ask them, you know, and when you do that, you start to pick up on themes and things that obviously overlap and connect. You're not going to get 100% agreement on anything. But if you're saying, hey, we really need to do X and you're asking your employees, well, what do you? think, and they're generally saying X or mostly, I mean, you find ways to connect the dots to make them see and understand that what you care about and what you want this company to be is ultimately align with what they're saying they want. Or, you know, sometimes you don't just ask what do you want? Like, what do you think a great company culture looks like? What is it in your mind, if, you know,

if we had the best culture in the world, what does that look like? What would we be doing? And they ultimately will start telling you things that maybe they're not doing yet. Again, we can go back the exercise. What's healthy? Well, healthy is I would be working out every day. I'd be eating good food. And you're like, we know you're not doing that right now. So, right, but you're getting that alignment on, we all agree what good looks like. And so we can start to work towards that. That's kind of a really good step one. Step two is there's this really interesting correlation between understanding and actually getting people to change. Yes.

And so usually what leaders do is they just try to convince, convince, convince, and they try to push and beg, borrow, steal, you know, yell, scream, whatever it is to get them to comply and to change. And all of that is a complete waste of time. All you need to do is to help people understand more and more and more about why it's important, why we're doing this, why it's good for them, why it's good for the company.

Assuming it's a good idea, more understanding will result in more change and people being willing to do more of that and eventually finding some people I call champions of change, people who are really love the idea and are really enthusiastic and we'll go carry, you know,

we'll go out into the world with their virtual sword and shield and help you, right? Do more of that. that's super important. So we have to ask, and then we have to really help inform people, not just once, but constantly, right, getting them to understanding. I think there's two things that people don't talk about is, you know, why is culture so important? And then why is it important to them individually? Because they don't have a good grasp of human behavior.

So first off, why is culture so important? And then we'll go into the second part. Well, culture is how we get things done. It's the norms. It's the behavior. And so if we think about what's the most efficient, what's the best way to get things done, I think most people would say,

I want a collaborative company, I want people who speak up, I want people to give ideas. I mean, we talk about all these things we would want from people. And yet, if your culture is one where it's shut up and don't talk, don't speak at a turn,

the senior leaders get to talk, and you have to sit here and be quiet. You know, we don't really care about ideas. Or, you know, if you give a good idea the senior leader is going to steal it for their own. I mean, like, there's what the reality of culture is,

and then there's like what we think we want. And so culture is so important because we have, this has been studied, I could give people, I could send them 100 studies right now if they wanted them that would, you know, we know that when you have a great culture, you have higher profits.

We know when you have a great culture, you have higher performance. And we know when you have a great culture, you have higher productivity. Give me the senior leader. Give me the business owner who doesn't care about those three things. Right.

And I think that goes to the human needs, right? Because if we go in and say, hey, yes, I'm going to sell you this and it's going to feel foo in its culture, they're probably not going to listen to that. If you go down to a C-level individual or senior leave and say, listen, this is going to increase productivity.

It's going to make your life easier. It's going to increase profits. And everything's going to be more efficient. Whenever rolling out culture, they're like, oh, wait, okay, this is now I want to pay attention to it. Maybe I do want to listen to Susie in the mailroom or I want to listen to Bobby the janitor or whatever it is. Maybe I do actually want to hear their voice because at the

end of the day, it's a win for me. And a lot of people don't understand that on a human needs level. So when it goes into this and you are evaluating this and you're talking to each individual employee and you're having these conversations and you go when you work with their clients, how much does human needs play into it, understanding where they go from? And then also, what are the things that you've used to kind of amplify that when you discover their needs? Well, their needs are everything. Everyone is always out to figure out what's in it for them. I mean, people are only working for you essentially because, you know, they want fulfillment.

They want to feel like they're part of something great. But they also need the money. They need to feed their families and all of that. So there's like this basic like contract in the beginning that I'm here because I need something from you business owner as the employee. Now, I'm here and I would much rather enjoy my time here. I'd much rather we feel fulfilled and to do something meaningful with this work, or else I could just go work at the local burger place and flip burgers and just not care, right? And so there is that shift there.

We need to think about they're not just showing up altruistically. That may happen in a volunteer organization, but we're talking about work, right? That is huge. So what have we done? I used to send out a one-question survey to all of my employees every single week. We ditched the annual survey, which I think is dumb and stupid, and if you're doing it, you probably belong back in the 19th, I don't know, 40s. It doesn't work.

