Dr. John Meis: Hey everybody, welcome to this session of The Strategic Thinker. I’m Dr. John Meis and I’m here with the amazing Heather Driscoll. How are you doing, Heather?
Heather Driscoll: I’m doing great, Dr. John, how are you?
Dr. John Meis: Awesome, so what’s our topic today?
Heather Driscoll: Culture. The king of all things, culture.
Dr. John Meis: Ah, isn’t that right. Culture is key.
Heather Driscoll: Yes, it sure is. So, we’re going to talk today about strategies really to improve the overall effectiveness of your culture and really help people understand how culture can truly impact the value of their organization. So, your culture can become your competitive advantage if defined and lived daily really, really well and ultimately add to the overall value of your enterprise. So, let’s just remind everybody of our Enterprise Value Matrix. Do you want to guide us through a little bit of the areas we focus on?
Dr. John Meis: Yeah, sure. So, in looking at how companies are valued, sometimes the valuation is affected by things other than EBITDA. And so, those things fall into these 4 quadrants. So people who want to get the best valuation, which is really a management team’s responsibility, we have a process to help people work through each of the 4 quadrants to improve enterprise value.
Heather Driscoll: We certainly do, and if it was just as easy as focusing on financial statements, certainly I think everyone would be a lot happier, right? But unfortunately, there are those more behavioral elements that ultimately end up leading to the results that show up on the financial statement. So, I always think, “What if our effectiveness actually was a line item on a P&L and we could truly say ‘well this month we’re performing to budget on cultural awareness and effectiveness.’” But unfortunately, it’s not that easy. So, lots of times we’ll just ask ourselves, “How do we know? How do we know it’s working?”
Dr. John Meis: Yeah, it would be so nice if there was some objective measure, ya know? And there really isn’t, but you can see the results of a strong culture when you look at a balance sheet and when you look at an income statement, but there’s just not that simple of a measure.
Heather Driscoll: Yes, for sure. So, culture really always starts in one place and that’s just the ability to define it. And often what we find is that the clients that we work with who’ve really, truly articulated their core values build the culture from that foundation. And so, our hope really is that if people haven’t done that, there’s no time like the present, right? What are some of the ways you’ve seen people go about really, truly defining values?
Dr. John Meis: Well, I’ve seen maybe 3 different ways. One way would be to take a list of values and then start to eliminate the ones that aren’t you until you get down to a core few that are you, you know 4-6 maybe values. Beyond that, it gets a little unwieldy, so narrowing it down to that. Another way I’ve seen people do it is talk about their best employees and start to describe them and start identifying what their values are, and because they are the most effective, let’s use those. And the third way is simply to copy from some other company you admire.
Heather Driscoll: That’s so true.
Dr. John Meis: Yeah that’s a shortcut. It’s quick. It’s simple, but it does give you the ability to copy the cultural things that they’re doing in that company. If you find something that really speaks to you in that way, there’s nothing wrong with that.
Heather Driscoll: No, absolutely. And so, a few additional rules of thumb for core values, it’s good if people can remember them right? And so, it’s not so much the goal to have 20 core values, but really distilled down into the most meaningful and impactful so that they really can live and breathe and be a part of each day.
Dr. John Meis: Yeah, you know Zappos has a great company culture and they have a set of core values and they joke a little bit about their core values because they put out a video of their employees and they’re asking their employees what the core values are. And, the employees can remember 1 or 2, but then they get lost. So, they have perhaps too many core values, that’s confusing. So, you don’t really want to do that. Even though they’ve got a great company culture, but fewer is probably better than more.
Heather Driscoll: Yep, absolutely. So our next strategy is really taking those values and that culture and working it into some of your more significant processes. So for instance, recruiting and hiring. So, often people will ask us, “Do you hire for attitude? Do you hire for fit? Do you hire for experience?” And so, what are some of the ways you’ve seen people really work culture into the recruiting and hiring process?
Dr. John Meis: Well, a lot of ads will have the values stated right in there. So, we both have worked with people that were great individual performers, but weren’t necessarily great team players. And if teamwork is one of your core values, that person may think, “Ah, maybe that’s not the best place for me. Maybe I wouldn’t fit there as well.” So, I think that’s one easy way to do it, is to just to lay your values out there. Other ways I’ve seen people do it is to use the values in the interview process, where we’re asking questions related to those values. What else have you seen?
Heather Driscoll: Those are some really good ones. I would say also sometimes what they’ll do is open the interview process up to other people on the team because people support what they help create. First of all, it takes a little bit of the burden off the leader’s shoulders to always be the one picking the newest team members. So, opening it up and having a little bit more input from the people who are going to be working with these new team members, that’s pretty effective as well. They can spot it out if they’re not a fit, right?
Dr. John Meis: I remember distinctly times when we interviewed people when we were in hiring mode where I would have a really good feel about the person, and the people in the room, including you, were like, “no way, absolutely no way.” (Laughs)
Heather Driscoll: (laughs) Right, yeah and I think sometimes we’re willing during times of what feels like crisis of being short staffed, we’re willing to compromise on culture and fit, only to have that come back and turn out to be a bigger mess than being short staffed.
Dr. John Meis: It always bites you in the end. Far better to get the right fit and be a little patient. And right now, with all the things that are happening with the virus and the demand is high and the workforce is low, and it’s really gotten out of balance right now, and so I know lot of people are struggling without enough team members, but this isn’t something to take a shortcut on.
Heather Driscoll: No, I totally agree. So next, my favorite, using your culture in celebration. So, this is actually just a snapshot of one of our longtime Spark members. And, it’s truly just a sign on the refrigerator because one of their core values is results. And so, sometime as simple as, “you’re killing it,” and congratulating everybody that on this day in February they did $63,000 in one location in one day.
