Meredith Hanrahan, Culture as a Competitive Advantage

Importance of Culture in Today’s Business Environment:
 [00:01:19] Why culture is important now. 

1. CEOs face fierce competition, rapid technological changes, and unpredictable macroeconomic challenges.
2.  Culture is crucial for organizational agility, leadership effectiveness, and employee engagement.
3.  Over 84% of CEOs recognize culture as important, but less than 30% actively shape it.

Defining Culture: [00:01:57] 

1. Culture consists of visible and invisible elements: values, norms, beliefs, and habits.
2. It’s essentially “how things get done,” especially when no one is looking.
3. Collaboration with MIT on cultural commandments.

CEO’s Role in Shaping Culture:
[00:02:44] 

1. The gap between recognizing culture’s importance and actively shaping it.
2. Cultural triggers: business strategy shifts, acquisitions, new leadership, etc.
3. The tangible impact of intentional culture on market performance and employee engagement.

Analog Devices’ Cultural Evolution:
[00:05:33] .

1. Analog Devices’ historical foundation  in innovation and risk-taking.
2.  The need for cultural adaptation due to acquisitions, new product development, and global expansion.
3.  Utilizing organizational cultural profiles to assess and enhance adaptiveness and accountability.

Must-Haves for Cultural Transformation:
[00:10:16] .

1. Five must-haves for cultural transformation
2. Full leadership commitment and visible role modeling.
3. Clear link between culture and business strategy.
4. Aligning purpose, vision, strategy, and values in a way that everyone understands.
5. Embedding culture in everyday interactions and measuring its impact.
6. Real-life examples of cultural change, including training programs and case studies.

Practical Steps for Shaping Culture:
[00:32:47] 

1.  Steps to take for cultural change. First, define the need for cultural change based on business events or strategic shifts.
2. Take stock through surveys, roundtables, and customer interviews.
3.  Align leadership on the importance of culture and its strategic relevance.
4.  Educate and train leaders at every level.
5. Embed cultural values into performance management and recognition systems.
6.  Create a common language and practical steps for cultural reinforcement.

Innovative Practices at Analog Devices:
[00:21:08] 
.

1. Virtual cultural sessions and skits to engage a global workforce 
2. The ADI Ignite Network to promote innovation across all business areas, not just engineering.
3. Cultural champion networks to advocate and reinforce desired behaviors.

Challenges and Solutions in Cultural Transformation:
 [00:37:00] 

1. Addressing limiting beliefs and entrenched behaviors.
2. Encouraging commitment and accountability at all organizational levels.
3. Practical examples of how leaders can role model cultural changes.

Importance of Work-Life Balance:
[00:42:19]  

1. Setting boundaries to ensure employees can recharge and maintain creativity. 
2. Real-life scenarios of senior executives adjusting their practices to support work-life balance.

Conclusion:
[00:45:46] 
1.  The importance of commitment, practical steps, and continuous reinforcement in cultural transformation.
2. Meredith encourages companies of any size to focus on culture as a strategic advantage.

00:03.09

asetili

My guest today is Meredith Hanrahan. Meredith led a range of sales, marketing, product, and general management functions at every stage of kind company maturity. She was instrumental in the startup and successful IPO of both salary dot.com and lycoscot.com. She held key leadership roles at General Mills, Lindt Chocolate, and Miller Brewing Company. Meredith saw an opportunity to apply her commercial skills and customer experience expertise to the business of people. And six years ago, she joined Analog Devices or ADI as Managing Director of People and Culture.

 

00:39.17

asetili

In this role, she has a relentless focus on two things. First, developing strong leaders and creating an environment where they can build high performing innovative teams. And second, making culture a source of sustainable competitive advantage. I’m just so excited about talking with you today, Meredith, because I also agree that culture is the main source of sustainable competitive advantage. But it’s a thing that many companies don’t really understand. So I’m really excited that you’ll be able to illuminate this for us today.

 

01:14.59

Meredith

It’s great to be here talking with you on this really important and exciting topic.

 

01:19.99

asetili

Why is it important, particularly right now, to focus on culture?

 

01:25.59

Meredith

CEOs need to drive profitable growth, and they’re experiencing fierce competition, rapid pace of technology changes, and unpredictable macroeconomic challenges. I think there’s a wide recognition today across boards, across CEOs, and even investors that more than focus on financial results matter. You need to look at your org agility, your leadership effectiveness, and even your employee engagement. And really, this all gets wrapped up under the important umbrella of culture.

 

01:57.14

asetili

How do you define culture?

 

02:00.88

Meredith

Culture consists of what you see and what you don’t see. It’s what you value, the norms and the beliefs and the habits. basically boils down to how do you get things done? And I always like to add that asterisk, especially when no one is looking.  think of it as those “thou shalt cultural commandments.” You know, what you see, what you don’t, what is expected of you.

 

02:31.12

asetili

So I kind of hear CEOs saying culture is important, but i I wonder how much attention they really pay to it. So can you tell us anything about what they say versus what they do?