It never really worked, but it definitely doesn't work today. Instead, ask people one question every week. What's going great? Where are you struggling? Who's killing it for you? What client's driving you crazy? What resource don't you have? If you had a magic wand,

what would you fix? What would you change in our software? You start asking people these things and they start sharing with you and you get great ideas, you get great insight on what they're dealing with, what's happening in their lives. Then, before you ask the next question the next week,

you come back to them as their boss and say, this is what I heard and this is what I'm going to do about it. And at the end of the month, I would say these were the four questions or five questions we asked this month. again, this is what I heard. Again, this is the update and progress

and what we've done about it. And sometimes it was something good. You all said that Steve was the best employee ever this month. He's been helping everybody out. Like, we sent, you know, Steve to go get a massage and gave him a day off. Like, we did something cool for him.

Or you're all telling me this one client is killing you. They are half of our tickets. They call constantly. They're driving you nuts. We've already interacted, you know, conversations with that. to figure out how we can better service them without them filling up our, you know,

resources away. So like, and then they feel hurt. And we're actually solving their problems. And we're making work better for them, right? That's how you do it. Because you mentioned, you know, Bob and the, Bob the janitor or Susie in the mail room. Like, what's the mechanism to actually hear from them? Because you may not ever actually, as the senior leader, you may, you may never cross paths with that person.

And so how do you extrapolate that knowledge and data and things from them, sometimes directly, sometimes through their bosses or the leadership in between you, to actually enact change. There's a great study on this that says if you pay someone a certain amount of money, their happiness goes up. But sooner or later, you're going to pay so much money that that happiness correlation, that ramp, that incline, just doesn't happen anymore. And I think the same thing happens with employees as well.

at some point they need to be seen that they have some sort of control of their destiny. There needs to be some sort of, there's studies about this as you mentioned before, tons of these where they need to feel like, hey, I'm not just coming in and punching a clock. And sure, you're paying me great money, but that's not going to increase efficiency. That's not going to increase the bottom line. That's not going to increase productivity. They have to feel like they're hurt. And I think for so many people, they failed to do this across the board, in relationships or in business or just across the board.

If the person doesn't seen, isn't seen, doesn't feel heard or doesn't see appreciated, it's important. And I think one of the things you said that was vital is if Susie, whoever it is, comes in and says, hey, this client's an issue. I'm having problems. And you don't immediately address it that week. Before you ask another question, her chances of speaking up again are now diminished. Just like in a regular relationship. If your partner says, hey, I really don't like it when you don't put the toilet seat down and you go, okay, great. And then you don't put the toilet seat down, probably going to have some issues because that person doesn't see seen and heard, which by the way, completely side note, it's never about the toilet seat.

It's always about being seen and heard and appreciated. It's never about the toilet seat. So for those of you're listening, if the misses or anyone else is complaining about the toilet seat, you're screwing up somewhere else. I'm just saying it is what it is. So when people go into this and you meet with cultures and you meet with senior leaders and they're like, okay, our cultures or we're not productivity, we're not having any productivity. You want to increase our bottom line. We want to increase revenue. you have this weird culture thing you're talking about.

And sure, it's backed by tons of science. How do you get them to buy in? Because that's a hard part. Because even if you have tons of science, like, hey, guess what? The earth isn't flat. There's still people you have to get them to kind of pivot over on that one. How do you get senior leaders to kind of come to you and say, hey, culture is important. This matters.

Let's talk about it. How do you get that buy in from them for? Yeah. I mean, they usually come to me for one of two reasons. One, they've got a giant headaches. They're looking for an aspirin. Right. So that's one kind of client.

And we have one approach for them. And then the other kind of client is like, listen, I know we're doing well, but I want to be next level. Right. And so they're looking for a vitamin. They're looking for what are the activities and things I can do to continue to be healthy

and sustain this growth or this company, whatever it is for the long term. So the answer for both is I have a seven-pillar framework. And we've proven that there are these seven things that if you do them well, you can have a great culture. In fact, you probably will have a great culture and you can move towards being a market leader.

A lot of good cultures and good companies do some of these pillars well, but you have to do all seven in order to be great. So usually what I do is we look at the seven. I talk to them about the seven, and they begin to self-identify where they feel like they're doing well. That's really important.

where are we doing well because we don't want to stop doing that? And then where are we doing okay? And ultimately, where is this like, you heard me say that and you were like, uncomfortable in your seat, you're like, I know that is not what we're doing well. And then the struggle is they've got to go and fix the one that's the worst. That has to be the first thing we do. So what are the seven pillars when you talk about that there's seven pillars of culture? What are the seven pillars?

