Who Owns Culture? Yorm Ackuaku Changed Her Mind

0:25I'll see you next time.

0:30watched it happen up close more than most people ever will. I'm Scott Amenta, and this is the Chief of Staff Podcast. My guest today is Yorma Kouaku, who has spent close to 15 years in Chief of Staff and Business Manager roles, most recently at Weight Watchers, where she supported four different executives in a little over three years. Before that, she spent five years at Citi across New York, London, Dubai, and Johannesburg, operations for a 500-person global marketing team at Vista, and a start in accounting and technology risk at Deloitte. She changed my thinking in a couple of places in this one, starting with who actually owns culture inside a company.

1:05We also talk about the three principles her marketing team wrote that spread across the whole enterprise without anyone lobbying for it. What to do in your first 60 days when you inherit a broken room and how a chief of staff stays standing when the strategy changes every quarter. Here's my conversation with Jorm. Jorm, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to our conversation here. I appreciate you joining us today. We're here to talk about culture, what it means for the chief of staff to kind of hold the culture within an organization, and at what point that's most important.

1:37Before we get into all of that, I'd love to just learn a little bit more about your background, your career experience, what led you into your first chief of staff role. You've been a chief of staff at many organizations. So let's start somewhere towards the beginning. I've been a chief of staff for almost 15 years now, which is wild to say. So for those that know what a chief of staff is, just essentially partnering with C-suite level executives to help translate their vision into execution. I most recently did that at Weight Watchers, where I supported four different leaders across different mandates, two chief marketing officers, a chief fund officer, and a chief engagement officer, which was a brand new role that combined three separate organizations for the first time.

2:18And then each transition was kind of its own pressure test, which I'm sure we'll talk about for the team underneath the leader. Before Weight Watchers, I spent five years at Citi in strategic operations roles, what they called a business manager role, which was my first foray into the chief of staff role. And I did that across New York, London, Dubai and Johannesburg. Then I built operations for a 500 person global marketing team at Vista, used to be Vista Print. Early, early on, I came up through Deloitte and their technology risk consulting group and started my career in accounting. What I've spent most of my career doing, especially these last 10 to 15 years, is really figuring out how to keep organizations functional and people grounded, especially when the conditions about them keep changing.

3:04You asked specifically about my first foray into a chief of staff role that came post business school, got into a program at Citi that was meant to be a leadership development program for folks who wanted to lead city franchises outside of the U.S. So I started in New York, was moved to Frankfurt. And then at the time, there was a national crisis happening for one of our European countries. And I was selected to go to London to help with a cross-functional team to help solve that. I was helping orchestrate a lot of different things. And then someone just saw that I was good at it and handpicked me to go support them.

3:42And when I was done in Frankfurt But in London, I was handpicked to go support a leader in Dubai and then in Joburg. And that kind of was the beginning of my chief of staff role. So I've done that since then. Was the city program kind of oriented towards chief of staff roles? Not at all. There were 10 of us around the world that were picked for this program and really meant to be steeped in the business of banking. So like I said, I was in a corporate banking group. And, you know, it's one of those things where someone just saw, I guess, my ability to connect the dots because at that point coming into Cydia, I had already been at Deloitte, done technology risk consulting.

4:19I had done some business process consulting. I was a CPA. And then I had also done a lot of stuff in technology processes. So I had kind of a really good cross-functional background to begin with. And I think just sitting in that room and being able to quickly connect the dots in a room where there was people significantly more senior than me was appreciated. And that just kind of was the launchpad for my chief of staff career. Let's dive into that idea of connecting the dots and kind of how it relates to culture a little bit more deeply. Connecting the dots can mean different things to different people.

4:53The way that I look at it, it's very much understanding what's happening and how people are feeling from the ground up and being able to reflect that in the most senior rooms as it relates to decision-making and the way that executive team decisions might be heard or understood kind of across the ranks. How do you kind of think about where the chief of staff role sits in this like dot connector reality? I wouldn't say necessarily that a chief of staff owns the culture. I think it's a leader that owns the culture. I think chiefs of staff often own that operating system that reinforces that culture or on the other spectrum, the system that erodes culture, right?

