372 The Power of Company Culture: How Any Business Can Build a Culture that Improves Productivity, Performance and Profits with Chris Dyer

Culture is often cited as a competitive advantage, yet many leaders fail to shape it with intention. In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli sits down with Chris Dyer, a globally recognized company culture expert and the author of The Power of Company Culture. With years of hands-on experience advising leaders on how to build high-performance organizations, Chris shares why most leaders think they have a great culture—until cracks begin to show.

Many executives believe culture is about mission statements, values, and engagement surveys—but Chris breaks down why it’s really about what leadership tolerates, ignores, and reinforces on a daily basis. Through sharp insights and real-world examples, he reveals the biggest blind spots CEOs and leadership teams have when it comes to culture and why those blind spots can lead to disengaged employees, stalled innovation, and underperformance.

Rather than offering theoretical concepts, Chris lays out practical, high-impact shifts that any leader can implement—starting with transparency, accountability, and a relentless focus on amplifying what’s working instead of constantly fixing what’s broken. He also challenges leaders to rethink how they approach mistakes, talent retention, and performance management, emphasizing that protecting top performers is just as critical—if not more—than managing struggling employees.

This conversation is packed with actionable leadership insights that go beyond culture as a buzzword and get into how leaders can build workplaces that drive engagement, innovation, and results. Whether you're leading a fast-growing company or steering an established organization through transformation, this episode will leave you with immediately applicable strategies to strengthen your leadership and build a culture that delivers.

Actionable Takeaways from This Episode:

• The biggest culture myth leaders believe—and why it’s costing their organizations talent, engagement, and innovation.
• Why culture isn’t defined by what leaders say—but by what they tolerate, reinforce, and ignore.
• The 1% culture shift that compounds into massive organizational change—and why most leaders overlook it.
• How transparency can be a leadership superpower—and why withholding information creates disengaged teams.
• The accountability mistake that erodes culture—and what great leaders do differently.
• Why most organizations spend too much time fixing underperformers—and how to build a culture that protects and empowers top performers.
• The difference between a mistake and an error—and why knowing this distinction is essential for driving innovation.
• How the best cultures don’t happen by accident—and the leadership habits that create lasting impact.
• What leaders should focus on instead of “fixing” culture—and how to measure real progress.
• A simple but powerful reflection every CEO and executive team should ask themselves about their culture.

Connect with Chris Dyer

Chris Dyer Website 

Chris Dyer LinkedIn 

Connect with Mahan Tavakoli:

Mahan Tavakoli Website

Mahan Tavakoli on LinkedIn

Partnering Leadership Website

Transcript

***DISCLAIMER: Please note that the following AI-generated transcript may not be 100% accurate and could contain misspellings or errors.***

[00:00:00] Mahan Tavakoli: . Chris Dyer, welcome to partnering leadership. I am thrilled to have you in this conversation with me. 

[00:00:04] Chris Dyer: Thank you so much for having me. 

[00:00:06] Mahan Tavakoli: Chris. Can't wait to talk about the power of company culture, how any business can build a culture that improves.

Productivity, performance, and profits. Before we get to that, we'd love to know a little bit more about you, Chris. Whereabouts did you grow up and how has your upbringing impacted the kind of person you've become? 

[00:00:26] Chris Dyer: So I'm born and raised in Orange County, California, and I imagine having good weather most days might have an impact on your outlook in life, that every day is a good possibility.

You can always go outside and, do whatever you want. 

. I think it certainly has an impact on your outlook there's no waiting. The seasons to change the snow to stop.

But I was really fortunate to be in a place that really values education living in neighborhoods with lots of kids. , Orange County is a great place to live. It's why so many people want to come here and been very fortunate and lucky that this is where my parents, landed and where I was brought up. 

So Chris, how did you end up being fascinated with organizational culture, both talking about it, writing about it, practicing it with clients. 

It started off by doing it terribly and then going I need to fix this and I need to do something different.

[00:01:19] Chris Dyer: I was brought up in like sports. I played water polo, swimming, soccer, basketball, like sports was it. And so I took the philosophies and the ideas of coaches and teams to my business. And that worked when we were small, didn't work so well when I got big. Cause teams are like five people, 10 people, 20, maybe a football team has got 50, but they also have 19 coaches.