Sure. So in no particular order, but I always say this one first. But transparency is pillar one. Positive leadership, positive, having positivity in the organization is number two. Then we have uniqueness, which is celebrating what makes us unique, understanding our unique value proposition. So it's people and D and I and it's marketing and it's like, you know, but uniqueness is a really important one. then we have how you deal with mistakes you know are you yellers and screamers or are you hey let's learn from this

let's figure out how we get better let's innovate measurement measuring what matters listening and then finally recognition so you have to have a great recognition program in your company in order to be great so those are the seven i can tell you which ones people typically are terrible at but it's not universal like i've gone into companies and like you guys do all these great things, but you don't have a recognition program? Like, what do you, what? And it's amazing how small, and people don't understand how important recognition is. In military operations, if I give you a little metal thing on your, on your chest,

you're willing to go get shot for it. And people are like, wait, really? That's it? I'm like, yeah, if I give you this little stupid metal, you're going to willing to lose a limb. Recognition is huge in the human psyche. It just, it is what it is. Now, I'm surprised that you said, you know, when you handle problems, the answer isn't just to yell and scream and punch people.

That doesn't work. That's not how you deal with, bro? Dang it. I just thought. All right. It might make you feel better, but it doesn't actually work. It's the end of your business. Really, really, really great.

And what I love about this is, you know, people are going to listen to this and they're like, oh, my God, that's so foo, that's so this, that's that. I'm like, okay, cool. Here's a science. Go look at the science and come back to me after you, S. You shut the top. It's just because this is a science. This is just what works.

Yeah. Culture is a science. It is not an art. Absolutely. And it's measurable. And there's, again, that's, Again, that's why, like, you have seven pillars. You didn't just invent these because you were bored one day.

These are what science is owners do. So what are the ones that most people get? They're like, okay, we're pretty decent on this. And then what are the ones that people are universally? They just screw up just like, wow, you're just, wow, okay. Usually people have some mechanism for listening. And usually they're okay at listening, but they don't, they could do better, right? We could do a question a week versus doing the annual survey.

We could, you know, be surveying our clients more often than what we're doing now. I mean, it's usually some way they could get better, but they tend to be doing something. It's pretty rare for people to be doing nothing. I think the one they struggle with the most, that when we start talking about what transparency really means, people get uncomfortable, and they're like, oh, I don't know if we can do that. Like, right? And yet, I would say when we got radically transparent with my organization and everyone I've ever consulted with, I ever had. Getting radically transparent has made all the difference in the world.

Because when I know a part of a story and then that part of that story worries me or puts me in a fear mode, I immediately will make up the rest of the story. I will fill in the gaps. And what do I fill in the gaps with? What I know from history. What I know it's happening in the news. what I know from my own previous negative experiences, right? All the negative stuff I know my brain will go up.

So today, my boss, Bob, came in, and he didn't look at me and he didn't talk to me. And he's been a little weird the last week. And I know our numbers are down. I must be getting fired. I must be getting late. Like, immediately, like, you go to this easy fear. Yeah. Right?

Instead, if we're radically transparent, and my boss shows up and says, here's our P&L. here's what's happening. Here's what we're doing about it. Right? Here's our plan. Oh, okay. Now my anxiety level goes down and I can begin to help immediately. Ah, okay, you want to do this thing?

You think that's going to help us save the business? I can help you do that. Like, I can go and do, right? So showing up with our P&Ls every month is something I highly encourage companies to do, delivering the detailed part of the P&L that makes sense to different business. So they can really get dialed in into costs, understanding where synergies can happen, where we can merge vendors or figure out ways to save money.

When we did this, within a year, we had saved 35% on our total operating expenses. Without me ever telling anyone, you had to cut anything, we're doing a cost thing, you know, we didn't like lay anybody off. I just said, here's our stuff. Anyone has any thoughts, has ideas. I'm here. Talk to your boss.

talked to me, and people started saying, hey, I didn't know we spent money on. Did you know we could do this instead? Mm-hmm. Right? Like, they understood and therefore they could come up with better ideas because they were closer to it. Not only that, they were bought into it. They're like, hey, this is what's going on.

There's this great video where it shows there's a, there's a woman sitting where they shrink and she's like, you know, I know he's cheating on me. 100% he's cheating on me. He goes and he disappears in the garage and he's on the phone. Then he crawls into bed. He doesn't talk to me. He's clearly cheating on me. me, my husband is an SOB.

And then they, okay. And then the husband comes in the room and said, hey, what's going on? I said, you know what? I have been on these phone calls trying to find this missing part from my motorcycle. And I keep calling people and I keep calling people and I can't find this missing part for my motorcycle. So it's that filling in the blank of the story. We go to our lowest.

