Outside Insights

Your Company Culture is Broken. And Yes, It’s Your Fault - Episode 77

• Chris Burkhard

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 49:30

Send us Fan Mail

"Culture eats strategy for breakfast." We have all heard the phrase popularized by Mark Fields, but if your team engagement is dragging, turnover is high, or your daily meetings feel like a waste of time, it is time for a harsh reality check.

In Episode 77 of Outside Insights, host Chris Burkhard sits down with multi-time entrepreneur, speaker, and best-selling author of Worth Doing Wrong, Arnie Malham. Returning to the show five years after his first appearance on our Culture Reflects Leadership episode, Arnie delivers an unfiltered masterclass on why your company culture is a direct reflection of your leadership, good, bad, or indifferent.

Chris and Arnie dive into the exact tactical playbook to stop pushing your team and start leading them, including:

  • The Mirror Test: Why you need to stop blaming clients, employees, or your industry and look directly at your own leadership style.
  • Bottom-Up Culture: How to stop trying to be the single "rah-rah" person and successfully delegate culture projects to champions lower on your org chart.
  • Fixing Broken Huddles: Why generic updates like "doing calls and meetings" kill productivity, and how to bring brutal specificity back to daily huddles.
  • Toxic Superstars: How to handle the high-performing, high-billing employee who refuses to align with your values.
  • Continuous Growth: Why reading must be built into your leadership habit and how books accelerate your pattern recognition.

Stop waiting to focus on culture "when you make money." Hit play to learn how fixing your culture is exactly how the money gets made.

📚 Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

If this episode made you a little uncomfortable or gave you practical ideas to take back to your team, please subscribe, leave a review, and share this with a leader who needs to hear it!



SPEAKER_00

This episode of Outside Insights is brought to you by Placers, a values-led staffing partner helping businesses and individuals reach their highest potential, build a flexible workforce, or take the next step in your career at myplacers.com. So welcome to Outside Insights. I'm Chris Burkard, and today I'm sitting down with Arnie Malham, multiple-time entrepreneur, accomplished speaker, hard to believe, best-selling author. Title of the book is Worth Doing Wrong: The Quest That Builds a Culture That Rocks. Arnie, I can't believe it's been five years. Welcome back to the Outside Insights show.

SPEAKER_01

You know, it's it's hard for me to believe as as I've done multiple talks throughout the country, um, had do a lot of consulting, the how this topic is fluid because how we deal with our business culture is how we deal with our business, and business is always changing. And so it's a it's a constant flow of information as companies try to get better and better and better at what they do.

SPEAKER_00

So, Arnie, that's interesting. I kept coming back to the Drucker Croat when I was thinking about this dialogue, you know, that culture eat strategy for breakfast. Um just to kind of warm us up, as I was thinking about this, I know sometimes I'm known to talk I I do public speaking, I'll talk about certain topics, and sometimes I get a little tired of those topics, right? You know, you've now been the culture by design guy, culture matters guy for a long time. How do you feel the marketplace has changed relative to this culture message? And then just take that anywhere you'd like. We obviously talk about the lessons you've learned both in running companies and in talking about this topic for a long period of time.

SPEAKER_01

Well, the the w here's as a as a speaker talking to audiences, the audience continues to change because every year a lot of people raise their hand and say, I'm gonna run my own business, right? I'm or I'm leading a group of people, or they get a they get promoted into a position of leadership. And so there's there's a constant flow of people that were just like me when I first had a leadership opportunity. It's like, I'm gonna be a great leader, right? I'm gonna be the leader I've always wanted to have in my life, and then life comes at you, right? The the Klingons are off the bow, and there's problems with Susie and Billy's not coming in to work. And we start building up this sort of intolerance to the people we're trying to lead as opposed to to learning how to lead those people. And so it's a constant, we get to I constantly talk to people who are just being put in a position of leadership, and it's their first opportunity to do that. Their intentions are good, but but it their insight is not yet developed. Now, for those that have been leading a great culture and doing great things in culture, we've all learned that it's not about having a static good culture, it's about having an evolving good culture. As the as as the as the as our as our followers change, we have to change, right? We have to come up with new ways to excite them about the vision, about about giving them a purpose, or not giving them a purpose, but offering up a purpose that they can follow and continuing to be the leader that our dog wants us to be, as opposed to the leader that sometimes we we fall into, right? We get mad about things as opposed to figuring out a way out of them. And so that's how I keep it fresh is I know there's a lot of new people coming in, and I know those of us that have been leading good cultures for a long time are always looking for fresh information.

SPEAKER_00

I don't know if this resonates for you, but I I've I've always said just kind of depending on the time of where I was in running my business or helping someone, is you know, I I was like the perfect leader for a 10-person company. And then all of a sudden everything changed, I changed, the market changed, and and then I was 17 people, and then all of a sudden it didn't work so well, both for me as a leader and the way I ran my culture. And that's so it's just supporting where kind of where you're going with that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, things are always changing, right? We're shrinking, we're growing, we're we we have supply line supply line problems, we have people problems, and sometimes we lose people to no fault of anyone's, right? Family happens, moving happens, life happens to people, and we have to continue to evolve. But I know this we measured a lot of our success through tenure. If we could keep our people in their seats and they became more knowledgeable, more trained, more uh uh enthusiastic about our about our purpose and our vision, then we had a much better chance of winning than if it was all the opposite of that.