It just doesn't work to try to take that philosophy and now manage thousands of people. And so I had to totally change how I operated and I didn't find what for me was an acceptable blueprint. To do that. And that got me really curious, got me interested. It got me studying, interviewing and doing everything I could to learn as much as I could from really smart people.

And I thought I was looking for a secret and instead what I discovered was a framework. Because the best cultures and the best leaders were telling me the same things over and over again. They weren't telling me like one special secret that only applied to them. They were telling me something that, let's say being transparent, every other leader was telling me the same thing, that's how they were leveraging, goodness and great culture in their organizations.

That's what then led me to go write a book and do podcasts. I didn't want to keep it to myself. I took , what I learned and I implemented it. And it was like, we just exploded in sales. And then I went and tested it with clients and other people and they exploded great.

And so I. Can't keep all this to myself, right? I have to go and share it with whoever was willing to listen and let them know what I found out. 

[00:03:00] Mahan Tavakoli: I love the way you approach it, Chris. First of all, a lot of times our minds gravitate toward, and we are seeking simplicity and answers and minimizing it to one point that makes for great means on social media, but something like culture is a lot more complex and There are different elements to it.

, it doesn't get simplified to just one factor, but one of the things that you mentioned that stuck out to me before we talk about the pillars of culture that you talk about is your realization that things weren't working for you. And I find a lot of times with executives and CEOs, there is a disconnect from their perspective on the culture they assume exists in the organization than the real culture.

So what was it for you that got you to wake up and say, wait a minute, maybe what was working in sports and with sports teams is not working in my organization. 

[00:03:59] Chris Dyer: , for me, it was this moment in 2008 when we had the big recession , the company was really struggling. We were potentially going to have to, go under ourselves and I'm like, okay, everyone let's come up with some great ideas.

Let's figure this out. Like, how do we save the business? , what do we do? And everyone just stared at me and I'm sure they said something, but it wasn't anything I remembered. And, I just felt like they weren't innovative and they weren't coming up with great ideas and they weren't, helping me.

 My first thought was to be angry at them. And then I started to think. Wait a minute. These are smart people. These are good people. They care. Why aren't they delivering what I need from them right now? And I realized that I had set up the culture wrong. And so it was really a reflection of my errors and my mistakes and how I had created this environment where all ideas come across my desk, all things go through my brain, which is not sustainable.

It doesn't work. And ultimately they didn't feel empowered. I heard. They didn't feel psychologically safe to tell me, here's my great idea or Hey, Chris, your great idea is a stupid one. And we shouldn't do that. Cause it's never going to work. And here's why. And I needed them to really feel comfortable in.

 Doing that work. So , that's where we had to change the culture to really, see that change happen. 

[00:05:22] Mahan Tavakoli: And that mindset, that self awareness is critical, Chris, typically podcast listeners have that. That's why they're seeking knowledge and information on how they can lead better. But I find , that realization that if it's not working, then it's something that I need to do differently.

That is a critical part of this process. 

[00:05:44] Chris Dyer: , it so is. And, to your kind of earlier point, a lot of leaders think they are open minded. They think that they care about culture, but if they don't really understand what culture is from a larger context about what it really can be, then it's hard for them to take full advantage of it and to really implement it in the right way.

It's, appreciating something. And then if you go and read a few books on it, you suddenly realize like how big that thing is and how much more there is to understand. It made me get a little overwhelmed. You realize that you know nothing about this subject anymore, but it's like learning three chords on a guitar.

And you think you know how to play guitar and come to find out there's a lot more ways to do it. But we need people to get curious about it. Because there's so much more there they can do so much more than just I have an open door policy or we have beanbags or we have a ping pong table, or we do, pizza Fridays.

, it goes so much deeper than that. And it can really be a secret weapon for us. 

[00:06:47] Mahan Tavakoli: , what is your definition of organizational culture? 

[00:06:51] Chris Dyer: So organizational culture or company culture is the norms. It is the way in which we get things done. So if you and I are going to go work on a project, how do we do that?

How do we operate? What are we allowed to do? What are we not allowed to do? That whole thing is culture. So if you and I are like our bosses said, Hey, go figure it out and just come back with a good idea and here's here's the budget and here's whatever. And then you and I figured out and they're like, yeah, cool.

