Speaker 1:
0:00
Today we have the vice president of Chick-fil-A and bestselling author, mark Miller, joining us to talk about organizational culture and his new book, cultural Rules. If you're a leader or someone that wants to be a leader, like you, inspire to be a leader. What Mark had to share during this interview was amazing. So with that, let's dive on in. I do have a question for you before we bring Mark out have you ever wore the cow costume? Have you?
Speaker 2:
0:33
No, I have not, but I took the cow lots of places and I delivered food in a cow van so.
Speaker 3:
0:43
I did drive around the cow van.
Speaker 2:
0:44
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
0:45
I did. All right, well, I'll have to think about that. That's a skill. Right there, that's a skill. That's a skill, yeah, Okay. Well, tonight you know we're going to be talking about culture, and how was your culture experience at Chick-fil-A?
Speaker 2:
1:00
It was, yeah, it was truly amazing, Like I said, just the way that there's an emphasis on serving the guests. It really just made my brain think about how can I super serve every person that I meet. It really just trained my brain in that way and I say my pleasure all the time still.
Speaker 1:
1:26
Awesome and I thought that this is a great opportunity to bring Mark out, because I know a lot of you in here are you guys are you guys have entrepreneur hearts. Some of you are already leaders, want to be leaders, you're designing things, you're building communities here in Horizon. And when I talked to Mark and he was telling me about his new book, I was like man, this would be great to talk about culture, because culture is so important. Well, with that, I think this is going to be a great time. Let's go ahead Now. This is Mark's first time in the metaverse. So his meta age I think he's been in here for maybe about 30 minutes already, so his meta age is 30 minutes. So if you guys please reign him with confetti as he comes out, let him experience what the metaverse is like. Mark, come on out. Come out and join us, mark, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2:
2:12
I'm looking at these.
Speaker 1:
2:14
Yeah, look at the confetti. I'm trying. It's all for you. It's on the couch and everything. This is awesome, this is good. I should go this way, there you go.
Speaker 2:
2:25
There you go.
Speaker 3:
2:29
Hey there, hey there.
Speaker 4:
2:30
Hey hey.
Speaker 3:
2:31
Delighted.
Speaker 1:
2:34
He made it. He made it. That's awesome. Well, listen, we're so glad that you're here, mark, we really are. I think a lot of people here know who you are, but I still, I would like to go ahead and give you just 30 seconds to let you introduce yourself.
Speaker 6:
2:48
Okay, mark Miller and I've been selling chicken for about 100 years and I will tell Olivia that I have not only been the cow, but I was the chicken. We used to have a mascot called Doodles and I was the chicken about 100 years ago. So I have won that costume. I have indeed, yeah, started as a team member at Chick-fil-A and I have been on the corporate staff over 40 years.
Speaker 1:
3:18
Wow, wow, that's amazing and I have to give you some credit because I know what it's like to put on those mascot costumes. I did it for a radio station. It was my big marketing idea. I was like I'm going to dress up as a dog in one of those mascot costumes. Kids will love it, and they did. We got loads of photos and stuff, but I had no idea how hot it got in there. Is that a baseball game? And I had the great idea of hey, throw dog treats down my mouth and they were stuck all over my neck. It was disgusting. So whoever puts on those cow suits, man, I tell you what that's a brave person. That's not an easy job.
Speaker 6:
3:55
Not an easy job at all.
Speaker 1:
3:57
Well, mark, we're here to talk about culture. We got your book right here in the metaverse, right here, see Love it. We got this book here. You guys can see it on the tables too. It's down the tables, if you're wondering more about it. Has anybody gotten the book yet? Has anybody gotten Mark's book Culture Rules yet? No, okay.
Speaker 6:
4:15
Well, it's brand new so. I'm not offended. Brand new, just came out a couple of days ago.
Speaker 1:
4:21
I love the game analogy that you're using. I mean, that was the first thing when I picked it up. It's hard for me to read books. It takes me a long time to read a book, so usually I'll get the audio book and then I'll listen to the audio and I'll read the book at the same time. That's the way it usually works for me. When I started reading it, you sent me a copy, and when I started reading about the monopoly and how you compare it, I was like wow, this is so good and it's going to be so good for everybody in here because we are in.