Dr. John Meis: In one location. That’s incredible.
Heather Driscoll: And I think people think carrying the weight of spreading the culture each day is a lot of work, and how long do you think that took? 3 minutes maybe? And the impact, everybody saw it and probably saw it for days on end because who would want to take that down, right? Until they eat I guess, right?
Dr. John Meis: It was right on the refrigerator so you knew everybody would see it.
Heather Driscoll: Right, because food and dentistry go very well together.
Dr. John Meis: That they do.
Heather Driscoll: Yes, absolutely. So yeah, celebration. Anytime you can correlate the culture and the values back to the things that matter and excite people, I think that makes a lot of sense. Alright, and the fourth strategy is culture, coaching, and accountability. So, one of the things that I see is people react to situations probably not in the most preferred way, not in the most aligned way with the culture, they’re just frustrated in the moment and they mishandle it only to come back later and go, “Oh shoot, I wish I had a redo button on that one.” And so, when coaching and trying to hold people accountable, how do you it Dr. John, how do you take our values and begin those crucial conversations?
Dr. John Meis: Well, I think when there’s some person that’s behaving in a way that doesn’t match our values, that isn’t productive, I think having the conversation, it’s not about us personally, it’s about you and it’s about these core set of values, and this behavior does not match those values. And just bringing everyone back always to the values and living those values, because if you have strong values and have really defined what living those values looks like, it makes it so much easier because then it’s just a conversation of, “we need to get back to our core values, we’re losing our core values.” And when you just drive that home over and over again, people start to really not resent you for the accountability but kind of say, “oh okay, yeah.”
Heather Driscoll: They can kind of start to self-police and from a leadership standpoint, the consistency of holding people accountable, and the way you hold them accountable just becomes that much easier. So, you know, people talk when there are crucial conversations happening, you just want to make sure you’re treating people in a fair, consistent, and aligned manner.
Dr. John Meis: Far too frequently, people allow frustrations to build and build and build, and then the first addressing of it is way too powerful and then the person you’re trying to have the conversation with focuses on your behavior and not on your message. And so, you really don’t want to do that, and so making sure we do it at the right time at the right place and relating it back to the core values really takes a lot of the pressure off.
Heather Driscoll: Absolutely. Alright so, our final strategy is using our culture in decision making. I don’t think this has ever been more important or more true, certainly through the times of the Covid crisis and the shutdown and really, truly just making sure that as you’re coming across these really significant decisions, or really less significant decisions, that your culture is ever-present and really at the forefront of how you’re approaching situations. So, you did a fantastic job of this, do you want to talk through how you used our values through the process of navigating the tough times of Covid?
Dr. John Meis: Yeah, so when the shutdown or the move to emergency-only services happened, we didn’t have enough information really to make decisions about our employees, what we were going to do - layoffs, furlough. And frankly, furlough in dentistry, we’ve never had a reduction of workforce, so it was really something very different to us. And, so many companies just jumped on right away and laid off all of their employees, even though for most practices that were really doing well, the biggest problems they before Covid was enough great team members. And so, we decided to do something different. How we connected with our team was we sent out a video twice a week, and the video started out the same way every single time. It started off with some inspirational quote, and then it went through our core values every single time. So, inspirational quote, mission statement, values. And then we talked about the virus and the we talked about all the stuff that we were doing in the background, all the things that we were researching, all the things that we were learning. So, they were keeping in touch with our team members twice a week, so they knew as well as we knew where we were. Like everybody else, we had to figure it out kind of on the fly.
Heather Driscoll: Absolutely. And, I think it also gave us the flexibility of just being comfortable with saying, “We just don’t know right now. We’re going to do the best we can, because that’s what we do and that’s who we are, but we don’t know everything in this moment.” And certainly, that process has carried over in a more present way with all of our decision making. The expansion of our practices and the signing of a lease for a new location, all of those kinds of things, those decisions become that much easier if you have your compass to guide you.
Dr. John Meis: Yep, for sure. And, that level of transparency when you don’t know is very uncomfortable for a lot of leaders, you know? They like to know, they like to have the answer, and they like to be the person, but I have found that you gain more trust and more connection when you’re just real, and you just tell people how it is, and you tell them what you’re doing about it. You don’t want them to think that you’re not doing anything about it. And, so many companies left their employees feeling like the company didn’t care about them, and that’s really tragic because I think most companies did, but they just didn’t communicate in a way that made their employees feel that way.
Heather Driscoll: Yeah, absolutely. So, it’s not unusual for people to come to Spark and say, “Our morale is down, our performance isn’t quite where we need it to be, our culture really isn’t what I’d hoped for.” Sometimes with really rapid growth, there’ll be some cracks in the cultural foundation, and so I’m always really excited when we can help people really just step back, define their core values if they haven’t, redefine them if they need to be because they’re a bit of an evolution. And, often what we find is that what’s really happening is that their culture isn’t quite as prominent in some of these key areas as it really needs to be.
Dr. John Meis: And, it’s that rock you can go back to, right? Whenever anything gets shaky, go back to the rock and look at it from that standpoint of, “What are your core values?” And, I think that’s so helpful in people being able to get through tough times when they don’t focus entirely on the tough times, they focus on the values and how they’re going to use their values to address the tough times.
Heather Driscoll: Wonderful. Well thanks! Thanks for talking to me about culture today, it’s always one of my favorite topics.
Dr. John Meis: Me too. Well, thanks everybody for being with us on this session of The Strategic Thinker, we’ll see you next time. 6
