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How Can You Build a Strong and Positive Company Culture?

The Randal Osché Podcast: Business Bites | Episode 3




Join us for this episode of Business Bites as Chris and Randall explore the essential elements of building a strong company culture. They highlight key strategies and practical tips to foster a positive and productive work environment.


What You'll Learn:


  • The importance of shared values, open communication, and employee engagement in creating a cohesive and motivated team.

  • The role of leadership in setting the tone for the company's culture.

  • How initiatives such as team-building activities, recognition programs, and professional development opportunities contribute to a thriving workplace.

  • Advice for aligning your organization's values with everyday practices and recognizing and rewarding the right behaviors.


Chris and Randall share their experiences and insights, guiding leaders and managers looking to cultivate positive company culture. Whether you're looking at just getting started or want to enhance your current company culture, this episode will help you build a workplace where everyone can flourish. Tune in to discover how to implement these key practices and transform your company's culture.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube, Podcast Index, Podcasts Addict, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.



SHOW NOTES





Questions this conversation has Randall Pondering


Is there more than one right way to build a strong and inclusive company culture?


What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments!


And that's it for today's conversation here on the Randall Osché podcast. Thank you so much for joining us and we hope that you've enjoyed listening as much as we've enjoyed recording it.


Many many thanks to our guests today for sharing their knowledge, their experience and their life lessons. If you found today's conversation insightful, interesting, inspiring, please join our growing community by subscribing. Randall Osché podcast on your favorite podcast platform, and never ever miss another episode.


 We'd love to hear your feedback. So keep the community alive by sharing your takeaways from today's episode and use the hashtag Randall O'Shea podcast. Your feedback and interaction fuels our continued efforts to build a safe space for meaningful, long form conversations. So thank you so much for the support until next time, stay curious, stay inspired and keep the conversation going.





Business Bites Episode 3

[00:00:00] Chris: So Chris today's topic, building a strong company culture. So let's just start with, how do you build a company culture? Preferably strong company culture. I mean, a culture you have to work at, I think, I mean the initial size of a company, the culture will be influenced by the owner founder.

[00:00:18] Chris: But as it goes through some evolutions, essentially a culture will come from those personalities who are involved in this early days. And then, it will go out of control, then they won't have much control over it and then they have to be helped to think about the culture a lot more than just some accidental thing.

[00:00:37] Chris: I've got experiences of amazing cultures and terrible cultures and have my opinions as to how they got there and how about yourself? 

[00:00:45] Randall: I would agree. I think a great company culture occurs because you're being deliberate about the culture that you want to build.

[00:00:55] Randall: Great company cultures. Don't create themselves is my theory but poor company cultures can create themselves. I think if you want to do anything, and if you want to do anything well, you have to be deliberate and intentional with what you want to do. I don't think it's an accident that great company cultures exists, right? 

[00:01:15] Randall: I don't know if this is a reflection of company culture, but there's a few organizations that I love to do business with because they have great customer service. Apple is one of them. Apple is one of the largest organizations in the world. Probably by revenue and they take the time to have great customer service.

[00:01:34] Randall: They're not saying, Hey, we're too big. We're still going to be like AI chat bots, good luck trying to figure out this setting function or feature that you can't figure out. You can call Apple and you can talk to somebody and they'll be nice and friendly and they're going to help you solve a problem and I think that's a representation of their company culture and perhaps that's one of their values.

[00:01:54] Randall: That's something that they value is how well they serve their clients, their customers. And I don't think that that happens by accident, right? I know this for a fact, if you go into the Apple store, I believe they train for 40 minutes a week or 40 minutes a day, something like that.

[00:02:10] Randall: But they attack that intentionally and deliberately. So when you go into the Apple store, You have a great experience. It's not an accident that you receive great service when you go into the Apple store. So yeah, I think great company cultures don't happen by accident. They happen over a period of time by being intentional and deliberate about how you want to craft the culture at your organization.

[00:02:35] Chris: You know, I should imagine at some point Apple went, this is going out of control. This is not a good culture. We're going to have to do something deliberate , else the culture would have been very heavily influenced initially by founder and others in that sort of area.

[00:02:50] Chris: But yeah, I think the thing that I remember from my business studies, that I did after, my chemistry degree which was essentially the, different types of cultures and different models and all those things. But if you want to be changing your culture or you want to be emphasizing you gotta look at what is rewarded.