Speaker 1:
4:48
You know, some people look at this as a game. The great thing is, though, this is not just a game, because these are real people in here and like the possibilities. It's not like you just come to a finish line and that's it. This is more than just a game in here, but I do want before we start talking about culture I want to ask you if there's a meaning to this game, to the circle featured on the cover of this book, because I'm also like I've had a background in graphics and I look at okay, there's gotta be a meaning behind the circle Is there a meaning behind the circle?
Speaker 1:
5:18
Yes, there is.
Speaker 6:
5:19
There is meaning behind the circle. If the people in this audience know anything about game design, there is a concept of the magic circle that game designers use, and the basic premise is that the designer is trying to create an environment that people will enter into. They will suspend judgment as needed, they will engage fully and they will enjoy their experience there. And so, in essence, we say that the parallel in culture is that leaders are the designers and we have the opportunity to create our own magic circle. It's that people will enter in, voluntarily, suspend judgment as needed, like in Monopoly. You know the person that's counting the money is not qualified to be a banker, but you suspend judgment and you engage and you actually may enjoy that experience, depending on what the designer has built into the experience. And so that's where we got the concept for the rules, and the game we're playing as leaders is culture craft. We're trying to build a dynamic and vibrant high performance culture.
Speaker 1:
6:38
So that would be like your objective in the game, right?
Speaker 6:
6:41
That is the objective.
Speaker 7:
6:42
Nice. That is the objective.
Speaker 1:
6:44
You know, you say the banker's not qualified to handle the money. I think sometimes my wife would probably tell you in real life I'm probably not really qualified to handle our money.
Speaker 6:
6:52
Well, I'm like here I'm not qualified to handle our money either, so my wife does all that.
Speaker 1:
6:57
That's great, how many here are qualified to handle their money. Let's ask that by the end of the confetti. How many of you are qualified?
Speaker 6:
7:04
Oh, I see the dean.
Speaker 4:
7:04
Manolivia's got it.
Speaker 3:
7:06
She's ready, okay.
Speaker 1:
7:07
Okay, deaners got it. Okay, all right. Arcane yeah, he is. My son is way more responsible with his money than probably I am, that's for sure. Why did you decide to write a book about culture?
Speaker 6:
7:20
Well, my team. For the last 25 years we've been trying to figure out how to serve our leaders and leaders around the world, and our methodology is to look at emerging issues, challenges or opportunities. You know, we kind of look out at the horizon and sometimes we'll be bold enough to look just over the horizon and say if we could help leaders with something that we believe is emerging, then that's what we work on, and we usually work anywhere from three to five years on a project before we share what we've learned. And several years ago we began to see what I would call weak signals. More and more leaders were talking about culture, and if you look at it in retrospect, it makes sense.
Speaker 6:
8:04
Because of growing complexity and just the challenges of the world in which we operate in, it's harder and harder to create and sustain a healthy culture. So we started this work and then, of course, none of us knew about COVID and what was coming, and that put tremendous pressure on the culture of organizations. It either exposed the strengths or the weaknesses of those cultures, and again, most organizations are somewhere in the middle. They're both strengths and weaknesses that were exposed, and so we're just very thankful that we have a point of view now that we began working on several years ago because we thought it would serve leaders. Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1:
8:46
That's good, that's really good, and I think that a lot of the leaders I know they want to have a good culture, but I don't know if this is something again, I haven't finished the whole book yet. Is it something that maybe you've run into as well? That you guys have seen I've got a lot of leaders that want to create good culture, but it's more of like it's something that they say they want to do, but I don't see the actions being put into place.
Speaker 6:
9:11
Well, yeah, it's interesting that your observation is, in fact, reality-based, because one of the first things we do when we're going to undertake a project like this is I work really, really hard not to just write about my personal bias. We always try to check that. I mean, I can't say there's no bias in the work. But that's not where we start. We try to figure out what is universally true about a topic, and so, in this case, we did research. We talked to 6,000, either interviewed or surveyed over 6,000 people in 10 countries To figure out what is universally true about organizational culture. And, to your point, one of our findings because, as you can imagine, we learned a lot is that in the United States, 72% of leaders say that culture is their most important tool to drive performance. Globally. That number is 67%, so people say it's important seven out of 10. In fact, there's nothing more important according to leaders. And then you ask them to rank their priorities and it shows up number 12.