We go to our worst side of us, which is the fear and the anxiety and the doubt versus, hey, this is what's going on. And if the employees and the people with you that are working on this are bought into it and that's part of your culture. If they're bought in, they're like, oh, wait, you're using this, that doesn't make any sense. You should be doing this. And it's, it happens even on an IT level. When I used to run IT, I would say there, I'd show them like, okay, what are you guys spending on email? I'm like, that's what we're spending in-house? You do realize for like $3 a mailbox, we could cut our cost by a bazillion dollars. Like, really? I was like, yeah. So, okay, so that's

transparency. What's the next one. Because, you know, you've, you've done it really well, but dividing this up. And again, I get it. You didn't invent these. This is science. Love it. Thank you for using things that are proven. What is number two that people run into that you have found that like, you know what? This is where you guys mess up on. I wish you guys would do better. Yeah, I think they struggle with the positivity part. So being a positive leader, creating positivity in the organization. Now, I know there's someone out there right now who thinks I'm talking about toxic positivity and I am not. I'm not talking about showing up and saying everything is great. No, it is a mind shift to do two things. One, if we create positive environments,

we create environments where people feel supported, they feel like their ideas are being validated, they're being heard, whatever, they can be innovative. But we know it is impossible for a group of people to innovate if they are literally in this thing and they feel threatened and they feel like their things are negative right i mean you can survive but it's really hard to get innovative so um we want innovation to occur we have to create these environments where people feel like they can succeed but more importantly we want to remove this sort of like badge of honor of i'm a problem solver right because that means you're ultimately walking around the office looking for problems to solve. Instead, you should be really curious and walking around the office or talking to people, whatever your environment

looks like, and trying to find what's working and getting curious about why, why does Susie get her work done in half the time as Bob? Why is Susie twice as efficient as Bob? They're both about the same thing. And why does Jason outsell everybody else? Why is he the only person who made his quote of this quarter? You should be getting curious about that and go and talk to Jason and try to help figure out what is it that Jason's doing? And can Jason take any of that and share it with the rest of the team?

And not me saying, oh, well, clearly Jason makes 200 phone calls. And then I go to everyone and say, you have to make 200 phone calls a day. No, do not do that. That is dumb. What you need to do is like, okay, well, Jason, clearly making a lot of calls is working for you. And can you go back and teach the team about what your strategy is, why you do that mini-call? And then people can take from that what they think will work for them. Right.

Right? Because one size fits one. Right? Well, that works for one person may not work for somebody else. And when somebody else teaches you how to do something better, like, your peer, your coworker, you're like, oh, that's cool. I want to try that. That's interesting.

When your boss says, hey, Jason does 200 phone calls and now you need to make 200 calls, you're like, screw you, dude, I'm looking for a new job. This is not. It's a competitive between you and Jason. Right. You're now in a resistance mode, right? As opposed to I'm cooperative. I'm walking alongside Jason.

He's telling me what he's doing. And I'm going, that's cool, buddy. High five. I'm going to go try that versus your boss coming in. Now we're both pushing up against each other. we're resisting each other, right? And I'm saying, you need to start making 200 phone calls. You're like, I'm not ever making 200 phone calls.

That's ridiculous. That's not how I sell. Right? We tell this with kids, we're like, you know, go brush your teeth. And they resist. And like, okay, you win. Which one do you want to do first? You can either brush your teeth or you can go to the bathroom.

I don't care. You win. And then I'm going to go, I'm going to go to the bathroom first. Or I'm going to take a bathroom for I do it. So it's simple human behavior. And we, we sit there and what we, I love how you talk about looking at what matters. You know, we talked about this where they did a study. where they change the lights in a factory.

They're like, it's not going to increase productivity. And they lowered the lights and productivity went up. Well, maybe if we increase the lights, productivity will change as well. Maybe it'll go down. They increase the lights and productivity went up even again. They're like, what the hell? And so then they turn all the lights off. And productivity went up again.

They're like, what you're monitoring matters? They realize that this was matter. And they realized that this was going on. So if you have the opportunity to monitor something that's positive and encourage, again, culture that they share with each other and they help each other. I love that you talked about that, that you went after looking at the university. And so out of that study, it reminds me of this really simple saying that I remind leaders of all the time. What you focus on grows.

Yes. They were focused on productivity in that particular plan and looking at that. And guess what? Even though they didn't really do anything monumental, they made some changes in the lights as an interesting correlation. But everyone knew they were being studied, they were being looked at, and the focus was on them and on productivity in that. grew. Right? Yeah, to your point, focus on what's not a problem solver, but what's working.