SPEAKER_00

So I really like when you say that about tenure, and I never never thought of it that way. I'm curious, over the years, have you been challenged on that premise?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, because because because the people say, well, if they're there too long, maybe maybe they're not they're maybe they got them there, won't get them there, right? Won't get them to the next place. They they're not growing fast enough. And so that's that look, leadership's hard, right? It's so it's it's if we've got to get people where they need to be, and it's our job to train them, help them train up into that position or move them into a position that they can be better. So if you've got someone that's been in a position too long and they're not up for the job, guess what? It's your fault. You're the leader. You let them get there, you didn't give them the training they need, you didn't give them the leadership they need. So it's you instead of getting there and figuring out how to do it, watch it on the way. Like help people get to where the puck is going and not where the puck is. And so if if we you know, we used to have a thing at our call center where instead of evaluating our intake specialist every quarter to see if they'd get a three or ten percent raise, we just said every quarter on the quarter, they're gonna get another twenty-five cents an hour. This was long enough to go the where the when that meant something, every quarter as long as they work here. And my manager would say, Well, I don't they they they're not good enough to get another twenty-five cents an hour. And my response.

SPEAKER_00

Make them go make them better.

SPEAKER_01

Make them better or let them go. But those are your only two options. Like Love them up or out. Up or out. And out's okay, especially if it's early, right? And out's even okay, even if it's late, if it's better for that person. Always do keep in mind you're doing for the you're doing them a favor by giving them a place they can come to work where they're not scared, they're not afraid, they're not pushing the limits, they're not bothering, no one's bothering them. Like you're you're also doing it for them, and I often think about what would I want if it were my daughter, my son working in that business, what would I want the owner to say to them? Right? That's what I want to say to people. And it's not because I'm all ushy gooshy, because that's what's best for my company, and that's what's best for them. Don't leave it unsaid.

SPEAKER_00

Uh you know, I um it's funny how you hear things differently, absorb things differently.

SPEAKER_01

Chris, that's why you should always read your favorite book from last year again this year, because it will speak to you differently in in a year and five years from now. Like it'll it'll wrap yourself up. But mark we I mark my favorite book every I read about 12 to 15 books a year. I mark my favorite, and then I always want to go back and read it again, like s sometime in the next five years. I interrupted you, but it made me think of that, and I want to throw it out there.

SPEAKER_00

Actually, I think we have we we had a pre-show meeting where we talked that this would to our read our listeners, this may be a bit of a roller coaster ride. Yeah, it was can't keep it in. We're gonna go from topic to topic a little bit here, but I I in fact, I will take advantage of that moment. I believe that we have a each have a new favorite book, Colin's new book. This is um being recorded in the spring summer of 26. Um the reason I know Arnie read that is because he's founder of the Better Book Club, and I'm a paying customer of that book club, and it's one of the unique features of Playsters, but I really liked his book. I re I hope you did as much as I did.

SPEAKER_01

And I'm I'm on my second read like in a row. Like I decided just to keep just to read it twice in a row, and I listen, I'm a listener. I don't I I fall asleep when I read, so I have to listen, and and I have a lot of opportunities to do that. So so I'm on my second pass through now. But some of the stuff in there, and again, it's you know, when the teachers, when the student's ready, the teacher appears. No. Jim Collins. Jim Collins, sorry. Jim Collins, What to Make of a Life, uh, is as good of a read uh as there is that's come out this year, and it's it's fantastic.

SPEAKER_00

And it's a 15-year study of comparable individuals and the life that they've led, and just the realization that we all have uh areas of opportunity challenges called cliffs, we all go through tough times called fog, how we handle it. So it's really a fascinating thing. Um that's one digression, we'll put that in the show notes. But I for me in studying careers, it meant a lot to put words to something that you experience and can't label. You know, it's a it's a process all of a sudden that I could follow. But back to this notion of what I'm hearing differently, leaders in bed culture. You've always said that. I heard you on stage, I think, in San Antonio talking about leaders in bed culture.

SPEAKER_01

Culture, culture reflects leadership. You're whatever whatever culture you have in your company right now is because of your leadership or lack thereof. Culture reflects leadership. And so the to to create the culture you want, you have to become the leader you need to be. And that's where my whole talk, that's where my talk starts and ends. And the goal is to is to find a way to get you to that spot.

SPEAKER_00

So I think that's you know, again, I also we we had a nice dialogue about like how many times can you have this talk, and then you realize that, well, there are new audience members, and it does supercharge you still. If if I'm this leader who finds themselves in this new role, take them through some of your favorite thinking about how they should be approaching this topic.

SPEAKER_01

So the what leaders tend to do is they try to take, they they don't take, they just take nothing on and they say, we'll worry about culture when we're making money. Like we'll we'll we don't realize that it's great culture productivity. Right. Having a great culture leads you to having a great company, leads you to making money. Or they say, I'm so passionate about culture, I'm gonna do it all myself. I'm gonna be the rah-rah guy, I'm gonna I'm gonna help people grow. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna. And whenever I hear I'm gonna from a leader, I know it's not going to happen. The key to leading a quality culture in your business is to delegate it out to the team so that it's scalable, so so that it that that it is um uh sustainable. Like it's actually, it's not, it's not I heard it at a conference, I'm gonna do it for three months and then it's gonna go away. I heard it at a conference, we're gonna implement it in a way that it's here five years from now.

