#22: The Costly Leadership Mistake That’s Killing Your Business Culture with Jeremiah Shaw

Are your company values just words on the wall, or do they actually shape the way you do business?

In this episode of Brewing Business with Brady, Jeremiah Shaw joins Mason Brady to discuss the real impact of company values on business success. Too often, leaders talk about culture, but fail to align their decisions with their stated values. Jeremiah shares his journey, his passion for leadership in blue-collar industries, and the unexpected financial impact of value-driven leadership.

You’ll learn:
✅ Why many companies fail at living their values (and how to fix it)
✅ The hidden cost of misalignment – and why it’s hurting your business more than you realize
✅ How business owners can define and reinforce their values to build stronger teams
✅ Why some companies struggle to retain top talent – and how values play a role
✅ The #1 mistake CEOs make when trying to implement values-driven leadership

If you’re a business leader looking to strengthen your company culture and improve decision-making, this episode is a must-listen!

🎙 Guest: Jeremiah Shaw
🔗 Connect with Jeremiah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremiah-shaw-maol-acc-50607532/
🌎 Learn more about Grovity Leadership: https://www.grovityleadership.com/

🎙 Host: Mason Brady
🔗 Connect with Mason on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/masonbrady/

🌎 Learn more about Brady CFO: www.bradycfo.com 

💡 Giveaway Alert!
Want to win a Brady CFO Mug? 

Watch the full episode to find out how! 

🔔 Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review if you enjoyed the episode!

#leadershipdevelopment #companyculture #businesssuccess #corevalues #entrepreneurship #businessgrowth #bluecollarleadership #executivecoaching

Connect with Mason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/masonbrady/

Visit BradyCFO: https://www.bradycfo.com/

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Have a business growth question you'd like Mason to cover in an upcoming episode? Email: info@bradycfo.com

Transcript

Mason Brady (00:29)
Welcome back to another episode of Brewing Business with Brady. Today's guest is Jeremiah Shaw. We are so excited to have you on the episode today, Jeremiah. Thanks for having, thanks for being with us today.

Jeremiah Shaw (00:40)
Yeah, thanks for having me. Looking forward to it, Mason.

Mason Brady (00:42)
Awesome. Jeremiah, tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell the audience what makes Jeremiah, Jeremiah.

Jeremiah Shaw (00:49)
That's a weighted question depending on who you ask. So I'm glad you asked me. What makes me me? Yeah. Been married for 15 years to just my best friend. We met just right out of college. In college, got married a few years out of college and it's been fun. We've got three kids, 13 year old daughter, 11 year old son, almost nine year old daughter. It blows my mind how just how fast it goes. Very community.

engaged on the local school board here. I've worked for nonprofits in my past. So very, but I love business. And so what I've tried to do is blend both. And so as I can stay involved in my community, we can also be in business. On top of that, I've got two golden retrievers, one of my favorite dogs, although I'm looking for a bird dog possibly. My son and I do a lot of bird hunting. I do a lot outdoors. On the weekends, I'm outdoor fishing, hiking.

My dream job would be able to just have people fly in and I can coach them on the river while we fly fish. Like that's my dream. Like if money didn't matter, someday maybe I'll be able to figure out how to make a living doing that. But yeah, that's me kind of in a quick nutshell.

Mason Brady (01:53)
There you go.

Awesome, man. Yeah. Great. Great intro. And yeah, good to learn a little bit more about, yeah, the dream of owning a fly fishing camp, you know, or instructional, yeah, set up someday. So that'd be good. I, I know, yeah, you and my brother, my brother fly fishes, he's got, he does more hunting now, but I think you and my brother would get along really well. So that's good. so yeah, obviously this is brewing business with Brady Jeremiah and, yeah, we, start every conversation kind of figuring out.

How does our guest, what do they take in the morning? What do they drink in the morning? What's in their mug? So yeah, what's in your mug today?

Jeremiah Shaw (02:38)
Yeah, well I'm I am my 40s officially now and I still can't grow like a full beard like the one you have so I 20 years ago. I started drinking just black coffee. This is actually Americano It's kind of my go-to Americano from the espresso machine every morning So the hope was that it would help my beard come in it's not working so but I've just stuck to it So that's my choice Americano is black no cream nothing

Mason Brady (02:59)
Yeah, I...

Fair enough, fair enough. Is it like, you know, you're not a man unless you drink coffee black. Is that what started that? Or you don't like any of the flavoring or anything?

Jeremiah Shaw (03:12)
I just don't like the flavoring. also, you know, relatively active and health conscious, I'm like, why add the calories? I mean, I think there's like five calories in a cup of black coffee. So, and I just like the taste of it.

Mason Brady (03:26)
Fair enough, fair enough, great. Yeah, I'm really excited to have you on the show today, Jeremiah, I think in the little bit I've gotten to know you and kind of the circles in which we've interacted that you're like, I hope I'm not going too far over assuming with this, but I mean, you're a hunter, you're a guy's guy, right? Like you're a guy's guy and you at the same time are a leadership coach. And I want to be honest that

you know, especially in the blue collar business owned space, or I should say, you know, lot of trades, construction, logistics, agriculture, et cetera. The concept of leadership and, you know, leadership coaching and whether people need a leadership coach, et cetera, sometimes it can be a frowned upon topic. Like, that that's, you know, kind of frou frou stuff out there. And I think you and I both would disagree that I've seen a lot of, you know, benefit from coaching and personal, you know, executive or business coaching and

Just getting another perspective. And so I'm really excited to dive in with you today. especially to hear your perspective and, and, yeah, I, I, I know personally, you have a powerful approach to helping leaders define and live by their values. And you are a very values oriented person that, know, when, you know, when I asked you to introduce yourself, you actually didn't bring up anything about your business. you brought up everything about who you are as a husband, a father, and then you are a school board leader and a hunter, but you brought up.

really nothing about your business at all. And so I can, know, for the audience to understand you are a very values oriented person. Share a personal story that inspired your journey into coaching though, and values driven leadership. Tell us what got you into it.

Jeremiah Shaw (05:07)
Yeah, no, think value, I'm very passionate about values, so really excited to talk about this today. And like you said, I try not to introduce myself in line with business. And when I'm in rooms with the most wise business people that I can be in, what I hear is that they usually start off with like, hey, this is who I am. It's not who I am professionally or personally, it's just who I am. And so, like you're getting at, yeah, I choose to work with

audiences that I say wear jeans and boots to work, right? The blue collar industries, big machinery, oil and gas, those types of things, construction. Just because I think that is what I relate to as well. I really enjoy being around those types of people. As far as how I got into values, my father was a therapist. And so with that said, he's very, very intentional with the conversations that we had growing up. He was the director at a nonprofit. So he was a leader himself.

And so he never specifically said, here are values that we believe or here's what values are. But I saw his values. I saw how he showed up as a leader. I saw how he showed up as a father consistently. And so my first answer that would be, well, my family, my family unit, right? My nuclear family, my community growing up. The second one is when I used to work for a nonprofit, the board was gracious enough to get me a coach.

I was an area director for this nonprofit, mini actually big in Texas, right? Young Life on staff at the Young Life. They got me a coach and what coaching is all about is saying, hey, what do you not only do, which is usually what we focus on as high performers and leaders and entrepreneurs, but the second question is equally as important as who are you going to be, which is really a value based question. And so he helped me redefine that at a very early age in my career.

And so I've lived through that. With that, it's also, it's been a blessing and a curse. And let me say that I've also experienced working for people in organizations that have been very misaligned with my value systems. And so through conflict or crisis, you show what you truly believe. You can say whatever you want in an organization, but when everything hits a fan, you start realizing, these are the values we're playing by.

And when there's that misalignment, and for me in my personal story, when there's been that misalignment, I can't in good faith, one, take their money, but two, show up as Jeremiah, as we were talking about. Life is too short for my heart to be drained because there's misaligned values. So through those experiences, it's reinforced this is who I am, this is what I want to spend my time doing in this short life.

Mason Brady (08:03)
You bring up something really interesting that I even have a prime example in my mind that, I have an example where we were helping, you know, an organization that, one of the leaders, they, they had a set of company core values painted on the wall. it was all over the place. I, whenever they spoke of hiring people, they spoke of wanting to find values oriented people that aligned with their values.

They, they spoke of all these things, but yet at the same time, we were in engagement with them where we had to let go of a third party vendor, that they had worked with for 20 years. And I was incredibly disappointed to see how the leadership handled the exit of that relationship. mean, that was the equivalent when you work with a vendor for 20 years, that is your partner, right? I mean, that is.

That is somebody that has been in the trenches with you and your business for that long and understands a lot of intimacy as to what's going on in your business. And the way that they exited the relationship, it was just, it was so misaligned. And, but this was coming straight from the leaders themselves that they were completely blind to it, right? That they had a set of values on the wall that spoke to how they treat people. And, yeah, this was completely different, and how they really handled it. And how do you.

go about helping companies walk through those situations where there is that misalignment that, yeah, what comes out of the mouth or what's on the wall is one thing, but actually practicing it and really living it out is another thing. How do you walk through that?

Jeremiah Shaw (09:45)
Yeah. Well, one is every organization has a culture and a culture, you know, values are a piece of that culture. And so there are values within an organization, whether people have them placed on the wall or living them out or not. They're living them out, whether they're written down. And so what we do is step in and you know the concept of becoming nose blind, right? I've got dogs, right? You come home from vacation, you're like, does our house really smell like this?

Mason Brady (10:14)
Yeah.

Jeremiah Shaw (10:15)
And my dogs do a lot of swimming in lakes. so sometimes they get kind of sneaky. And when I'm around them all the time, all of sudden I don't recognize it. And I go on with life like nothing's wrong. And then I have a friend come over. He's like, dude, what does that smell like? What are you talking about? Well, I leave town for a few days. I come back. I'm like, my gosh. I become nose blind to it. Same thing happens with culture and leadership. And leaders get dropped in the weeds all the time where they become reactive.

And when we lose strategic thinking, when we lose proactive thinking, we start to see nose blindness with leaders when it comes to the idea of values. So what do we do? We start coming in and we may come in and do a cultural analysis and do employee engagement surveys and really figure out, what do the employees see? What do their clients see, right? Clients pick up on your value systems. And then we may interview all the, everybody on the leadership team. Hey, what do you see? And we just ask.

thought-provoking questions to draw that information out, give them that report and say, hey, here's where we're at. But then we do a lot of value mining just through conversation. And we'll talk about this, I think, on the end as kind of a takeaway for your listeners, but it's like, hey, what gets you fired up? Hey, passionately and with kind of this righteous frustration, right? Like, let's talk about that, because the reason those two things are happening, it's a values.

core values.

Mason Brady (11:44)
Yep. Yeah. on the other side of it, right. That. Like I present this example of a company that they at least had values written out, right. And that's at least a first step forward. I would agree with you that, you know, we talked about the situation in which there's misalignment between what the leaders did and what they said. Right. and, but there's a lot of companies, especially smaller midsize businesses that

They're just blown and going, right? Like they're just, they're chasing revenue. you know, and it's been successful for them and the whole values piece, like, it's just feels like it's another compliance checks box. And I'm going to be bold and say, you know, especially in the current environment, right? Like, you know, there's a lot of shift in regards to, you know, DI and ESG and all this different stuff. And it just feels like, Hey, it's another, it's another check box for that. Those bigger corporations have, but

that's not how small businesses or that's not how middle market businesses really operate. Like we get the work done here. And what would you say to those leaders that think and feel that way on the importance of building a correct company or building a company culture or focusing on company culture, I should say, cause they're always building it, right? Naturally, you're always kind of doing some things, but focusing on it, prioritizing it and setting it, you know, and implementing a set of values in your company culture.

Jeremiah Shaw (13:11)
Yeah, one, absolutely. I love the question because values are not a checkbox. Values are not marketing. Values are not something an organization can fake. They can say it and push enough money towards marketing to make people believe it for a while, but our household, my wife and I stepped away about almost 10 years ago and created a mission vision value statements for our family.

Mason Brady (13:15)
and

Jeremiah Shaw (13:34)
and this is a roadmap and what we agree upon of how we're going to live life together as a family. Our first and foremost one is a shah is a truth teller at all costs. So we go on to define that value system, right? At all costs. So it's gonna cost us to tell the truth sometimes. And so being able to come back to an organization and say, hey, this isn't a checkbox. Because if it's just a checkbox, one, it's not gonna sustain, and two,

The truth always wins. You're gonna be found out that you're not genuine about this. And I would say most powerful businesses, if you wanna recruit and retain top talent, if you wanna do great business development and attract the right clients, find people with the shared values. What are your value systems? Do you really have clients that believe that integrity's first and foremost? Or are you gonna end up in situation saying, no, Mason, hey Jeremiah, find the gray area, find the loopholes.

That may or may not be legal, but that's the way I wanna go. We have a lot of case studies on how that doesn't work out, because when you take that one step that direction and this other step that direction away from this so-called value on the law, yeah, it can't be faked. I'll close that question, Mason, with this is there's two types of values. We do a lot of mission, vision, value retreats with leaders of saying, hey, we're gonna help you define these.

And so within that, it's good because we're creating vision for what the values should be. They're aspirational. But the reality is those values may not be real in this moment. So what we say is, okay, what are observational right now? And how do we make the aspirations observational three years from now, five years from now, 10 years from now? Because again, the litmus test is what can we observe, not what do we say?

Mason Brady (15:29)
Yep. I, you know, I, even as you were talking, I was thinking, you know, even for some of those business owners that question whether, you know, they should have values. It's like, there's, there's already inherent things built in, right? As to how you operate your business. And so it's like, if your mentality is just get it done, right. That can be a value in itself. And you want to find other people with that mentality of just get it done. Right. And, you know, and I, just, I can't help but feel like how important it is. I've just seen so many examples where.

You can, you can see this shiny object syndrome where you can potentially get this employee that you think, my gosh, they've done this amazing job for another company. What if we brought them over here? It's like, yeah, but if they're not a cultural fit, that's going to implode in your face really, really fricking quick that, I just, if they do not fit in with your organization, if they disrupt your current team, it takes one team member to make a cancer, right? like it, and it spreads and.

I think we've all kind of been in those situations where we've had that one team member where you're like, I don't like showing up to work today because I have to talk with that guy or that gal. Like I don't like it. And if you, if, if you got values alignment and in place and hired and fired correctly, right. That that wouldn't be a problem. And you wouldn't potentially lose the people that, that you do like on your team that fit those values. So, yeah, I, I, do I say like, you know, I think you mentioned it just like, there's some inherency to this that, know, there's a.

Jeremiah Shaw (16:40)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mason Brady (16:54)
there's a defining of the values and obviously what's existing today and what is aspirational for the future, but everybody is carrying a set of values. It's just, you know, trying to communicate and define it is important too, right? So, yeah.

Jeremiah Shaw (17:06)
Yeah. Well, and

going back to it can't just be a checkbox for a successful business because if you're going to be successful, you've got to be able to repeat that in a consistent manner. And I always think about the analogy. I do a lot of backpacking, a lot of hiking. And so this always comes to mind when I'm talking about mission, vision, values is if I'm a leader and I've got four or five people on my immediate leadership team and they're looking at me and saying, hey, where are we going? Why are we going there? How are we going to get there?

You know, I can say, we're gonna go to that mountain peak right there. Here's why we're gonna go there. The question on how we're going to get there together is still out there because I may have one person on my team that's gung ho, they're the driver, they're like, we're gonna get there at all costs. I don't care about the bodies that we're gonna leave behind. Let's just hike straight up the face. We're gonna need ropes and chains, let's go. Then there's the other person that's like, what if we just take the meandering way where we do like eight laps around the mountain to work our way up where I can stop and smell the flowers, find the wildest strawberries, right?

If you go on a hike with people like that before you define how you're going to hike together, you're going to have a lot of conflict, unhealthy conflict along that journey, right? And so it becomes a roadmap on, here's how we do things here. Now all of a sudden you're pushing out who shouldn't belong, who's not willing to perform at the level you want to do. And to be clear, that's not HR's role. And that's how we've ended up in these places where there's all these initiatives that actually don't have a lot of research behind them.

that aren't helpful, that's costing the business money, because the executive team took their hand off of it and you cannot pass this off. Like you said, a CEO's job is two things. One, profitability of the company and people. Right? Focusing on those two things and being obsessed with them. And being able to say, no, values, this is how we get there, this is how we do life with it. In fact, I mean, look at all the case studies right now. I mean, you can look at Wells Fargo. Like these are the big ones, right? Think of all the small ones that we don't even see or talk about.

Mason Brady (18:45)
Yep. Yep.

Jeremiah Shaw (19:03)
Enron, you know, they have their values on the wall. I think integrity was actually in the lobby at Enron. Right. But it wasn't observed. It wasn't lived out because the executive team didn't believe it. They didn't live it out.

Mason Brady (19:10)
Yep.

I mean, it's still with me today that, mean, you even in Brady CFO, we obviously we provide CFO services. And a part of it is, is we're often helping to, we're helping our clients to get new banking relationships and obtain, you know, the credit that they need, whether working capital lines, you know, real estate financing, equipment financing, et cetera. And I don't mean that like, there is still a hesitation even after all this time of, you know, what happened with Wells Fargo.

there is still a hesitation in me that when I meet a Wells Fargo banker, would I actually refer business to them? Like because of that and what happened, like there is still that hesitation. And so I think, yeah, we don't want to underestimate that if you have people not operating correctly, not adhering to a good set of values that, my gosh, like it just, it can absolutely implode and it can damage your brand for much longer than you could ever imagine. I mean,

That Wells Fargo deal, it happened close to 10 years ago and I still think about that, that I tend to stay away and even if somebody worked at Wells Fargo at that time and I can see it their LinkedIn profile, I'm already hesitant. I'm already like, I don't know that I'd do business with them. It's already in the back of my mind.

Jeremiah Shaw (20:31)
And that's so

important for us to remember. I have left organizations because I did not agree with the stance on things. I've left organizations before I had a plan because that's how much I believe in value systems. And I know not everybody's been able to live in that position. I haven't left just because I'm not rich. I can't afford to do that. But I found myself saying, okay, here's who I am. Here are my value systems and I can't do this.

I can't do this. And you're right, who we do life with matters. And so what you're saying is, well, they were doing life with people in a system that was encouraging what? And they didn't take action. Everybody has control to do something about something.

Mason Brady (21:18)
Yep. Very much so. That is the assessment. Yeah, that is the assessment I'm making. That's the judgment and you know, this whole concept, you can't judge and you're not supposed to judge. And it's like, yeah, we can. Like we can, we have to make judgments every single day of our lives as to what's safe for our kids to do. You know, do we really want, you know, our children going over to that house, et cetera, et cetera. We're having to make judgment calls to protect ourselves, our family, et cetera, and, and our businesses. And,

Jeremiah Shaw (21:20)
We get judged by that.

Yep.

Mason Brady (21:45)
Yeah, I, it's a judgment call I make all the time, you know, of, I feel a little bit fearful, you know, or a little bit hesitant and, you know, of, people coming from a particular brand or a company that I know that there isn't a values alignment and well, why'd you work there so long? You know, how long did it take for you to want to get out, you know, and why didn't you look for other options? And I get it. Like you said, that it's not easy for everybody. They, everybody, you know, could have a particular situation where it isn't that easy to leave a job, but at the same time,

I'm not saying that I wouldn't work with them, but there's hesitation, right? And I think, you know, it's really important. I think you're kind of even bringing up something that it's not just about the company's core values. It's even, you know, a little bit of the personal values too, that we all have to understand who we are personally. And that's the thing for companies to understand is that people are going to make decisions where to work. Top performers are going to make decisions where to work based upon whether they even feel like they aligned. And it's not just about

hey, the money, you know, the opportunity itself is, will I align with this company myself, right? Like, do I feel like this is gonna be a good place for me to thrive and grow because I'm gonna get along with other people? And people make associations like that all the time. And they exit organizations because that isn't the case, just like you've done. And so, it's so important, right? I am interested, Jeremiah, that, you know, I think a lot of people look at this and this is where I appreciate just kind of,

you know, your, your mentality on, and the clients you work with, cause I, I think, you know, again, there can be some, for lack of a better word, some of this feels fluffy to some people, right? Like it feels like, Hey, this is pie in the sky stuff that we're talking about here. Where's the tangible ROI? and I don't mean to be overly objective, but like, where's the ROI to this, right? Like, how does this actually impact and help businesses? Do you have examples, in which

You've seen that, wow, like a business really took off, whether top line revenue growth or bottom line performance, ideally bottom line, right? But, yeah, that, that, you know, in, in terms of solidifying and making sure that there was alignment and their values, their culture, their mission vision, that all of a sudden they took off. Can you give us some examples?

Jeremiah Shaw (24:01)
Yeah, there's a lot of stories from big to small and I can definitely get into those. I would say, one thing I passed on earlier when we were talking about...

kind of a hiking the mountain, right? And it comes back to what we're about to talk about here is the first and foremost value systems keep us on track and our feet on the path that we intended to set out on. And it becomes a compass for everybody. That when you hire an employee, you get to say, here's who we are, here's how we do things. As far as, you know, I've talked to owners that are saying, well, we don't have time for that, or yeah, we do that. And so I usually say,

Well, tell me about, what are your values? And so all of a sudden they start getting online and pulling up their company about us page, right? I'm like, okay, well, right there, we aren't living our values if we can't say, here's where they are and here's how we live it out. And so we all know organizations that have value systems that they live out. Southwest Airlines. Southwest Airlines, one of their value systems is act like an owner. And then another one is hospitality. Do you think they are being,

And we've all flown Southwest. I know there's people that are diehard United. I like United. But I will say there's something when I step on a Southwest flight, there's a light hardness and a level of hospitality that I don't experience with other flights. And that is a value. We're observing a value system there. And so that's where we're seeing it. Through COVID, we saw this play out a lot, not just with big companies, but small companies.

I'm working with, I've worked with a construction company in the past that they're going through fluctuations in their market and they're having to figure out, okay, we are going to have to make some hard calls. Now the question is, how do we make those hard calls? And again, back to the coaching question, who do you want to be in this moment? Who is the organization in this moment? Because not only you have to sleep at night,

You have to make sure these decisions are aligned with your personal values and your organizational values. You have to make sure that your employees will see this and these are the values that they're gonna hold you accountable for the values. If you're saying and putting values on the wall, you are held accountable for those values, whether you're living them or not. Then your clients in the marketplace will hold you accountable for those values. That's why great businesses grow and bad companies that do bad business, they get found out.

Mason Brady (26:33)
Nope. I mean, I think too, like, you know, I tell people even in our, you know, in Brady CFO, our business, like they ask, what are some of the differentiators and I give them it, but oftentimes it does come down to the values, right? Like values themselves can be a distinct differentiator, for how your company operates and how your brand is seen in the marketplace too, right? And that will others want to do business with you? And it is, you know, I think for a lot of business owners that

You know, there's this fear of niching down too much, or, know, not being able to go for the entire market. And it's like, yeah, but that's impossible, right? Like you can't be all things to all people. And so if you really want to see growth that you have to take a stand a bit as to who you are and what you're about. And you'd be surprised to see the growth that comes when you finally take that stand and say, this is what we do. We're excellent at it. And this is how we do it. And your values are in the part of how we do it. Right. And,

I've seen several examples, but when companies did that, you'd be surprised that business development wasn't that hard because referrals came in from other people that were values aligned that said, this is, know, if you need a company that you can trust, like this is, this is them go to them. and, you know, they didn't have to have an outside sales department to go out and bang on doors. And so just having the values in itself, relieve them from a marketing and sales expense because.

Jeremiah Shaw (27:53)
Mm-hmm.

Mason Brady (27:59)
people got word of how they did the business and that they could be trusted and business continued to come in. The business continued to grow and it was successful. so, yeah, I do have some other examples like Southwest is a good one. Do you have some other examples that come to mind as well?

Jeremiah Shaw (28:15)
Yeah, so you can definitely get into an organization, do like a comparative analysis of before and after you implement value systems, right? And really start pushing communication plans and showing employees with that. You can do, I've seen organizations that say, recruit, that they have, their tenure's like 30 years, right? Well, it's because, and there's a logistics company that I know of that lives out their values in such a way that their employees do not leave. One of their top values is health.

And if you go there, they've built their organization around this idea of health. They have a walking track around their corporate headquarters. They have internal incentivization programs for their employees to be able to get health coaching, to be able to get access to subsidized gyms, right? Even the way they have a cafeteria, the way they feed their employees is in line with that value system, right?

And so we can talk about the health savings expenses that they're experiencing as a whole, right, on their premiums. Not only that, we know that when people are physically healthy, they're more emotionally healthy, mentally healthy, spiritually healthy, relationally healthy, now all of a sudden we have higher performance. so values, like the same organization talks about collaboration all the time. How do we cross collaborate from departments? How do we not withhold information? How do we trust each other?

so that we can have free flowing information so that we make the right decision as the markets change and we have to hold agility. Well, that comes from the value of we trust each other, we collaborate with each other for why the sake of the success of the business. That team cohesion when we have shared values, we do a lot of team coaching of like, okay, what does everybody believe here? And we do individual kind of interviews before we start, then we do team conversations over many, many months.

and we design who are we as a team, how are we doing this, what do we believe, and all of a sudden that team cohesion drives engagement, drives tenure. There's so many things that all those things impact the bottom line. To find a new employee, you're spend what, two and a half, three times their salary?

Mason Brady (30:27)
Totally.

Yep.

I, we, we had a guest on the podcast, actually last week that she runs a cabinetry manufacturing company and, they decided, you know, that, you know, growing up that it was actually, she's inherited her family business and she just remembers her dad, you know, working 24 seven and her mom too, to, be able to make ends meet. And, so she just really felt in her heart, like she wanted to give everybody Fridays off, in the company Fridays off so that they could spend time.

you know, doing things, going to the grocery store, cetera, but that way they could be engaged with their family on the weekends. And, so she wanted to get Fridays off. then as I dug into it, it was like, so what they did is they, instead of, okay, you know, regular shifts the other days, they switched it to four tents. So instead of having five eights, they switched it to four tens for all their hourly shift employees. And, but they have a bunch of equipment to start up every day. And so the total time of getting the entire shop.

opened, started, you know, started up and everything. There was total savings because, you know, the reality of like how efficient they were in an eight hour shift and how much they were able to output versus a 10 hour shift. found that there's no difference that they were able to still get it done. If anything, they were more efficient because, you know, they started up the machines and instead of having to have another startup on Friday, they got more done during that same, you know, that same period when all the machines were going.

And so it actually turned out to be a tangible business result for them. We're just giving everybody a Friday off, you know, and that, you know, our goal was just to do something great for employees and our employees are going to stick with her forever as a result of having a four day work week that, especially in a field where cabinet manufacturing, like, where do you get that? Right. That everybody's working, you know, many days a week. And so her team is probably going to stick with her. She's going to have less turnover and she did something really cool for everybody. Right. And it just.

Jeremiah Shaw (32:06)
Yeah.

Mason Brady (32:28)
It's small stuff like that, that we're talking about that how your values are lived out that sometimes it doesn't need to be this big thing, but you know, it's that small stuff to where everybody loves working for your company just a little bit more now. You get to keep people, but there's actually, there's no loss in profitability. There's no loss in, you know, production. If anything, there's potentially some gains in it. So yeah.

Jeremiah Shaw (32:50)
Well, you can definitely measure these things, right? It just takes time. There are metrics you can put in place and start measuring, and it may take two, three years to really capture great data on it. However, when you jump in the river, you know there's a current. And so great leaders feel it. Great leaders feel they understand how the current is going to shift based on what are we living here within the organization.

People say you can't measure it. can't measure it. At the same time, you're halfway good at leadership, you can fill the current shift, positive or negative.

Mason Brady (33:28)
I'm interested, Jeremiah, that, yeah, I mean, you mentioned, you know, a bit, even before we started, you know, recording, you know, how you recently just went elk hunting and, know, you go hunting and you're, you're a very outdoorsman and, you know, you work with a lot of businesses. You're the first one that I heard use this phrase and I've since stolen it. So thank you for this. So, you know, where they wear blue jeans and boots to work every day. And, you know, I think I mentioned previously, I, know,

These are very salt of the earth people that just kind of get it done, right? Like when there's a difficult job to get done, these are the people that you lean into to get it done that are very reliable. you know, the concept of values and all that, I think most people would feel like these two concepts are paradoxical. Like they go head to head of like, you know, blue jeans and boots types of businesses versus values, right? And like for yourself,

What has made you interested in focusing that area and what are some of the unique things that you see in that area of working with those types of businesses?

Jeremiah Shaw (34:32)
First and foremost, I'll be honest, it's completely selfish because my only business goal is never to wear a suit again. love just jeans. Usually you can find me in jeans and cowboy boots as long as the snow's not too deep where I live. yeah, I grew up kind of in that world. We had a family farm in western Oklahoma. Most of my friends are in that world.

Mason Brady (34:41)
Right on.

Jeremiah Shaw (35:00)
I, you know, as I step back and I've worked with Fortune 500 companies, I've worked with tech companies, finance companies, know, big banks, and I step back and look at who were kind of my favorite projects with, who were my favorite types of people.

And I think there were just a lot of exciting moments with the machine companies, the construction companies, that whole world, oil and gas companies. And I think everybody in my industry, the coaches and the talent development, the Deloitte's obviously very, very large. And there's a lot of boutique firms like us. Everybody perks their ears up. Man, if I could work for Apple, if I could work for Google, if I could work for that tech company.

One, they're overvalued, right? And I think the experience is overvalued. And not a knock towards them, but that's not where my heart is. I think there's plenty of people serving the white collar workers in those white collar industries. And so when I step in to these industries and start talking about, tell me stories about how you all do things here. Now you're capturing their value systems and you reflect it back and you're like, I didn't even see that. They appreciate it in a really deep level.

because it's ingrained in how they're raised, it's ingrained in their industries, this is how we do things here. And on the flip side, what a differentiator. Like roofing company, right, kind of a little car salesy, right, of a lot of roofing companies, a lot of bad roofing companies. You're differentiators that you do things the right way. You provide customer service like nobody else, that's a differentiator. And so when they start understanding, like, we can embrace values here.

But why do I work with them? I think they're underserved in a lot of ways. And so they really lean in and we get to lean in and it just creates really powerful partnerships. And it's fun.

Mason Brady (36:47)
Awesome.

No, I, I would agree with you that, and I think right at somebody like you helping to facilitate these things. We were just with another guest that, you know, not every business leader owner can do this themselves because they really need some third party perspective. That's kind of viewing. And like you said, you go in and do assessments of several team members. and if a CEO were to go sit down directly with one of their direct reports and say, what do you think the values are?

they may get the answer that they want to hear, not the real answer. Right. and so, you know, having somebody like yourself, you know, facilitating some of this is really, really excellent, because you get that third party perspective, but also you make sure that all of your team is giving really valid inputs to that. is anonymous that there's no, you know, lashback as a result of it, et cetera. But, you know, sorry, excuse me, but you know, the idea that they can relate to you as well, that, you know, in terms of that facilitation, because.

You know, yeah, like a, a, a construction company based in Oklahoma, you know, if they got the same leadership coach that is working with, is working with, Tim Cook over at Apple. Yeah. I don't know that they would feel like they can even relate. Like, do you really understand our business? And so I think what you provide is really unique, Jeremiah, that sense of that relatability that, Hey, leadership.

Jeremiah Shaw (37:59)
Yeah

Mason Brady (38:10)
core values, mission, vision, values, alignment for organizations is a real thing, regardless of what industry segment you're in. and there's folks like yourself that, you know, can relate to them and can understand, you know, like some of these people they're coming from backgrounds where yeah, like, you know, maybe they're working for a farming company and they can tell a multi-generational story of farming and how they got into it. that there were crisis at times in their family that this is why things happen. And this is why they do what they do now in terms of managing, right? That.

Jeremiah Shaw (38:16)
Right.

Mason Brady (38:38)
Maybe they don't take risks the way that other businesses take risks because of something that happened in their family. And, you know, that's hard to relate to if you're coming, you know, I don't mean to be too objective, but if you're coming from say San Francisco Bay area or something elsewhere, that's just, that's just not, you know, that's not heard or seen and there's not reliability. So I love that, Jeremiah. Yeah. I think, you know, as we kind of begin to come to a close here, like I do want to understand what's one expected challenge.

Jeremiah Shaw (38:43)
Hmm.

Mason Brady (39:07)
that you see CEOs face when trying to embed values into their business, when they're trying to create more focus on, you know, making sure that we have the right values and that we are leading according to these values and that there's full implementation here and, you know, and that there there's accountability held to these values. Like what's one unexpected challenge that you found that really trips up some CEOs that they don't really think about.

Jeremiah Shaw (39:29)
Yeah, it may be obvious to some people, maybe it is a blind spot to a lot of people we've worked with is how misaligned and how much damage has been done. How misaligned have they been? How inconsistent have they been as a leader? And all of sudden they're saying, hey, actually we are committing to this and there is gonna be a change. And it takes about two years to really shift the company culture with about 10 % of the organization pushing hard towards that direction, right? If you have more of a percentage, we can do it faster.

but for sustainability and consistency, it takes about that amount of time. You know, I always say the values conversation and values initiatives are always, it's kind of like your car. You've been driving your car. I've blown up a great set of tires because I didn't realize my alignment was out. And I look down, you know, six months later, I'm like, crap, that's not good. There's wear on the, I just wasted 1200 bucks, right? Whatever it is.

And so it's the same thing with an organization. And it's painful to pay the money for a new set of tires when I knew better. But all we can do as a leader is recognize where we went wrong, where we're out of alignment, and how do we fix it. And again, it's like a new set of tires. You're gonna pay for the mistakes you've been making, but pay once and do it well. And that might include half of your executive team not being on board with that. It might involve you recognizing like you've made bad hires that they either need to get in line

in alignment with your vision as you push forward or you need to replace them. And those are the most painful situations that CEOs get caught off guard with is when they're getting undermined because there's blind spots around shared values. Good or bad? Good or bad?

Mason Brady (41:15)
Yup. Yes.

Yeah. so yeah, kind of as a final takeaway, you know, for our listeners, you know, you've given a lot of practical advice here, but I, know, one key takeaway that when they're focusing, you know, on, Hey, how do I improve, you know, this situation that we're in that, you know, Hey, we have, there is misalignment and, know, and they can feel it, they can sense it. Something's going on. What

key takeaway do you want our listeners to understand that what's the next step that they should be considering?

Jeremiah Shaw (41:49)
I'd ask yourself, does courageousness look like in this moment? What do you really want? And there's some questions you can self-reflect on that I'll give you right here. And you can also ask your team this in maybe an executive session. So I would say, one, can you all name your top five values? Can you define your top five values? Can you observe your top five values within your organization? And then if you can't, here's kind of the first steps down the rabbit hole is,

When was the last time your team felt alive together? Or if you're doing this individually, when did you feel most alive? And then the second question behind that one is, when were you most misaligned? When were you most frustrated? Tell me about a situation that made you really angry. Because we get angry when we feel like our values are so misaligned that we're both completely missing each other. That causes this tension and rubbing.

So as we answer those questions, we start identifying like, that's why I was angry. So ask yourself, why was I angry? When was I angry? Why was I angry? What about that made me angry? And you're gonna start uncovering your value systems and you can do that individually or as a team. But great, great exercise for everybody to run through.

Mason Brady (43:07)
Awesome. Yeah. Great insight, Jeremiah, that we really appreciate having you on the show today that, you know, I, yeah, I know. I, just, I, I think that, you know, they're, they're like, we've said it throughout here that I think that you've provided some tangible advice here because, know, this is an area that it feels a little bit loose. Like, how do you, how do you contain this? Like, how do you, what are the next steps that you take with this to actually improve this? And you provide some really tangible advice. So just really, really thankful for having you on the show today, man.

Jeremiah Shaw (43:12)
Hey, it's been fun, Mason. Yeah.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Mason Brady (43:38)
Where can our audience find out more about you and gravity leadership?

Jeremiah Shaw (43:41)
Yeah, absolutely. LinkedIn, very active on LinkedIn. So Jeremiah Shaw on LinkedIn. Check me out there. I love to chat. I just love jumping on the phone for 30 minutes too and just nerding out over this. If people have questions, I want to follow up. Second spot is on our website, just grovityleadership.com. So you can look us up there and learn more about what we do at our firm.

Mason Brady (44:04)
Awesome. And for our audience, remember we are doing a giveaway. So from this episode, whoever is the first to comment in any major of our, any major distribution platform that we're on. So YouTube, Spotify, Apple podcasts, if you comment blue jeans, you will get one these Brady CFO mugs. So make sure you comment and make sure you like and subscribe as well. Thanks everybody. See you Jeremiah.

Jeremiah Shaw (44:29)
See you, Mason.