Go try it. That's one culture. Another culture is you two come up with a list of 15 ideas and submit them back to management and management will decide whether or not they like one of them. Then we'll send you back without any clear directions on why that one might be the one you want. And then have you come back with more data?

And then we don't tell you what the budget is and we don't tell you like what else it has to integrate. Like we've all been in those different situations of no transparency, high transparency, low trust, I trust. And sometimes you can even feel it. It can be on floor four of a company and everyone is talking and they're comfortable and they feel good and they like their boss and you get in the elevator and you go to floor five and it's the same company and you open the door and it's cold in there and it's icy and no one's talking and there's distrust and people don't want you to look at their computer screen and like, why is that?

What is it that happens to create that? But that's culture in itself. And there's, Micro cultures, team cultures, location cultures, floor cultures. Then there's the larger company culture. We want to hopefully emulate the best version of the company that then can permeate down properly to each level of the organization.

[00:08:35] Mahan Tavakoli: That's such a great point, Chris. I've noticed over the years, working with organizations of various sizes across the globe. Sometimes people talk about organizational culture as if it's one static thing. Google's culture, Amazon's culture, while there are elements. That can be part of that larger entity's culture.

There are subsets. You can work with teams within an organization that the culture is drastically different than other teams..

Now, ,  You talk about the seven pillars for organizational culture. One of them is transparency.

[00:09:17] Chris Dyer: So transparency is usually the area that I challenge organizations to start with. I think it's pretty easy to be more transparent. You may have to work through some things, but it also has such a huge uptake, a huge shift the organization. So what's like easy transparency? Can we share goals with our team?

Can everyone on the team know what each other's goals are? Does the organization let everyone know what each team's or department's goals are? Do we know what the larger goals are? Organizational goal is like, how much are we trying to grow? , what's our profit number this year, our sales number this year, whatever, like all those things.

Does everybody know them? Cause I'm still shocked that today there are so many organizations where nobody knows this. They don't know what their team member's goals are, they don't know what their actual team's goal is, they don't know what their boss's goals are. Like, why aren't we transparent about that?

There's such an opportunity to help each other be successful. If I know you're trying to do this thing and I'm trying to do this other thing that's similar but not exact, and I get there but I can help you too along the way. That's great for the organization now, harder transparency, which, but I think is really vital is maybe at the company wide meeting every month, we tell everyone what our P and L numbers were.

This is how much money we made. This is what, how much profit we made. This is where we spend our money. When I started doing that, my team started coming back to me with, Hey, did you know we could probably combine these vendors and have them give us the best price, but all the business of them, and we could actually save money.

Or did you know over here, like we're having a problem with our customer service is saying, having complaints in this area and this vendor is getting a lot of our business. I think we could switch to this other one and they're like 10 percent more expensive, but like we'll solve this other problem over here with it, which is a performance problem.

And so they end up coming up with these. Great ideas. Like I mentioned before that I wasn't getting back in 2008 because they didn't know I knew I had all the data in my head. I had all the reports in my head. I knew everyone else's opinions because everyone came to me, but they didn't know.

And so that was a blocker from us. So if we can get information out now, I understand. Sometimes there's it. Secret stuff or class, whatever, things that are personal about people that we have to keep private. Fine. But anything else, let's get that out into the open and put light on it because it will only help your business.  

[00:11:56] Mahan Tavakoli: We can spend an entire hour or hours talking about transparency and its impact. Chris, a couple of things I wanted to underline that you mentioned. First of all, the financial side is harder, has a lot of value, but I find in many instances, business decision makers minds, when we talk about transparency jumps to the financial side, I've been working with clients on objectives and key results, OKRs, and interestingly, a couple of the teams.

They are not as good at coming up with outcome oriented OKRs, but just the fact that the team members and the leader have to communicate the objectives with each other and be transparent has really benefited communications, alignment, a lot of different factors. So just talking about goals, transparency is not going to the extreme of who is exactly making how much and why and what bonus they're getting.

There is value to some of that financial transparency. There's value to financial transparency on costs, but even the goals can have significant impact. . 

[00:13:08] Chris Dyer: And I just noticed how much more people feel connected and how much more they feel a part of the team and they feel a part of the company when they know what's going on with everybody else and allows them to care more about their team and allows them to care more about their And ultimately what we see is that teams that like Each other tend to like their company and people who like their boss tend to think the senior leaders are doing a good job too.

