Take It To The Board with Donna DiMaggio Berger
Take It To The Board with Donna DiMaggio Berger
Transforming Your Corporate Culture with Motivational Speaker & Author Chris Dyer
Join host Donna DiMaggio Berger on this week’s Take It To The Board podcast as she welcomes Chris Dyer, a motivational speaker, author, and former CEO who’s led teams of thousands. Ranked as the #1 leadership speaker on culture by Inc. Magazine, Chris is known for his best-selling books, The Power of Company Culture and Remote Work. Together, Donna and Chris share insights on keeping people motivated, overcoming adversity, and bridging generational gaps in the workplace.
Whether you're a management professional, community association vendor, or volunteer board member, this episode uncovers crucial leadership steps that can drive innovation and engagement across any organization. Chris and Donna explore what truly motivates people, revealing why recognition and purpose often outweigh paychecks. They discuss strategies for fostering creativity and risk-taking, even in traditionally conservative fields like law, and highlight the importance of embracing change to create a dynamic workplace culture.
Tune in to discover how to overcome resistance to innovation, use open communication to nurture new ideas, and navigate the unique challenges volunteer boards face. From generational differences to the role of AI in workplace communication, this episode is packed with practical tips for building loyalty and cultivating a connected, productive environment—whether you're leading from the boardroom, the Clubhouse or the home office!!
Conversation Highlights Include:
- The “7 Pillars” that can transform an organization’s culture
- How corporations can use adversity to grow
- What qualities distinguish a great CEO from others
- How different generations can work together to foster a more productive working environment
- Skills to effectively manage a remote team
- How AI is changing corporate culture
Related Links:
- Online Class: Dealing with Difficult People
- Webinar: Employment Trends and Recurring Issues That Impact Community Associations as Employers
- Podcast: Examining the Challenges Community Association Attorneys Face and the Corporate Responsibility Community Associations Shoulder with Marcia Narine Weldon, Law Professor
Hi everyone, I'm attorney Donna DiMaggio-Berger and this is Take it to the Board, where we speak condo and HOA. Today, I'm thrilled to welcome Chris Dyer to the podcast. Chris is a powerhouse in the world of leadership, corporate culture and workplace dynamics. But he isn't just any motivational speaker. He's been ranked by Inc Magazine as the number one leadership speaker on culture, and he's a former CEO who led teams of thousands. His companies were consistently celebrated as some of the best places to work.
Speaker 1:Thanks to the principle he shares in his two best-selling books, the Power of Company Culture and Remote Work, chris has transformed organizations worldwide, helping them build thriving, productive cultures where employees feel engaged and valued. Today, he's bringing those hard-won insights to us, diving into how to keep people motivated, overcome adversity and bridge generational gaps in the workplace. So, whether you're a management professional, a community association vendor or a volunteer board member, this episode is going to be packed with takeaways to help you elevate your organization. After all, your association is a corporation and building the right culture is key to its long-term success. Get ready for an inspiring conversation with Chris Dyer. So with that, chris, welcome to Take it to the Board.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:I wanted to start out with your seven pillars of success, which you highlighted in your book the Power of Company Culture. Can you tell us what those seven pillars are?
Speaker 2:Sure. So I'll just kind of name them really quickly, and if you want to talk about any one in particular, we can, but they aren't necessarily in an order. It's not like number one is the best one, it's usually just in what order I can remember them Transparency, listening, positivity, measurement, recognition, mistakes and uniqueness. So those are the things that great companies get right in their companies, whether they are nonprofits or they are for profit. It doesn't matter what kind of organization you are. If you get those right, your culture will be great.
Speaker 1:I can tell you that one already leapt out at me, and that was transparency. So we're going to be talking today about corporations, both for-profit, like I said, whether it's a law firm, whether it's a landscape company, a management company.
Speaker 1:they're all looking to build a productive corporate culture, but we also are talking about this called Take it to the Board. So we're going to be talking about all the not-for-profit community association cultures out there and transparency left out. At me, chris, because that is perhaps one of the biggest sticking points in private residential communities that a lot of times the people living in those communities feel that there is not sufficient transparency between what the board is doing and what they're deciding and what you know, the ultimate framework within which they're expected to operate.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it's really the magic bullet, and it's often where I suggest people start if they want to make improvements, and what's hard is that we can only do our 50 percent. And it's often where I suggest people start if they want to make improvements, and what's hard is that we can only do our 50%. So let's just say you were on that board of that community. You can be transparent, you can tell people everything that you think they need to know. They need to want to listen, to read, to be informed in order for that to have a large effect on them. But it's our job to do everything that we can to make sure that anyone who wants to know, anyone that should know that they have everything that they need to make good decisions, to feel confident about what's going on, and that they know whatever the truth is.
Speaker 2:In my company, I was frustrated that people weren't coming to me with better ideas. I thought I have hired all these smart people, they do a good job, but they weren't showing up with great ideas, they weren't innovating, they weren't. You know, essentially I was the one who had to make that happen, and when I started being more transparent, that was when everything got better. That was when they understood how to help me, how to be more innovative, because they had what was in my brain as well. So my company was a human capital company. I still had it for 20 plus years. I sold it at the end of 2021.
Speaker 2:But back in 2008, when we were really going through a tough recession because 40% of my clients were in the mortgage industry which recession because 40% of my clients were in the mortgage industry, which meant I lost 40% of my clients. Also, 40% of my receivables were gone. And so I'm like, hey, we need big ideas. How are we going to save the company? What are we going to do? And everyone was staring at me and I realized, for the first seven years of the company, if there was an idea, it came from me.
Speaker 2:If something happened, it was because I wanted it to happen and I had not created the right culture for them to really feel empowered to come up with those great ideas. But, more importantly, I had not shared with them enough information. They didn't understand how the business worked, how we made money, how we spent money. Like what are all the things that they needed to understand. And as soon as I started giving them more and more and more information and some employees they just they couldn't get enough, they were sponges. And others employees were like yeah, yeah, whatever, like I don't, they didn't care and that's fine. Again, remember, I have my 50%, they have their 50%. They either they want to know or they don't want to know. But for the ones that wanted to know, that loved learning and knowing about the business, suddenly they had better ideas than I did. Suddenly they started coming to me and solving problems for me because there wasn't the gap right it's a big picture.
Speaker 1:So you were explaining the big picture to your employees. What would you say to a large company where they want to know whether or not Susan in the mailroom needs to know the big picture of the company, its ethics, its mission statement? I mean, do you think this trickles down your big picture, speaking to everyone in the corporation?