SPEAKER_00

And so is that because it's it's better process.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, and the pro the process is this everything you decide to do as a leader, everything ever most things you decide to do yourself that aren't your core strengths as a leader, those are the things that are not gonna happen. So you go, okay, I'm gonna assign it to my number two. Well, he's he or she has other things to do too. The way we got culture accomplished in our companies was to push it down to a champion as low on the org chart as we possibly could. A front desk manager is a great example of that, right? A new graphic design person is a great example of that. Someone new to the office is a great example of that. It gets them involved, it helps them get to know their teammates, it gives them responsibility, and it gives them a chance to show you what they can do. And by God, it gets done. Every culture project needs a champion, it needs a checklist, and it needs your support. And then get out of the way, man. Get out of the way, and it'll happen. So the answer to your question is the reason it goes wrong is that leaders try to take it on themselves or assign it to their executive team, and it almost always fails. When it goes right, we get a champion from deeper in the organization. Culture then builds from the bottom up. It's not pushed from the top down, it takes root. And once it takes root, we got a chance.

SPEAKER_00

So I pushed culture, practiced it, and and have a culture-led company. But I have failed to realize that when I have failed, it's for the reasons that you're mentioning, Arnie. That's right. I take it on myself, and before you know it, it's on to the next races or something.

SPEAKER_01

Champions and checklist and support equals a program that's got a chance. And it's not, it doesn't get six weeks. You gotta, you know, every program needs nine months to really take root, and you only want to start one program a quarter. And so that's the the other key is people take on too much too fast, it goes, it goes too far. The other problem is that we start a program and we forget about it, right? You may maybe we did a perfect delegation, maybe they we gave them a perfect checklist, maybe, maybe, maybe, but it leaves it what's not in front of us sometimes we forget about. And so the number the other big, big thing we did as a company that created success is we named our culture, as famously called camel culture, and we created an some artwork around it that said this is the outline of a camel, because that was the name of our culture, and everything we did unique to us, we wrote the words inside that camel so that it had a place to live. And we put that poster on our, and it's in the book, you can see a picture. The poster is on the in the lobby of our building, it's in our break room, it's in multiple places. And you know, we were we were a lot more uh uh in office at the time, but it was everywhere people could see it because it always reminded people that that's our culture. And when someone found something that was written in there that we weren't actually practicing, they could hold us accountable to it. And when we had new things, we could add it and let people find the new stuff there or through their champion. So it it gotta make these things living, breathing, they can't just be an idea that we had once upon a time. Most leaders think they put 10 things into motion and they did put them into motion, but typically only two or three are actually still happening.

SPEAKER_00

You know, your visualization of the culture. I find I have found I've met a couple of leaders that were kind of embarrassed by that. Um and and then they had a customer come into the lobby or the break room and see it and ask about it and realize that you know what people say, well, we don't have that at our company. Well, we really need to do more of that at our comp. Well, you're the kind of vendor or partner I'd like to work with because I'd like to have this kind of culture where I work.

SPEAKER_01

We all want to do business where people are happy about doing their jobs. That that's your grocery store, that's that's where you buy furniture, that's why you that's any restaurant you go to. If you go to a business and you recognize that the people there enjoy their jobs, you're more likely to enjoy that business. And so, as a leader in my company, I want an environment where people enjoy their jobs and show it. I make my people happy, they make our customers happy, and the business goes round and round. And so, but I think about it all the time. If I go into a business and I can tell the team, whoever I'm working with, the airline people, the whoever it is, if they're angry, it's not a good culture.

SPEAKER_00

So, summarizing a couple of points if uh I'm a new leader, if I don't like my culture, it's get it down into the organization.

SPEAKER_01

Well, first, first recognize I'm the leader, it's my culture. This is and this is look, I can preach about this because this is what happened to me. I was mad at my team, I was mad at my clients, I was mad at the industry, I was mad at my landlord, I was mad at everybody except the right person, which was me. I wasn't I was yelling at people trying to push them, push them towards my goals as opposed to lead them towards my goals. And so the first thing is realization I'm the leader, I'm responsible for my culture. It's not about pushing people, it's about leading people. So, what was your epiphany? John DeJulius, uh you know, the guru of customer service, uh, hells from Cleveland, multiple books, great podcasts, super uh human individual when it comes to creating customer service cultures within a company. He was at my conference, my client conference, speaking to my clients. Your conference. The conference we put on, I was I was I was madder than a hornet because of all the work that went into this. You know, I felt like I was doing everything, right? And and and he's speaking, and he's speaking about a culture of customer service. And that's when I first heard the words that culture reflects leadership. And he was talking about it in terms of customer service, but it hit me that those true those words were true of business, and it hit me that it wasn't my people and it wasn't my clients, and it wasn't the industry. It was me. I was pushing and not leading. And so first it's that it's that realization that it's me, and then it's not as you know many people will do, try to change everything at once. What can I change today that will make a difference tomorrow? What can I change tomorrow that will make a difference the next day? And you know, whether it's day by day or week by week or quarter by quarter, those small changes, the same way you got into this mess, it's gonna take you probably twice as long to get out of it.