 

02:44.94

Meredith

Right, I think that they know culture is important. It’s a board-level topic. More than 84% of CEOs agree, according to the Peter Drucker Institute survey. And in fact, it’s not just that culture is important to driving success, but it’s sometimes even more important. 60% think it’s more important than the operating model or a strategy. And, more than half of CEOs know their culture needs a major overhaul. But ironically, while they recognize that it’s important, less than 30% of CEOs are intentionally shaping or reshaping their culture as the market changes and new technologies become available.

 

03:27.30

asetili

I think sometimes they just don’t know how. They know it’s important, but they’re like, uh, I know how to manipulate financial members. I know how to get people to do things. I know how to crank out more widgets. I know how to, you know, whatever, but culture is this kind of, uh, difficult to pin down aspect or running a business.

 

03:44.91

Meredith

Yeah, it’s a little like jello on the wall. It feels like an amorphous mass, right? it’s soft and squishy, and you know senior leaders. They want tangible. So let’s give them tangible.

 

03:55.39

asetili

move

 

03:56.66

Meredith

70% of your employees’ engagement is tied to the leaders at your company. And when you are intentional about culture, you outperform the market. So what’s getting in the way of CEOs? Knowing it is good for them, but they’re not able to make it happen. I call the cultural triggers when people actually start to pay attention. They either have a new business strategy shift or acquisitions occur or new leadership on boards. It’s almost like something goes wrong and they suddenly say, “oh, my gosh, we have to pay attention to culture” because their attention is divided among competing priorities and short-term financials.

 

04:35.66

asetili

do do you Have you seen any statistics saying how much it really matters what your culture is? Because um you know unless they see the numbers, they often don’t believe it. um That’s what I’ve experienced. This is like, yeah, yeah, yeah, culture is important. Now let me get back to what I was doing.

 

04:52.61

Meredith

 

When you look at the raw data, starting with how McKinsey looked at the zone of Distinction. They came up org. health as important, if not more, important.  When you focus on org. health and financials, you are more likely to be in the top quartile performance. They started identifying those KPI’s. Also, Kotter from HBS, looking at companies that focus intentionally on culture, they outperformed revenue growth 2to3 X (those that didn’t).  

 

05:33.13

Meredith

it’s a big it’s a big number.

 

05:33.33

asetili

That’s a big number.

 

05:35.39

Meredith

well, what do I need to do to grow? That’s the number one priority. And it’s about figuring out how you intentionally shape your culture. I like to say, either shape it or it shapes you.

 

05:46.17

asetili

Yeah.

 

05:46.94

Meredith

what do you want to do to make it an accelerant for your company’s growth?

 

05:53.50

asetili

So as you were working on this at analog devices, there’s all different kinds of good cultures. There’s accountability culture, there’s customer service culture, you know, there’s innovative culture. What did you find? Like, did you have a way of describing your culture that you wanted to shoot for that you thought would really make the difference for you, for your particular company?

 

06:15.29

Meredith

Yeah, analog devices have been innovative for a long period of time. They were really looking at culture as being a source of advantage and the principle that Ray Stata embodied throughout the org was this idea that the speed in which you sense, learn, and adapt is really your only true source of competitive advantage.

 

We grew through acquisition and new product development and global expansion, we recognized that our culture was changing, evolving as the strategy was shifting. So, we followed the Charles O’Reilly organizational cultural profiles.

 

What I found really fascinating about this assessment tool was the ability to look at how your leaders ranked your culture behaviorally. What were the behaviors that fell into some culture that might be accountable or customer-centric or data-driven?  of the eight [profiles], one out of the eight was called adaptive.  We learned that adaptive set of behaviors not just correlated to better performance, it actually predicted better financial performance. 

 

what is the cultural profile and what do you need to be successful? also looked at the idea of a tolerance for risk taking, a cohesive identity, and the ability to have financial rigor. So that foundation of analog was built there. 

 

And we had recognized that we were starting to kind of lose our edge on adaptiveness. And so that’s where we really looked at what do we need to do as we scale and grow and be intentional about the innovative behaviors, because we really wanted to continue, you know, analog had been in it made know business for six decades, so constantly changing, constantly learning, and then pulling that together. 

 

And that’s when we said, okay, we how do we use these profiles to our advantage? And how do we become more agile or adaptive, more accountable? And these were the things that actually helped us accelerate our growth — helped us stand out even during market challenges.

 

08:53.29

asetili

Learning and adaptation is so important for every company, but you guys are kind of in a business that is changing faster than most other businesses. You offer things to measure real world data, real world events, like weather and farm data and all kinds of stuff, and then connect that to the digital world. And think of how many more sensors, controllers, devices we have in the world even this year versus last year, much less a decade ago.