Speaker 2:We can't tell everyone everything. We can create access. We can make sure that if there's things that if they want to know, they have access to them. But it gets to be a little overwhelming if, like, all we're doing is constantly telling everyone everything that happened right, if, like, we recorded every meeting that happened in the entire company and try to ask everyone to be insane. But I was first turned on to this concept through uh jack stack, who's a famous business person, and he had a book called the Great Game of Business. In fact, we read it in the book club that you and I are in.
Speaker 1:I should have mentioned that in the intro, that we're in a book club. That's how I know you.
Speaker 2:Yes, and so in that book he talks about how he began to give everyone in the company the P&L statement every month, and they also provided financial education to everyone in the companies. They realized they were giving them these P&Ls, but most of them didn't know how to read it, they didn't know what it meant. They didn't have that understanding. And to your question in the book he said it was the janitor. It was the guy who was sweeping the floor in my factory who came to us with the biggest idea that saved us the most amount of money. Why? Because he's there observing everything. He was watching them moving all of this stuff around, only to have to move it all over again. Right, because he had to go and sweep after they moved every time. And he came up with the idea of changing the order in which they did things.
Speaker 1:That saved them millions of dollars a year, right, there's always a better way to build a better mousetrap, right? So in your example, it could have been the janitor coming up with a better way to do his job, but sometimes it's somebody in a completely different department, right, coming up with a better idea for somebody in a different department.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and when they see like wait a minute, we spend money on that, like we spend how much money on what? And suddenly they go you know I can get a better deal. I know another vendor that like it's half the price, but they didn't know we spend $12 million on toilet paper every year. Like suddenly, when they have that understanding, then people go well, how do we save money, how do we conserve? How do we do that differently? Right, we know we need more salespeople, but we're spending $12 million on office supplies. Like how do we cut that number down, right, in a big organization? And so people start thinking about in different ways because they understand, they know, and then we've empowered them.
Speaker 1:Do you have to incentivize them, chris?
Speaker 2:No, I've seen companies that do that. But I will tell you the research says that when we tell people, if you do, if you come up with better ideas this is from Daniel Pink's work when in his first book we talked about mastery, autonomy and purpose, they went back and proved that if you tell someone to like make hit the hammer harder, hit it more times on a factory machine. Yes, you can get a little bit more productivity out of them if you give them a little bit more money. But if you say to them, I need you to come up with better ideas and if you do, I'll give you more money, they actually came up with less ideas.
Speaker 1:Why do you think that is?
Speaker 2:Because it's the pressure and it's like suddenly now it's like, oh my gosh, I have to come up with this idea because I money instead of here's what we do, here's how we do it. If you and we want, we want your ideas, if you have them, and then we're going to celebrate you and we're going to put your name on the wall or we'll give you a cape or buy you lunch or send you like we'll do something for you afterwards, that's OK, can be, we can be. Recognition is one of the pillars. We can recognize you appropriately. But when we take money off the table, we pay people appropriately. They're making what they should be making. We're not. So this doesn't work. If you're going to like what we woefully pay under what the industry is paying, it's not about money Very, very few people and very, very few jobs.
Speaker 2:Is it actually about the money? And I know what everyone's saying. Well, what about salespeople? My best salesperson. For 10 straight years I gave him the award for best salesman of the year and every time I asked him and every time we surveyed, the money was like number eight on his list of things that were important to him.
Speaker 1:Isn't there a book that's the equivalent of the seven love languages? But for business acknowledgement I think they want time, maybe with the CEO.
Speaker 2:Right right, he really enjoyed seeing the impact that he made for clients. He enjoyed creating better outcomes for clients. That really made him happy. He really enjoyed that the company did well and he was a part of that, that he had a big hand in the success of the company and that ultimately allowed us to continue to employ his friends and people he cared about. Like there was so many other things. Yeah, he liked the money, but it wasn't like if he made $5,000 less this year, he was like, well, that's it, I'm going to go look for another job because I'm like, no, like the other things meant so much more to him.
Speaker 1:So some people are huge idea generators. Others not so much. Do you think everybody has the ability to contribute ideas?
Speaker 2:Ideas, yes. Now whether or not they're going to be helpful to your company and be groundbreaking, that just depends on the person, the situation, all that. But you set yourself up. You will have the most luck in something amazing happening if you give people that information, give them access to the information you talk about, what it is we're trying to do, what our goals are.
Speaker 2:One of the other pillars is measurement right. So I would show up every month and say to people okay, remember, okay, here's our P&L. I sent it to everyone. We'd ask, answer questions. Here's how our goal was to be growing this much. Here's how we're doing. Our goal was this much profit. This is how we're doing. And when things didn't go well and it was like, well, we were supposed to make money this month and we lost money. Here's what we're going to do about it. Here's why we think it happened Right and like suddenly now we're in a real dialogue with everyone about how we're going to fix it, what we're going to do or why we think it's happening. And now they feel a part of the conversation. They feel I don't want to say they feel like an owner, because that's not fair. They're not getting the benefits of an owner. They certainly feel connected.
Speaker 1:Or inclusive.
Speaker 2:Or included right into the conversation and what's really happening. And I know a lot of people say well, if you tell people how much you make, they're going to ask you for a raise, and if they see that you didn't do well for three months, they're going to leave. That never once happened. I had thousands of people that reported to me, that had access to those records and not a single time did someone call me and say well, I saw we had three months of record-breaking sales. I deserve a raise. Never happened?
Speaker 1:Did you have an open compensation model, Chris, where people knew what other people in their departments made or just how the company was doing overall?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we struggled with, like, whether or not we should blast and share everyone's salaries with everybody. We were working our way to that and we saw some other companies that tried that and we saw where they struggled. Um, it can be really difficult because what's fair? So if we try to treat everyone equal, I think that's where we fail.
Speaker 2:Does my salary in orange county? How is that different than what you might get paid for the same job where you live if your cost of living is dramatically different and your state sales tax system is dramatically different? Right, like what's fair, and that's what we always tried to do is are we paying people fairly based on their job, their experience and where they live? And so to do that, we were very transparent with the team. The team had a big. They definitely knew kind of what they were being paid and what those ranges were. We had a harder time and we maybe would have gotten there if I would have not sold the company within a few years that maybe the whole company could have known that Right. But we certainly didn't stop people from talking about it. There was no rules against it and we weren't intentionally hiding it.
Speaker 1:This is industry dependent too, chris, because, for instance, I'm in the legal industry. So some big law firms, everybody's in lockstep. You know what the associates make every step of the way. You know what your bonus is going to be. There's firms, smaller firms, mid-level firms like mine, where you have what's called a closed compensation model. You don't know necessarily what everybody's?