5:39So when leadership is changing, when people aren't looking for another vision statement, they're looking for consistency. They're asking, can I trust what we're doing today? Are decisions being made the same way? Do our leaders still behave according to the values that they talk about? I think that that's where chief of staff becomes incredibly influential. So being able to connect the dots, going back to this idea of connecting dots from what's actually happening on the ground versus what leaders intend to happen, I think it's where we can play a crucial role. When there's a revolving door at the top, like what actually happens to a team's culture on the ground?

6:14What is the chief of staff are you looking for? What are the signs that culture might be eroding? The first thing for sure that goes away is certainty, right? So people stop trusting the direction because they've watched it change so many times. I've seen people become more, especially in the marketing organization, become more cautious versus creative, and they're always optimizing for survival instead of results. And so I think as people often think culture changes because a new executive arrives, I think culture changes because that uncertainty compounds. So priorities become less clear. People start optimizing for whoever has the most influence that week.

6:53Decision-making slows down. Psychological safety declines because nobody knows what good looks like anymore. So I've seen that the culture really breaks down all at once. It kind of erodes through hundreds and hundreds of small moments. It's meetings getting quieter, fewer people challenging ideas. There's kind of more side conversations. There's less willingness to experiment because what does failure mean when there's a new leader and I don't really truly understand what their proposition is here. So it's those little moments that compound that creates the uncertainty, breaks down psychological safety, and then yeah, just erodes culture ultimately.

7:33And at what point do you as a chief of staff kind of step in to help save that culture? The way that I look at chief of staff roles, if you kind of really zoom out, and we were chatting about this in one of our launchpad courses yesterday with a cohort of students, the chief of staff can kind of operate within three different modes. You're kind of in all three modes at all given times, but those three modes are operations, strategy, and culture. You know, those are kind of the three things that a chief of staff is generally looking out for. Going back to one of your first statements, the culture from kind of the chief of staff lens is actually delivered through the operational framework, right?

8:11The business cadence and rhythms that the team is kind of organizing itself around. So as the things are breaking down, as you just described, is that a reflection on the chief of staff, like not paying close enough attention to those systems? Or is it more that as the leadership at the top has eroded in this case, the changing culture is now reflecting on those systems? You can have kind of the best operating rhythm in terms of those forms where decisions are made, how communication should be cascaded down to teams. I used to think that it was all me. It was all on me in some ways. But what I've learned over time, especially in the experience of consistent changing of leadership, is that I can't necessarily make a leader trust with me, right?

8:57And I think it's back to the reframing I was kind of pointing to earlier on. And we had talked a little bit about the ownership of culture. So I would say HR talent, people, teams will own the systems, the policies, engagement, measurement, all of that stuff. And as I mentioned earlier, I think the owner owns kind of the values, the priority, the behavior. That's what people are watching. And then the chief of staff ultimately owns that operating rhythm that reinforces those values, those processes, those policies that exist. So as leadership is shifting, including within the kind of people, HR sphere, what I can do as a chief of staff is to continue to make sure that my principal communicates consistently.

9:39I can try to make sure that the decisions that are made match what was said last month or what a leader said last month is very clear to the leader today and then they can decide how they're going to frame that for the team. I can design the forums where questions get actually answered. I can also surface when behaviors aren't matching intentions. But more and more, especially in the situation that I'm envisioning that I lived, it was increasingly difficult to directly influence behavior. So I go back to my operating systems. I go back to how the leaders then can use what's existing or what forms we can create from scratch to make sure that the teams are feeling heard.

10:19They understand the direction in which we're going. They understand when decisions are final, that they can move on and those sorts of things. In the context of a very fast moving organization where leaders are changing quickly, it becomes more critical that relationship between the chief of staff and the leader, I think it's really, really hard to put that on the chief of staff alone because you're changing. And in my case, it felt like we're changing priorities almost every quarter with new leadership. And so we kind of almost had to be walking in tandem very, very closely all the time where in a more stable environment, I'm used to understanding very clearly what the short-term, medium-term, long-term priorities are.