Patrick Lincioni has talked about this for years in his work, it's like you basically like you're the company's kind of the people you spend the most amount of time with, which isn't really true, but like at our own perceptions, it's, if I'm working with six people all the time and I like them feel good about my job, I feel good about the company, so it's so important that we expand that ability to care about each other by.

Knowing what each other is supposed to be accomplishing and what are we doing and if two people on, the team are really not doing well, that we see the leadership's doing something about it, whether they're helping them, coaching them, providing more resources, or eventually cutting them loose that they're, they can't pick up the slack.

We're not asking the top performers to do more work. We're saying these are the goals and hey, we help these people. But at some point. Maybe this is the wrong job for them. It brings somebody else on the team who can come in and help, right? That creates so much momentum for people.

[00:14:35] Mahan Tavakoli: Now, one of the other pillars that you talk about, Chris, is positivity. How have you seen leaders or organizations do that differently and do it well in order for it to impact culture?, 

[00:14:52] Chris Dyer: So when I'm talking about positivity, a few things. One is, are we focusing on what's working as our first priority?

Do I as a leader get excited and curious about why certain people in my team are doing well? Why they're so successful, but why are they so productive? So high performing employees? How do I help and support them? How do I take what they're doing and help the rest of my team learn so they can be better and healthy, not ignore my top two salespeople, but go and spend all of my time and energy on the bottom two.

That's not going to help us, right? Great organizations. No. That the top people have figured something out and how do we support them? How do we help them grow? How do we keep them from getting, how do we really protect them from the organization coming and adding a bunch of dumb meetings on their calendar and wasting their productivity?

Like, how do we help them help us? That's a big shift in mindset. We usually were focused on the negative on fixing problems. And so we need to focus on what's good first. Then we can turn to what, how can we improve in other areas? The second area is, can we say yes? Are you the kind of boss that if someone comes to you, your first inclination is to say yes?

Sure, let's talk about that. Let's try it. Let's figure that out. I love that idea. Let's get a group together and figure out if that's viable, something we can do. Not, we don't have time for that, no, I'm too busy. We already have 13 initiatives. No, we tried something like that last year. No, just do it. Like I told you to do it.

That's a really different message, and if those two things resonate with you or excite you, there's an entire framework called appreciative inquiry that will actually help you do this better all the time. If you just start with what's working and you're saying yes more often, you're 80 percent of the way there and you'll be like a 9000 percent better boss than anybody else.

But if , want to get really curious, you can go look at appreciative inquiry. And we know that when people are in a positive environment, they are better at coming up with ideas. More positivity, better brainstorming, more positivity, better solutions for our clients, happier clients, happier employees.

We get all the numbers are there. It's crazy. And when the negativity is there, we have all those other problems that Chris, 

[00:17:25] Mahan Tavakoli: I love what you mentioned for a whole host of reasons. First of all, sometimes I hear from listeners that say, I'm not the CEO of the company. What can I do? And they get frustrated with some of the advice that different authors share.

What you're saying, With respect to find ways to say yes, anyone who interacts with or manages others can find ways to say yes more often, and that impacts the culture of the team. So I love that because it makes a big difference. And then you made another outstanding point earlier I wanted to revisit.

 I had a manager that I was talking to a couple of weeks back and I was encouraging him to meet with his people on a weekly basis. He had left a couple of his people alone. He said, because they are doing really well, they are high performers. I don't need to meet with them. And that's the exact opposite of what you're saying.

So I would love to get some more of your thoughts on why should managers focus on . meeting with coaching, interacting with those top people, as opposed to what tends to happen in organizations, which is focused on the middle or the bottom. 

[00:18:43] Chris Dyer: So with top performers, when I meet with them, it's a very different discussion than I would anybody else with them.

It's how do I protect your time? Are there any meetings or requests coming from inside the organization that are a waste of your time? I can help you deal with, I'm trying to clear obstacles for them. How am I, as your boss getting in your way is there anything I can do to help you be more successful, help things get done faster?

You know what I mean? And then I might. Want to get curious about why do you think your things are working well right now? What activities are you focusing on to be successful? And if they say, listen, I don't do these other 50 things you guys told me to do, but I do these two things. I spend my whole day doing these two things and that's why I'm successful.