Speaker 1:making and everybody's opportunity for bonuses and compensation varies depending on how much they want to put into it I want to talk about. I want to continue with the industry specific question, because let's sit with lawyers for a second. We're not the most creative bunch of people. To start with, we have a few creatives in our midst, but overall not the most creative bunch. We're a few creatives in our midst, but overall not the most creative bunch. We're also very risk adverse. So, unlike more creative industries where they come out with a new product or a new idea and there's a buzz, you do that in certain industries like the legal, there's going to be more fear related to that. What do you say to somebody who is an idea generator in an industry and specifically in a corporate culture currently that doesn't embrace change, and that person is getting hit with? Well, we've always done it this way and we're comfortable doing it this way yeah.
Speaker 2:So I believe that everyone can come up with great ideas and I believe that every culture and company actually wants change. They just want good change. They don't want bad change. They don't want to do something and have it not work as well, like that's the thing they're trying to avoid. We're always trying to avoid loss. There's a cognitive bias that says you know, basically, if you lost $10, you would feel so much worse than if you won $100. Like the feeling of $100 isn't even close to what you feel as if you lost $10. So we are very, very worried about loss.
Speaker 2:So the language that I suggest people use is what's tradition? What are the traditions of the company that we wanna keep? And if you call that out and you talk about that and you make sure that people understand and believe that we're not trying to change the tradition of this company. But there are things that we can do to help us be better, to help us honor those traditions in a new and modern or better way. And that's usually the language that we need, especially with those that are the most risk adverse.
Speaker 2:But look, we went through COVID and everybody went and worked from home and it worked out just fine. Like, sometimes we get our hand forced on us and we have to do something and we find out it worked just fine. So the other thing that we can do is, instead of asking like if you go to your boss and you're like I had this idea and I want to radically change everything and let me like no, but what you can do is say would you mind if we went and tested this? I have this idea. Can I go test it with this small group of people Right, or with this one new client, or with this one thing? Can I go test it in a safe way and I'm going to, we'll come back, I'll tell you out, be open and transparent and we can talk about it. Was it a good idea or not? What did I learn? Like I've never had anyone tell me no in that, in that setting.
Speaker 1:It's the way you framed it. You framed it in first of all. You made it temporary because you're saying let's try it, Not that we're going to. This is our permanent path from this point forward and, yeah, I imagine that's a very that's a very effective way to approach management with a new idea. You did say that there's a big fear when it comes to accepting ideas that they might not work out. But listen, I mentioned in the intro, you're a keynote speaker. You've got tons of speeches on YouTube. I checked you out, Chris, and you mentioned that adversity that it's actually can be very helpful. So if you try an idea and it doesn't work out, or the company goes through adversity, like yours did during the recession and the subprime mortgage failure, how do you think that does help a corporate culture?
Speaker 2:So let's turn this a very calm and perfectly manicured existence of anything right will actually create weakness. This comes from the book Anti-Fragile I forget the author's name, but if you laid in bed and never moved right, you would be perfectly rested right, your skin would be like not everything should be perfect, but like it would also be weak because your muscles would atrophy. If you just sat in bed all day, you never talked to anybody, your brain would start to basically decompose just laying there. But technically you'll be safe and you'll never be sore and you'll never have anything ever happen to you.
Speaker 1:You know, there's an old saying on points smooth seas don't make good sailors.
Speaker 2:Perfect. That's exactly what we're talking about. So we can't constantly be in adversity, we can't constantly be in like this chaos, but when we go through chaos, when we go through a hard time, that's what builds character, that's what builds resilience, that's what builds our muscle, our virtual you know culture muscle to be better and to be ready for the next time something happens. And so if we're constantly not allowing for anything to be different, if we're not testing and we're not trying new things, we're not going to be prepared for when we actually do have to make a shift or a change, because a pandemic shows up, or because the laws change, or because our industry suddenly under I mean, look at them, look at the real estate industry has suddenly had this like crazy change because of some of some lawsuit that happened, right. We're recording this today on the election Based on your political views, you may, at the end of today or tomorrow, whenever we know, you may think that the world has gone upside down and your business has to change, right.
Speaker 2:So how do we prepare for those moments? And it's by doing these smaller things to be it's like, it's like exercising. If you go to the gym a little bit and you prepare Right. You could probably go run a marathon if you needed to, but if you never exercise and you never did anything, there's no way you'd ever be able to do that.
Speaker 1:You know I failed to mention that we are taping this on election day. There's going to be a lot of people up late tonight, but you're talking about pivoting, so your business may have to pivot, depending on. I think it's the book Good to Great that talks about the black swans that pop up that you haven't anticipated. I want to talk about CEOs and how they handle this.
Speaker 2:And this could be either the.
Speaker 1:CEO of your business, or it could be the president of your community association board. You kind of revealed your level of leadership when you said, basically, you had a level of humility by admitting that the mistake was yours because you hadn't talked to your people and welcomed them. You know, introducing ideas CEOs who are control freaks and they don't really want to hear. They don't really want to hear other people's ideas. They've got their ideas. They want people implementing their ideas. Okay, they may even bounce their ideas off of somebody else, but they're not that open to anybody else being an idea generator. How would you convince that style leader that they might want to reconsider?
Speaker 2:So let's put them in a couple of categories. There's the great leaders, who are open to that, right? Ok, so that's in one bucket. Then we have the next bucket, which is actually they will.
Speaker 2:If you come to them correctly, if you are delivering that message in the right way, which is what we've been talking about, they will be open to it. It's just that they're a little jaded, they're a little. They have a little bit of a crusty exterior because they've been doing this for a long time and they've had, you know, every employee come to them with some cockamamie thing that they want, or they want it for themselves. Like, the employee is not really asking for the benefit of the company or the CEO, they're really asking for some selfishly motivated thing, right? So we have to make sure that we're aligning correctly with the business and the CEO to ask that question correctly.
Speaker 2:The third category this is actually a much smaller group, even though we characterize them as a much larger group are the ones that are totally closed minded. It's do it my way, it's my way, the highway and all of that. And for that group I say run, go, get a new job, get out of there now, if that really is the case and they'll never change. They're not going to listen to your ideas unless they're paying you obscene amounts of money that you're willing to put up with that. Get out of that business as quickly as you can.