11:02And to the extent that they are changing, I'm in the rooms that happen. And so then I can use existing forums to cascade that message down to work with teams to understand where things need to change. In a faster moving environment, that trust between the chief of staff and the principal needs to be there so that we stand up very quickly. We need to be very agile, nimble in creating new processes, systems that allow teams to be plugged in to what's changing, what's current priorities and what they need to move forward. a slightly nuanced dynamic from a more stable environment. And I think the distinctions that you made between the people ops team or HR, what the leader owns and how the chief of staff is there to kind of drive consistency across both behaviors and policies makes a lot of sense.

11:50I'm curious, as you reflect back on some of your previous experiences as a chief of staff, when you first found yourself protecting culture, let's say, in the systems that you were designing and kind of how people were showing up to those meetings or forums, et cetera. Was that something that you kind of voluntarily stepped into? Was there a fork or function that you were like, oh, wow, like somebody needs to care more about this? I think in all of my chief of staff roles, there was a transformation happening. Now, to the extent that leadership was changing quickly, that was different within each organization.

12:26organization and I will say in the organization where I felt this the most was where I was kind of supporting several leaders and I wasn't explicitly asked to protect culture as these things happen with chiefs of staff you just kind of put yourself in the place where you see a gap and try to fill that in a lot of instances I owned the partnership with the people team with the HR team and those related processes to the extent that I was in constant communication with the people team, my leader, and then downwards was the teams that were actually doing work. I was able to connect the dots because nobody ever protect, you know, quote unquote, protect the culture in my job description.

13:04But after enough leadership transitions, you kind of start to realize that nobody else is watching that connective tissue. Because HR has their work in transformation, especially when, you know, resources are being shifted or being deprioritized. Leaders are also trying to stabilize strategy. And so somebody has to ask the question, what are people actually experiencing every day? And that definitely, I think the chief of staff owns. I've always had one-on-ones with teams across the board. I know who my culture carriers are and making sure that I touch base with them to kind of get a pulse of what's going on.

13:38And then that awkward feedback and then figuring out how do we address this on a larger scale. So like many things, not explicitly asked to do, but just noticing the gap and stepping in, asking the right questions, and then putting the right systems and processes in place to address it. We've talked previously on this podcast, I've heard from a few guests, the kind of old montage or adage of culture, each strategy for breakfast. Yes, I totally agree with it. And it's very relevant to this conversation. I know since you've worked on marketing teams with great CMO leaders. It sounds like that was kind of their mantra as well.

14:16How did that manifest itself on the team where a leader is, you know, very culture first and you're there to help make sure that like those values are instilled in day-to-day work? The first time I was brought on as a chief of staff, our priority is a high-performing team culture. My first instinct to as always, we should be talking strategy. Like we have ambitious goals. We are in the middle of restructuring resources, a limited culture to me in those moments felt like a luxury we hadn't quite earned it in light of everything else we had to do. But generally speaking, I'm more curious than skeptical person, especially with my first CMO.

15:00I was very quick to come to their realization or maybe more to like understanding what she was trying to build. And I got it very quickly that you can get strategic alignment from a team that doesn't yet trust each other. Right. And so the culture work that she wanted to focus on right off the bat wasn't separate from strategy. In a lot of ways, it was the strategy. And I remember early on in one of my chief of staff roles, I had to build a business case for a leadership offsite to a CFO during a restructuring where we were tightly watching numbers. And this included most of our North America-based leaders traveling to Europe and not a comfortable conversation to have, right?

15:41But from my experience working at a global bank, I knew it was a non-negotiable. I knew we had to do this. And so the case I made to the CFO in terms of that investment wasn't about team building. We were moving from a regional model to a global one with US being kind of at the center of it. And the European team needed to know that they had a seat at the table in that transition. And an email or a Zoom just wasn't going to do that. So I built my case. We went to the European city. The leadership team did our internal alignment work. But then we also brought the broader Europe team in for dinner one evening.

