The Power of Microcultures: Designing Culture and Purpose That Stick

0:01Most organizations completely get it wrong. And by the time it gets to a frontline employee, they roll their eyes and they go, that's just senior management talking to itself.

0:12Amanda Schneider:Welcome to Design Nerds Anonymous, the podcast that sparks curiosity at the intersection of business and design. I'm your host, Amanda Schneider, founder and president at ThinkLab, speaker on TED.com, and now author of the new book, Work for What's Next. Over the past few episodes, we've talked about trust and talent. Today, we zoom out to the belief systems that hold them together. In this episode, we'll step into culture and purpose, not as words on a wall, but as the choices people make every day. Because if purpose is in practice, and culture isn't lived, they really don't mean anything. My guest today is Ron Tite.

1:02Amanda Schneider:He's a former stand-up comic turned award-winning creative director, a best-selling author, and a keynote speaker. He's shaped global brands from Google to Volvo, and now works with hundreds of organizations each year to align what they believe with how they behave. In this conversation, We challenge short-term thinking, unpack why performative purpose actually erodes trust, and explore how leaders can move from abstract statements to behaviors people of all generations can see, feel, and follow. Here's my conversation with Ron Tite. Welcome, Ron. So glad that you could join us here today. And I would love it if you would start us off with a brief intro.

1:50Amanda Schneider:Tell us a little bit about you, the work that you do in a few words, and if you could add one word to describe the future of culture and purpose, given where we are today. I'm the founder and the chief strategy officer at Church and State, an agency based in Toronto. I'm an author of three books, and I'm a speaker. I spend most of my time on the road, and I'm the father to two beautiful young children, even though I'm being incredibly old. They are young. I am old. I think when I look at the one word for the future, I think it really has to be sustainable. And I don't mean that from an environmental perspective.

2:26I mean it from a long-term survival perspective, that we should be building cultures and we should be building organizations that are here for a very, very, very long time.

2:41Amanda Schneider:Are we sustainable today? The path that we're on right now? Are we sustainable? No, I think most organizations are so driven by short term goals. But you know, from large enterprise organizations kind of dealing with a board that just wants quarterly financial results down to startups who are stuck in the current trend of today and always kind of skipping on to the next thing before they actually optimize the thing that they were pursuing in the first place. So it's just in both cases, it's this short-termism that is getting in the way of real growth. Well, we're going to talk a little bit today about how to kind of look up from the busyness and maybe look out a little bit more.

3:20Amanda Schneider:Now, in prep for this, this whole season is helping to launch my new book, Work for What's Next. And I invited you to read two of the chapters. One was on culture. One was on purpose. The one on purpose really looks at how the youngest generations in our mix are maybe motivated a little bit differently than their predecessors. And the chapter on culture really focuses on this idea of microcultures and maybe how we're building culture differently. So I would love to invite you to kind of pick out maybe one core idea from these two chapters that aligns well with your work and maybe build on it or help us kind of understand how your work relates.

3:58The biggest thing for me when it comes to purpose is really about how we define it. And I think in a lot of cases, most organizations completely get it wrong. And I can see why. I mean, if you trace the origin of where this has come from, at least over the past decade, you can kind of see how we got there. So it kind of starts with the old Milton Friedman, the social responsibility of businesses to increase profits. And that's where we used to be for close to 50 years. And it was shareholder primacy, and it was driving shareholder value. And it was very short-term thinking. We took people like Jack Welch and we made them, you know, manager of the century.

4:35And then 2017 GE was removed from the Dow Jones. So we start to see how, oh, maybe those short term decisions don't work for the long haul. And we started to relook at that. And then, you know, 2018, Larry Fink of BlackRock sends a note that basically says, if you're not doing work with your community, we don't want to do business with you. and then business, you know, the business round table gets together and says, you know, maybe corporate purposes and what we thought it was, maybe it's not the Milton Friedman thing. And maybe we don't have one stakeholder, the shareholder, maybe we have five, but we also have our customers and we have our partners and we have our employees and we have the communities that we operate in.

5:21So that was kind of where the initial direction started. And then as many organizations, as many leaders do with every trend, we got lazy with it. And we're like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We stand for something more. Okay. And we went away and we hired consultants like you and I, and they went away to a resort that was on a lake north of whatever city their head office was in. They huddled around a flip chart and said, we need to write a purpose statement. And they took it into this zone where it was really more focused on PR and sounding good opposed to something that was strategically tied to where they make their money.