Speaker 1:Well, for that third category, you know, there's also some old advice saying make it think it's their idea. Is that really the right way to go? But that's in the second group, right? Oh, that's the second group.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of like there are ways to reach them if you do it the correct way and listen. If we want to go back to what's the probably the first book that anybody should read how to Win Friends and Influence People right, you go back to it, make it about them. You show interest in the other person for the pure sake of being interested in them and making it about especially people with important titles who think that they're overly important to the world. That's who you really have to play that game with.
Speaker 1:Is that manipulative though?
Speaker 2:It's only manipulative if you're doing it solely to try to get the thing that you want. But if you're doing it because you really want to create a good connection between you and that person, because you want a long, lasting, good, healthy relationship with them, I don't think that that's being manipulative, right. So you should take an interest in what your boss is interested in. You should be curious about what makes them tick. You should want to know what they're involved in and what books they're reading, and all of that, so that you can better understand them and be able to speak their language, to be able, when it is time and you're bringing them a good idea that's good for them and good for the business that they're going to listen. If it's only good for you, then yeah, it's manipulative.
Speaker 1:Now you're going to make me take golf lessons. Okay, what we say on the topic of CEOs what do you think distinguishes a great leader from a not so great leader?
Speaker 2:Great leaders are introspective, they listen, they are lifelong learners and they have a clear passion or direction about what they want or where they want the company to go. I mean, they are leading, they are pointing the ship in the right direction, but what you don't want is someone who's pointing the ship. They're also steering the ship. They're also down there whipping, you know people to to row harder, like we don't need someone who's like doing all, we just need pick, pick your lane. You know, and are you the visionary? Are you the the captain? Are you the the hard worker?
Speaker 1:there's different types of ceos.
Speaker 2:so if I'm hearing you correctly, you can wear a lot of hats in a startup, but as your company progresses, you have to pick a lane. The lane I had to pick was I have to be the visionary. I have to be the person that helps create the vision of where we're going, get out my virtual machete every day and help them clear away the crap so they can actually get their jobs done. But I'm not. I'm no longer. Am I putting my hands on the wheel. I have hired great people to do that. I have a great sales leader, I have a great customer service leader, I have a great market. Like I don't need to go in there and be. They can ask me for help and I'll be part of those meetings and and give them the vision, but I don't need to be like I need to read every single email, I need to look at every single PowerPoint, I need to be on every single meet Like that. That's. That's what we get screwed up.
Speaker 1:I've worked with leaders like that in the past, where they were micromanaging to a level that I thought must be absolutely paralyzing. I don't know how they could possibly have been reading every email across multiple departments. That would actually make me crazy. So yeah, I get exactly what you're saying. If somebody is looking to try to evaluate corporate culture let's say they're thinking about joining a particular company, chris, how effective do you think sites like Glassdoor or the Onion for the legal industry? Going on those sites and reading comments from either current employees or past employees, do you think those are useful to try to gauge corporate culture.
Speaker 2:It's a data point. So sure you should go look because if, like you know, they have a one star rating and there's 562 people saying don't ever work for this company, you might want to pay attention to that. But when it comes to, like most companies, and it's relatively like you can't quite tell. There's some good, there's some bad, whatever, like I don't know. It's a data point. I think it's more important.
Speaker 1:Review driven. These days, before we go eat somewhere or stay in a hotel, we always look at the reviews. But I always wonder when I'm reading them. I mean, I kind of look and see are there more positive reviews than negative reviews?
Speaker 2:Does it seem like the negative reviews are a little too personalized. When it comes to, like, amazon reviews and yelp reviews, I always read the three star reviews, because the one star review are just tend to be angry people or maybe it was a bad experience, is a bad thing that happened right. And the fives are I don't know. Maybe people are like overly, maybe they're lying, maybe it's like the owner's got them on there, maybe they're overly like impressed by decor and don't care about the food, like I don't know. They just feel like extremes that I'm going to remove. You look at the three and I tend to get a pretty good sense, right, I do this with the books that I bring to book club. I look at the threes and if it's like, yeah, it was a good book, but like literally I've read this advice and like 50 other books like you know, ok, so this is probably not going to be a groundbreaking book for us, you know all there's a lot of threes are kind of saying the same thing, like, so it's not the angry person and it's not the person trying to get clout and look good by giving it a five or whatever to get clout and look good by giving it a five or whatever.
Speaker 2:Instead, I would say, if you're really worried about the culture when you're talking to someone and maybe hopefully multiple people in the organization, ask them when was the last time something didn't go well in the organization at a very high level? And then say how did your boss or how did the CEO react? And get them to tell you what was that like. Because if they tell you the CEOo react like and, and get them to tell you what was that like. Because if they tell you the ceo yelled and screamed and people lost their job, and like, right, we don't need to know. Oh, the ceo buys us all lunch on fridays, that's all well and good. If on monday through thursday, the ceo was throwing things at people and like yelling and screaming as a total tirades, like I don't care about pizza on friday, so we need to ask good questions to find out, you know like what's what really happens well, and that actually gets back to your point about what your values are.
Speaker 1:you know, I guess if you value pizza on fridays more than respect monday through thursday, you're going to have a different perspective on it. I know condo and HOA life is not your arena ordinarily, but I have to tell you, you know, given our conversation, I'm always sort of shocked when I meet with volunteer boards, because a lot of people I mean a significant percentage of people around the world, but particularly in the United States. So we have a lot of people throughout the 50 states listening who serve on boards or live in community associations, whether it's an HOA or a condo. And when you talk to the boards, many of these people have been high power CEOs or they've worked in corporate environments, and yet they tend to get on these boards, chris, and they don't use any of those skills when they're now sitting on a representative board making the same sorts of decisions like how much property insurance coverage do we need?
Speaker 1:Do we want to engage in this litigation? Some of them are even handling budgets in the, you know, 15, 20 million dollar range. So we're not talking insignificant amount of money, we're not talking insignificant decisions which can wind up, you know, resulting in litigation Just off the top of your head. Any idea why, it seems. Do people just get burned out? Or how is it that we've got some really strong CEOs in their past lives who get on these boards and they don't seem to embrace or utilize any of the skills they learned?
Speaker 2:Well, a lot of people. You know managing volunteers is always a little bit different than like managing inside of a company with employees, because you know the motivations of why they're there and what's the purpose that they're there. So we can solve this by having a really clear purpose, a really clear culture. Really, you know that getting that process part. So the people are really important. Who are the people that are going to be helping us do the thing that needs to be done and that's up to generally right? It'd be up to the community to elect and to make sure that they are having the right people that represent their values on that board. I'm assuming that they're going to be elected and all of that like that may be some part of that and they have a responsibility. They elect the wrong people.