Freaking fantastic. Can I go train the rest of my people to do those two things, to spend their time? Can I tell them in my calls, you said, you want to be like Susie and John do these things really well. And they don't do all this other stuff. And you're telling me you're doing all this other stuff and you barely do the things.

That they're doing, make a choice. So I'm helping, they're helping me. Like you want to talk to video games? Like they're giving us the cheat codes. And then it's my job as the leader to learn that and go and deliver to everybody else, give them the cheat codes. And if they want to take advantage, they can do better.

And if they don't, that's a separate conversation, that's totally different coaching and conversation. I don't want to have the same call with them as I do with my people in the middle or my low performers. It's not just about talking to them and being all over them and, asking about their kids soccer game or something like that.

That's not what I'm talking about at all. In fact, I almost would recommend that people think about not doing that as a one on one. Like I might one on one with that person every once in a while, but what I want to do is bring them together as a team and talk about what's working as a team. So those two people say, this is what I do to the team.

And this is why I'm successful and the team learns from them, not from me, because if it comes from your boss, sometimes like people are skeptical, they think you don't really know what it's like, or you don't understand my job, like you got boss telling you to do it one way. But when the number one salesperson comes in and tells you, this is exactly how I do it and teaches you.

You can go, Oh, okay. That's different than my boss telling me that's what I'm supposed to do. Try to move those stuff into team calls every once in a while, you got to have your one on one, but I hate every Monday at three o'clock, you and I have a one on one. I think that is the most antiquated old management style.

It does not belong in this world anymore. We need to be working with our teams. We need to be helping our teams be successful coaching and supporting each other. Not, it's not only my job as the leader to coach and support you. Should be the whole team's job to coach and support each other again, because we've been transparent about our goals.

We've been transparent about what we're trying to achieve, and we're all there trying to help each other reach those goals. And that's real culture. And that's how your life gets easier as a leader. 

[00:21:56] Mahan Tavakoli: There is so much value in doing that, the way you mentioned it. There is the transfer and coaching value.

There is the acknowledgement, which is another one of the pillars that you talk about. Nothing better than seeking advice from people who are doing it well in acknowledging their success and talk about a great way to retain people. It's a stay interview rather than an exit interview on an ongoing basis.

So there is so much brilliance in tapping into that potential within the team. , 

[00:22:31] Chris Dyer: absolutely. It's like the next level, right? We can go and have a bunch of meetings with our people and think we're doing a good job or we could have better meetings. And change how we're doing it and change that focus and doing one thing with these people and one thing with these that's the next level up of how we do better.

And, if you're treating everybody the same, if you're leading everybody the same, that's your first indication that you're not doing right. You're not getting culture right. We have to be leading people based on who they are and delivering messaging. And coaching and support based on who they are, where they are in their lives and what's happening right now.

That's how we can really start to impact that change that we want much faster. 

[00:23:16] Mahan Tavakoli: Now, another one of the pillars that you mentioned, Chris, is mistakes and seeing mistakes as learning opportunities. There's been a lot of conversation around that. That's another area that I see a lot of indigestion with leaders.

They want people to take chances, but they don't necessarily want mistakes or problems. So how do you balance that? How do you approach mistakes being acceptable within the culture as learning opportunities rather than things that can take a toll on that leader, the performance of the organization and the culture?

[00:23:53] Chris Dyer: Yeah. Usually where people get hung up is they don't understand there's a difference between mistakes and errors. Somebody's making errors, it's because they don't care, they don't have the right qualifications to do the job. Listen, you know how many errors I would make if you asked me to do brain surgery right now?

I have no training in brain surgery, despite my best efforts, and me wanting really to do the best job possible. I'm going to make all the errors. Because I don't know how to do that thing. And sometimes we put people into roles or tasks or jobs and projects where they do not have the capability to do the thing that we're asking to do.

And that's our fault as leaders. So is it a capability problem? Is it an apathy problem? Is it a multitasking problem? Is it a, they don't, a health problem? Like they don't, they're not having a getting good sleep. They're not there. Those are errors. We can fix that. We can fire them. We can replace them.

We can change their job duties. That's a fixable problem, but they should not be tolerated. When I talk about mistakes, it's, Hey, I tried something new or the client called. And in that moment, I had to make a decision and this is everything I knew. And I thought I made the right choice. And it turns out I should have suggested something else.