SPEAKER_00

And for my audience, I don't care if you're a scaling up or a traction. I hope you have a business planning process and in setting priorities and in thinking about this. One way to make sure that it is a reasonable amount is to follow those processes because they help you keep in check from doing too much of one thing, you know.

SPEAKER_01

That's right. Our priority, like you know, the famous priority is one thing. You know, we often leave our quarterly plannings with two or three things, and and because we can we can delegate them out and they're assigned, we can we're we can get away with it. But we got to do the number one thing. And the number one thing is creating a culture where people want to be, where they understand the vision, where if they're not making fun of you repeating things so often, then you're not repeating it enough. And and it's your job to it's your job number one to create the culture where people enjoy being so that so that they can if you don't care about them, they won't care about you. And that's that's step one. So that's the so we name the culture, yes, we delegate the responsibilities, we recognize who's responsible for the overall culture, and we slowly march this thing forward. And again, is however bad you are, however long it took you to get there, it'll take you twice as long to get out. But if you don't start now, you'll be even deeper.

SPEAKER_00

There's study after study, small business, big company, fortune that, you know, to my opening quote about Drucker and culture eating strategy for breakfast, that you know, high retention, high uh, you know, folks that are in a role a while, you know, that success of high high net promoter scores or surveying, that you're gonna have a better financial outcome.

SPEAKER_01

Well, you can charge more. That well, that we could charge more. I don't know, you know, everyone's business is different. But the more our when we the highest when we had high tenure, we could charge high prices. And we could raise our prices because our tenure allowed us to. Our tenure gave us the expertise to be able to raise our prices, increase our margins, and thus increase our profits. And and it I think it's true of so many businesses. If you're in a commodity business, you gotta find a way not to be a commodity, right? That's number one. But as but as long as you're not in a pure commodity business, the differentiate the differentiation is your people. And the only reason that they can be different than your competitor is if you're a great leader and can lead them towards being different and better. And so that's how we created margin. Why do you think this is so darn hard? It's so darn hard because we are my we we get we get super focused as as can do type one, type, you know, a personalities about getting something done that we we ignore the people that are trying to help us get it done, and and and we trade that off for just getting it done. And we don't realize the the wake that we leave and the and the issues that we run into. Um and so we just want it done. Like the the the opportunity is to step back and say, I want this done today, it's gotta be scalable and it's gotta be sustainable. How do I get that done over a long period of time? And you can't, no one can do it alone.

SPEAKER_00

Arnie, I'm curious how much of this is of your message is intended for the founder versus the executive management team? Because I think it fits equally, but it feels very founder-specific.

SPEAKER_01

I speak of founders because that's my experience, right? We have we often teach and preach about the things we need to learn most as a founder. And what I need to learn most is how to be a better leader, and that's what I teach and preach about. But this comes into effect, even if you're a leader within a company and your boss or the person you report to isn't doing the things they need to do for you, you doing it for others sets the tone for for your division, your department, everyone below you. Some daily huddles, weekly huddles. Huddles are a big deal. Yes. I don't know how companies operate without huddles, but it's like they they don't people that don't know what high people do.

SPEAKER_00

You know what it did work is when I had two cubicles and we all gathered around the cubicle. And I didn't realize it was a huddle. Yes.

SPEAKER_01

So what I have found, and I've gotten into coaching companies on their huddles lately, is that if I can get two or three people to show up and huddle correctly, then I can get four or five people to show up and huddle correctly. And if I can get four or five, I can get eight or ten. And if I can get eight or ten, I can get the whole huddle at an A to A plus where before it was a D. It takes time. See the Leader, be the human being, be the person, be the culture example, be who you want your company to be, and you have a better chance of getting there. It's true in Huddle, and I believe over a long term it's true in companies.

SPEAKER_00

Arnie, I am a fellow Huddle snob and would love to hear you talk about what needs to be well done in the Huddle. That would be a fine diversion because we got a whole army of leaders that are like, why do I do a huddle? And my huddles never go well.

SPEAKER_01

Well, we got it. It's a great place to change the entire outlook of a company as and everyone that attends Huddle, right? Because if everyone attending Huddle is thinking, I wish I wasn't attending Huddle, then it's going to be a bad huddle, right? That what I want is everyone attending Huddle to say, Huddle is a part of my productivity today in this company. It it helps me be a better person, helps my team be a better team, and I'm looking forward to it, right? I miss them only occasionally. I'm not paying attention only in the most extreme circumstances. And so it all starts with, do I have your attention? And you know, huddles used to be all in person, and now there's some combination of A V and in person and stuff. But the first is, are you present? Are you engaged? Are you listening for to what others say? Or are you thinking about what you're gonna say? I can go on and on.

SPEAKER_00

Well, it's the Ken Blanchard one minute manager. If you're a really great leader, you have a whole hour's worth of work you can do if you really listen to Huddle. It's a teasing. Yes.

SPEAKER_01

But you're but if but if everyone shows up at Huddle and their cameras are off and their brains are off and they're just there to say what you've programmed them to say and they're not listening to anyone else, then you it it you don't need to be doing it. You you are wasting time. And so it's a it's about like like a common example is uh tell me what you you know for some Huddles, one of the questions is what's your day, what are you doing today? And and an easy answer is calls and meetings. I'm doing calls and meetings today, right? It's a completely waste of time, useless information.