Speaker 1:Which they do. Sometimes there's apathy that's rampant and boards don't change because nobody's stepping up and running or just the board, just you know, turns over.
Speaker 2:But then can we have a good process, and that's what's our purpose. What is the ultimate goal? What is the thing that? Why is that board there? What are they ultimately supposed to do? What's that bare minimum thing right, and are we holding them accountable to that?
Speaker 2:Then we have tools and technology. So then there are other things that can help us do that. So if you look at a tool, we could very easily you could take all of the notes and all the things that happen from that thing and have ChatGPT, summarize it in a very simple way, and we could probably communicate in a much more engaging and simple way with everyone to help them understand what's happening, what's going on. More engaging and simple way with everyone to help them understand what's happening, what's going on, you know, instead of sending them these super boring, you know minutes from the meeting that no one's ever going to read. Right, if we want more engagement, we want all of that, but the problem is that people often take what they learn from their parents and their coaches and their teachers as the model for how to lead an organization, and that is command and control.
Speaker 2:That is, do what I say, because I say so. That is I'm in charge. So tough luck. And that doesn't work in the corporate world and it really doesn't work in the volunteer world. It's like even worse there, because nobody has to stick around. They don't. They're not getting paid right in most cases.
Speaker 1:I think you really hit the nail on the head with communication style. So you know I also break boards up into dysfunctional, functional and highly functional. And the highly functional boards are the ones that have frequent meetings. You know, now there's a new law in Florida that says you have to have at least four meetings. That tells you if the legislature thought that that needed to be baked into the law that there were a lot of communities that were having no meetings.
Speaker 1:But the dysfunctional, the highly functional communities, they have them every month. They keep people, you know, engaged. They really really figure out who on the board is their best communicator, whether it's a director, an officer or one of their management professionals and they do a good and welfare report each year where they let people know what they've done and what they've accomplished and what the challenges have been. Now our dysfunctional communities, they don't do any of that. So there's a lot going on. Nobody knows what's happening, nobody's communicating with them, and that's where things get very, very rocky. You mentioned a few minutes ago about why are we here, what are we doing? How important do you think mission statements are?
Speaker 2:They're very important. I mean, ultimately the purpose is the most important thing, and so a mission statement can help us figure that out.
Speaker 2:But like you, know, let's just say a community, you know, a board for an HOA or something like. I would assume the purpose is to create that desired environment or that desired outcome for the community. Right, the community is there for wanting a particular experience. Might be safety, might be lifestyle, it might be a certain aesthetic, it might be whatever. That is that the community's decided. What is that purpose? And if we clearly define that and it is agreed upon at at the onset or at some reset point, then it's much easier to make good decisions. It's much easier to make good decisions. It's much easier for the community to say whether or not the board is doing a good job, because if it's about that lifestyle, then are they ultimately making those decisions to help us reach that goal? And so the mission statement, then, can be a good way to make that happen.
Speaker 2:The problem with mission statements is we also make them and then it goes in a drawer, on a wall and like no one ever pays attention to it again, which is why we need to more clearly understand why we exist. What is the purpose of this body, and that should be how you start every meeting. That is how we should start every communication. The goal of this group is to do this, and here is what happened this month and how we addressed it. And you know, whatever, and and continue.
Speaker 2:It's our job as leaders to continue to educate and remind people who are paying attention to a thousand other things in their life about that. We're doing a good job for them. And this is it's wildly frustrating as, as a leader I mean as a CEO I had to spend so much time communicating with people to remind them that I was taking care of them, I was running the organization correctly, that I was making these decisions and what was happening, so that they felt included, they felt like they understood what was happening, they, and that they felt connected to the business so they wouldn't get recruited away to my competitors. And so it was exhausting sometimes because I'd be like, well, can they just trust me, can they just know? I mean, they know me right. But no, I had to continue to remind them. This is why we exist, this is what we're doing, this is our goals and here's how we're doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think some boards shy away from that, chris, because they equate that to governing by consensus. You're never going to govern by consensus, but I do believe when you're expecting people to comply with rules and voluminous rules in some cases I've seen I think the worst was 120 pages of rules and regulations in one condominium client that I had years ago you have to explain why you need these rules. Why is it required that you park head in and not back in?
Speaker 1:There may be a good reason for it or there may be no longer a good reason for it.
Speaker 2:So that's a good one, right? So you need to be like flexible, like if a rule doesn't matter anymore, but if it does, and explaining why that's the transparency, right. So our goal is to maybe it's safe, a safety thing, and so a part of the lifestyle thing is that we're safety, and the reason this rule is in place here is why this is was put in place. So, to your point about consensus it. That's why it's super important for us to talk at the high level, the very like 30,000 foot level. This is our purpose, this is why we're doing these things, and so if those boards who are concerned are shying away from that could take a step up the ladder and talk in more general, larger terms, and not be sending out. Well, here are the five things that we did this month, and we're looking for everyone's opinion because, you're right, it's a disaster.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're never going to make everybody happy disaster.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're never gonna make everybody happy, right, and that can't be the goal. The goal is we said we care about this and our goal is to make sure this is happening and, to that end, this is the decisions we made. This is what we did. If you want to come and talk to at the meeting, great, but, like you know, you want to talk about decision z. We're not worried about that. Our goal is up here and we have to keep redirecting people sometimes to that right and that that's ultimately what we're doing. Well, and how are we doing?
Speaker 1:How do you frame that messaging when you are dealing with generational gaps in a corporate culture, whether it's again a for-profit corporate culture or residential community? I mean, we see those generation gaps, um, in the corporate world, in law firms and management companies and and in private residential communities. How do you, how do you frame the messaging when you've got very different maybe you've got multiple, four different generations working together, maybe more?
Speaker 2:yeah, I think we're up to five now. So, yeah, um, you know a good friend of mine and and fellow speaker, uh, named matt havens. Uh, I heard him speak one time and he said something really I thought was really really great. He said you know, you're either young or you're old. There actually isn't a lot of these generate, you don't worry so much. Like, well, I'm supposed to say one thing to millennials and one thing to gen x and like one thing to gen z and like you either know what a floppy disk is young or old right, you either know what a floppy disk is and a pager or you don't.