16:17And then the next day we had an AMA with the leader of team. We did a debrief of the strategy that we had worked on all week with the broader Europe team. and ultimately the investment wasn't in that T &E budget. It was for the signal that it sent to our global teams, right? And when I framed it that way, I think the CFO understood because that trip is where we built our initial principles, our ways of working as a team, not in a conference room in New York with Zoom, but in Europe with the people who had kind of the most reason to feel left out of a US-led reorg. And so that was the beginning of us making culture operational and part of our DNA as a marketing team.

16:55And we can go into how that then became the launchpad too for building culture, not just for the marketing team, but then broader organization. Which is probably an interesting kind of side story to explore. When one team feels like it's operating with a very smooth rhythm and the team is getting along really well and communication feels like it's flowing as it should. And yet other parts of the organization might be totally in flux, right? leadership changes, teams are not getting along, teams are not communicating between or among each other. What do you do in those situations? So in this case, if your marketing team is like humming along and the product and engineering team are fighting, what does that look from your perspective?

17:41And in this case, you're reporting to the CMO, right? So maybe that's not your problem. How do you address that? I think we were very much a marketing-led enterprise just by virtue of how much marketing drove revenue and that P &L, like we essentially own most of the P &L and we were the demand generation engine for the org. A lot of what we did was seen by the org, but in terms of what we built first within marketing and then how that cascaded to the rest of the organization, a very tangible example. Again, one of the things coming out of that European offside that I mentioned earlier was that we needed to figure out as a team, you know, our principles or ways of working on how are we accountable to each other, right?

18:24How are we going to be working together as a team? And when we came back to North America, because we had started to build a foundation for that, we were then okay to do the rest of this on Zoom. So when we came back, we aligned very early on as a leadership team that this was going to be important to us. And we knew that the org was also trying to figure out what our enterprise wide values were going to be yet. But with a newly formed global organization, our CMO didn't want to wait. So a few things we did, we built three principles at that leadership offsite. We built three easy principles that people could follow.

18:58The first one was about keeping the consumer at the center of every decision. We called it life cravers inspire us. Life craver was our consumer persona. And so really thinking about this consumer at the center of every decision and not as a research slide that you pull out at the end, but as the first question that you ask. So would a life craver, for example, fund this idea on Kickstarter, right? So that was kind of one of our main principles. The second one was around all of us collectively owning growth. We call that chief maker offices. We're all chief maker offices. So everyone, regardless of level, was accountable for growth.

19:33No one got to be purely executional. Even at the most junior level in the marketing team, you had to see the big picture and go deep. And then the third and last principle was we are bold and humble. So we make big bets, we launch early and we learn out loud. And this one was about making people feel comfortable failing because that was the thing that we noticed coming in that with all of the changes, people just didn't feel comfortable making big bets essentially. So we landed on these three principles and then reinforced them in very specific ways. We had very early on, literally almost the next day, a weekly Slack ritual we launched where people would call our teammates living those principles.

20:11So who brought life craver thinking into a decision? Who made something happen? Who took a big bet and shared what they learned, right? So we made these principles visible early on and every week so that those norms stick when you see people living them out loud repeatedly until that example becomes the expectation, right? The second thing we did was our monthly all hands, right? that put a spotlight on one of the principles with a real story. So one principle got a spotlight each month, a specific story, a specific person connected back to the principle. And I think that that's the cadence we started to build to make it a team habit.

20:48So if you think about it and take a step back, the offside set kind of the direction. Then the weekly ritual started to build the muscle. And then we created a monthly moment that made it mean something. And I think that's ultimately what made it stick. So by the time the org caught up with its enterprise values, we already had several months of praxis of putting that into place. And so that's kind of an example of how we did that in one place that really helped it to stick. And in that specific example, too, in terms of how we scaled some of that to the rest of the organization for us, it was really word of mouth.

21:25All hands was open to cross-fractional partners, again, just because of how important marketing was to the broader organization. We invited specific key stakeholders just to get a sense of what we were doing and what we were kicking off. So people saw it happening in real time. Like we brought in real member stories so that people could see the life craver in action versus using research decks. And then we built a monthly spotlight around teams values. And so I will say at some point, the CEO's chief of staff flagged our all hands as kind of the not to miss event in the org and it became too much.