5:57So most organizations wrote stuff like our purpose is the something, something community, you know, like they just, they just, I need our purpose is to save the planet and champion human rights. And it's like, you make a cracker. What are you talking about? Like those are lovely purposes to have, but they're completely useless. And all they do is create more distrust in organizations because they never follow through on it. And that's not what they do. That is not why they're in business. And there's nothing wrong with having a purpose that is strategically linked to where you make your money.

6:34That's what it should be. All those other things of human rights and the planet, and those are expectations. Like, I hope you believe in saving the planet. I hope you believe that. But that's not why you're in business. So, you know, I think that's the fundamental difference I have with a lot of people is like, I want to talk about purpose, but then don't actually ever define it. From my perspective, purpose is a fundamental belief that drives what you sell and how you grow. The organization I'm speaking to today is in fleet management, global fleet management for large organizations who have fleets of cars.

7:11And I wrote what we would call a brand belief for a purpose statement to say like, hey, we believe that efficiency starts with intelligence. So that's strategically linked to their intelligent mobility solutions. It's where they make their money, but it's a step above so that it can also provide a path for growth and connecting to the other chapter that it can help drive culture. Because, you know, and then I'll stop rambling. We can actually have a conversation, but - It's good, no, it's good. Where I think, you know, And you're right in what you wrote, that generations have a different perspective on purpose.

7:49Gen Z is the first generation to prioritize purpose over compensation. It's not that everybody wants to work for an organization that saves the world. Because again, those are expectations. What it means, I think, is that everybody wants to know clearly what an organization stands for. And the most important part, They need to see that they have a personal and valued role in bringing it to life. So I know if we believe that efficiency is about intelligence, I know that I'm in payroll and I have an actual role in bringing that to life because I applied intelligent and efficient solutions to the things that I do on a daily basis.

8:32That's fulfillment. That's purpose. Not going to work for an organization simply because we think they're going to save the planet.

8:41Amanda Schneider:And how do you translate that down? Because I think one of the challenges that we have is it's easy. It's a finite thing. I understand the corporate retreat where we can go and we can put things on a whiteboard and we can decide where those fall down is sometimes they're the wrong decisions to your point, you know, the cracker company trying to save the world. But even if you make the right decisions, put the right words on the board, I think that we're such a time starved generation of workers, all generations. This is not a Gen Z thing, all of us. And when that translation to what does it mean to me in payroll is where it really starts to connect with meaning and especially with this younger generation, how do we find the time or how do we translate that the brilliant words from a paper to action?

9:23Yeah, that's a great question. And I think, you know, there's a statement that organizations should write. It's a double that short because you said, and you're right, most leaders say, how do I find the time to do this? well, if we do it right, you will actually save time because what it does is it makes decision-making so much easier for people because they know the role that they have to play and they know what they're laddering up to. They don't have to check in with leaders all the time and leaders don't have to oversee as much. When we work with clients, we just write like, we'll just finish this statement.

9:50We believe this. We believe efficiency starts with intelligence. So we do this. We apply intelligence to mobility solutions around the world by incorporating data, by having global collaboration, by having lean systems. Very simply, the word so connects the belief to the fundamental action of the organization. And the by is the unique way that you do it. We believe this. So we do this by doing this. And it's a great check because if you're a cracker company and you go, we believe in saving the planet. So we make a cracker that doesn't connect at all. Now, the next layer down is, okay, what do you believe as an individual?

10:37Or if we as an organization believe this, so I apply efficiency and intelligence in my payroll by using the latest software, by collaborating with teams in HR. And from a manager perspective, we can apply that same model of like, I believe that management is about mentorship. I mentor the people on my team actively by having one-on-one coffees once a quarter, by doing a holistic review with them, by taking them out for an informal walk three times a year. So you can apply it both ways, but it really is that simple.

11:15Amanda Schneider:I'm thinking about our own. We do market research, specifically to the interiors industry, architects, designers, people who sell furniture, all kinds of things. So I'm thinking about this in our own business about how we could maybe think about our mission statement or a broader purpose a little bit different. I love that. The other thing that we can do is when you simplify it with just that, organizations are right to think about efficiency, but what they do is they chase, it's like they just chase MBA textbooks in there and trying to find it. And so it's like, okay, we got the purpose statement.