So focus on, as you said, really articulately, focus on, hey, this is working. This is what I'm going to start focusing on and then having them share it as a unit. And I think when most people think, hey, be a positive person, they're going to think, like, hi, everything's wonderful. I'm like, no, that's not what we're talking about. This isn't foo. This is science. This is what works. What is the one that no one gets?

Like you go into every one of your organizations and you're like, oh, wow, they just, holy Moses, every single time. What is the one that people collectively fail? You know, uniqueness is hard for people to get. And so uniqueness, again, goes in a couple different ways. On the business side, uniqueness is what is our value proposition, what are our features and benefits, how is it we do our product or service differently than our competitors?

I mean, really good companies get that right. right so that they can market correctly. It's amazing how many, you know, fairly successful companies don't figure that out to the point where they could be market leaders by just articulating, right? I mean, this may piss some people off, but does the iPhone that much better than like the Samsung galaxy or what I, you know, look at the top phones, are they that much? No, but Apple's marketing is amazingly better. Yes.

And it's built a culture, right? And it then built culture. Exactly. I remember the commercials, I mean, you might not be older enough for this, but they used to have commercials like, I'm a Mac, I'm a PC. And there was this whole thing with like, oh, I don't want to be a PC. PCs are dorks and they're losers and it's gross. They built it a whole identity around it. It's kind of like if you go to the motorcycle world, there are significantly better motorcycles than Harley Davidson's. Sorry, guys, I've been riding for years. There are motorcycles that are just light years better than Harleys. But I'm not going to go be on one of those bikes because there's not Harley.

And it's so moronic. but it's built in that uniqueness that you're talking about. Yeah, that culture and the uniqueness. And so, you know, that's one part of it. But the uniqueness pillar also goes into what makes our people unique. Because often what we do is we say, well, what makes us all the same? They all show up in a meeting and it's like, oh, well, we all like the bears or we all like the angels or whatever. It's like whatever stupid thing, we're trying to find commonalities all the time to create connection.

And instead, we need to get really interested about what makes us all different. And what are the different qualities, what are the different skills, what are the different abilities that we can bring to the organization? And so I don't really care that you and I maybe both are really good, let's say, writers, right? I want to know what is it that you can do that I can't do so that I can help me when I need it. And I can tell you what I'm really good at. So I can help you when you need it. Right. There's an area that you're just aren't that strong in. So for teammates, us really understanding what makes us unique, is important. And that creates diversity of thought. And that will, and this has become very politicized more lately and certainly

some changes happening, if you really want to have a diverse workforce, whatever that means to you, whether that's diversity of thought, diversity in how people look or who they are, the way to do that is to celebrate what makes people unique. Because if you are ultimately reinforcing this idea that we care about. Tom is the most amazing salesperson. Let's go find five more Tom's. Well, Tom's, you know, let's just say Tom's, you know, whatever his demographics are, but he's from this particular school and he's from this particular part of the country.

And you end up hiring like five versions of Tom. That doesn't mean you're going to be successful. I mean, my top five salespeople could not have looked, acted, spoke differently, worked completely different, approached sales completely different. approach sales completely differently. And that was a huge value to us because one did all their sales in the golf course. And the other one was like way into partnerships.

And the other one like made 500 phone calls a day and we just knew everybody. Like having that skill set in many different people was very, very valuable. So I kind of find that people get this like a little mixed up sometimes. In the book, I'll tell you a quick story. If you want an example of, of how to do this.

We had everyone in the company take the strengths finders, the Gallup Strengths Finders test. You get your top five strengths. I think that's all you need. You don't need the other, sorry, Galap. I don't think you need to pay the extra money for the other 34 or 37 or whatever it is. You need the top five.

And we asked everyone to take it. We took their top five, and I put them out on, just because I was curious. And we put them all the strengths up top and we put all their names down this side on an Excel sheet. and then we just filled in the box wherever they had strengths.

And what was fascinating was we had so many people with overlapping strengths. I mean, my entire operation and research team all had responsibility in their top five, which makes a lot of sense because they have to be responsible. They were doing work that was really, really important

and if they were irresponsible people, like sex offenders get jobs at daycares and stuff. I mean, it was like they had to be, be that kind of type of person. But was also interesting to me was we had all of these gaps. We had, I think, something like 12 or 14 strengths that we had nobody. Talking thousands of people, I have nobody. That's terrifying.