SPEAKER_00

How about some specificity, Arnie?

SPEAKER_01

I've got calls with Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Smith. This afternoon I'm doing lunch with Tom J Tom Jerkin. You know, he's one of our large like it's just here's what I'm doing now as I hear these names and I have other relationships with those people, I can tie in opportunities, right? I can this it's a silly example. It doesn't apply to all companies, but I guarantee you that that if I can engage, if I can get specificity in the in everyone's reporting, I'll get a better huddle.

SPEAKER_00

Arnie, you're right, because marketing's listening to hear if that appointment's scheduled. The CFO is waiting to see if the deal is gonna close. The COO is waiting for a resource meeting to figure out if they need to hire someone to do the work. The admin is wondering if the phone's gonna ring more.

SPEAKER_01

Everybody needs to know. It's kind of like going to Amazon.com and they show you the three things or five things that you didn't even know you needed, but now you realize you need. And it's the same thing on a huddle. You didn't show up knowing that you needed to know about Mrs. Jones, but now that you're mentioning Mrs. Jones, you've got some paperwork for her to sign, and couldn't we all take care of that at once? So it it's an amazing process. Again, let me stress, doesn't change overnight. However bad it is, however long it took you to get there, it'll take you twice as long to get out. But it starts with with one or two people showing up at Huddle with the right attitude and the and the right spiel to get everyone else thinking about what huddle could be.

SPEAKER_00

How do you feel about recognition on a huddle? Well, if you know, here's speaking of culture and leadership and values and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_01

It's I don't if you're huddling daily, like some people huddle once a week, three times a week, five days a week. So if you're huddling daily, basically let me break it down. It's one recognition per huddle. It can't be it can't be a a you know, ice cream cones up for everybody all the time. Um and so here's another example is that uh I recently was on a huddle and uh they would say, uh, does anybody have a nomination for who rocks today? We used to rock people all the time. Like, you know, it's a it's a long basically goes like this is that, you know, Chris, I really appreciate the ex the work you did for the for the Smith account. Uh you went the extra mile on this and this, and for that you rock. Everyone, Chris rocks on three, one, two, three, and everyone says, Chris rocks. Works great in person, does not work over Zoom, right?

SPEAKER_00

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01

It's all it gets all muddled up and everything. And so we have to change that, right? We have to say, what we do now is we say, Do we have do we have uh recognitions for folks that rocked, you know, since our last huddle? And anyone can throw out a recognition. And it's just great to hear that Susie did something great or Bobby did something great. You usually get two to four per huddle. It's that fast. You know, I just want to write out Suzy. Susie, we had we had the client lunch the other day. She did a great job. There were no issues. You know, she worked her tail off. Super great job. Great. Anyone else? This person did this and this, great. Anything else? This person did this and this. I want to make sure everybody knows. Great. All right, that wraps up Huddle. Let's go. Like those three people got to hear themselves recognized, and the people that recognize them feel good about it. And everyone knows that when you do good stuff, you get recognized. And so those are that's how we end Huddle now, instead of picking out one person that rocks and fumbling over it over Zoom. We let everyone talk about the folks that made a difference for them, and everyone goes home happy.

SPEAKER_00

So a quick story and then a question. I remember, you know, reading Mastering the Rockefeller Habits. I think it came out in 01, have no idea when we ran our first huddle. It was about the time oh, I'd say mid-2000s. And my highest performing, highest billing employee kept refusing to come to hustle. Thought it was the silliest thing in the world, would always schedule a client meeting then. It could be a dentist, it could be anything. But she was by far my highest biller. Clients loved her. And although it took a while, ultimately we parted ways over her saying that my huddle was silly. And you know, I guess you have to stand for culture. She was not wrong. She was a great performer and she had a terrific career. Just it couldn't be at my place of business any longer. Understand. Um and it just, I guess, just you know, it wasn't like it's not about the drama of being it's not a it's not a TV show where you fire somebody over that live, but it was a very hard leadership dialogue to explain to her that it was important to the business.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I you know, I I I don't know if if that's the if if you have a specific question, but I can talk to the general story. Yes. First, it's the you know, it's the four quadrants. It's you know, doing great, acting great, easy, easy, easy, doing poorly, acting poorly, easy, easy, easy. Those, you know, keep keep the lead. Uh that's right. Then it's doing uh doing uh great, doing poorly, acting great, right? We train, train, train, move them up and to the right, move them up and to the right. And then there's doing great, acting poorly. And that's those are the hardest ones to deal with, right? Because those are the painful ones where you've got to let people go. The question is, as a leader, have you given them every opportunity to get up and to the right? And in this case, in your case, it's what would make Huddle viable to you, and then you as a leader deciding if those things are reasonable, how do you incorporate it? Maybe they make Huddle better for everybody. But as also as a leader, if you can't get an answer or if the answers don't align with your values, then the only answer is to let that person find success somewhere else. That's the only answer. In in a in where culture is number one. If culture is not number one and you and you and it's all about performance, I think you will have a a successful but short-lived company. And what we wanted was you know overnight success, you know, 20 years of overnight success. We we wanted the longevity, not the short term. And so I I think you re the only the only criticism I would have of of you, Chris, is that rather than being a slow death, faster death may have been better for everyone.