11:53What else do we need? And they just keep going down the rabbit hole. Okay, then we need a mission. Okay, now we need a vision. Okay, then we need North Star. Okay, then we need a BHAG. Then we need, you know, and they just keep going and adding layer upon layer upon layer. And by the time it gets to a frontline employee, they go, I don't understand any of it. Or they roll their eyes and they go, that's just senior management talking to itself. that's not the reality of what we do here on the street.

12:18Amanda Schneider:Which is the irony, because if they can get all of the workers in your organization, let's say you have 400 employees, to embrace that, embody it, live it out in their daily life, that's where, to your point, the purpose of purpose comes in. Exactly.

12:35Amanda Schneider:I'm so proud to introduce Mannington Commercial and Cindy Coffin as a season 10 sponsor of Design Nerds Anonymous. Mannington and Cindy herself have been alongside me, not only in the research, but also in the writing of this book. Mannington Commercial has been a longtime sponsor of DNA. And one of the reasons I'm so proud of that is because DNA is the voice of our industry. I'm so thrilled that you've been a partner for so long on DNA. What are the changes that you think people are struggling to solve? It's a tough time to be a designer because you're dealing with a lot of information, but the responsibility lies on the shoulders of our industry.

13:11Amanda Schneider:for a great deal of what our future as a civilization looks like. What is Mannington Commercial doing to really address some of these challenges? We are committed to being fully transparent with everything that we do and the way that we do it. So that transparency really supports designers having access to all of the information that they need to make the right decisions clearly and plainly and transparently as possible. If you could invite our podcast listeners, what would you say to them? I think human beings are the differentiator. So I invite you to connect with a Mannington commercial rep to learn more, not just about our new products, but how we think and how we show up for you as your design partner.

14:01Amanda Schneider:Again, I invited you to read a couple of chapters. You're an expert on purpose. You are an expert on marketing and connecting that purpose to people's brand. What is one way maybe these chapters challenge you to think differently or one new idea that you'll carry forward in your work? I was consulting with an organization who was very quickly growing and we got the senior leadership together, like 20 people. They've done all the exercises, like what are our values? What is our purpose? They did all that. And then I said to the group, what are your values? and they're like, oh, we put them on the website.

14:38Amanda Schneider:We got to find them. No one could name them. Like nobody could name them. And when we started to dig down deeper that some people on the team were checking the box of doing this stuff. But the reality was that there wasn't cross-departmental communication and there wasn't a shared level of accountability. And so it was like, oh, that's somebody else's responsibility. And so that team level agreement, I think, is so great to be able to establish like two things. One was accountability of like, hey, this is how we do things around here. And you're accountable to it. We have an agreement at this, whether it's a senior team or this entire organization.

15:17So we have that. But the other thing that I love about it is that really is a document. And I love that it's a dynamic document as well, that it's a living, breathing document. But so much about culture is this culture says that culture is the, you know, kind of the choreography that everybody follows, but nobody learns. You just kind of know that this is the way the dance go. And then slowly you get into step with everybody. But no one sits you down and teaches you the moves. And so you're like, oh, this is how we do things around here. OK, this is great. But that doesn't get documented. So a team level agreement connects kind of the broader purpose into specific actions that drive culture and that hold everybody accountable to that.

16:04This is this is what we do here.

16:06Amanda Schneider:Yeah. Roger Martin has a great line that culture is the inner playbook that says this is how we do things around here. if how we do things around here is transparent and honest and collaborative, we should probably state that and hold people accountable to it. Which is so interesting because I think as we think about, you know, why people aren't going from a purpose statement on the wall into action is because they're not translating it well. Yet, I don't know about you and a lot of the consulting that we do. And I think the reason all these MBAs are doing all of the checkboxes that you talked about is because everybody wants the solution.

16:40Amanda Schneider:That's the way our culture works. Yet, as you were talking, it was making me think, you know, if our culture statement is the purpose or if our purpose statement is the what, the team level agreement, which I credited profusely to a book called How the Future Works. Brian Elliott, Sheila Subramanian and Helen Kropp wrote that book. And what that is, is the how. So it takes you from the what to the how and translates it down to that checklist for the individuals, not just the checklist for the company. Maybe I think especially in this era of hybrid work, where the dance moves and the dance floors, everyone's coming from different environments, everyone's coming from different places, the dance moves aren't always clear, that we have to get a little bit more prescriptive and a little bit more stated about what that culture is today, maybe than ever before.