 

09:26.01

Meredith

right And sprinkle in a little AI. So how do you how do you build and ignite growth as you scale right and become bigger and more complex and some of the cultural barriers get in the way? you know being intentional for CEOs, but then following a way to activate, what does it mean to actually put practical steps into making culture work to your advantage?

 

09:49.10

asetili

okay Are there any things that you would say, um you know, I find culture to be really stubborn and and entrenched and very amorphous, and yet companies want to transform their culture. And one thing that you guys did really well was to find what’s the future state that we’re headed toward. You know, what do we want to be? and What are we and what do we want to be? But are there any things that you would say are sort of must haves for being able to undertake a cultural transformation?

 

10:16.32

Meredith

Yeah, and I think of these as must-haves. There are about five of them. You can’t skip any of them. I think the first thing about culture is this has to have full leadership commitment. If it’s not a priority for the CEO, it’s not going to happen because they have to have time, resources, and role modeling. It has to be a visible commitment. And it’s multi-year. It’s making sure that you’re putting in investment over multiple years on this.

 

10:48.49

Meredith

and And that’s difficult.

 

10:50.33

asetili

Mm

 

10:50.63

Meredith

The second most important thing is an intentional indelible link between culture and how it will accelerate your business strategy. And a lot of times, people don’t connect the dots. 

 

And they got to connect the dots on the third element, which is clearly connecting your purpose, why you exist, your vision, your big ambition, your strategy, what makes you different and how you win, and then your values or your culture, which is how you choose to get things done.

 

11:16.51

asetili

-hmm

 

11:23.72

Meredith

And it’s a choice, and you’ve got to connect those, and you have to do them a way that everybody understands, and this is where a lot of CEOs fall down,  it has to be something that people can understand, I like to say, from the factory floor to the boardroom. And it’s not just saying it, then you’ve got to actually align it across the leaders in your organization.

 

11:38.08

asetili

Right.

 

11:44.81

Meredith

A lot of times culture gets stuck at the top, but you know what? Your leaders and your managers are on the front line and they are role modeling it. Culture’s reflection of your leaders. They cast a shadow and is it is it what you want? Are they role modeling what you want? 

 

And then what you have to do is embed it into your customer employee interactions and make sure you’re measuring, delivering and building credibility and trust with your employee because you’ve got what I would call bi-directional feedback, 

 

people keeping you honest we’re either living our values or not and you’re reinforcing by like Celebrating and role modeling when those values are put into action over multiple years, right?

 

12:29.78

Meredith

a great example of that full leadership commitment was when I worked for Salary.com. The CEO made sure everybody had shares in the company. And that really reinforced a strong connection. So how you incentivize, how you hire, how you adopt, that’s how it gets manifested. 

 

12:53.58

asetili

Right.

 

12:57.61

Meredith

 

First you’ve got to organize it, then you’ve got to activate it.

 

12:57.98

asetili

Other, yeah. You know, so many times you’re right. The top couple layers might be able to articulate the desired culture. They might even be role modeling it pretty well. But then you go down a few layers and something completely different is happening. And the completely different thing is often happening due to roles and I mean, rules and incentives and the way you hire that are in direct conflict with the culture that you’re trying to get to.

 

13:27.35

asetili

I see this so often.

 

13:28.27

Meredith

What are you going to believe?

 

13:28.31

asetili

and Yeah.

 

13:29.23

Meredith

Are you going to believe the action or are you going to believe the word?

 

13:31.64

asetili

Right, exactly. um So making sure that everything down at the lowest level is consistent with where you want to go with your culture and really taking a kind of a micro view of, you know, what are we looking for when we hire? What are we, what rules are we telling people that, you know, how can they make decisions at the lowest level with a customer, for instance? How are we listening to them? All of those things, um if you don’t really pay attention to the details at the lower levels, you can really miss the mark.

 

14:06.71

Meredith

Yeah, how do you tie strategy to culture throughout the organization? And I always say, you have to make it relevant to the team and the individual and how their work is contributing to a greater purpose, vision, and strategy. A lot of times, people aren’t sure what how their role is connecting to advancing the strategy. it’s a really important thing — not only do I understand it. I understand what i can do to make it better and then i take ownership in it 

 

a great example of that was at Lindt chocolate when i came from the us to go into headquarters. and

 

14:47.41

Meredith

The receptionist knew the purpose and the vision and the way she questioned and asked me, she was embodying it. And I thought she knew what Lindt stood for, she knew what the purpose, and she knew what her role was in greeting visitors to the Master Swiss Chocolatiers because it was tourist place. I just was always really struck by that, that you know that was consistently

 

15:06.73

asetili

Yeah.

 

15:11.09

Meredith

and the pride that that produced throughout the organization is really what makes people want to stay and work at some place, right? They feel a pride in what they’re doing and they feel like they’re advancing the success of the company.