SPEAKER_00

Well, this is for all the founders that are paying their bills on the back of their superstar who fits that category, but is you know, that's ultimately you have to decide if you're gonna eat dog food again, right? And I made that decision. Uh we'll wrap with Huddle with one question. I coach people, you coach people. One of the things that's hardest, even with modeling, is getting people to talk about stucks and problems. As uh Huddle master thoughts around that. I know it takes time. That's my experience.

SPEAKER_01

It I you know, stucks stucks and and hurdles come after I'm hearing things that help me. If I'm not hearing things that help me, if if I show up at Huddle to talk and not listen, then then I can't even get close because no one's listening to the stucks and and and issues, right? So if I'm just reporting and no one's listening, then it doesn't matter. The first step is giving people a reason to listen, right? So we have to we give people a reason to listen is by giving them information that means something, right? And so by giving information that means something and giving them a reason to listen, now we can work towards stucks and hurdles that we need to get through. Now I know if I say something, people are gonna hear me. And then I can take that conversation online, offline, I can get with someone later on something, I can hear, and I start listening for things I can help with, right? Maybe someone doesn't reflect it as a stuck, but maybe I hear someone and I recognize it as a stuck, I recognize that I can help them with that, and I say, hey, Chris, I've got some comments on what you just said.

SPEAKER_00

Can I hit you right after huddle? That's a really strong leadership point that we were referencing. If you're not fully in that huddle, you might miss that. You miss it. You you you you can't.

SPEAKER_01

And here's the other part is that where leaders get huddle wrong. The leaders have to be in huddle. If you think you can start huddle and then not show up for six weeks and then come back and huddle's if if it this is true of everything. If it's not important to the leaders, it's not going to be important to the team. And so leaders have to be on huddle. And guys, so if you're too important to attend huddle, you're not a good leader.

SPEAKER_00

And this is the size business where you can have relatively everybody in the huddle, and you know, some people have departments that huddle and then roll up to executives, uh, and that's all fine.

SPEAKER_01

And it's uh just in that case, the lead, you know, like the the CEO of a 200-person company is not going to be in the bottom huddles, but the leaders of that team will be in the huddle, and then those leaders will go to the next huddle, and their leaders will be there, and it'll it'll you know stair step up. But the leaders of the group of the of the so the 25-person sort of work group, if you will, 12 to 25, if they're not there, then the team won't be there. And and they may show up physically, but the mentally they're not gonna be there.

SPEAKER_00

Arnie, people aren't gonna believe that you and I don't hang out every day, but I do believe and have said many times as a coach that all of this stuff starts with Huddle. And it's communication and it's leadership and it's problem solving and it's uh speeds things up and feels good and it's recognition.

SPEAKER_01

So I think it's a chance to it's a chance to repeat the the the values, to to recognize people in accordance with your values, to to talk about their purpose and why it's important to everyone, to to just do body language and eye contact, recognize people for showing up. And this is true again in person and via Zoom, we have to recognize people for showing up.

SPEAKER_00

So believe it or not, we're following a path. We are following a path. And uh if if we kind of I don't think we need to rewind it all, but I'd like to think that where do you want to go post-huddle for a leader whose thinking culture?

SPEAKER_01

So um where we what the one of the okay, so name your culture, designate your champions, make sure programs stay alive through checklist and support, and then communicate to your people, right? Those are those are big, big items that a leader is responsible for. Here's the one a lot of them forget. It's easy to put in downhill communicate down downstream communication. These are our values, this is our purpose, these are our goals. Congratulations on doing this, congratulations on doing that. You're great, you're great, we're great, rah-rah, rah, let's go get them team, right? That's that's all that stuff is part of the suit, suit of leadership we wear. Here's the one we miss listening. And listening comes in many forms. There's gotta be a path, a sustainable and a scalable path for upstream communication. It has to be. Think of it in its most basic generic terms as the suggestion box, suit, suggestion box, right? Put some technology behind that and create an opportunity for people to tell you the truth about your business and be willing to listen to that truth and not be defensive about that truth. We did it through a team survey every month that says, How do we become the best run culture on earth? Right? Tell us what we're doing right, tell us what we're doing wrong, and we listen without defensiveness. There's many other ways to do it. In my call center, I would walk into the call center. Of course, when I walk in as the founder, president, everyone's everyone's perfect. I would sneak in and just sit and listen. I would sit and listen to the overnight shift. I would sit and listen to the weekend shift. I would sit and listen to the really busy periods and watch how the team was reacting once they didn't really see me anymore. Listen to your people. We set up dinners to talk to our frontline people. No one knows more about what's going on in your company than your frontline people. Listen to them. Get them talking to you. Not they tell you something and you swing a hammer. They tell you something and you realize there's something that needs to change far upstream so that they don't experience that again. Listen, listen, listen. Find ways through surveys, through active listening, through observation to understand what your people, what the obstacles they're running into, because your job as a leader is to remove them.

SPEAKER_00

Some people that use the methodology of a stop, start, continue, I know that's a bit more leadership and strategy and business plan. Um you ever use that at all as your fact-finding in this uh constantly looking for information?