Speaker 2:Right? You're either using chat gpt every day or you're not. Like I mean, they're either kind of have like two groups and if you think about it, and inside those groups you could have someone who is technically old or technically young and they are not actually that thing because they behave more like a different group. So are we making sure that for those people who are old are getting what they need and the people that are young are getting what they need, and we're trying to identify what those needs are. Is it high communication? Is it just to feel like we are doing what we said? We do, that we're living up to that purpose for that particular group, Like trying to understand what's important to them, but simplifying it into kind of like two general groups, you'll be able to figure that out right. You'll be able to come up with a much better approach. Or your board or the people that are involved are somewhat representative in both of those groups as well.
Speaker 1:So I know what a pager is, but I use ChatGBT every day and I listen to Charlie at CS, so that makes me old young.
Speaker 2:Yeah, old-time Charlie XCS, so that makes me old young. Yeah, you probably want, you would probably want the things that the young group wants, right, you probably would fall as far as like their priorities and their value. You'd probably fall more in their category and and that's why so it's not an actual age thing, it's more of a your behaviors. And I know some young people that like literally don't use their phone and like can't put a sentence together. I would put them in like what they care about more in the old category, but generally speaking, that's not. Those are the outliers.
Speaker 1:What do you say, though, to the older workers? That don't can't really relate to either, maybe, perhaps the work ethic that they're perceiving, accurately or inaccurately, from younger co-workers and vice versa Younger co-workers who are really frustrated with their older co-workers who are not embracing technology. They don't understand how to get on teams perhaps, or they don't love it, things like that. Is there a? Is there a meat in the middle?
Speaker 2:I mean sure, but remember that we had a better work ethic than the younger generation has been said every generation since the Industrial Revolution. I mean, this is not a new thing. So I always laugh when they're like, oh well, gen Z, they don't have the same work ethic. Yeah, you guys said that about millennials, right, and now they're kicking your butt, so like it's the same thing. What we find that's really helpful is if we have two-way mentoring, so if you can connect somebody who's you know newer to the organization with someone who's been around for a long time and have them do two-way mentoring, right. So what is it that that person, an established person, could learn from that younger or that newer I won't say younger, but that newer person in the organization that might help them grow, and then vice versa. So it's not just that one-way street mentoring, it's not that.
Speaker 1:I love that. I've never heard that before, but you're right, there is an opportunity for two-way mentoring.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, Microsoft does a fantastic job with this. This is like a regular program of theirs, and so it really helps them get on the same page to understand each other better and for them both to get what they need. I'm sure someone who's been around a long time would love to understand more about AI and chat, GPT and whatever else that they may be struggling to learn. There's a newer technology or newer thing, or maybe it's just how to talk to that generation in a better way. And that person who's coming in is like well, how do I navigate the business? And I don't understand. You know why the company does what it does. I mean, there's so much there to help them both be successful.
Speaker 1:You mentioned a few minutes ago when we all started working from home during the shutdowns and everybody was like, how is this going to work? And I think across the board, a lot of companies saw actually increased productivity. Obviously there were pros and cons and there was a lot of fear back then. Obviously during the shutdown, I know, at least in the legal industry. I think this is true in creatives too, because my daughter is out in LA and in her industry they're wanting them to come back four or five days a week as well. First of all, let's talk about those companies that are still allowing work from home, at least a hybrid model. What skills does a leader need to effectively manage a remote team? Do you think?
Speaker 2:Well, they need to understand that remote teams are very different than having a team all in the office. So you're going to have to learn some new skills because you can't just do what you did before. Meetings are different, interactions are different, the signposts are different. You have to realize that we're going to have to re-engineer and shameless plug, but I wrote an entire book about this, because it's a lot. It's not just like I can tell you one thing and you'll be like oh now I know how to do a remote team. There's a lot that is very, very different that you have to do. And so that's one thing.
Speaker 2:But number two is and this is true of all leaders is you need to be wildly introspective. You need to be willing to look at yourself every single day and say what is the story I'm telling myself? Where am I falling short? Where could I be doing better? How can I get my people to help me fill in those gaps? Right, so that it's not a problem for the organization. And then number three is to be a lifelong learner. So great leaders are willing to constantly learn, that do read books and that do want to go to conferences, learn new things and do want to you know, meet their peers in different settings and find out what they're doing to be better and then take that back and go back and be willing to experiment and try. And, lastly, to listen to really talk to their people and listen to what they need.
Speaker 2:We were shocked to find out. We listened to our employees. We had Walden University came in and studied us for an entire year and what we found out was that when we were not remote, they valued personal connection. Of the top five things that were important to them, personal connection was number one, meaning I connect with people at work. I got my work buddies. My manager likes me, like it's a lot because you're, it's your life when you're in an office, like you, all those people around, like you better get along with your teammates, you better get along with people at work or like you're going to be pretty miserable when you work from home. Personal connection is still important, but it's now number five on the list of five. Number one is now work-life balance, which, by the way, is number five when you work in an office the ability to manage your own schedule, the autonomy to be able to manage your own schedule, but also the you need help from your company and your boss to not overwork, because suddenly, when you're in your own home office, you start overdoing it.
Speaker 1:That's exactly the pushback I want to give you a little bit on that, because I think the bloom is off the rose. A little bit for work from home for some people. Bit for work from home for some people, because there was just no delineation between this is my work, I'm at work right now and now I. Now I'm home, I, you know what I've left the office, maybe on the ride home.
Speaker 1:I've decompressed during my commute. I walk in the door. I don't feel as compelled to hop back on my. This isn't me, by the way. I'm always compelled to get on my email, but for normal people I don't feel compelled to get on my email to midnight. I imagine there are some significant percentage of people that feel like I do. Then For a while I thought it was great, I didn't need to. You know I didn't need to dress up to go to my law office. But now I'm kind of wanting that. I really want to get back into the office. I want to be able to pop into my partner's office next door and talk to him or her. Dress up a little bit. I don't think I want to. I don't think anybody I should say most people want to go back to five days a week, but certainly for me, working from home all the time, it lost a lot of its appeal. What do you think about that?
Speaker 2:So when we helped our people create better boundaries, we use some strategies from Atomic Habits. It's a great book of like hey, if it's five o'clock when you're done, close your laptop, close your office door. Like those physical acts could help us shut off. Just like getting in your car and driving late from the office creates that natural click of like okay, I'm done with work now. Um, they needed that help. Um, it's really nice to have the flexibility of like well, I got to take my kid, you know, to the doctor for two hours. I want to come back and add two hours on.
Speaker 2:But, like, making sure that we're having those conversations of like, well, were you able to keep that within reason and not suddenly be working all night long, checking in with our people to really see how they're doing, how they're feeling, are they being burnt out, and then talking to them about why. And we often discover, well, they're working too much. They're doing too much. So the number one problem I had with my remote employees was they were working too much, which was both a legal exposure because were they working more hours than what they were actually clocking me for and telling me they were working and was I putting myself in a potential problem, to have them come back and say well, I know, you told me I only worked eight hours, but I was working 12 hours every single day.