Ah, okay. That's a learning opportunity for everybody. We should talk about that as a team. Sally, you try, you thought this was the right answer. Let's talk about why that wasn't correct or, what other information we should have gotten. This was the choice you made. It's not the worst choice in the world, but here's the better choice you could have made.

And everyone learns from it. And thank you, Sally, for being open and honest. And we celebrate that and we move on. No yelling, screaming. Why didn't you do the right thing? That's a huge difference. If people feel like. They can come back to the team or come back to you as their boss and say, this was the choice I made.

I thought it was the right one and it didn't work out. What should I have done differently? We're having those good discussions or I went and tried something and it worked magnificently. It was like better than what we normally do. Awesome. But usually it's about as a leader telling people the mistakes you made first, they have to feel safety.

And if I show up and say, Hey, everybody. I did this thing with this client yesterday and boy was it blew up my face. It was the wrong thing. And let me tell you what I did. So you don't ever make that mistake too. Let me tell you how much I screwed up. And suddenly everyone goes, Oh, okay. Got some psychological safety here.

And then the next time somebody on the team goes, Hey, I had this thing and I think I messed up. And Hey, Let's celebrate the fact that you tried. I appreciate that you were trying to figure this out on your own and make the client happy. And kudos to you, but here's how we can make it better next time.

That approach and that philosophy as a leader is only going to get you people who want to be innovative. We want to come up with solutions who want. To figure it out before that comes to your desk, as opposed to no one ever tries anything. I have to solve all the problems it's just a huge shift.

[00:27:18] Mahan Tavakoli: It is a shift. And therefore, if you want it done differently, I love the way you put it. You have to serve as an example of what you want to see. So in this case, if you want people to be owning up to their mistakes, the lessons they've learned from a leader's perspective. It would be great to share some of that yourself.

Now Chris with the word culture, there is almost always the word change. That comes after it. A lot of leaders are thinking about how do I change the culture of my organization? One of the other pillars you talk about is measurement. 

How do you measure or assess where your culture is at? Or do you need to do that? Then how do you actually change the culture of your team? 

[00:28:09] Chris Dyer: So we measure what matters. At least that's what we should be doing. We're measuring everything. We're measuring things that don't really matter to what we're trying to do or the goals or the culture and that's getting in our way.

So do we want a culture where people say thank you? Do we measure that? Do we want a culture where customer satisfaction is number one? Do we measure that? So there are mechanisms and ways for us to do surveys and measure and talk to our clients. In general, I would say. What do your employees say about you on surveys?

What do your clients say about you on surveys? Do you even care what your vendors say about you? We started doing surveys to our vendors, right? And that we figured out there was some problems there and there was a way for us to fix that. And we actually got better results. A lot of times we just think about vendors as like our slaves or something like, no, you do the work for us.

We pay you the bills. And we never asked them how they felt about working with us. We found better ways to improve. So that's, those are the, some of the things you should think about. What's your employee retention? Do people stick around? How long do they stick around? How quickly do jobs stay open or fill out?

Those are, there's lots of different metrics. You could think about watching that would help you understand, is your culture good? Cause if your culture is good. Your clients should love you, your employees should love you, your vendors should love you everyone should love you, the scores should be pretty great, and you should be keeping top talent, and there should not be a revolving door happening with open positions, because you can have great customer satisfaction and also not be able to keep people because your customers don't see that toxic side of what's happening There are some really great examples.

Google is one they measure what they measure. They just measure everything, not everything, but they measure what they prefer in a really high level. So can we take that information? Are we being transparent with the results? And are we letting our people see it and understand it and then using it to create better solutions?

I often challenge leaders and organizations And I'll say, Hey, what could you do right now to get 1 percent better at culture? And they look at me like I'm crazy, 1% that's not very much. And I go, exactly. Because I don't want you to think about how do you get 30 percent better because it's too big and it's too overwhelming for everybody.

And it's suddenly like you're the boss or your boss's boss is eh, I don't know, we got time to do all these, we've got to meet all these initiatives. And, but if I'm like, Hey, how do you get 1 percent better? We've got the data and we know what we're doing, our customer service rating is like 60.

How can we get that to a six, 61, our employees say that we're a 70. I don't get that to 70. And even though I've never actually only seen it go up 1%, it usually goes up a lot more than that. It's okay, we can go, we can make this change, and we can make that change, and we can help over here, and suddenly it gets addictive.