SPEAKER_01

Any any series of questions you can ask where the question is short and the response is open-ended and the response is anonymous. Well, that's up to that's up to the leader. We we have programs we had programs that were anonymous, we have programs that were not anonymous. It dep weekends.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's an assumption I made. I I actually think the anonymity creates lots of challenges because it's hard to go get enough information sometimes to really solve something without a team that will is willing to talk about it.

SPEAKER_01

So what the way you saw Fran and Envy is you publish the information. So if you get a comment, a comment that's anonymous and it's and it bothers you and you want to do something about it, then you go expose that. You you tell, I'm hearing this. What are you hearing? I'm here, you got to go investigate. You got to go find out if it's true or not. It it it just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's it's not true, right? All right. We have to go investigate, is it true? And so what we would do is we we had an anonymous monthly survey, and people would write things and we would publish back everything they wrote so that others could tell us if it's true or not. Now, this I go on the book I talk about how we did it and all the steps, and I don't want to get into it now. But there's got to be a system. My point is this it's not just you being fired up about it for one day. Say it's something that repeats itself. Every quarter, I would go sit in the call center, right? For a twenty you know, not 20 consecutive hours, but for 20 hours a quarter, I would go sit in there and listen. We would do dinners with our um uh shift managers so that we could get them to talk to us about the problems they're seeing with their people, with our clients, with the technology. But it was we did it once a month. It was programmed in. We had a monthly survey where we talked to everybody. I didn't I didn't do the survey, I just made sure we weren't defensive about the survey. And so there's all these things we can do. You made it automatic. Made it automatic so that it's sustainable and it's scalable. If it's not, it's you're excited about it today and you forgot about it tomorrow. It's for sure. These are the things. And there's, you know, we could we could spend an hour on any one of those things and get into the how-to. I I I'll offer you not don't just read my book, read a lot of books. Like if you want to be great at something, read ten books about it, you'll know more about it than 98% of the people on earth. Find the podcast about it, find other people you respect to talk to about it, but don't just do nothing. Right?

SPEAKER_00

That's no BS response. You're the he's the godfather of the book club, for goodness sake. Yeah. Um it it's I know it's a digression, but how did that come about? Because I I think it's just entrepreneurial genius or or just a wonderful thing you did.

SPEAKER_01

It came about because just like every one of you listening, I read a book and then told 20 of my team they should read the book, and they said, I'm not reading your stinking book. They made it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that was not deleted by me, by the way. That was just uh uh yeah, I I get it. I'm not reading your book because you're the boss and because you told me to read the book.

SPEAKER_01

That's right. That's right, that's right. And so the the so in me, and so I was all this, you know, I love this book. You've got to read this book, and like, yeah, whatever. So some people would tell you whatever, some people would tell you they're gonna read it, but they never do it. Some people would read it, but it didn't matter because they weren't really absorbing it. And so the key is how do I get people to choose to read? And so the concept was look, I don't care what you read because a great book to you is an okay book to me, and vice versa, just read. And if you read, I'm gonna reward it. And I'm rewarding you not because I'm trying to buy this this you off. I'm rewarding you so that I can help you create the habit. Because if you enjoy, once you establish the habit of reading, it changes your life and potentially and probably changes the life of your family and your kids and your offspring and their offspring because all the secrets are in the books. You just don't know it yet, but they're all in there. And so just to start that habit. And I say all this, Chris, to say, and I know we're getting close on time here, is to say one of the we've employed over 25 years and you know, four different companies. We employed thousands of people over that time. Some with very short tenures, some with very long tenures. Some of the people that that I hired are still working for the company that I sold now eight years ago, right? They're they're still there. The point is there's thousands of people. My biggest points of pride live growing living in Nashville, Tennessee, is when I'm on the street and our and someone recognizes me as someone they used to work for, and they come up and they say, Thank you for a great experience. Those are really I'm a prideful, those are prideful moments. But some of my most feared moments are the ones where I wasn't a great leader, where I didn't listen to them, where I didn't give them the chance to be successful, and they're still bitter about it or mad about it, and they deserve to be because I was wrong. And so I I want to coach leaders forward to say that no matter how old you are, when you sell your company, if you sell your company, wherever you go through life, that people recognize you as someone that helps them become better, and they don't recognize you as someone who held them down.

SPEAKER_00

So, Arnie, it's very refreshing to have you speak from a place of vulnerability about where you feel that you failed or could do better. The whole point of outside insights is about closing personal and professional gaps. I believe for the leaders that are listening or would be leaders that are listening, you can really only learn by doing and experiencing what you've experienced. Now, you can also learn through books. What does Ryan Holliday say? How can you speak to the dead? The way to speak to the dead is through books. I do believe and have seen it where my teams grow when they realize that the words of one book connect to the next book, and before you know it, thinking and reading becomes true knowledge. Um Absolutely. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01

If you know smart men learn from their mistakes, really smart people learn from the mistakes of others, and and those are in the books as well, right? And so you it's the let pain creates learned lessons learned. You know, pain and extreme joy can create lessons learned. But the reason we become stronger and wiser as most of us as we get older, it's all about pattern recognition. We get better and better at what we do because we recognize the patterns faster and faster, right? And so books lay a foundation for all that pattern recognition, and it it has served me well. It served anyone that's a reader, uh they're passionate about it. And the only people that aren't passionate about it are those that don't read, and and all we can do is coach them up.