22:00At some point, honestly, we had to turn people away, but that's when we knew that we had gone from, you know, our own little internal ritual to true organizational signal. And then by the time the talent team was ready to roll out kind of its own culture programming, they came to us first. I know the global town hall that the CEO owns adopted our member storytelling format, for example. And so, and we hadn't lobbied any of this. We just built something that worked. We made it visible. And then it just kind of took off on its own. It makes sense that it was kind of held within your department first before the broader organization caught on to it.

22:37The thing that jumps out the most is that you created moments where people across the company that were genuinely interested to see how the organization was running and what was doing well or what needed help in some cases. the forum that you created, like for people that were curious, their ability to show up to that probably sparked more success in getting that ball rolling across the company. Yes. So in the org that I'm referencing, we also had a decent chief of staff cohort, which was helpful. I think we met every other Friday. And so in that forum too, that's when I also heard feedback about, oh, my team member was in your all hands.

23:20and they said you did X, Y, Z. Like, can you tell me a little bit more about that? So even outside of the broader, larger forums, let's say within the smaller chief of staff cohort, I was also helping chiefs of staff understand like how we built this from the ground up so that they could take that to their organizations and do that. So it was all organic, word of mouth. And I think that that helped in that scaling within the org because nobody was pushing anything down per se. They saw something that was working. and they could reference it. And so it was then probably easier to make the case to kind of build out, for example, on all hands, that was more 360 than just product or finance or what have you.

24:03Yeah. And I think that applies for companies of all sizes, right? Even if the team is 100 employees, it's going to be one all hands probably across that entire company. The content that's presented there still needs to feel organic. And again, kind of spark that curiosity amongst employees of what's happening in departments other than their own. And all of that can't come directly from the executive team, right? Certainly the top, as we discussed earlier in the episode, like the top level vision, the direction, the values, but how that actually is manifested in the day-to-day work. Those are the stories that you want to tell.

24:40And the more you can highlight the employees that are doing that really well, the more that culture rubs off on other employees that want to emulate that work. We've talked a lot about your world in the marketing department. How do you see kind of other leadership types, you know, have influence on culture, say sales or finance? Well, most of my chief of staff experience, especially most recently, has been in the marketing org. I've been in the bank. I would probably call that more sales. And then I've also been in more finance led organizations. I will say that like just working across multiple executives, I will say that culture kind of follows where power lives.

25:17So in a sales led company, speed and kind of customers will dominate. And then in a finance led company like the bank, discipline and rigor kind of become the default language. And that's just kind of how people operate. Product led organizations, marketing organizations will optimize differently. And so as a chief of staff, I think you have to recognize the operating logic of the leadership team before you try to shape culture. like really understanding for this organization, what ultimately drives the P &L, where does power sit, what is that culture like, and then shaping your operating rhythm, your processes around that.

26:00But I would also say to not be afraid to break the mold. I think it's good to understand that, But I will say, for example, in the bank, which is very finance led, you can within your specific function, add a little like softness, if you will, to the edges. I always say that ultimately it's humans who are coming to work every day and we all want to come to a place that we feel motivated, energized and excited to do work. And so while we may be in a boring widget company, it doesn't necessarily mean our ways of working, our hands and all of that need to be boring too. I think it's good to have the context and then shape that in a way that also maintains a certain level of humanity.

26:50It's also, I think, important to understand people's motivations, right? And this goes back to the department theories, right? Like different departments are going to be motivated maybe by the same vision or at least the interpretation of that vision, right? Whether it's how do we serve our customers or how do we make the most money or how do we design the best product? All three of those can still contribute back to the same vision and mission for the business. I agree. And it's funny. I see we're talking. I was just reminded, and I think you had mentioned it in my intro, of the one time where I supported an executive who had three different organizations reporting to them for the first time.