 

15:21.88

asetili

Pride is so important and often overlooked. you know we We don’t appreciate the people who might be in a ah role where they don’t really see the direct connection to what what we’re trying to create here together. And they don’t know that people are proud of them. And so how can they be proud of themselves? But you mentioned earlier, you know celebrating. celebrating so um you know situations where someone did something that was very consistent with the values. It was very consistent with how we want to treat each other. It was consistent with what the culture we’re trying to to to take because adaptation occurs not only you know at the customer interface, but it occurs in you know financial analysis or compliance or you know customers or you know all of these small niches within the organization.

 

16:15.64

Meredith

Right. This is what creates a cohesive identity. You’re aligned and you’re connected.

 

16:23.10

asetili

There’s room.

 

16:24.94

Meredith

This is a practical thing to do. It’s not hard, meaning it’s not like creating a widget and producing a multi-billion dollar chip industry.

 

16:27.68

asetili

There’s room.

 

16:34.76

Meredith

These are things that you can do. They require commitment, they require stakeholder engagement, they create alignment and reinforcement, but they are practical and they can have a huge impact. you know making sure people are committed and that when we say tie strategy to culture, make it real for your people.

 

16:56.70

asetili

Tell me more about what you mean by commitment and how you would bring that about. How do you get people to commit and what are they committing to?

 

17:02.78

Meredith

Well, the other thing that we did is, really helping leaders understand that they shape a culture, right? That the culture reflects what they are doing. 

 

But it’s hard to deal with that kind of one-on-one, right? What we did is actually created real-life scenarios that talked about the strengths, challenges, and weaknesses in cultures. And then developed a training program that helped leaders assess the problem and come up with solutions.

 

17:33.98

Meredith

the real-life case studies came from our engagement survey, came from roundtables. And we took those stories that people were saying like finger pointing, well, that’s someone else’s problem.

 

17:44.80

asetili

mhmm

 

17:45.38

Meredith

And we said, look, the first rule of thumb here now is leaders, it starts with you. So what are you going to do differently? and really came up with these ideas of I will commitments, right? What am I going to do differently to role model the stated values of behaviors, right? You said this you connected the strategy. You told me what a leader looks like. um And a lot of times that’s an important step. What is the leader need to role model? And then the real-life stories of how culture is showing up and getting people to participate by, say, you know recognizing a commitment they are doing and then a commitment their team could do. So, for example,

 

18:22.10

Meredith

One of the case studies we had was a project at risk, right?

 

18:22.19

asetili

Hmm.

 

18:25.88

Meredith

And it was a fear of elevating bad news. People didn’t want to, they wanted to come up with a solution, — they wanted to make sure they had looked at everything, they had analyzed, well, time is passing. And sometimes you need leaders to escalate

 

18:40.62

asetili

Right.

 

18:42.82

Meredith

bad news so that you can take corrective action so people said well, I will elevate bad news quicker and then as a we will commitment we recognize we’re not going to mark everything on the status report green.  You know what I mean?

 

18:59.03

asetili

Right.

 

18:59.13

Meredith

You’re like, everything’s great. Everything’s great. Because the culture said, hey, everything’s great. You don’t want to have a yellow [flag]. God forbid you have a red [flag]. 

 

But isn’t that a leader’s job is to say, here are the five red things. Here’s what we’re going to do about it. And here’s where we may need help  or your team may need help. So team commitments could be, I’m going to be accountable to hit my deadline. And if not, I’m going to escalate it. And it’s a simple example. But creating these ideas where people can actually work the problem out and then put it into action with something that they’re going to plan on doing, and then holding them accountable for doing that.

 

19:32.36

Meredith

Coming up with an I Will commitment is like creating a new habit.

 

19:35.50

asetili

Mmhmm.

 

19:35.50

Meredith

It’s not like you have to go analyze reams of data. 

 

19:38.82

asetili

Right. And they’re witnessing each other. They’re witnessing each other saying these things. They’re witnessing each other react in the scenario analysis that the they are experiencing it as if it was life in a way. And seeing that, hey, it’s it’s a it’s a it’s something my company wants me to do is highlight that I’m off track on this and I need help. Whatever the thing is, you know, I’m in the yellow ground.

 

20:05.11

Meredith

Right. And I think when people are witnessing, they’re more likely to do it, right? You know, this idea of when no one’s looking or when people are looking. This idea of, oh, this is what’s expected. And then secondarily, it creates a common language. we had a bunch of games and exercises, but it gave people a common language to say, hey, that cultural you know case, you’re living it right now. And then people could laugh and course correct.

 

20:29.24

asetili

Yeah.

 

20:30.87

Meredith

It made it more transparent, but also people can make someone who may not even be aware that that’s one of the, oh, you’re doing it now. We’re like, oh, of course I am, right? it gives people visibility,

 

20:43.38

asetili

Right.

 

20:45.56

Meredith

but also it gives them a common language to kind of make it more part of the DNA of the company.

 

20:53.43

asetili

That’s really important, especially when you’re dealing with a large company like analog, where people are spread across the globe and you’re dealing with different country cultures in different, in addition to the trying to transform the company culture.