SPEAKER_00

So I think it would be the definition of insanity not to ask you for a leadership book recommendations, culture book recommendations, and frankly, just your favorite books. We'll put them in show notes. And if that's if none of that resonates, answer it any way you want, Arnie.

SPEAKER_01

You know, the the when people ask me all the time to recommend a book, and it they it comes down, what do you want to learn? Like it doesn't if I if I recommend a book about hiring and you want to learn about running better meetings, the who is the greatest book on hiring I've ever read. Death by Meeting is the greatest book about meetings that I've ever read. It's changed, it changed how I ran my business, my meetings hired by people. But if you're looking for one and you get the other, it's a bad book.

SPEAKER_00

By the way, both books are within three feet of me right now. It's a good game to play.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, they're classics. I mean, then you got you know the emyth and great by choice and you know, all the so many classics. Upstream is one of my favorites, but I could go on and on. The question is, what do you want to learn? Uh, and I and we can give you a top five on those. And by the way, even if I give you my top five, there's probably a book coming out tomorrow that's better. And so once you get into that journey, once you start w you know, going down that trail, books will find you, right? When the teach when the student is ready, the teacher will come. And often that teacher is a book.

SPEAKER_00

And I I'm just gonna share what my My all-time favorite leadership book, just as a primer, is The Leadership Challenge by Posner. It's on like a sixth or seventh or eighth revision at this point. It's research based, but it's the uh it's those six or seven chapters that I cut my teeth on leadership. So anytime I get a chance, I want to throw that one out as something there. So I guess there's two other things. Uh I know you're up to new new and different stuff all the time. I don't know if you want to chat about that, but I do want to ask you, uh I always like to end with advice you would give your 21-year-old self. Um and yeah, I change it sometimes if there's a meaningful event. But I think 21 is good for you. Uh and if you think back about my gosh, what an interesting career, all the things you've built, all the lessons you've learned. What advice would you give young Arnie?

SPEAKER_01

You know, I think that some of the times I'm most when I, you know, there's moments when when when my memory serves up a a memory, a s a thing, right? And often I'll I'll be very proudful of that. Like I talked about meeting a team member who who really we help find they help find a you know, they grew through our organization. But often I cringe at some of the things I've said or done. Sometimes my pride got so in the way of of doing, you know, doing the a better being a better person, uh, things like that. But I guess the answer shorten the answer, sorry, is is just lose some of the hubris, right? Just just let life don't be so damn uh stubborn that you won't you can't learn from nearly everything around you. And so just just learn. I I'll tell you this. Um the first time I had to speak to more than ten people in a room, I felt like my heart was pounding so hard that it would be impossible for the people in the next room not to hear it. That's how nervous I was. And it was only through that pain, through that craziness, that I now can speak to a room of any size, right?

SPEAKER_00

That I can Gosh, I think there was 3,000 when I heard you speak.

SPEAKER_01

It doesn't matter, like it doesn't matter anymore. But you can't get there without going through some level of discomfort. We can't become better leaders by just taking the comfortable path. We can't do it through the easy button, right? It it involves it involves us wanting to get somewhere so bad that we're willing to endure some of that discomfort. And as our friend, you know, Andy Bailey will say, you know, get comfortable with discomfort so that you can get where you need to be. And so that those are the two things is lose some of the pride and get more comfortable with discomfort.

SPEAKER_00

My mentor always says, I think it's uh part of what's implied is to practice grace, forgive yourself, forgive others, to realize that these things are not that important. Just learn from them and move forward. Arnie, it was a bucket load of fun. Uh it's great to have you. And uh, I have a little bit of a streak going. Not that you need this, but a lot of guests that have been on the show recently have been tapped to talk about their topic. So it's, you know, if if something like that happens, they gotta let me know. Uh it's not sole purpose, but certainly when it's good content and people are trying to get culture right, how they can learn from this podcast. And uh if they're interested in you, how do they find you?

SPEAKER_01

WorthdoingWrong.com. Uh I'm easy to reach, I'm easy to find. Um the challenge is coming up with the time to spend, you know, one-on-one and talking through what where people want to go and and what's keeping them from getting there. Um, I've uh my wife and I bought a farm about an hour from my my home, and we now have a home there, and so we're spending more and more time uh there. We grow lavender, we have a young dog we run around a lot with. We just we're just out there having a lot of fun. And so sometimes I'll sacrifice a cons a consultation or two uh for a day on the farm. Uh, and I say that out of with with both pride and and humbleness to say if you've ever seen uh Clarkson's farm uh on Netflix, then you know the experience I'm having because I have no idea what I'm doing out there, but we're having fun.

SPEAKER_00

I was gonna I was gonna break midstream there and ask you about supply chain issues on a lavender farm, but I didn't do that to you. Uh no, I think uh I like to think uh think and talk about the earned life, the journey of it. And this is the path and this is next. And actually it sounds pretty cool to me. But Arnie, you've given the gift of your ideas and your experiences, and you've been very open and honest about the lessons that you've learned. Thank you for sharing all this with Outside Insights audience today.

SPEAKER_01

Chris, thanks for having me. It's always energizing to get on and talk about a topic that we're both passionate about. And if just one thing we said makes a difference, makes you uncomfortable enough to make a change towards where you want to be or affirms where you're going, then we've both done a great job, Chris. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks for listening.