Speaker 1:Wait an hour wait right, and that's a potential lawsuit huge especially being in california.
Speaker 2:I was a california like huge right. So that was one concern. But the second concern was more the burnout, one of like there may be that occasional time when you need to put in a little extra, but like if that's consistently your response, you've got a problem. Man, how do we fix that? And 99% of the time it was. They were doing activities they didn't need to do. They were worrying about stuff they didn't need to worry about. We had to help them prioritize and declutter and get refocused and ultimately they'd end up being far more productive and a much better employee at eight hours than they were doing the 12 hours where they were just all over the road.
Speaker 1:Distractions, chris, like pets, children, elderly parents living in the home that need help, landscapers outside construction, next door. Do any of those distractions?
Speaker 2:play. Not necessarily because at the office you have people bumping into your desk coming up to you asking you to meet and there's just as many distractions at work. I think there's more at work than there is at home. But you have to be really intentional. We would coach people like listen, you know, maybe don't you know. You can coach people like listen, you know, maybe don't. You can't really like work in your office and have your toddler there every day Like that's not gonna work. You're gonna need to figure out again.
Speaker 2:You treat your work like you would if you were at an office. Right, and try to remove some of those things. But we always suggested to people to do either like 45 on, 15 off, or use the pomodoro technique of I think it's 20 or 25 on and then like put your head down and sprint and go hard. For me I could do. 45 minutes is great. Then get up for 15 minutes, check email, get your coffee you could deal with a gardener move the laundry over, pet the dog. Come back 45 minutes again. Um, some people need that 20 minute. 25 minutes was all they could do. That was the right equation for them and that means turning slack off, not having your email open like we would tell them turn that stuff off. Do your highly focused work, then turn that stuff back on. Just that little shift really helped them not to be so distracted and all over the place.
Speaker 1:Is there a societal divide on this, though? Because some people obviously can't work from home. You're a nurse. You're not going to be able to work from home unless you're a nurse making well. Even then, you're making house visits to other people. You're in a landscaping company. You don't have the option to work from home. What do you say to people, in terms of their work-life balance, who don't have the option to work from home?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, there are jobs that absolutely cannot be remote. In your example of nurse, I mean, I've met with tons of telemedicine people. I've met with nurses and doctors over the internet. Um, you know, so there are a lot of advancements and things that can be better. But like, listen, if your job is to pick up the thing and put it in the thing, like at a warehouse, yeah you're. Maybe one day your job will be to control the ai robot, I don't know. Um, instead of picking up the thing. But for right now, yes, there are jobs. A waiter is going to, you know, until we've come up with a robot to take your job away, like you're going to be the waiter in the restaurant doing the thing with the patrons, and so, you know, that's a choice. You may want that kind of job. That may be the job that you can get right now.
Speaker 2:And a lot of companies struggle with, well, what's fair? And you know, what we try to do is come up with policies and compensation that's fair, based on that job. And you know, sometimes it's like, listen, you can't be remote and someone else gets that advantage. How do we, how do we make it fair for them? What is that they get by being in in the office. That's different, right? Maybe they get meals, maybe they get you know, there's some other advantage because they are driving and they're coming. Maybe we pay for their gas, their parking or give them an auto allowance. There might be some different compensation for them Because, again to your point, there are people who want to be in that situation and there are people who want to be remote.
Speaker 2:Also, I find that I got the most amazing people by being able to be as flexible as we could be, by allowing them to not only be remote but to live wherever the heck they wanted to live, to work, depending on the job, stay at home, moms, mostly moms. There was a few dads that could not get a job because we would have let them work six hours and not eight hours. We would let them be not full time, we would let them, you know, and still give them benefits. So we would do all kinds of like crazy things because we could get this incredible person, because it didn't fit into a mold that all the other companies had. Well, it can't work. Full time can't work for us, right? Can't work. Nine to five can't work for us. And we were like, listen, you need to work for four hours and then like you need to take three hours off because you got your kids or whatever, and they got to work four hours. Fine, I don't care, right.
Speaker 1:That's how I became a condo attorney.
Speaker 1:So really it is so I would had been working in downtown Miami at a boutique real estate law firm and then I had my first child, ryan, and I said I just don't want to be working full time, I don't want to keep commuting. I had I was living in Aventura at the time and I was contacted by the firm that I'm now a partner at, becker, and they had a flex time program, chris, and they had a number of female attorneys who were working. I was able to work 10 to 15 hours a week and it was flexible and it's really what kept me Well. First of all, it put me on this path. Up until that point I hadn't been a condo attorney. I hadn't even contemplated going into that practice of law.
Speaker 2:But it was fantastic.
Speaker 1:So to your point that I wouldn't be doing what I've been doing all these years if it hadn't been for that, for the foresight, this firm had to say hey, there's a significant percentage of female attorneys, and maybe even male attorneys, who want to work flex time and right now they need that work-life balance between the number of hours they can commit to their legal career and the number of hours they want to commit to raising the baby right now. So I agree with you. I think flexibility in a menu of choices is ideal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean we used to pick up fantastic people that were spouses of military and because, again, if they needed to move often they would get like their spouse would get reassigned somewhere else or whatever. Their situation could get weird if they were sent away for a month or two overseas and then suddenly their childcare thing got shifted. And so if we committed to them of like you need to change, if you're going to get moved bases, we will continue to pay you. You take that time, take that week to go move your family from this base to that base, we're going to keep paying you. You're not going to lose your job, right, and it doesn't count as vacation. And they were, they were so appreciative of that, like if someone ever came knocking at their door to come and recruit them away, they flip them the bird and say I'm never leaving this job, ever, right't touched on loyalty.
Speaker 1:What creates that loyalty? I meant just what you described the flexibility. Are there other factors that create that level of loyalty with your?
Speaker 2:employees. I mean, it's the golden rule right Of like treat people how you want to be treated. I mean, if I had this crazy situation to happen in my life, I want the company to help me and do whatever it could to make it easy for me during that time so that I can continue to work for them. The company makes it hard for me and wants to punish me and wants to look down on me and wants to, you know, not basically do everything it can to make this hard situation harder. I got no loyalty right and we also can create loyalty by asking our people great questions and meetings, asking how they're really showing up, asking how they're leaving the meeting, and when we discover that there's something going on in their lives, that's when we need to jump in hard and say, hey, let's talk about this. How can I help you? Like, oh, your grandma has cancer, like you know, let's figure out how the team can help you, support you.