 

21:08.26

Meredith

Exactly. some people say, oh, how do you do culture now if you’re not in person or you’re not local? And we did it virtually. We created a program that you could do.

 

21:18.65

asetili

Oh, wow.

 

21:24.37

Meredith

And this was in partnership with one of our consulting agencies from Heidrick and Struggles We adapted the program to make it work based on feedback. 

 

What we learned was that through breakouts and through applied learning  and skits, you can get people to have almost as effective a cultural session virtually as you can in person. So I also like to encourage people that in a modern day, there are many ways to make culture, ah you know, actionable in your org, and it doesn’t always have to be in person.

 

22:02.25

asetili

I hadn’t thought about um virtual skits. That’s pretty funny.

 

22:06.84

Meredith

Yeah, they’re games and skits. especially when you’re talking about a modern take, the younger generation, you know, that are digital natives, and are looking for, social learning, they value culture, they value purpose, and they want to see where they can make a difference. we found that we’ve got to introduce ways that people can do social sharing in the breakouts and make it much more digital and much more engaging. Culture doesn’t have to be a lecture.

 

22:40.09

asetili

Right, of course, if they don’t get practice and in sometimes maybe a silly situation, you know, it can it can make it more real and more accessible if you create it through a game.

 

22:53.69

Meredith

and even going back to your point about recognition, When was the last time you opened up a meeting and said, [we have this thing called meeting starters –, it culture in a minute, I like to call it and just ask, how are people feeling today?

 

22:58.06

asetili

if you

 

23:13.32

Meredith

You know, what’s going on? You know, what are some of the challenges?

 

23:14.77

asetili

Yeah.

 

23:16.70

Meredith

But more importantly, I’d like to open up with my appreciation, you know, thank you very much for getting that major project out the door. And in the spirit of continuous learning, I’d like to see if we can set up some time to learn from any mistakes and keep going. 

 

But great job. you know I really appreciate how everybody worked really hard. And I’d really like us to kind of take it to the next level. people feel appreciated, and then they feel like it’s still an opportunity to improve. And that takes what, a minute and a half in the meeting?

 

23:45.36

asetili

right

 

23:47.79

Meredith

Or it’s sending a note of congratulations to people.

 

23:47.93

asetili

Right.

 

24:01.88

Meredith

the thing about culture is it can be simple, practical, strategic, and scalable, right? It’s just, are you focused on it?

 

24:16.99

asetili

Right. And appreciation can be for something that’s really tiny or even for a failure or you know a small amount of progress on a difficult project. It doesn’t have to be just you know when they knock it out of the park, which I’m sure you know. but

 

24:31.47

Meredith

I’d like to reiterate this.

 

24:31.82

asetili

um

 

24:34.34

Meredith

When you showcase or show and tell, there is a way to learn from a mistake. It’s a skill, right? This ability to look at what didn’t work. how do you take complexity out of a system requires learning. And if you could showcase when someone has had a difficult challenge or took a long time to overcome it, that’s teaching people a skill that’s probably more important, Amanda, than just recognizing a job well done.

 

25:07.09

asetili

Right, right. That’s really, really good. um yeah We’ve talked before about financial rigor. And I really liked the way you all thought about that. And I thought that, you know, so many companies say they want to be innovative, but then they kind of run off half cocked in 100 different directions and chase shiny objects and don’t really have that discipline that enables them to, for instance, truncate a project if it’s not going well, or put more resources on something that is going better than expected. How do you all think about the the financial um kind of oversight over what you’re doing?

 

25:45.17

Meredith

Yeah, I think the companies that I’ve worked for that demonstrated financial rigor, a key component as exemplified. And I’ve seen it show up in a couple of ways. I think it analog boiled down what the model was, which is we innovate and command a premium for our innovation, and then we reinvest that back into the business because innovation takes R&D spend.

 

26:15.69

Meredith

there is a financial rigor that says we need to deliver to the street short-term goals, free cash flow, gross margins of X, Y, and Z. So we have to be managing our short-term operational expenses

 

26:24.38

asetili

Mmhmm.

 

26:27.63

Meredith

but we have to reinvest in the future. So there’s a significant percentage of funds to the long term. And this is the job of a CEO and the CFO to stand up to the demands of the business between what you get judged by in the short term and what you put into the long term that has to deliver you know future ROI. 

 

and to be able to capture that value in premium and then having the rigor to reinvest that into long-term and to educate your leaders on what commercial acumen, what is free cash flow, why is that the most important health metric and how investors judge your success 

 

27:03.73

asetili

Mm hmm.

 

27:25.02

Meredith

do you have the discipline to manage the  operational levers so that you can continue to keep that long-term portfolio healthy and vibrant. that is what has led to market leading growth and staying ahead of the technology. And I think that to me is where companies that have focused on that financial rigor part of their culture have greater long-term success.