27:30So it was the People Org, our commercial business, brand marketing. So very distinct cultures, if you really think about it. And I was the chief of staff that was brought in to kind of help integrate these orgs, create processes, the operating rhythm and help run it. And the one thing that I learned in that process specifically was I couldn't lean into any one specific function in terms of how they did things. And so I had to come at it from what felt most natural to me. I had to kind of put all of my different hats that I had worn up until that point and create an operating rhythm. And then also a tone of voice, if that makes sense, that would appeal to those three groups.

28:16Because, you know, you can have kind of your traditional stereotypes about what a people team would be like versus a commercial team versus a creative team. And I think about things like we started a weekly, a light newsletter, let's say on Slack, just to give visibility into, because this was the first time these groups are coming together, right? We had a fun punny name for it. And then that's when maybe I go back to this idea of being human. Like I decided I wasn't going to try to sound too business-like because, yeah, too corporate, thank you, because we had our commercial business in this group.

28:51And it was surprising how just like having funny puns. I remember I created a haiku, we had an annual compliance training coming up and we were really, really far behind in terms of those who had completed it. So I created a funny haiku, which I thought like, oh, I don't know how this will read, but I was like, this is my vibe. So I'm just going to say, and I posted it on the Slack channel and then like engagement through the roof, we started seeing people, like people said, oh, I'm going to set aside time to do this later today. So this is what I mean by also kind of knowing the magic that you bring and kind of staying true to that.

29:25I mean, one, you have to be aware of kind of the organization you're in, the context, have a pulse on the culture, but then how can you also bring in your magic in certain moments to make it new and different in its own way. It's interesting because as much as we kind of started out saying that the chief of staff is not the owner of culture, certainly in the execution of how culture is kind of felt and practiced within the company is definitely on the chief of staff's shoulders. And I think no successful rollout would happen without you putting a little bit of yourself in the mix. And that comes across hopefully to employees as being more authentic, more genuine, and better received.

30:08That obviously comes with its own consequences in terms of your own personal exposure to how people perceive change within the company, especially if that change is happening at the top. I guess my question to you is like, as you're absorbing conflicting messages from changing C-suite, as you're translating them down to the team that is looking for that stability, how do you carry all this weight without that breaking you? What should you as a chief of staff do to kind of protect your own footing? That's a good question. And I don't think it's something that I perfected until very, very late in my career.

30:47And probably until the last couple of years, to be honest. Yeah, that's a very honest answer. And I think it probably comes with a lot of hard times. Yes, I think one lesson I learned and it was a hard lesson to learn, And I think it's not absorbing everyone else's anxiety with all of the change. Really, truly focusing on the intent of my job, which is to create clarity and not necessarily certainty for people. And I think those are two different things. So I've come to learn that people actually don't expect that certainty during transformation. They expect honesty. They expect transparency. And so being able to hold that for myself and know that it's not on my shoulders to create that for the team took me a long time to learn, but I think I'm finally there.

31:35And then just in terms of practical things that I did for myself and I continue to do for myself is one, having a trusted sounding board outside the organization. So I have friends that I trust who work in business that will get some of the pain points that I'm going through. I think organizations like the Chief of Staff Network, where you can share challenges that people may have experienced themselves. And I want to caveat this, not necessarily giving all of the details, but enough details and context that someone can help you parse through and figure it out. So I think that that's incredibly, incredibly helpful because you want objective people, sounding boards, you know.

32:17So having classed sounding board outside the organization, I think is key. And then even as I'm talking to people one-on-one and kind of listening to their fears, their anxiety, doing the work of separating facts from rumors, right? Being able to clearly say, this is what I know to be true. I don't know this yet, but when I do, I will let you know. Just being able to ground people is also grounding for me. saying that consistently all day, every day is bonding for me. And then kind of related to that is also just staying connected to the frontline reality, right? Talking to teams and not just staying in executive conversations because that can provide a distorted reality into what executives are thinking the strategy is and how that's landing versus what teams are actually feeling.