With these strengths. And I was like, that's a problem for us. Right? And we had been trying to reach some. particular goals with diversity to create more diversity in the organization and we had hit a ceiling. We kind of hit, hadn't really gotten any better.

We didn't really know what to do. We were certainly committed to it, but like, you know, we didn't know what to do. So I just said this at the time, you know, pull this out of my butt. I was like, hey guys, the next time you're going to hire somebody,

I'm not going to take a final interview and I will not hire them unless one of their top five strengths, includes one that we don't have right now. Yes. That's it. That was my only requirement. And it's a game changer.

It's kind of like saying, hey, we have a thousand eggs in our fridge, go to the store and buy more eggs. That's not going to make the damn cake. It's not diversity based on geographic or or belief. Race or gender or sexual preference. Nothing. I just,

right? I just said, give me people who don't, who are different than the people we have now. Like just by one strength. They could have the other four that are the same, so they're going to connect still with the organization. And the people I started getting at the interviews,

and I gave no other instructions. The people were acted different. They spoke different. They had different backgrounds. They looked different, right? They talked different. Everything was different about them in a wonderfully positive way. And the organization just,

and it was like a snowball. as soon as we suddenly had this new injection of fresh ideas and different perspectives, we never had to, like, think about diversity again because we were now already, it was just going. It was like the momentum was there, right? And we weren't trying to, like, solve all of society's ills by inside of an art organization. We were just trying to get people there that could think differently and have different perspectives so that we could argue more in a very collaborative and constructive way. about how to solve real life issues.

I don't think people are doing that. I don't think because they get stopped at the political side of this, which is just not the conversation we're having at all. It's a bit like going to go get sushi and then people are arguing about what we're going to get for dessert. It's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about sushi in this case.

We're talking about how it helps out the culture. And I love that you brought in for your people underneath your command that you were working with. You're like, hey, this is all I want. You decide everything else. I'm empowering you to do that. So again, you're going back to the idea that they have control. They've got influence.

They're deciding not only who's going to be in their org, but the people they're going to be working with every single day. It's like, I only just want to, this is my one requirement. You didn't get in their face without anything else because if not, you just get a wall of the same thing and that's not going to create different results. You mentioned your book. What's the name of the book? The book, my most recent book is called The Power of Company Culture.

That's the second edition. And it's filled with, it's really a three-part. part one is like, what do you got to do not to suck? Like, what's the bare minimum you got to do to have a company culture, right? And then the middle is, how do you be great? And then gives you a breakdown of those seven pillars. And I've got case studies with NASA, Neiman Marcus, Gary Vanderchuk's company, lots of different organizations in there to be able to help keep good examples.

It's not just my companies, not just my experiences, but, you know, what are they doing with those particular pillars. It's really interesting. And then the third part is, and this is, I think, really interesting for anybody on any topic, culture aside, third part is like, how do you actually do change? So it's my little mini guidebook of, you know, change management. So if you have a big change management issue, and right now your culture is fine, you could live by the book and just open up the last third, and that's going to give you the framework on how to get people to change and not drag their feet and make it harder on you

to really create that momentum you need to create. You mentioned some case studies in there. You know, Neiman Marcus, I'm so used to say needless markup, but Neiman Marcus, and you have all these ones. What is a case study

that didn't make the book that you're like, yeah, I haven't told the story, I want to tell this one because this would be something that the audience were like, okay, yeah, okay, that's cool.

So what is the one that isn't in the book as well? I was going to do a case study on Uber because they really screwed up diversity. Okay. How so? They had a lot of problems for a while.

Now, they ended up riding that ship, and they brought in some really key people to help them deal with this. But I mean, they had a, they had a young boys club, essentially, right? They had sort of this, like, tech bro thing going on for a period of time, and they had some real problems, and they had some lawsuits, and they had some real, you know, legitimate concerns for people that didn't fit that, you know. This was years ago. And I remember, like, I remember people wouldn't drive with Uber. They would only drive with Lyft because they had heard about some of these real problems. I had kind of wanted to do a case study on them on like how that, what was going on with that.

Shockingly, I couldn't get them to want to really talk about. They had done some, I wanted to kind of show what their growth had been and show like what they had done to try to write that ship. They weren't interested in, I guess, bring some of that because they had kind of gotten over that. PR hump, I think. So I think that would have been really, really interesting to have learned and see what they learned and what they actually ended up doing.

I understand they didn't want to, you know, open up the scab, you know, peel the scab away and we injured the wound. I think my favorite example of how you have to listen to everybody that goes through because you can't just have all the tech bros is when they did, so there's a great movie. It's called Zero Dark Hundred.