17:30I agree. And I think that setting up that I'd say that, you know, if we go back to that, we believe this, so we do this by doing this, then that's where those, the elements of culture can go in the by doing it this way. This is why we do the thing we do. This is the what we do by doing this. And this is the how we do it.

17:49Amanda Schneider:I love it. And that's so simple and easy to remember. And I feel like applicable, whether you're a senior leadership team trying to decide it for your team, or you're a mid-level manager trying to make that applicable to that person in accounting or whatever other department. I love it. Yeah, exactly. So what is a caution to all generations? What do we need to do differently to kind of avoid maybe the dark side of going too far? Is it possible to go too far with too much purpose? Give practical advice to our leaders, teams, and listeners. I think it really is. It's the balance, right? It can't just be about purpose.

18:26It has to be about making money or else you go out of business. But it also can't be just about money. It also has to be about purpose or else you go out of business. We've seen that. And I think we are in a weird time where there's generational conflict inside organizations. I think underlying the humor is a real tension that exists. Certainly between if we bookend it, we've got the later stage boomers who are leaving the organization. And that's going to be the biggest exit. you know, in the next couple of years, that'll be going to be the largest exit in the history of capitalism. And with that exit goes a whole whack of corporate intelligence.

19:08And that's where I think we're going to see. And a lot of that corporate intelligence is the stuff that's not written down. It's the, oh, we did that in this year and you should, or the, you know, it's kind of the corporate equivalent of what that light to work. You got to pound the wall with your elbow three times here and flick it this way. All that stuff is not written down. And so that's all going to walk you out the door. And we're going to be left with people who maybe aren't as experienced and who's going to mentor really young people. So that's, I think, one possible tension.

19:37Amanda Schneider:If I can add to that real quick too, it's also my generation, Gen X, is not big enough to fill their shoes. So in addition to losing all that tacit knowledge, the next generation isn't big enough. So that means the youngest generations, the millennials and Gen Z in our midst are going to have to step up sooner. Yeah, 100%. I'm Gen X as well. I'm probably in the upper regions of Gen X. Yeah, there's going to be kind of people who are more junior who are kind of coming up in the ranks. The other thing I'm saying, this just happened in our organization. I was in the office and we had a creative intern with us, very young, in school.

20:14And one of the creative directors said, hey, I'm going to go to a cafe. Does anybody want anything? I said, no, I'm good. And then he looked at the intern and said, would you like to go for a walk? I'm going to go over there and we can chat about stuff. And she goes, no, I'm good. I said, I think just some career advice. The most learning is going to occur in the informal time. It is in those casual conversations that occur. It's that what we used to call those water cooler talk. Like that's where real learning takes place. And so if somebody says, do you want to go for a walk? you should take them up on it.

20:52Like any chance you get every single person, you should be having as many informal conversations as you can. And now granted, maybe there's a thing where people are like, Oh, you know, I'm uncomfortable in a social environment, even it was what, you know, with, with a more senior person. But I think that conscious, like you need to be greedy about learning and we need to be greedy about teaching. And as we've moved into more hybrid environments, those intentional moments or those unintentional moments aren't happening as much. You know, I know it's a massive quagmire to talk about return to office and the balance of all that.

21:32I think people should be in office as much as they can, not because you have to justify rent or anything like that. There was a CHRO of one of Canada's biggest banks. I was doing a keynote following her and she articulated it perfect because they had a returned office mandate. And she said, let's talk about this and let me get something out of the way right off the top. This is not a discussion about personal productivity. I'm way more productive at home and so are you. It's not about that. This is about the fact that our collective, the gains we've made in personal productivity have been offset by greater losses in collective productivity, in communication, in collaboration, and in culture.

22:23And so we're coming back. And I think that's the conversation we have to have more. And that's the conversation that younger generations should be pushing for. I don't need to be in the office. I've learned all that stuff. I know it's a debate and I know that people want to stay at home. So I think they should be greedy and get in the office and learn from people.

22:44Amanda Schneider:Can I challenge you there a little bit? Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah.