Your Culture Called - It Wants Its Standards Back: Mike Walrod on Accountability & Leadership Drift

What happens when a leader avoids the hard people decisions—and everyone else quietly lowers their standards to match?

In this episode of Leadership Levers, Mike Walrod, founder of Incite Business Strategies and longtime fractional integrator of EOS shares why accountability is one of the most powerful cultural signals a leader sends.

With over 30 years in operations and executive roles, Mike has seen the same pattern across organizations - people issues ignored at the top become performance issues everywhere else.

Through EOS’s “right person, right seat” framework, Mike helps leadership teams confront misalignment, rebuild trust, and reset expectations—often for the first time in years. And when leaders finally raise the bar, the culture responds almost immediately.

Mike walks through:

• Why people issues must be fixed before processes
• How one misaligned leader creates a ripple effect across culture and morale
• Why employees watch what leaders tolerate—not what they say
• How communication breakdowns fuel organizational drift
• Why resetting standards begins with honest, direct conversations. 

Mike also shares how fractional integrators help teams rebuild trust, alignment, and clarity by reigniting honest conversations—often the first candid conversation the team has had in years.

For leaders navigating team dysfunction, misalignment, or cultural stagnation, this episode is a reminder that accountability isn’t punitive—it's cultural stewardship. And culture changes the moment leaders decide to raise the bar again.

Seeking to align your culture, boost performance & impact your bottom line? Let’s chat—no sales, just real talk about your challenges. Not ready? Join our PL3 Community for free insights & connections.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Guest Intro
• 1:36 Mike’s Background And EOS Focus
• 3:34 Why Healthy Culture Matters
• 5:24 People vs Process vs Profit
• 7:06 Right Person Right Seat In Practice
• 9:35 Tolerating Problems Erodes Culture
• 11:21 Building Communication Bridges
• 11:55 Closing And Listener Invitation

Transcript

William Gladhart: 0:00

Welcome to the Leadership Levers Podcast. I'm your host, Will Gladhart, CMO at The Culture Think Tank. At The Culture Think Tank, we empower leaders with metrics that strengthen culture, drive performance, and return. We're here today to learn about the actions leaders have taken to address organizational change. Today, our guest is Mike Walrod, founder at Incite Business Consultants. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us. Let's begin by having you share with our audience a bit about yourself, your background, and your organization.

Mike Walrod: 0:36

Thanks for having me on, Will. I really appreciate it, I founded Icite Business Strategies. We do consulting. I've been doing it for with Insight for 10 years. Prior to that, I was with a financial services company for 23 years, give or take, where I basically was in the operation side for that whole time. And that's where I grew my love for all things operations and being a leader. Started doing Insight Business in 2014. Started out doing some strategic consulting, some project-based consulting, and then over the years kind of evolved into some MA stuff and kind of got into the interim, which is now called fractional. So interim COO, interim CEO type work, and then started doing fractional COO. And more recently, I am spending most of my time doing fractional integrator work for companies that run EOS, which is the entrepreneurial operating system. And so I've been focusing a lot on that probably the last three years, not quite three years. It's been great.

William Gladhart: 1:39

Yeah. And also I was interested to talk with you. One, because your background in EOS, but also in the crossover with CEPA as well, with certified exit planning. As we begin, we'll be discussing three questions today. As a warm-up to our conversation, would you share why you believe a healthy culture is critical?

Mike Walrod: 1:57

It's interesting. I was having this conversation with someone earlier today about working and having a healthy environment to work in. And you spend a huge bulk of your life, your adult life, in the workplace or working with people. And it should be fun. It should be a place that you enjoy, a place you want to go to and not a place that you dread. And I think that's why the foundational things that culture bring are huge in order for you to have a one productive life and also a productive place of work and able to get more things done. Because if you're in a positive frame of mind, your ability to do good things and great things is so much enhanced as opposed to going into a place that is you don't want to go or it's toxic, or to me, kind of bottom line is you should have fun. Go to a place that you enjoy going to and work with people you enjoy working with. And if you have that, it's amazing what could happen.

William Gladhart: 2:54

Well, I think what you're speaking to is certainly around positive culture, but also driving innovation, thoughtfulness, all sorts of different things, but also creating an area where people feel like they can be productive, well-being is encouraged, and the whole push person can come to work. So I think that that really speaks to a lot of different organizations that I do like the analogy of having fun because uh why would you want to go and stand at the front door and dread that you have to walk into the office every day? Let's begin with our first question. It's been our experience that leaders tend to struggle in three key areas people, process, and profits. In your role as a leader and also working with CEOs and other leaders, could you identify which of these three areas represented a cultural challenge in organizations you worked with?

Mike Walrod: 3:40

It's interesting because from my perspective, profit comes is a byproduct of the other things that we're going to talk about. And then the other thing is the cornerstones is it people versus process. A lot of times when I come into an organization, really it foundationally is the issues rely around those two things. It's either a people issue or a process issue. And from my perspective, you have to handle the people things first. You have to create a good team, you have to have a strong team. In order for really anything else good to happen, you could have the best processes in the world. And if you don't have a good team, it's just not going to work. If you have the best team in the world, you could have mediocre processes and still do really well. And then fix the processes. And then by doing all those things, if you have good people, good process, then all the profitability, the things that you're going to work on, your long-term goals, all those things, they will happen. But unless you have a really strong team, it's really tough.

William Gladhart: 4:37

I think that's a really good point. Certainly with managers having some of the least set of skills, at least that we've seen in terms of not that they aren't fantastic workers, but sometimes people are punching the checklist and you know, not looking at the greater piece of what's happening in the organization or what's being impacted. But then again, that could be solely based on the leaders. As you've thought about those challenges, especially with people in process and your work with EOS, could you give us an example of something that either you worked through or it was negatively impacting the organization? And then we'll kind of talk about the flip side of more the positive impact.

Mike Walrod: 5:15

Yeah, absolutely. EOS, one of the things that they do really well is they make you accountable. Everybody's accountable for each other. And you can't shove something under a rock and ignore it. You have to deal with it and in a positive and proactive way. And one of the things that they really work on is making sure that your team is good. They have this thing called RPRS, which is right person, right seat. And so it's a good way for you to evaluate whether you have the right people in the right seats in your company. So your is your leadership the right people in those specific positions? And so what I found out, and being a fractional integrator, I've had the benefit of seeing lots of different companies and lots of different environments and lots of different issues. And so I've encountered quite a bit of things. And one of the things I found out is if you have someone who is in a leader, especially a leadership position, who should not be in that position and nothing is being done about it, then that creates huge, it's a big ripple effect and it really hampers the company. It goes back to one of the earlier things we talked about as far as culture. If you're ignoring a people problem in your organization, everybody else watches. They assume that you're accepting that issue and that's okay, even though it might not be. That's the assumption. And one of the things that I find when I go in is a lot of times there'll be a person in a position that they probably shouldn't be in. They might be a really good fit for the company, but maybe not in the position that they're in. And so what we do is we work really hard trying to figure out okay, what how do we fix this? How do we help them? Again, kind of going back to what we talked about earlier. Work should be fun. And a lot of times, if you're the wrong person in a seat, you're not having fun. You're miserable, you're not having fun. A lot of times people around you are not having fun. And so one of the things that's really beneficial and what I really like is going in and trying to figure out and evaluate how do we fix that problem? Because not only does it fix the team, it really helps that person, individual person, become better. And certainly their life usually becomes more enjoyable. That is really beneficial for me.

William Gladhart: 7:11

I think that's a really interesting statement, uh, especially that people are watching and people are watching the leader and what you're willing to accept. We worked with an organization a while ago that uh there were a number of staff that were chronically late to work. I'm not talking like five minutes, I'm talking 15 to 30 minutes. And that was being accepted by leadership, and everyone else was kind of looking around and going, Well, I show up on time. I'm here, I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. Well, how come they're not? So it was creating a disparity, especially in the culture of haves, have nots, but also what leadership was willing to accept. And it really boiled down to they were too afraid to address the people issue because they thought individuals would leave. And all you're doing is Well, okay, well, who's gonna leave? Do you want your people that show up at 8 a.m. Right to leave, or do you want your people that show up at 8 30 who are supposed to be there at 8 o'clock to leave? That's a totally different conversation. I appreciate that you bring that up. Is there one thing in your work as you worked with a variety of these organizations, especially in the fractional role, that you've identified that has helped impact a culture positively or a leader positively?

Mike Walrod: 8:17

That is one of my favorite things about what I do is being able to work with everybody in the leadership team. And the reason why I really like it is because I am able to a lot of times create communication bridges that weren't there before. One of the positive things that I bring to an organization is I start having open dialogues and communication with everybody in the leadership team and start encouraging them to do that with the other leaders. Because a lot of times when I come in, the issues that I find is really a result of no one talking. They're just kind of doing their own thing and they're not, they don't feel like they can be open with another leader and talk to them about the issues or ask for help. What I do is I am very purposeful about asking them, what do you have going on? What are your stumbling blocks? What's holding you back? And then having that same conversation with the other leader. And then a lot of times you find out this person's not helping me and I'm not helping this person. And the next part of the conversation is, have you guys talked about it? Let's figure out a way where we can communicate. You know, no, that's right. It's weird because people who've worked together for 10 or 15 years, they're just not communicating real well. And so one of the things that I really enjoy is coming into an organization and trying to help improve their communication. And it's amazing how light bulbs pop up in people's heads, like, oh, if I would have been doing this five years ago, where could we be? And that's all great, but let's just move forward. We figured it out, let's move forward. Now you know how to do it, let's just keep doing it.

William Gladhart: 9:39

And I think that's a there's a really important point for other leaders to think about is that communication aspect, but also the impact on other leaders and other people around you. Because if you're not effectively communicating in any situation, then things are happening, things are drifting. I'm sure you walked into many situations, like you said, where five years have passed and no light bulbs went on, but all of a sudden people are like, oh, well, right, that was pretty simple, but we just didn't have the skill set or we didn't have a way to actually do it. So I think that facilitation, I mean, and I'm sure you've seen a major impact as organizations improve that communication, especially in the leadership suite, that's trickled down to all levels positively of the organization.

Mike Walrod: 10:22

Behavior is modeled. It is absolutely modeled. You were mentioning about the people who are chronically late. If they understand that that's accepted and the bar is lowered, conversely, when communication improves and all these other things, they start modeling that. It's a good way to raise the bar back up if it's been lowered before. So it's a nice Yeah, that's a that's a great point.

William Gladhart: 10:41

I like that. As we wrap up today, is there anything else you'd like to share or any insights for other fellow leaders?

Mike Walrod: 10:48

I think one of the things, what I like about EOS, and this is not necessarily a plug for EOS, but what I like about my involvement as being a fractional integrator in EOS is that I understand that I don't know, I don't think I ever know enough. And so I continue to try and learn and work on my trade because there's periods of my time like I've been in executive roles for 30 plus years. And some points are like, ah, you know, I know as much as I need to know. And kind of like the last three or four years, I was like, you know what, I can always, always work to improve. And if I do that, it's more energizing. I appreciate things more, I'm more engaged. And so I think my message is it's up to us as leaders and even followers that we need to do what is right in order to improve our everyday lives, improve our skills and even our soft skills, leadership skills. We should never be satisfied with where we're at.

William Gladhart: 11:42

That's really good insight. I appreciate that. So, Mike, I've enjoyed having you on our Leadership Lovers podcast. Appreciate your insights. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us on the Leadership Levers Podcast. Find all our Leadership Lovers episodes on the Culture Think Tank website at www.theculture think tank.com or listen on your favorite streaming platform. We'd love to hear from you about the challenges you have faced as a leader. Tune in weekly as we invite leaders to share their experiences in strengthening culture and performance one action at a time.