It's about when they went after Bin Laden. And they got that. And they're going and they're doing the mockups and they've done that's a bunch of times. And the lowest seal that was on command, it goes, well, what happens if the helicopter crashes? They're like, what do you mean? They're like, this helicopter has never crashed on any mission ever. They're like, yeah, but what happens if it does? I don't know.

You guys asked for something outside the box. And they were like, okay, it's never going to have. You know what? The rules are we're going to have to roll play it. What do we do? How to prepare for it? And they adjusted how much C4 they brought and they did all this. And of course, sure, sure, enough.

You know, they went in and they put the helicopter a bunch. of it and that created a wind tunnel because of the walls and smashed it immediately right down on it. And it's amazing that the youngest seal, the most inexperienced, brought it up. And he was like, oh, no, no, what about this? So being able to your point, having those, those things, those diversifications in there to get that. When you're talking about change and you're talking about serious change, how do people

do that? Because I get it, I think most people know at this point, if you haven't at this point, you already know that, hey, you're screwing up and I haven't even touched the seven pillars. I think most people have listened to this one and listen to what you've done and going, Well, shit, I need to change in ball games. And then they get the rough idea of a seven pillars. But change is hard.

You know, we're experiencing that collectively as a society right now. Some things are changing in one way that doesn't resonate with people. And some things are changing in ways that we wish it would resonate with people. It's about as political as I'm going to get on this call. So when you go into this and you're trying to implement change, what are the things that actually are sustainable when you're trying to implement change? Well, is it good change? That's number one.

Right. So is it a good idea? This is always my terrible example. But if I came to you and said, hey, we should start selling meth, right? No matter how much I try to get you to change your mind

and you're like, listen, Chris, I'm not getting into the meth business. No, thank you. I'm like, but listen, we can make a lot of money. No much I convince you, you're going to be like, no.

Because if it's a bad idea, you're going to get resistance no matter what you do. So that's kind of like the first, Let me test it like, is it a good idea and are you certain that the change and the thing that you want to do is the right decision and is a good idea and is good for everyone that's involved and all of that, right? So that's like given baseline. And then we talked about us a little bit earlier, helping people understand, deeply understand. So if I open a door and it's totally pitch dark in there and I'm a stranger, you don't know me and you're happy to be walking.

passing. I say, oh, excuse me, can you walk in that room? You're going to be like, hell to the no. Right. Because I don't know who you are. I don't know what's in there. I mean, it could be a million dollars. It could also be, you know, a monster that's going to eat you. Like, I don't know anything. My answer should be no. And that is the answer at work. I don't understand what you want me to do. I don't understand what is. What is this? No. That's my, that's my baseline is no. So I help you understand a little bit. Now you're aware hey, can you help me find the light switch in this room? I can't find it.

I forgot my glasses. And now all of a sudden you have a little information. Oh, you're asking me for help. Well, I can reach my hand in there and probably find the switch without being in real danger. Right. So now I've given you a little information. Now you're willing to do a little bit more. Right.

Now it's, hey, I need to find the light switch. I don't have my glasses. My grandson is lost in this room. Right? I need now of a sudden. It's a different conversation. Right. So you're getting more and more and more information.

I'm asking you to do this thing that might be weird or scary, but like, and so the more you move up that ladder, up that X, you know, Y axis, anyway, whatever it is, the X axis, up the axis. I've suddenly blinked on my X and Y's and forgotten all my geometry. The, as you go up the X axis, the, which is more and more understanding and more and more training more and more of them deeply getting it. And some people are going to stop at, they get it.

Some people are going to go all the way up to like expert level. They want to know everything, right? Some people understand what chat GPT is and how to prompt it. Some people are using it to like deeply program and go. Like there's the spectrum of what people understand about that. But as they go up, then, and again, it has to be a good idea. they begin to move along that y-axis to, I'm going to do something, I will change,

I will help you get other people to change, I will be a champion of change, I will reinforce and like literally help you find the people that do that. So that's sort of one tactic that leaders can take. The second tactic is I realized when we were going to this change that I had a group of people that were my champions of change wanted to change, they were good to go. And everyone was like trying to convince the people in the middle to change, to go along with this,

to why it was good for them. And I kind of was like, you know what, I don't think we need to worry about the middle group. And I've actually seen this work over and over and over again. The middle group essentially gets pushed by the bottom group. and the middle group actually ends up pulling the bottom group. So, and the, and the, the, the, the, the, the champions of change kind of pull everyone along, too. So I got the champions, the people who really got it to go and have lunch and go have coffee and go have side conversations with the people who were like, no, I don't like change. I don't want to do this.