[00:03:11] Chris: And in every scenario, there could be an email, it could be a town hall meeting, it could be just a, department meeting. Someone's highlighted as being, getting an award for something. And one of the things they say is, this person, burns the candle, the things, the work, the weekends, they dedicate, they prioritize stuff, and they're doing all these things.

[00:03:34] Chris: If there's any way like this is so good. They did 24 hour a day once and just the language that's been used associated with the award sends a signal to everybody, that's, that's how you get on here. You just have to stay and work till midnight, ignore your children and all those responsibilities you have outside of work and that's it.

[00:03:54] Chris: So rewards are super important for me and I think you're consciously thinking what is it that I want people to see is important here and I want those things to be awarded. Team working. How's that measured and who's the best at that. If it is about agility and thinking fast on the job, then that's great.

[00:04:14] Chris: But then you've got to be consistent, consistent with your message, consistent with your words you say, and the actions you do. And and that's you're always on guard for those inconsistencies because I think that's what really people pick up on. 

[00:04:28] Randall: I think one of the things that helps you be consistent is by understanding what you're say, like departmental values are, what your company values are.

[00:04:37] Randall: So again, that's the strategy, that's the mission. This is the culture we want to create. And these are our five or four guiding principles, right? Like teamwork, effectiveness, like whatever it is, they're not changing every week. It's not the flavor of the month club, but these are the core principles to how we want to operate as a team or operate as an organization.

[00:04:58] Randall: And then it makes easy tying the rewards to what you value and making sure that the, making sure I've worked for like many companies that said, these are our guiding principles. These are our values, but then it's not reflected in how leadership leads. It's not reflected on how awards are awarded.

[00:05:15] Randall: But there has to be cohesion there for it to be a good, like those organizations that say our values are X, but they reward Y there's not cohesion and that's a poor company culture, right? Those are organizations where people are just showing up to collect a paycheck. They don't feel taken care of there.

[00:05:34] Randall: They don't feel appreciated there, but in organizations where you have a clearly defined what those four or five values are and you align your activities with those, you align the awards to those. That's where people feel like they can be their best selves. That creates good company cultures and you're awarding the people that represent those the best. 

[00:05:59] Randall: If one of the values is, Hey, we award being busy, not being productive. So we're going to give somebody the award for working 24 hours in a day, that's fine. Good luck trying to find people that want to sign up for that. 

[00:06:12] Chris: I've worked quite a few places.

[00:06:13] Chris: And I probably can't quote half of them, but at least I can remember them in there. And I certainly didn't see them necessarily anything other than the HR or even culture team or whatever. Maybe doing something around everything else. And maybe because I've always been in sales, in sales environments, everything that was awarded was to do with revenues and new deals and new logos and more money from the existing clients and less retention.

[00:06:40] Chris: And so there were measures that sort of didn't reflect, but I agree. They have to be consistent throughout. I think the other problem I've experienced from the industry that I've been is continual leadership changes. CROs, CEOs, only last about 18 months in the IT software world. They, come along with their ideas and you know, put something in place.

[00:07:00] Chris: And unless it's instantly successful, then they're out again. So most of the cultures I've been in felt in the constant state of flux. 

[00:07:09] Randall: Changes happen, leadership changes happen, and if we all had crystal balls, we would always hire the right people at the right time to manage the right initiatives, but we don't. Do you think it's reasonable though, to have an organization and to have defining values of the organization, like these are our four or five drivers, right?

[00:07:28] Randall: And then hire people that aligned with those values and then lead and manage to those values. So yes, you will have to replace a CRO at some point in time in the life cycle of your organization, but do you think it's a matter of hiring the right CRO that aligns with the company's values instead of coming in and saying, Hey, I'm going to do it my way and really blowing up the thing.

[00:07:53] Chris: There's a McKinsey survey out it's just come out today, I think, talking about, the relationship between a good culture and a successful company. And so when you're changing your CRO, or a CEO, some assumption that you're not being successful. And therefore You hamper a successful culture, you know, a culture that is creating the success.