 

27:50.58

asetili

Right. And I would think that a lot of the work that you do helps people in all different roles kind of have a nose for customer value where they can see opportunities where wow, this could really change the customer’s long-term success. This is something we should really be collaborating with the customer to to um you know develop something that solves a really important problem for them. And if you ignore that over time, you end up just kind of becoming a commodity, which is horrible.

 

28:23.03

asetili

But you guys have avoided that really well by being very, very attentive to it.

 

28:26.18

Meredith

it takes a lot of work, but I also would say that when the Black Swan event occurred with the pandemic, we recognized that innovation had been really focused on the engineering community. And during the pandemic, when we were all at home, we launched a whole program called the ADI Ignite Network, which was really around innovation happens across the business.

 

28:48.32

asetili

Mm hmm.

 

28:48.75

Meredith

innovation started popping up in manufacturing, started popping in business because people want to solve complex problems. And that was a core kind of value. But I would say even when you think you’re doing a great job, you can still do a better job, right? We said, wait a minute, why shouldn’t everyone be innovating? And that really came out of the pandemic to be, you know, to be much more enterprise thinking in our innovation, not just, the engineering side of the house.

 

29:11.18

asetili

And that makes work more fun, too, I think.

 

29:16.15

Meredith

Way more fun. People love to solve problems.

 

29:18.73

asetili

They do.

 

29:18.91

Meredith

I think at least that’s the people we attract, right?

 

29:21.45

asetili

Right, right. That’s cool. Did we talk about culture um champion networks? I don’t remember you telling me about that.

 

29:28.40

Meredith

Well, I think another way to activate your culture in a modern way is to make the people that are leading and managing, become culture champions and advocate culture. what I call, say-do ratio. It’s credible. It’s consistent. when you get down to the you know the people, the frontline managers and leaders, have to be walking on the talk. They’re the people that attract, hire, promote. after we did this culture shaping work and program with our teams, we asked how many people you know and in the room want to become part of the culture champion network and really participate.

 

30:23.07

Meredith

we’ve signed up ah over 350 out of 1,800 leaders. right And how did they want to participate?

 

30:32.47

asetili

Wow.

 

30:34.27

Meredith

Well, the first thing was they shared their I Will commitments.

 

30:35.79

asetili

Mm.

 

30:37.80

Meredith

Going back to that, they made their commitment public. They stood up in front of people. They role modeled it with meeting ah starters and other programs. They build it into their quarterly town halls. We took all of our values and put them in our performance management system, our recognition system, and helped leaders recognize and train them on how to how to give recognition. so culture champions help role model recognition.

 

31:07.16

asetili

And that’s good.

 

31:10.73

Meredith

They help role model onboarding. we found was that the culture part and that pride we’re talking about, and it becomes infectious when you involve and delegate to your managers and your leaders, and then they start creating all sorts of wonderful innovations off the core company foundation. And it’s wonderful. So to me, the Culture Network is really engaging your leaders and managers to advocate in champion culture as part of their leadership style.

 

31:45.14

asetili

That’s pretty cool, especially if you’re talking about engineers who probably haven’t thought much about culture, you know, until you started talking about it.

 

31:53.94

Meredith

and then they really care about it, right? Because you know they want to be in an environment that fosters innovation. And really what we were trying to say is there are practical ways that you can foster innovation and create a healthy work environment. 

 

And again, I go back to the pandemic, even more important, people want to value, they want to be valued and they want to value what they’re doing and bring it to the table, right? And this idea of they’re making an impact and they want to work for a company that values culture and they want, values how you behave is important. 

 

32:25.84

asetili

Can you, so if I were in a company and I wanted to change the culture, can you give me kind of a process that I could use for saying, here’s where we are now. Here’s where we want to go. And then just saying, here’s how we’re going to get there. Like, are there some steps that people can take to go from one point point native to point B culture wise?

 

32:47.89

Meredith

I think that there are a couple of things you can do from a kind of a step-by-step process. 

 

1. First of all is to define the need. If you’re a senior leader or C-suite and you’re facing certain business events like global expansion or shift in your strategy or M&A or you’re onboarding new leaders, , or if you experience tremendous growth, you probably are in in need of a refresh, right? Because culture evolves and it usually lags your strategy. 

33:23.60

Meredith

 

1. Number two, take stock. And there are several ways that are simple and easy to kind of baseline what your culture is today. We did a lot of roundtables and surveys and customer interviews:  what are the aspects that you want to keep? What is working? And what is it maybe not working? right Because people have opinions.

 

33:50.50

asetili

Mm-hmm.

 

33:51.93

Meredith

You want to kind of capture that.

 

33:52.54

asetili

Right.

 

33:54.40

Meredith

you know You’ve kind of got this idea of, you know 

1. is the CEO open to this?

