#114 Planning for Your Year of Intentional Culture

In this episode of The Culture Coach Podcast, I’m pulling back the curtain on three powerful programs I’ve created to help leaders design intentional cultures that prevent burnout, increase performance, and create thriving organizations.

All three programs officially open on September 29th, but you don’t have to wait—when you sign up now, you’ll start receiving updates and get immediate access on launch day.

Here’s what I cover in this episode:

• Why I created these three programs and how they work together
• The difference between community, sprint planning, and CEO-level support
• How to choose which path is right for you or your organization

✨ The Programs:

Culture Strategy Lab – A community designed for leaders who want research, frameworks, and live support each month to build culture intentionally.
🔗 culturecoachwendy.com/strategylab

Culture Strategy Sprints – 3-month sprint programs where you’ll create and implement a clear, actionable culture plan that aligns with your business strategy.
🔗 culturecoachwendy.com/strategysprints

The Empowered CEO – A 6-month program for CEOs who want to grow their own leadership capacity while building an intentional culture that scales.
🔗 culturecoachwendy.com/ceo

Whether you’re a CEO ready to lead with confidence, or an HR leader building culture strategy, there’s a place for you to start.

🎧 Listen in to decide which program is right for you—and get ready to take action on September 29th!

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With 25+ years of leadership experience, spanning multiple roles across corporations and non-profits, I have gained a wealth of experience in understanding what makes organizations successful.

FREE Culture Roadmap Webinar Series: http://CultureCoachWendy.com/WebinarSeries

FREE DOWNLOAD - The Culture Strategy Audit:
https://culturecoachwendy.com/cultureaudit/

Online Community - The Culture Strategy Lab:
https://culturecoachwendy.com/strategylab/

FREE Online Mini Course - The C.E.O. Reset:
https://culturecoachwendy.mykajabi.com/offers/zqP7fYvR/checkout

CONNECT WITH ME
Website: CultureCoachWendy.com
LinkedIn: Linkedin.com/in/wendybrand/
Instram: Instagram.com/culturecoachwendy
YouTube: YouTube.com/@CultureCoachWendy

The CultureCoach Podcast Page: CultureCoachWendy.com/podcasts/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:10

You are listening to the Culture Coach Podcast. This is the place where CEOs and people first leaders come to boost productivity, extinguish burnout, and cultivate a vibrant culture that reflects a fully integrated mission, vision, and core values. Get ready to take your culture to the next level. I am your host, Wendy Brand. Welcome back to the Culture Coach Podcast. I'm your host, Wendy Brand. So excited to be back with you. Sorry, we missed a week last week. Um, had some sad news. I had a loss in my family. My father passed last weekend and needed to just take a week, as you can imagine. Um, but I'm happy to be back here and I'm really excited about this episode because I just have something really exciting to share with you. I've had people reaching out asking how we could work together, people that don't live in my com in my city that I'm not able to work with directly on a regular basis. And so I've been working behind the scenes for quite a long time on ways that I could work together, work with others in a community through programs. And so I've put together a couple things that I'm excited to tell you about. But first, I want to set the stage for those of you maybe that that are new to the podcast or don't know me as well as others. My area of expertise is change management, transformation. It's kind of the space that I've lived my entire career. Started out in event planning, uh, the NCA Final Four basketball tournament. I was the executive director uh in our uh in the in our city in San Antonio, Texas. That was over 20 years ago. Had some leadership, uh high-level leadership roles like that early on in my career. And it wasn't until I took a step down. Um, there was a tech company that was headquartered in San Antonio, where I was living, and they had really gotten this reputation for being a great place to work. They were fast growing. I knew nothing about technology, but I stepped down from uh from a CEO role of a local nonprofit to pivot and work at this tech company. And it wasn't until, you know, I really thought I knew what it was to be a good leader, to um to build a team. And it wasn't until I worked at this tech company that I really realized what an intentional culture looked like. And from there, you know, I've had another decade of experience leading transformation globally across a tech organization, retail, um, and then working with clients since going out on my own in October of 2022. So I live and breathe this stuff. I'm excited about different ways. I mean, I, you know, I've been having these, hosting these culture strategy sessions, these free monthly calls. And it's been a lot of fun to get to talk to a lot of you, understand what your pain points are in your culture, talk strategy, talk frameworks for how to move forward in creating an intentional culture in your own organization. And so, because of that, and because of my desire to continue to work with more of you and create opportunities for us to collaborate and connect, I have three different programs that I'm gonna talk to you about today. And the first program is the Culture Strategy Lab. Now, this is similar to those free culture strategy sessions that I've been hosting, except it's like that call on steroids. Because I will be hosting monthly hot seats where I'll be doing group coaching, um individuals bringing their culture issues to the table. We'll talk through it, we'll use a framework, and I'll coach and give direction on how leaders can move forward with some of the challenge that they face in creating an intentional culture. So this is the Culture Strategy Lab. If you want to learn more about it, and I'm gonna talk, I'll give you some more details, but uh culturecoachwendy.com forward slash strategy lab is where you can find more about it. Again, it's gonna be monthly calls. This is for CEOs, founders, HR leaders, uh, change champions, culture champions, anybody that is working to create an intentional culture in your organization. If that's your role, this is the place for you where you can meet with like-minded peers and have access to resources. I am constantly, you should see the stack of books on my bookshelf that are all related to culture, the articles, the conferences um that I've attended, that I'm continuing to attend, so that I'm always staying on top of the latest trends, challenges, and ways to increase and uh increase the employee experience and really create an intentional culture in your organization. So the Culture Strategy Lab, it's$57 a month. It's a month to pay as you go, month to month. There's no commitments. You can drop at any time if you want to come in for a month, have access to the resources, meet a couple people, and then exit, you're welcome to do that. You know, we know that culture takes more than a month to solve, but this is a resource for you a month at a time. You can sign up for a year, whatever works best for you financially. But it is going to be a place where you'll want to spend some time and learn and engage with your peers in this culture strategy lab. So that's the first program that is accessible to anybody. I've made it low entry, low cost, so that anybody can be there, but don't think that it's a cheap option. This is for again, CEOs, founders, CE, CHROs, anyone really wanting to delve in, get um monthly access to me and continuous access through a portal where you'll have access to all of the resources that I have on building culture in your organization. So if that sounds interesting, you can check that out at uh culturecoachwindy.com forward slash strategy lab and um learn more there. Okay, the second program, because like I said, you know, we all know that it's more than culture transformation, it's gonna take more than a month. And you can sign up for the strategy lab for a year at a time if you'd like, and you'll still get that monthly access to me. But if you need more hands-on support, I've created these culture strategy sprints. And so if you have worked in the tech industry at all, you know what a sprint is, it's or if you're familiar with agile at all, um, it's really no longer for technology. There's all kinds of different industries that use um sprints as a way to develop and create in in with incremental change. And so these strategy sprints that I've created are the three-month sprints. There is a monthly cost if you want to just do it for a month, but it's weekly calls with me over a three-month time period. And we will use my core culture framework. We will uh assess your culture and we'll spend three months. We'll spend each week for three months looking at your culture, where the opportunities are, uh, selecting initiatives maybe that you can start right away, or if you've if you're midway through an initiative and you need to talk through the change management piece of it, we'll dig into