[00:08:15] Chris: So therefore, that other stuff already feels carte blanche. They can come in and bring in their own ways. Cause obviously it's not a successful, obviously there's something wrong with the culture. Maybe they're thinking the culture is a laziness and you know it's just a party and there's no need to work that hard culture, which is maybe their assumption from the outside.

[00:08:34] Chris: But yeah, should be hiring people to fit with that culture. And it's interesting ones that have come from one particular nation, you know, country that is passionate about human rights and employee rights and everything else. And then that gets changed by ownership structures.

[00:08:51] Chris: And suddenly it's no longer for one country is now, I mean, I'm going to start to say, and I'm sorry, you're a fellow American, but you know, often European company, that's very centered around a world culture and then gets taken over by investors and it becomes an American company.

[00:09:05] Chris: Massive kind of clash between those cultures is painful to watch and be involved with. So I think the reason why someone's coming in is generally perceived because the culture needs fixing and they're gonna come in and deliberately be quite disruptive. Yeah, 

[00:09:25] Randall: I suppose in my opinion is that there's a way to be disruptive that aligns, say you're coming in to a good company culture and a culture to me is different than like say revenue performance.

[00:09:39] Randall: So you could have a good company culture be underperforming as an organization and like certain things might need blowing up but like the whole thing doesn't need blowing up. I think as say a new leader, like CEO CRO coming in, I think it's important to use those active listening skills and understand what is actually going on here and maybe challenge your own preconceived notions of what needs fixed and what doesn't need fixed.

[00:10:05] Randall: You know, my first leadership role, I was managing an office of folks who hadn't had a manager on site in a while. And my initial approach. I didn't know if it would work at the time or not, but my observation was, and I think my I'm naturally inclined to observe before I make changes.

[00:10:24] Randall: My initial observation was things need fixed here. Right. But I'm the new guy. I'm coming in from the outside. And while I might have the authority, I probably don't have the trust or respect yet. So like, let me work on those things. And sort of my internal dialogue at the time was I don't want to upset the apple cart too much too soon.

[00:10:43] Randall: We're going to take an apple out at a time and we're going to fix it. But I'm not going to dump. I'm not going to dump it out day one and say you guys have been doing this the wrong way and if we continue doing this, we're going to get in trouble with the regulators because it's a big deal and everybody's in trouble for it.

[00:10:57] Randall: That's what I didn't do. I could have because it was true, but I knew that wasn't going to give me the best results and I think for new leaders at any level is probably important to observe more than anything else, at least initially, and then start to make changes, but recognize what things are broken.

[00:11:16] Randall: Cause not everything's going to be broken. What things are broken, what things aren't broken, what requires your immediate attention and what things are working and making sure that your actions and the things that you're doing align with what makes the organization have a good company culture, because that's why people are showing up every day.

[00:11:36] Chris: Exactly. And they've probably been around for a while. There must have been some success for some period of time. There must be still some essence you can get back to I'm thinking on the lines of interview processes. To understand a company culture before you go and join it or for them to understand your personality, whether it fit in with the culture, you've got an interview process that's flawed probably.

[00:11:57] Chris: And it's not going to be very easy to assess that. I've gone for jobs where I've had 11 interviews and some of the sort of half of the people, or certainly most of the people were not paid to be my boss. They were going to be people that they want to see if I fitted in with their culture. So there'll be peers that are mine if I joined them.

[00:12:14] Chris: So they're doing some aspect of that, but is it, are you assessing it very well from that means? And then you've also got the people who are really advising if it's private company, then it's the owners who will be saying, not necessary part of the company at all. They won't necessarily know what's wrong.

[00:12:31] Chris: And giving a bit of a bum steer to whoever's coming in as to what needs fixing. they'll be listening to them a lot more loudly than anything anyone tells them internally. Andeven if it's a public company, there will be a board and so forth who are doing that interview process.

[00:12:44] Chris: So it's really, are you going to choose somebody Do you fit your culture? Is there a very scientific, again, way of finding out whether they fit your culture or not? Or is it just through some conversations? And oh, he seems a nice person. She seems all right. Now, what is that? Is that the scientific way you're going to do it?

[00:13:02] Chris: So I think you do is get it wrong probably as many times as you get it right. 

[00:13:05] Randall: I think again, one of the themes for me at least is that I think a lot of this comes down to being intentional and deliberate with the process and not just being like shooting from the hip and expecting great results.