 

33:59.84

asetili

Mm

 

33:59.96

Meredith

I call it the case for culture, which is, if you see it, do your fellow leaders, leader, executive team members see it? And is there an opportunity to align? And the way you would align is, the case for culture is going to show you all the metrics, right? Here’s all the reasons why we know it’s important and we need to make it a priority. And then the simple steps I start with,

 

34:26.08

asetili

-Hmm

 

34:28.17

Meredith

your purpose, vision, strategy. Do you know what the strategy is now? What your baseline is? Do you know where you want to go? And do you have the three main pathways to get there? Now that might seem like a pretty simple, I call it the strategy one page pager. Is there a gap in where the culture that you have today? For example, let’s say you’re a full line manufacturing company and given cost competitiveness, you really can only be competitive on one product line and you have to downsize to that one product line.

 

34:47.29

asetili

Mm hmm.

 

34:56.33

asetili

Mm hmm.

 

34:57.56

Meredith

And then that means the culture that made you successful as a full line is going to be different.

 

35:02.29

asetili

Mm hmm.

 

35:03.01

Meredith

So the culture to be a boutique manufacturer is going to require different things. Do you have the right culture for a boutique manufacturing? And if not, what do you need? And if there’s a gap between where you are and you put that down into a simple one pager and you get everybody aligned, it’s really difficult. People think It’s easy, and then they start talking to one another, and they realize, well, I don’t think that, I didn’t think that. And that alignment is really about aligning the strategy so that you can cascade it and map the course.

 

35:25.82

asetili

and

 

35:32.97

Meredith

What I mean by that is educate the leaders, say, here’s where we are today. Here’s where we’re going tomorrow. We’re going to go from full line to boutique. We’ve got these three main stages of plotting our course and getting people ready, and then we’ve got to start executing.

 

35:45.18

asetili

Mm

 

35:46.81

Meredith

And this is what we think is the cultural foundation of that future.

 

35:50.50

asetili

-hm.

 

35:51.87

Meredith

And then you start really engaging the leaders. And this is something that I’ve done in several companies where we educated and trained the leaders at every level on why culture was important and what they could do to shape it on an individual basis and on a team basis. And as I mentioned earlier, we use those culture case studies as being a huge tool.

 

36:12.55

asetili

Mm

 

36:14.26

Meredith

And then we started to walk the talk and we embedded our values into our employee experience. It was in performance management, how you recognize people, how you were celebrating and in communications across the group. And we asked questions in the engagement survey to say, hey, are we are we doing what we said we were going to do? And if not, we created actions to fix it.

 

36:37.21

asetili

hmm.

 

36:38.87

Meredith

Because I think one of the gotchas, Amanda, is that people start the process, but then they don’t stick to it. They don’t reinforce it.

 

36:46.28

asetili

Right.

 

36:46.41

Meredith

And you lose credibility.

 

36:48.71

asetili

You sure do. It seems like, oh, that was a thing they were talking about last year. They must have forgotten about that, you know.

 

36:55.67

Meredith

We had one case called the shiny object syndrome.

 

36:58.33

asetili

Mm hmm.

 

37:00.22

Meredith

And you know we’re like, well, guys, who’s permitting the shiny object syndrome to happen at the manager leader level? And at the senior level, we did the same program, whether you’re CEO down to manager of one. And we said, hey, guys, at senior level, who are the culprits of the shiny object syndrome? Because they’re sitting around the table. 

 

37:22.10

asetili

Right.

 

37:22.95

MeredithIs that the behavior you want? Is that behavior going to be an asset? you know Or is that something you’ve got to stop doing or leave behind?

 

37:32.30

asetili

That’s the hardest thing I find is to leave things behind. Things that were very important at one point. Things that you’ve kind of been trained to do through a series of um experiences during your work life at this company. Things you’ve gotten your hands slapped for. Things you’ve gotten rewarded for. And <unk>re it’s just so ingrained in you. It’s like, you know, those things experiences you had as a small child that stick with you for the rest of your life. um It’s really hard to to change in that way. And, you know, sometimes companies…

 

38:03.50

Meredith

And we talk about that. We say this is a habit that you  have to unfreeze that habit.

 

38:19.21

asetili

And having the courage kind of to say, I commit to changing. I realize what I used to be like and how I’m going to be different. And you all can expect me to be different. And if you don’t see me being different, let me know.

 

40:19.89

Meredith

 one of the things we weave into kind of our training is the idea of you know the role of thought and how you think and how you react to people that may be different than you are and how those limiting beliefs and habits

 

40:26.32

asetili

none

 

40:31.13

asetili

Right.

 

40:34.56

Meredith

We make you aware of them, and then we say, is that going to help you accelerate your goal? And if not, what do you need to change? And then invite your team. What do we need to change? Because change happens on an individual level first, then your team level, and then ultimately the org level, getting everybody in a row in the same course.

 

40:47.69

asetili

Mm

 

40:51.69

Meredith

I think it is courageous to admit that. And that was one thing that we did, is when people stood up and talked about things that were hard, it built greater trust. and was one of the largest pieces of feedback. The most positive feedback was thanks for investing in culture and giving us this leadership training because it makes me a better leader.

 

41:09.17

asetili

-hm.