Speaker 6:
10:25
Creating and maintaining culture shows up as number 12. So our team set out to try and help leaders close that gap. It's something they know is important, but they're really not working on it. So your observation is spot on.
Speaker 1:
11:01
Well, that's really good information there, because it makes me think me and I'm at Olivia, and maybe you guys are going through this too. If you're in a business around a company, you know we're in digital marketing. We connect with. Our focus is connecting with people. We want to connect with people on a personal level, build a relationship to earn trust. That's our, that's our. I guess our formula Connect, build a relationship, earn trust. That's when they can convert. You build a community.
Speaker 1:
11:28
Now, when some of the things we've been talking about recently with the digital field there are so many distractions these days, so many distractions and one of the things that we're stepping back at and looking at and evaluating and say, okay, let's set our priorities, what are, what are things that's fighting for our time and our attention that really aren't important? Like, we need to. Really, we need to filter this out and just make sure we're focused on the right things in the right order and say, just because everybody says we should be doing, that doesn't mean that's what we should be doing. We need to see what we should be doing as where we are, because we're we're unique in a. You know, we can't compare ourselves to another company. We need to compare ourselves to ourselves and try to keep moving forward. So with that question, I'd like to ask you, or that thought, I'd like to ask you with all the distractions that we face today as leaders, do you think that these distractions are hurting culture or organizational culture?
Speaker 6:
12:24
Yes, I think it's bigger than that, though, and this is not the topic of tonight. But but we did some work over the last several years. The project that preceded this was on leadership effectiveness, and what we learned is that so many leaders are in quicksand. Now that quicksand it may look a little different for you than me, than than some of the other folks here, but it's busyness, it's distractions, it's complexity, might even be fear, fatigue, aimlessness, even success can impede a leader moving forward. And so we did a similar project where we were trying to figure out how to help leaders escape the quicksand, because it does more than harm culture it harms people, it harms performance, it it. It harms your family, it harms your health. You're never going to lead to your full potential from the quicksand.
Speaker 3:
13:26
You got to get out, you got to get out.
Speaker 6:
13:30
So that's another topic for another day, but that's very important, very important.
Speaker 1:
13:35
So good, that's so good. All right, we're going to get ready to open up for Q&A here because I want to give you guys plenty of times. This is your guys opportunity to ask more as many questions you want about organizational culture and stuff. Before we do that, I want to ask you one more question. What are some things we should be aware of that maybe culture is taking a dive, Like if this is not where we want this to go, is there anything that we should be kind of keeping an eye on? I think yeah there.
Speaker 6:
13:56
There are two things there. One is you need to begin with your aspiration. What do you want your culture to look like? What do you, what are your hopes and dreams for your culture? I would say always start there. And then you look for the gaps. You look for where? Where are we not living up to our aspiration? The other thing you look for we call them toxins. You haven't gotten to that chapter yet, but you look for the patterns of unhealthy and unproductive behavior, because if you don't deal with the toxin, it becomes a malady. And you can. Your organization might not survive. So start with your aspiration. Where are the gaps? And then, specifically, you got to, you've got to attack the toxins.
Speaker 1:
14:43
Let me see if we got some questions here. Give us a check one, two.
Speaker 4:
14:46
Check one two.
Speaker 7:
14:47
Yeah, we got you, there we go. Can anybody hear me Got?
Speaker 4:
14:51
you.
Speaker 3:
14:52
Got you.
Speaker 4:
14:54
All right.
Speaker 3:
14:55
All right, yeah, thanks for doing this man.
Speaker 4:
14:57
Oh, for sure, For sure, man, I wouldn't miss this. This is, this is great. I'm glad you're being here and sharing your wisdom, and I'm actually going to ask you a question that is not about leadership. I'll do the best I can, yeah. So I mean, you just have released this book. I'm sure you're very busy on a circuit promoting stuff. What inspired you to come into the metaverse and share some wisdom?
Speaker 6:
15:20
Well, I'm, I'm, I'm about lifelong learning and it's a new experience. I know it's, it's I would say it's the future, but it's the present and I need to understand it more. I have had some casual exposure, but this is my first time participating and, yeah, I'm, I'm trying to keep learning and keep growing.
Speaker 4:
15:43
Pursuit of lifelong learning. Thanks for sharing that. Yes, that's it Awesome.