I used to call them the flip phone crowd, like the people who had those old flip phones. Remember, like the buttons were fun. falling off and there was no way they were going to go to an iPhone. They were never going to give that thing up until finally, like, a broken, there was no more warranty and they finally had to go to the Steve Jobs Mafia, right? So, like, but when I got those people that really got it, like, I have these, like, peer conversations about what are you worried about? What's going on? What do you, what do you fearful about, you know? Let me tell you what I think is going to happen. Like, I know Chris has got all these crazy ideas, but like, I actually think these are good ideas.

And let me tell you why. As you're a coworker, as your peer, right? I'm not telling you how to do it, but I think this is going to work. I think this is great. I think we're going to end up being happier. And when those people were like, oh, okay, then they just started pushing the middle people forward. Because if you're in the mill and you're like, well, I'll go along with what everybody else is doing it. That's your job is the middle.

That's intuitively who you are. And, and, and Steve, who like doesn't ever do any change is suddenly going, yeah, I'll do that. And you're like, oh, well, I guess it must be an amazing idea. Steve's on. It's not really that you say Steve. I've got an uncle Steve who literally has a flip phone. And his flip phone literally just died. And I was like, I'll send you a smartphone.

I've got extra iPhones. I will send it to you. He's like, no, I just bought a new flip phone. I was like, Mother. Right. Steve. Shout out to my uncle, Stevie. We love you.

But dear God, man. So, okay, so actually with that in mind, what do you do when you have those people like, I'm not changing? That's adorable. I'm still going to use a dot matrix. I'm going to use an abacus. I don't care if you give me a calculator. It ain't happening.

How do you deal with that in a culture or is that toxic to that? Well, I mean, listen, sometimes having people who are resistant to change is a good thing. They help protect us. They help us from running, you know, off a cliff because we see some shiny object and we want to run after it. I mean, we need these people in our lives, too, for different reasons. They usually hold institutional knowledge. They help ground us in tradition. And so those people aren't all bad. It's just that when we find a good idea and we need them to come along, we want them to be a part of that journey. We've just got to figure out how to, you know, put it in their

terms and help them. So they're not fearful and so that they understand why it's important, and they ultimately decide it's good for them, too, to come along. I think there's so much in culture that we just don't understand and that we're slowly getting into it and we're finally guiding beyond the woo-woo. But there's so much more that needs to do that. So there's so many more conversations. There's so many more questions that I want to ask, but it means you'll be here for another seven hours, which would not be fair to you. What is the best way for people to track you down? What is the best way for people to connect with you?

You mentioned your book. What is the best way that someone says, listen, my culture's shot. And I don't want to do this for foo-foo reasons. I want to do this to increase productivity. I want to do this to increase efficiency and increase ultimately my bottom line so I can do that. If I'm trying to build a bulletproof culture that's built on the seven peers, how do I do that? How do they, someone get a hold of you to actually implement those things? First, if you are in the U.S. and you want to text 33777 and just put my name, Chris, is the message.

I'll send you off some ideas about how to change your meetings. I'll send you 25 starter questions for that one question survey a week. And that'll get you on my newsletter. you can, you know, get additional content. As of the 16th here today in January, TikTok is still up and running. I'm on TikTok. I do lots of content there. But I also do it on Instagram Reels.

YouTube, happy to connect on LinkedIn. You can also go to my website, chrisdire.com. But wherever you hang out on social media, I'm probably there if you want to connect. And then there's lots of stuff that you can digest. Certainly, my book is really set up to be not woo-woo. and not foofy, and it's meant to be really, this is how you actually do it, and it comes from me having to go through it myself

and all of the other people that I've been able to learn from along the way that I know have had to go through that same journey. So the good news is you can make small incremental changes. You don't have to make a radical change tomorrow. Working on your culture doesn't mean, you know, we go back to this health example it doesn't mean you have to start starving yourself it doesn't mean you have to go through this painful thing you can start doing small incremental things a little bit at a time that will over time have a huge huge impact on your company on your bottom line on your

happiness as a leader and the happiness of your people and i love everything is based on what's been proven these aren't things that are made up these are things that not only you've experienced but science backs it, and you've also done it with all of your clients. Chris, I appreciate you for being on the show and for being able to give out and have people get access to it and write a book and spend the time with us. I really appreciate you being here. Thanks much for having me. Stop theorizing about what might work and start measuring what actually does. Chris, just preach about culture.

He transformed his own company, saved 35% on operating expenses, and built a repeatable system that works.