 

41:12.42

Meredith

But the second one was I loved hearing from all of the leaders because it made them feel approachable. It made them feel connected. And when they said, this is what I have to work on, I have to be i have to put my phone down during meetings. because I’m multitasking 

 

how do you think it how do you feel when somebody is you know texting while they’re in a meeting with you or you’re answering your IM?

 

41:27.28

asetili

Yes.

 

41:39.53

asetili

and And that person may not have even been aware of how much they were damaging the trust and the dynamic of the of the collaboration by doing that.

 

41:49.05

Meredith

I would say the vast majority of people that we do this exercise with are not aware.

 

41:53.09

asetili

Right, right.

 

41:54.52

Meredith

And all of a sudden they go, and I go, hey, are you doing that at home? You know?

 

41:59.14

asetili

Exactly. And maybe it’s due to this mental talk track that’s going through their head. Like, I can’t let this, I can’t let this email sit. I have to take care of it. I have to take care of it. I have to take care of it. And no, you don’t have to stop listening to that. Stop listening to yourself, telling yourself that you don’t have to.

 

42:17.26

Meredith

It’s so funny you say that. We literally experienced that where people were saying, and  I can’t disconnect between work and home life,  especially you know where you know when working virtually. And what we had a cultural awakening where we said, guys, as a manager and employee, you have to set a boundary. I’m not going to be available from five to seven when I pick up my kids, right?

 

42:40.20

asetili

Right.

 

42:44.71

asetili

Right.

 

42:45.85

Meredith

But, the boss has to say, I don’t expect you to answer it. 

 

I’m doing all my emails on a Sunday night. This came a real-life case. ah Senior executive realized that they were sending all their emails on a Sunday night because that was their quiet time.

 

43:02.04

asetili

Mm hmm.

 

43:02.32

Meredith

but their team was getting all these emails on a Sunday night.

 

43:05.82

asetili

Mm hmm.

 

43:06.20

Meredith

And their limiting belief was she’s expecting an answer right now. I gotta to do this right now. So now I’m working Sunday night.

 

43:13.35

asetili

Right. Right.

 

43:13.73

Meredith

That’s not my quiet time, that’s my time with my family dinner, right? But then when they said, you know what, because they talked about it, the I Will commitment was from the senior executive, I will send a Microsoft scheduled email so all my emails go out on Monday morning.

 

43:25.48

asetili

Mm hmm.

 

43:30.64

Meredith

we will as a team set up our, ah you know, our do not disturb hours.

 

43:39.86

asetili

isn Well, because if you don’t spend time that’s disconnected from work that’s playing with your kids or having some relaxed time with your spouse in the backyard or taking a walk with a friend or any of those things, your brain gets stuck in in a rut that’s not healthy.

 

43:40.84

Meredith

Problem solved.

 

44:01.49

asetili

I mean, you have to have times when your brain can kind of defrag, you know, kind of reset.

 

44:07.57

Meredith

 it’s not only not healthy it’s actually more predictive of you know, um less effective decisions, higher mistakes, um you know, ah greater um absenteeism, higher health risks, right?

 

44:18.47

asetili

Mm

 

44:25.43

Meredith

so what the limiting belief was, I can’t say no. Now we say no. Here’s my off hours. Here’s my recharge hours. And now there’s a common language. And then what happens is you don’t blame the person. get the blame out of the equation 

 

is the process is broken ? or we’re not communicating effectively ? or you know there’s something else going on but to your point that scenario that you described actually happened and people came up with a different way of handling it.

 

44:47.63

asetili

-hmm.

 

44:57.12

asetili

Mm hmm. Yep. um I think that time away from work lets you be so much more creative when you come back if you really take the time away from work and you’re really, you know, in the present moment of whatever you’re doing when you’re not there at work.

 

45:16.56

Meredith

And there’s a surprising number of companies where it’s culturally rewarded to not take your vacation and people, if you’re in an innovation company and you want to foster a healthy, adaptive organization, you want to make sure that people are bringing their best thought and their best work.

 

45:22.02

asetili

ah Oh, gosh.

 

45:36.70

Meredith

And that means they have to be able to take breaks. They have to be able to recharge. how do you innovate when you’re exhausted?

 

45:46.99

asetili

Right, right, exactly. um This has been such a fantastic conversation, Meredith. I feel like we’ve covered so much ground and people are going to really go back from hearing this this these words of wisdom from you and be able to really do some concrete things in their organization to define where they want to go with culture. and be able to help their people experience what it’s like to go there.

 

46:20.04

Meredith

Exactly. It’s a great topic. I look forward to hearing the podcast and then brainstorming on new ways we can make culture work for companies of any size.

 

46:27.11

asetili

All right. Thank you so much for being a guest today, Meredith.

 

46:32.22

Meredith

All right, take care.

 

46:32.49

asetili

We really appreciate it. All right. Bye bye.

 

46:34.34

Meredith

Bye.