And suddenly people start talking and they start seeing the changes, right? And then all of a sudden it's what else can we do to get 1 percent better? And so it's a really palatable way to start thinking about change. 

[00:31:28] Mahan Tavakoli: That's one of the reasons, Chris, why so many cultural change initiatives fail.

 McKinsey KPMG, every once in a while, they put out studies showing vast majority of these change initiatives and culture change initiatives failing, because as you say, It is seen as a large project on top of whatever one has to do, wanting massive change rather than looking for those incremental steps that can be incorporated in making the change happen.

So that's a great way of thinking about change and making it sustainable rather than initiative that everyone gets frustrated with and doesn't get you anywhere. Now, Chris You also, back in 2021, wrote a book on remote work. There has been a lot of push and pull on hybrid work, remote work, over the past couple of years.

More recently, some companies have been pushing their employees back to the office five days a week. Some people say that's Their way of letting people go without officially letting people go. Some others say, no, we are going to go back to the office five days a week, because that's the best for culture.

. We'd love to get your thoughts with respect to remote hybrid culture and interplay. As we look at the coming years, how we should lead our teams and organizations. 

[00:32:58] Chris Dyer: Yeah. I always laugh when I see this thing that it's somehow better for culture.

Now there are certain jobs. There are times when being together can spur innovation IBM has done a lot of measurement and a lot of research on this, and they know they do a little bit better when they have people co coding together. And sometimes when they're coming together to invent something, but that can be better.

But the rest of their teams, and the rest of their people, and their 5, 000 people in customer service, doesn't help them to be in the same office together, not at all. So there are these little examples when, this , Can be good and we can bring people together. We're looking at Amazon specifically I agree with those that think this is just a ploy to cut some numbers out it looking like layoff tech companies are Notorious for laying people off not because they're not doing well but because they have kept promoting people and promoting people because That's what people want.

They want the next title, next promotion. You keep promoting and promoting it. I'm like, who does the work right. When everyone is a manager of something. And so they ended up just cutting, off the top. And then now there's another gap in there for the five years to give a bunch of people, a bunch of promotions in these different titles.

It's like a shell game, I think sometimes for them. Amazon specifically hired people for for a remote. And did not require them to be anywhere, a certain distance from the office to tell somebody who's now living in Oklahoma, who was hired for a remote role, that you have to move to their headquarters.

That's insanity. There is no other outcome than, and they're not like, going to pay for all of that and move them, and cost of living is wildly different. There is no other outcome than that person leaving. Now, I know that they're having a huge. employee up upheaval, and there may be enough pushback that this doesn't go into effect the way they planned.

I will, time will tell, but that's up to them though. I always say with culture, one size fits one, so that's up to Amazon. Amazon's got to decide what's good for them and There will be fallout, there will be changes, there will be, and they'll have to adjust and decide what's good for them. I do laugh because often, so this happened with Nike, right?

Nike said that they weren't as innovative because they had too much remote work. And yet their company was built with people who spent no time in an office. A coach who was literally out in the field testing the shoes with athletes. I think he spent zero time in the office. And the other guy spent all of his time at the factories, working with the people in those factories, figuring out how to make the shoe and how to do all that stuff.

They didn't spend any time in an office. And then you fast forward today to their competitors are talking about how their competitors are kicking their butt. Many of those competitors who we would look at are startups who are all working remotely or hybrid. They are not all sitting in one office together being suddenly more innovative and collaborative than Nike is.

Maybe Nike is just top heavy. Maybe they've gotten too clunky. Maybe they we've seen big organizations when they get that big. Innovation has to be pulled out of the organization. This is not a new lesson. And that CEO of Nike, who is no longer. Who has now been relieved should have known this lesson that the best biggest organizations that do innovation take it and they remove it from the company and they give it like they put in its own location or its own world They are totally separated from the company They're not in all these stupid meetings all day long these status meetings and they're allowed to innovate by themselves Or you buy another company to go who's a part of your portfolio.

But again, they're insulated to go be innovative. That is the only way big companies have been able to continue to innovate. I even look at Google. They struggle with AI innovation. And now that it's hit their door. Maybe I've got Sergey Brin, all these people like working in this little separate silo on innovation by itself, away from the other monster.

And if you're big enough to worry about this, then pull it out. It's important. Silo it itself, , let it be its own little startup. And don't go make your 5, 000 people in customer service go sit in a cubicle farm that they hate, because you think that's going to make you more innovative, because it's not.

It's just not . 

[00:37:44] Mahan Tavakoli: So we'd love to get your thoughts, though, on Would there be a difference in the way a remote or hybrid organization would approach culture than one that is fully in person?

[00:37:59] Chris Dyer: What makes a good culture doesn't matter whether or not you're in an office or you're hybrid or you're remote. And but again, one size fits one. So how we're going to operate is different. Our size matters. How many time zones are we dealing with? For three time zones, that's one kind of company culture.

I got people in five, six zones. We're really going to be more of an asynchronous company and communication is going to be very different. It's not going to be, Hey, let's hop into a Slack. Let's hop on a zoom. It's going to be. I need to fill in a document. I need to pass on information to the people who might be working while I'm sleeping.

So we really need to build it. So it works for us. And then, but remember the larger framework, can we be transparent? Do we have positive leadership? Can we focus on what makes us unique? Can we celebrate mistakes? Can we be good listeners? Do we have a good recognition program? Are we measuring what matters?

Like those things still matter, but can we do it in a way that's That fits for who we are, what we make, what we do, where are people around the world? All of that will be your own special ingredients, it's, this is oversimplification, but if culture is soup, you're every soup is going to be different if based on what ingredients we have to work with.

Some level there's still soup, like it's gotta be a liquid with stuff in it, but the ingredients can be wildly different based on, what you have to work with 

[00:39:26] Mahan Tavakoli: and the focus areas that you place would be different. 

So what is one small but impactful change that you want to see? listeners, leaders, managers of their teams to make that you believe will strengthen their organizational culture   

[00:39:44] Chris Dyer: one shift is just to remember that what you focus on Rose, if you're focused on what's working, if you're focused on measuring for finding the good stuff, if you're focusing on what makes a good customer interaction or why your best clients buy from you and pay a premium, like you focus on those things will get bigger and better.

You focus. on problems and you focus on, the employee that you don't think is cutting in or if you put all your focus into the negative stuff, that only gets bigger. Or maybe you're focused on what are my employees doing? And are they working every single second? And you're going to start micromanaging them or being big brother on their computers.

Like you do that problem will grow. Every time I've seen this. So put your time, your energy, your focus into what is working, right? What you want to get bigger and better and to grow. Yes. You still have to deal with problems. Yes. You still deal with things that aren't working, but if your energy starts with the positive stuff, everything else, like I've always, it's always been this way.

99 percent of the time, all the other stuff just takes care of itself, right? That employee that's not working out, they usually end up leaving on their own before I ever fired them because we were focusing on these big things and they saw that we were never, this was never going to work. They were never going to get there.

We cared about this and we cared about that. And we didn't put up with these things and they figured out real quick, they weren't going to last here and they went off on their own. So it really is a shift in thinking. If people can just try to go back even for a day and spend your entire day Thinking, breathing, living, expanding, and giving all your energy to what's working and what's good you'll notice your whole environment changes.

[00:41:39] Mahan Tavakoli: What outstanding and practical piece of advice, something that listeners can do just today, focusing on what they want to grow, that one thing, and it does have an impact on it. Now, Chris, how can the audience follow your work, find out more about you and your book, The Power of Company Culture? 

[00:42:00] Chris Dyer: . So I'm on LinkedIn.

I'm on Tik TOK, Instagram, wherever you want to go. Chris Dyer, sometimes it's crispy dire seven, but you can find me all over, but on my website, chrisdyer. com. It's got all my links. Happy to connect with you on LinkedIn. If anybody would like a free uh, guide on some different meeting types, I suggest some different ways to survey your employees.

You can text three, three, seven, seven, seven. And just put my name, Chris is the message. It'll ask you a few questions and then , I'll send you a free PDF with all kinds of resources, no strings attached. And my links and stuff will be in there too. So happy to connect with anybody who'd like to connect.

[00:42:39] Mahan Tavakoli: We will put a link to all of those in the show notes as well. Thank you so much for this conversation and your very practical insights on how to make company culture work and your book, the power of company culture. Thank you so much, Chris Dyer. 

[00:42:55] Chris Dyer: Thanks for having me.