Speaker 2:It's when there's that moment to have empathy, that moment to help you need to jump in with two feet and just be all over that and I just get rid of the stupid stuff. Like no one needs you to be constantly doing like little tiny things, those don't matter. I mean, I guess they kind of matter. I don't want to be like we'll throw it all away, but it matters how you show up when something's when that person really needs it.
Speaker 2:I think that's how you create loyalty. You create loyalty by being very transparent about what you're trying to do and where you're trying to go and if it's actually working right so people can believe in the company because they actually know what to believe in right. That creates loyalty. And then also to be perfectly upfront and honest that we all know you're on the bus right now and you may not be on the bus forever, and that's okay. We don't expect you don't have that toxic thing of like you you're gonna be an employee forever. You're never gonna leave us like's silly. We should be trying to develop you and help you and if one day you run out of runway with us, we're going to be really sad you left, but we're going to understand and that's okay.
Speaker 1:So if you handle it in a gracious manner, you set yourself up for referrals in the future, the potential to continue the relationship. Like I've seen, if we have attorneys who leave, there's an ability, depending on where they go, for us to continue to maintain a relationship that's productive for them and for us.
Speaker 1:But what you're talking about Chris is a level of introspection again. So some companies lament the fact that you know, oh, we treated them well and then they left without any sort of introspection as to were they really treated well? Did the company really step up when they had a personal issue and they needed help?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they needed some flexibility. You know, I know you can address this better than I, but I read certain articles where European countries may adapt a more flexible corporate culture than America. Do you think that America is trending more toward, you know, post pandemic, where we now have more flexible working arrangements? Do you think that the trend is going to be, with American companies maybe embracing a more flexible culture along the lines of some European counterparts?
Speaker 2:The good news is the most amount of people have the highest amount of access to flexible work whether that's remote or hybrid or whatever than they've ever had since the Industrial Revolution. Covid is a blip of well. We had to all do something because of a particular reason. But that aside, currently we have the most amount of people who have access to that, and prior to that, it was just managers and salespeople that had access to that kind of arrangement. So it's pretty remarkable the amount of people that actually have access to it now and that will only grow and get better.
Speaker 2:Yes, there's going to be these pendulum shifts and these tech companies are doing different things and people are figuring that out, but we also know that, like more small businesses are allowing it than ever have ever happened, small business is actually where most people work. Most people don't work for a large tech company, so it's there Now in Europe and Ireland and different places. They've literally made it like a right that you know they have hard-coded flexible work into there. They've made it where, if you have particular disabilities or needs that, you have access to that and it's not a choice and we can debate that all day long back and forth, but you know, flexible work allows us to have these different groups of people I talked about, you know, stay at home parents.
Speaker 2:I talked about, you know, military spouses. I didn't get to. We also had a lot of people who are physically disabled. They were neurodivergent, that could not, for whatever reason, get to an office or exist in an office on a consistent basis, and this allowed those great people who couldn't get jobs anywhere else that again were like fantastic and super loyal to us, to work for us. So is it a little bit of hard work? Yes, is it harder than trying to recruit all of the same people that your competitors want? Absolutely not. I think it's easier. I think it's a better way to go.
Speaker 1:I think your overarching message is flexibility is a lot more effective than rigidity. You mentioned AI a while ago. Do you think artificial intelligence has the ability to improve corporate culture? Are you looking at a more dystopian future related to it?
Speaker 2:Both I'm thinking about both right. So on the dystopian side, it could be that actually it screws everything up because we don't believe that anyone actually understands or is reading or hearing us, because the AI is doing all this summarizing and doing all this work for us. I'm like, are we now back to? If I'm not meeting with you in person, I'm not physically in your presence, I can't believe, and you can't believe, that we're actually having a conversation Like that's the dystopian problem. We'll see how that gets solved.
Speaker 2:But on the good side, it's well. It's actually a lot easier to be transparent, it's a lot easier to measure, it's a lot easier to do all the things that I'm telling you to do by having this great tool right. I mean you could take the notes, you could record the the senior level meeting right, and then you could put that in chat, gpt, and say create a transparent, you know, like summary or bullet point of the really large topics and outcomes that we talked about. That I can send to the whole company Like that's a two second thing, and now I can be wildly transparent to everybody. I can review it to make sure it wasn't anything I shouldn't have, shouldn't be saying right at this point and and it it wasn't hard, whereas when I was doing it it was hard. I had to write that email myself. You know it was a lot of work. Now I have a tool that will help me do it in a way easier way. But like but it's not taking a human capital business. We all really are in human capital business.
Speaker 1:So it really does boil down to not losing that, the humanity of what we do. Chris, is there anything I should have asked you? That I didn't ask you about what you do, your keynote speeches, your focus right now?
Speaker 2:No, no, I think you, we talked about some great stuff and I always like to remind everyone. Well, I mean two things. One, if anyone is interested in some additional resources, want to know more about how to have better meetings, how to survey your people better, if you're interested in anything like that, you can text 33777 and just put my name, chris, as the message, and I will send you a free PDF and you'll get my newsletter and all that if you want it. If you don't, you can opt out of that. But the other thing is to remember what you focus on grows, and that has been something that has fundamentally changed my perspective as a leader.
Speaker 2:I focus on the negative. I'm going to get more negative. I focus on what's not working. I'm more is not going to work and it just seems like weird hippie, I don't know, like you know spiritual, like mumbo jumbo, but like I can't argue with the fact that when I focus on what's working and I focus on what's good and I really put my effort towards that, I get more of that and I'm happier and that grows and I start to deal with problems and issues, but those seem to go away and kind of dissipate and figure themselves out most of the time. So if you're struggling, go focus on the good stuff. Go get curious about what your best people are doing. Go talk to your best clients. Go do more of that and you'll probably be a lot happier.
Speaker 1:Great advice, as we are on the eve of probably 50% of this country being unhappy one way or the other. Considering how divided we are Folks, I can't recommend highly enough reading Chris's books the Power of Company Culture and Remote Work and I can already see you would be a fantastic keynote speaker for some of the larger management companies who have to deal not only with their internal corporate culture but all these other private residential community cultures that they contend with. So I hope your phone rings after this episode. You've been fantastic. I could talk to you all day, but I want to thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2:All right. Thank you so much, Donna.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us today. Don't forget to follow and rate us on your favorite podcast platform, or visit TakeItToTheBoardcom for more ways to connect.