[00:13:16] Randall: I think being deliberate and intentional can be applied to like a lot of things that happen throughout the day. And that, you want to achieve individually or collectively, or as an organization. I wrote down this is a whole separate topic that I would love to get into because I'm very passionate about this really flawed interview process.

[00:13:33] Randall: So it just, this is a little teaser there. Audience if you want to hear some fireworks, tune into that one at a later date, but I wanted to um, before we wrap up today's episodeI had the good fortune of reporting to Chris at an organization that we had both worked at, so I got to see his leadership style live, and I got to see him recognize, you know, people on his team.

[00:13:58] Randall: Like awarding people on his team for the results that they were producing. I thought it was very good. You know,I'm thinking of a specific annual event and Chris went out of his way to have his own agenda to award, not company wide awards, but like award people. On his team for achieving certain milestones, I suppose.

[00:14:17] Randall: So Chris, I'm thinking about the time in Madrid a few years ago, you gave out bottles of champagne, I think. So I just wanted to dive into that a little bit. One, I want to give you your flowers for being an exceptional leader. And then two, It's one thing for us to be a couple talking heads here and talk about these theories and say people should be doing it, but I think it adds some weight and credibility when we're actually out in the wild doing the things that we're saying.

[00:14:43] Randall: And I know I approach these conversations with, what I've learned through the years by testing these assumptions and testing things that people say or advice I've gotten from mentors and seeing how that works. And my current way of communicating is based on my current operating system of things I've learned to work well and, for you, we're talking about having a great company culture and how you cultivate that and by being deliberate and intentional and awarding the right behaviors.

[00:15:11] Randall: And again, I've been, privileged to witness that in person. So if you could just talk me through a little bit about, how that came to be of, you know, like, it wasn't part of the weekly agenda there, I don't believe. And you're like, Hey, I'm going to do my own thing and award the members on my team for hitting these milestones.

[00:15:29] Randall: Why did you do that? How did you come to it? And why was that important to you? 

[00:15:33] Chris: Mm. Right. Okay. Come back to the story about the sort of the resentive process and the horrific kind of process of deciding someone has to leave and you haven't got a common language for what good looks like and quizzing people and seeing managerseither being tough on their team or hiding their team, you know, behind Oh, no, they're all perfect. They're all brilliant. And all this sort of stuff going on. So common language basic human right for everyone to know what their manager is expecting from them. And it needs to be clear.

[00:16:03] Chris: So that common language comments, so definitions is an exercise that I like to do with leadership team to say, what is it we're looking for? What does this company need in our team? How is our team going to be super successful? What skills and competencies they need to develop to support the business for the now and for the future?

[00:16:23] Chris: So we do an exercise with the leadership team. Even if I've got most of it in my head already. It's important that everyone goes through that process of thinking, it's not just this, they need to, you know, sell stuff and it's not that they need to understand the product very well and it's not that they need to be a good communicator.

[00:16:43] Chris: It wasn't enough. There was a lot of other things in there and if we go through that process, we then have to say, right, how does everybody know about those, constancies? How do we describe it in their job? So that they are clearly aware, what's expected of them, as I've said before, trying to get promoted, what do you need to be doing at the next level?

[00:17:02] Chris: I want to be a principal, I want to be at that level, well it says here you need to do coaching, mentoring, a junior staff member, so okay, junior somebody to mentor, you know, I want to be at the next level, and probably a project, efficacy, global recognition, or something, but having them on a powerpoint deck, or some website that people can go look at. But the next thing is, how do you bring them alive?

[00:17:24] Chris: Well, you need to make sure your managers and the manager of the individuals, have you develop conversations essentially around those things. But then how else do you make them alive? You know, so it was change management, communicate in many different ways. Well,let's think aboutthe message to everybody and let's reward them.

[00:17:40] Chris: Let's find, examples of one of those concepts. They're not a perfect human being, but they're very good at time management or something or agility as I've called it. And then we could interview them in a podcast. We could interview them on a newsletter. We could, that's what we do. We say, Hey, this person's a bit of this.

[00:17:57] Chris: How they do it, and then you will peer to peer seeing that being recognized. But the awards was also the one to say, right, we're going to have some of the awards based upon metrics, but this year we're trying to sell more software. So, the people who are associated with the deals to sell the most, you know, it makes sense, but an awful lot of the rest of the awards were about being The best person at teamwork, the best person with the best attitude, the best person who is a forward leader, the best person who is continuing learning, whatever it is that you're wanting to.

[00:18:27] Chris: So it was just set out at the start of the year that you're going to do this, and then do it halfway through the year when we went to Madrid. And then if I'd still been around in December, we would have been doing the awards then. And so you're sending the signal to everybody. This is what. recognized. 

[00:18:43] Chris: Recognition is more important than pay. It's much more visible to everybody else. We make sure that we publish the lists of the winners and everything else into a wider community at our company. And that's what we're doing. I'm doing it because I want to change the culture.

[00:18:58] Chris: And I want people to grow and have that growth mindset and all those sort of PJ lines, but I want them to be thinking what got them here is not going to get them there. I want them to be thinking about some missing things, which I would even digitally say it was fine because it wasn't in their job description or why they joined.

[00:19:16] Chris: But now we need to do a lot more. This and now we should do a lot more of that. It wasn't there before. Right. let's just award it if we see it happening. And therefore encourage it in everybody else. 

[00:19:27] Randall: Yeah, I think that make some great points. I think a general principle too, and I think this is often lost when it comes to organizations, is that everybody can win.

[00:19:37] Randall: Right? Everybody can be the top salesperson, everybody can win like these other things. And even if you're not the top salesperson, you can be awarded, and I think this is Chris's broader point, for doing something that you're exceptional at. And then if you award that person for maybe not being the top salesperson for driving revenue, but being, you know, the connector or resource provider or X, Y, Z, that they feel that they're being appreciated for what their strength is and what they bring to the table.

[00:20:05] Randall: I think also. Having those sort of, like, maybe downstream, awards, if you will, of teamwork and mentorship and things like that. You're reinforcing those values of maybe it doesn't align perfectly with the organizational values, but from a leadership perspective, those are the values you've created for your team and you're going out of your way to award the people for what's important to you and your department.

[00:20:28] Randall: And then you're reinforcing that message of We help each other out, everybody could win. We're all a collective here and we all have different strengths and weaknesses. I'm trying my best as a leader to award people's strengths as I see them. Right. I think that's wildly important.

[00:20:44] Randall: The thing I want to mention about from an organization standpoint, I think it is important to have a clear path to, you know I want to be level one, then I want to be level two and be level three. I think it's important to understand how that works, but I think organizations get it wrong is.

[00:21:02] Randall: One, they aren't consistent with that. Two, they don't effectively communicate that across the organization. And three, it's often confusing. So, in my experience, and what I would recommend is, make the complex thing simple. It doesn't need to be complex. This is where you're at. This is what you need to do to get the second level.

[00:21:24] Randall: Boom. Done. I've been at organizations where they had a grading system. Like, this job is a grade 20. This job is a grade 22. And they've hid what, those pay ranges are. Why? Just share it. It makes it more effective and more efficient for everybody to be like, Oh, well, I don't want to be a grade 22 because that's not going to pay me enough.

[00:21:45] Randall: I'm just going to apply for grade 24 jobs because that's the pay range. I think my value is for right. So understand what that is, make it simple for people to understand and effectively communicate it across the organization. To me, there's no reason why you need to keep that, you know, close to the vest as an organization.

[00:22:04] Randall: I think it should be widely communicated, easy to understand. 

[00:22:07] Chris: I haven't heard that from you, but I wrote it down because I think I agree with you, understanding everyone should know the basic human right is everyone should know what's expected of them, right?

[00:22:18] Randall: I don't understand why that is. So it's such a basic concept, but it happens so often where people don't know what's the expectation of them and getting back to, I guess, where we started here, basic human right creates good company culture, have everybody know what's expected of them. And if they don't know that.

[00:22:36] Randall: That's on leadership. That's not on them. 

[00:22:38] Chris: Absolutely. Absolutely. 

[00:22:39] Randall: Well, Chris, appreciate you joining me for another episode of Business Bytes of how to build a strong Company culture. Appreciate your time and having a chat with me today. 

[00:22:48] Chris: It's a sweet pleasure. 

[00:22:49] Randall: Thanks.

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