that. It's really dedicated time with me weekly with a group. It's not one-on-one support, but it is group support, and you can purchase additional one-on-one um uh sessions if needed. But these weekly calls with the group, um where we focus on uh pinpointing areas of opportunity and initiatives that you can launch for your culture. Now, if you're interested in this more hand-holding, dedicated space, these culture strategy sprints, you can go to you guessed it, culturecoachwendy.com forward slash strategy sprints. So those are the two programs that if regardless of what your role is in your organization, if you are focused on creating an intentional culture, pop yourself into either one of those programs and let's get started. Now, I will say all three of these programs that I'm talking about do not launch until September 29th. So as we move into the last quarter of the year, that's when these things are kicking off. And um, but you can sign up today, you'll start getting weekly emails from me just to kind of get you ramped up. I'll send you some pre-work. And September 29th is when everything will kick off, and you'll get access to the portal where these resources are stored for both the strategy lab community and those culture strategy sprints. And then finally, the third product that I have is specifically for CEOs. And this is a small cohort. I only have a certain number of spots available. And so if you're a CEO that wants to focus number one on your culture, but also on yourself. I'm excited about this six-month program. The CEO is clarity, energy, and ownership. So we're gonna dig deep first on getting clarity around what you want and need in your organization and and yourself. So looking at your own personal core values, how they align with your organization's core values, then we're gonna look at your at energy. How do you spend your day? What are you what is draining your energy? What is filling your cup? And how can you do more of that? How are you delegating? How are you assigning the time during your day and getting the most out of your day? And bringing your best, highest energy to the team, to the table, to your strategy. So clarity, energy, and the final thing is ownership and really creating a leadership team backed by accountability. I've done a lot of work with my clients using Patrick Lincioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team. If you've heard of that book, there's a framework called The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team. And I've got a full episode on it. If you haven't heard that episode, go back and listen to it. I'll drop the link in the show notes. Um, but it's all, I mean, it is based on your leadership team holding each other accountable. So you're not constantly being pulled down to solve problems that you should not be solving at your level. So this six-month program, we meet twice a month. It's a group of peers, a small group, only 10 individuals. So again, it's a small cohort. So sign up now if you're interested. It also launches at the end of September and runs through March, but included in this program in January is a full day in-person strategic planning session uh in Green, Texas, in the hill country, in the hill country on the river, this gorgeous facility. You can spend the night or not spend the night, but the cost of the full day strategic planning session is included in the cost of your program. Now, if you sign up for the strategy lab, the culture strategy lab community, or those culture strategy sprints, those three-month sprints, you will have access to pay and attend these strat the strategy all day in-person strategy session in January. But if you're a CEO and you're in my empowered CEO program, then that is included. And what we're gonna do in January is we're gonna really start your year off right. Um, it's that first weekend of January after you're coming back from the holidays. It's a full day of mapping out your culture strategy so that 2026 is locked and loaded and you're ready to go. I'm really excited about that piece. I've I've done these events at this facility before in green, and it's just such a beautiful backdrop. And after you've been working with a group, with a cohort for a couple months to come together in person is just so exciting and um it really helps you bond and build those relationships for the rest of the cohort through March. So if you're interested in that program, it is culturecoachwendy.com forward slash CEO. So that's it. Those are the three programs that I am launching at the end of September. And again, it's just the perfect opportunity if you are focused on culture in your organization. If you're not, and and you think you should be, um, if you have members on your team that you want to get into the community, you you can add as many people as you want. It's$57 a person per month. Um, you can add them at any time. You can swap yourself, you know, you can join at first. And then if you want to change out and have someone from your team start attending, you're welcome to do that to access the materials and be a part of the community where we're solving problems, learning best practices. It's the perfect place to do that. So you have the community, you have um the culture strategy sessions and the culture sprints, I'm sorry. And I will tell you that if you if you join Culture Strategy Sprints or the Empowered CEO, you get full access to the community while you're in those programs. So you can join the community on its own, go in and out month to month, however you prefer. You can do my three-month culture strategy sprints where we tackle things one quarter at a time, or you can sign up for my empowered CEO program. It's a six-month program where you're focused on not only yourself, bringing clarity to what you desire from your leadership and your organization, to protecting your energy and understanding how that impacts your team and your leadership ability. And finally, ownership, how you are owning and creating accountability with your team and your organization. And you'll walk away with a culture strategy plan for 2026. I hope that this has been an informative session uh episode. I hope you don't mind me sharing all of that detail and taking us a little off topic this week, as I just really want to make sure everyone's aware of the programs. I'll be promoting it obviously on LinkedIn. If you're in my newsletter, you're gonna see more about it. Head over to my website if you want to get access to that newsletter. It's culturecoachwendy.com. Next week, we'll have another culture strategy topic. And that's it for this week. Thank you so much for listening. If you know anyone who might be interested in any of these, share this episode, go on to Apple Podcasts or Spotify, like it, comment, and I will see you next week. Thank you so much.