Culture That Fuels Revenue - Chris Dyer

0:00Welcome 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. Hi, 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?

0:34So 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 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 I needed to change culture and, um, we did it.

1:12We did it really successfully. I worked with 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, I'm, I'm actually not as healthy. I am. I shouldn't probably be eating McDonald's and fast food. What are some of the things in culture that or there's the McDonald's fast food version of that. It's 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?

1:46That'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. The second one is that they believe that if they just tell people that that is 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 to ultimately say people like us do things like this and don't do things like that um you know what was it google's theme used to be don't be evil right that was sort of like a baseline thing um but beyond that we need like our people to be a part of that process.

2:30And 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 doesn't work. So a lot of that happens because of buy-in, right? And getting the people underneath your 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 you're 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?

3:03Well, first step is to ask them, ask them what they care about, ask them what they value, ask them, you know, when you do that, you start to pick up on themes and things that obviously overlap and connect. You're not going to get a hundred percent 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 x i mean you're fine 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 aligned 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.

3:52Again, we can go back to 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. And so usually what leaders do is they just try to convince, convince, convince, and they try to push and beg, borrow, steal, yell, scream, whatever it is to get them to comply and to change.

4:38And 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 will go carry, you know, will go out into the world with their virtual sword and shield and help you. Right. Do more of that. That's super important.

5:19And 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 behaviors and so if you if we think about what's the most uh 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.

6:03And yet, if your culture is one where it's shut up and don't talk, don't speak out of turn, the senior leaders get to talk and you have to sit here and be quiet. You know, we don't 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 is 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 a hundred studies right now if they wanted them that would, you know, we know that when you have a great culture, you have higher profits.

6:40We know when you have a great culture, you have higher performance. And we know when you have a great culture, you have higher productivity. Tell, give me the senior leader, give me the business owner who doesn't care about those three things. Right. 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-foo in its culture, they're probably not going to listen to it now. If you go down to a C-level individual or senior leader and say, listen, this is going to increase productivity. It's going to make your life easier.

7:09It's going to increase profits and everything's going to be more efficient. Whenever rolling out culture, they're like, oh wait, okay, 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 and you work with your clients, how much does human needs play into it, understanding where they go from?

7:40And 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 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 this basic 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.

8:15I'd much rather 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 1940s.

8:59It 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. And 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.

9:36And 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 in 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, 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, call conversations with them to figure out how we can better service them without them filling up our, you know, resources away.

10:17So like, and then they feel heard and we're actually solving their problems and we're making work better for them. Right. That's how you do it. Cause you mentioned, you know, Bob in 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 their 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.

10:58But 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 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 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 heard and i think for so many people they fail 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 say appreciated, it's important.

11:41And 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 seem seen and heard, which by the way, completely side note, it's never about the toilet seat.

12:13It's always about being seen and heard and appreciated. It's never about the toilet seat. So for those of you listening, if the missus 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. We 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.

12:39How 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? Yeah. I mean, they usually come to me for one of two reasons. One, they've got a giant headache. So 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.

13:10And 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 there are, 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.

13:50So 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?

14:26There's seven pillars of, of culture. What are the seven pillars? Sure. So in no particular order, uh, but I always say this one first. Um, but transparency is pillar one, positive leadership, positive, uh, having positivity in the organization is number two. Uh, 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.

15:07Let'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 it's, and people don't understand how important recognition is. In military operations, if I give you a little metal thing on your chest, you're willing to go get shot for it.

15:42And 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 it? Dang it, I just thought. Might make you feel better, but it doesn't actually work. It's the end of your business really, really quickly. And what I love about this is, you know, people are going to listen to this and they're going to be like, oh my God, that's so foo-foo.

16:11That's so this, that's that. I'm like, okay, cool. Here's the science. Go look at the science and come back to me after you shut the up. It's just because this is a science. This is what works. Yeah, culture is a science. It is not an art. Yeah, this is, absolutely. And it's measurable. And there'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 of personas do. So what are the ones that most people get? Like, they're like, okay, we're pretty decent on this. And then what are the ones that people just universally, they just screw up.

16:41Just like, wow, you're just, wow, okay. Right. Usually people have some mechanism for listening and usually they're OK at listening, but they don't they could do better. Right. We could we could do a question a week versus doing the annual survey. We could, you know, be serving our clients more often than what we're doing now. I mean, there'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 and yet I would say when we got radically transparent with my organization and everyone I've ever consulted with or 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.

17:44I 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. 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 crazy place. 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.

18:23Here'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 pnls every month is something i highly encourage companies to do delivering the detailed part of the pnl that makes sense to different business units 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.

19:09We're doing a cost thing. We didn't lay anybody off. I just said, here's our stuff. right anyone has any thoughts has ideas i'm here talk to your boss talk to me and people started saying hey i didn't know we spent money on did you know we could do this instead right like they they understood and therefore they could come up with better ideas because they were closer to it but not only that they were bought into it they're like hey this is what's going on there's this there's this great video where it shows there's a there's a woman sitting with a shrink and she's like you know i i know he's cheating on me 100 he's cheating on me he goes and he disappears is in the garage and he's on the phone.

19:47Then he crawls into bed. He doesn't talk to me. He's clearly cheating on me. My husband is an SOB. And then, 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 from my motorcycle. So it's that fiddling 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.

20:24That 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 sit there and 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 costs by a bazillion dollars like really yes so okay so that's transparency right what are the what's the next one because you know you you've done it really well but dividing this up and i 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 this is where you guys mess up on i wish you guys would do better yeah i i think they struggle with the positivity part.

21:05So 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.

21:45I mean, you can survive, but it's really hard to get innovative. So 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?

22:29Why 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 quota 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 many calls and then people can take from that what they think will work for them right right because one size fits one one right well that works for one person may not work for somebody else and and when somebody else teaches you how to do something better like your your your peer your co-worker 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 call you're like screw you dude i'm looking for a new job like 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 gonna 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 okay you win which one do you want to do first You can either brush your teeth or you can, you can go to the bathroom.

24:19I don't care. You win. And then I go, I'm going to go to the bathroom first, or I'm going to take a bathroom before I do it. So it's, it's simple human behavior. And we sit there and what we, I love how you talk about looking at what matters. And we talked about this where they did a study where they changed 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, they increased the lights and productivity went up even again.

24:43They're like, what the hell? And so then they turned all the lights off and productivity went up again. and they're like, what the hell? It's like, what you're monitoring matters. They realized 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 work. And so out of that study, it always reminds me of this really simple saying that I remind leaders of all the time.

25:10What 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 to 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 and that grew. To your point, focus on what's not a problem solver, but what's working. So focus on, as you said, really articulating, 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.

25:44And I think when most people think, hey be a positive person they're going to think like hi everything's wonderful it's like no that's not what we're talking about this isn't foo-foo this is science this is what this is what works what are the um what is the one that no one gets like you go into every every one of your organizations and there's like oh wow they just totally moses every single time what is the one that they people collectively fail you know uniqueness is hard for people to get um and and And so uniqueness, again, goes in a couple different ways. On the business side, uniqueness is what is our value proposition?