33:02So just having conversations with people who can give you a true clear picture and then being able to cascade that up and down the chain as you hear that has been helpful for me in terms of grounding myself. And then just reminding myself that I don't have to personally carry strategy and this is ultimately work. And so just those few things I think have been helpful for me. So investing in those relationships outside of work. And then also I just thought of this, not just outside of work, but also within the org, because when the person at the top changes, just I haven't necessarily started from zero with new teams right even with example I gave off the new role where we brought these three disparate teams together because I had a very clear strong relationship with our commercial teams and I was already on the marketing team with the brand team but I had a very good relationship with our commercial team leadership and then also with the people team it was a no-brainer I think to pull me into that chief the staff role.

34:04I wasn't investing in relationships across the org. I don't know what would have happened to my role specifically. And so knowing that I had sponsors, advocates across the organization was also helpful in keeping me grounded and not getting lost in the fray of all the change. It's an interesting insight. And going back to the dot connector notion, your ability, even if you're not a chief of staff, right, even without the title, but the ability to essentially be the bridge between people and teams, particularly as the company is going through some massive change, right? Whether it's technological change or turnover on a leadership team, that trust extends well beyond that change and can help an organization kind of see its way through that difficult time.

34:54Yeah. I think it's very much like on the chief of staff shoulders to be that bridge. And you won't know that you have it until that change happens, right? Like we take for granted all those relationships and side conversations until we really need it. And then we're like, okay, I'm glad I put the time into this. Or we're left wondering, why didn't I put more time into this? Exactly that. And then I thought a quick thought I had is also outside of all of the change that's happening, really, truly getting clear about what you stand for, independent of what the leadership message is for that month.

35:28So being very clear about your own values so that those values don't change when the org chart changes. That's a good point. I think it must help to build the trust as well. Yeah, I think that gives you something stable to operate from when everything else is shifting. And to your point about stability, I think teams noticed and I got this feedback that as leadership was changing, they felt that I was the one constant and I was saying the same thing. Like what I said to them didn't change. And I think that was helpful for me, but I didn't realize that it was also helpful and grounding for the rest of the team too.

36:01What would your advice be to a new chief of staff kind of walking into a difficult situation as culture might be changing or someone that is just trying to get a better handle on how the culture is evolving as the company grows, for example, as the new teams are expanding? I would say what I did was I wouldn't go in trying to change processes. I would go in trying to understand where trust has been broken. And so I think most people do this in those first 30, 60, 90 days. I always invest in that listening tour early on. I remember in one particular case, I had over 100 conversations in my first 60 days.

36:42And I think it paid off tremendously. You know, ask those questions. Which meetings waste everyone's time? Which decisions surprise people? Where do people feel unheard? Which leader behaviors are creating confusion? I don't think process fixes trust because trust is the underlying thing that's breaking in moments of transformation. I think trust is what makes process work. So really, truly understanding where the pain points are in those conversations and then working with people to help build the processes that will ultimately make things work. Yoram, any other parting thoughts for our listeners?

37:19As I was reflecting on coming into this conversation and the more we spoke, I think sometimes you put culture on the back burner. I think it's a good reminder that culture is strategy. If there isn't that underlying trust alignment at the leadership level, that impacts what teams can do. And what I found is that more than anything else, what your culture is, isn't what's written on posters and set in town halls. It's leader behaviors. And it's most especially revealed in those moments of transformation, those moments of instability. And teams are always watching. So Yoram, I learned an incredible amount from you today.

38:00I really appreciate the time. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. This was great. Yoram opened this conversation by changing her mind and closed it by doing it again. Culture eats strategy became culture is strategy. And I think that's the more honest version. Here's what makes it so honest. Your culture isn't what's printed on the poster or read off the slide at the town hall. It's how leaders behave and it gets revealed in exactly the moments when everything else is unstable. Teams are always watching, and they're watching hardest when they're the least sure of what's coming. This puts the chief of staff in a specific spot.

38:32You can't make a leader trustworthy. You can build the forums where questions actually get answered. You can keep the message consistent across the quarter that changed three times. And you can be the person whose answer today matches their answer last month. Yorm, thanks so much for the honesty, especially about how long it took you to stop carrying it all for yourself. If this landed, pass it to someone who needs it. And if you want people to understand this work without needing the backstory, you can find us at chiefofstaff.network. See you next week.

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