Speaker 1:
15:49
Thanks, thanks. Unemployed, right, that's. That's really good. I love that about you. That you're willing to still still. You're still trying to learn and keep up with what's happening today. Is that something that you see? Maybe can that affect culture too, Like organization culture, like maybe being stuck in, like the way you've always done things, Absolutely.
Speaker 6:
16:10
Yeah, yeah, yeah, late, late, late is half the best. Leaders are learners, and they always have been and they always will be. That's good, that's really good.
Speaker 1:
16:19
That's really good, all right, so let's go ahead and bring up lace dragonfly. Lace dragonfly, you want to come on up?
Speaker 3:
16:25
Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. It's my first time here at Killer B and I appreciate it so. So for me, looking at leadership, I am an owner of an engineering firm as well as one of the main leaders for a ministry and VR, and a lot of our both are volunteers and our employees are seeing a high level burnout and when you know one burns out, then that load goes on to others and they burn out more progressively quicker. It seems to be accelerating the last few months. So my first prayer to the question is have you seen that slash? What would cause that? And then what can I do to sort of hedge the destruction if that makes sense of that progressive collapse of stress on everybody as they're getting burnt out?
Speaker 6:
17:11
Well, this is probably a good point for me to say I love Q and A and I hate Q and A, because I don't want any of you to mistake the brevity of my response with the magnitude of your question.
Speaker 6:
17:25
So there's a lot I don't know about your situation, but I think leaders have the responsibility to intervene because oftentimes I have found people who are putting unrealistic expectations on themselves, and if they've got a really good work ethic and a high sense of responsibility and if they're, if they're driven people, you have to take the keys away from them, and so I know that could feel parental, but I think when an employee knows that you have their best interest at heart and you really want them to win and you may need to help them prioritize or reprioritize or say we'll do this later or bring additional resources.
Speaker 6:
18:12
More than once I've had employees that just were on the verge of killing themselves and I had. I just had to intervene because I could see where it was headed, even if they couldn't, and again, I know that feels parental, but I think I think we have a responsibility as leaders for the people that we serve, and so I don't know the individual circumstances, but I think you need to get close enough to try and figure out what is the real root problem here and again. Maybe they have resource challenges, maybe they have skill challenges, maybe they have prioritization challenges, because you know there are people that see everything as an a priority. Well, everything really shouldn't be, and probably can't be, an a priority. And so I would just say, get close enough to try and help them.
Speaker 4:
19:03
Perfect Thank you.
Speaker 6:
19:03
That's good Hope that would help yeah.
Speaker 4:
19:06
Thank you, Lace.
Speaker 1:
19:09
All right, let's see who else we can bring up here. We've got, uh, all right, Fated Ghost. You want to come on up, Fated, Hello. There we go, we got you.
Speaker 5:
19:16
Hello, okay, uh, mark. So I've watched a couple of your interviews and it was awesome to see you how consistent you are with your answers. But the question I have for you is so I've worked for Amazon for about 13 years and the culture change has always gone with the site leader. So I've seen good up and down. I have been submissive to the culture, to the site leader, even if I had to bring up the same problems, and you know they might tell me after a certain amount of time, okay, and then I'll just cut it off and be submissive to it. But, um, almost honestly, I'm getting burned out by the ups and downs to different cultures. What advice would you have for me?
Speaker 6:
19:53
Well, first let me say I understand that completely, um, because I feel like part of our role as employees is is to be truth tellers within the organization. But at the same time, I understand that we need to be submissive to authority. And so what? What I have done historically is I will bring something up repeatedly until I'm told not to bring it up anymore, and that's when I usually go, okay, um, I got it, because I do believe there's something more important than being right, and it is submission to authority. And if we can't submit to the authority, then we need to. We need to move somewhere else. As long as they're not asking us to do something illegal, immoral or unethical, we are under authority, and so I appreciate your spirit on that.
Speaker 6:
20:39
As far as the ups and downs, I understand that as well, because the leader, the local leader, is the primary driver of culture. We tend to think it's the CEO, and the CEO does set norms and boundaries and vision and value and other things. But it all gets real when you get down to a frontline supervisor. It all gets real to a frontline supervisor. And so, uh, I obviously I don't know your circumstances or situation, but the advice I give very, very often, because I get the question in one form or another very often about career advice or this, that or the other and I sort of get you talk about being consistent. I think I pretty much always give the same answer.
Speaker 6:
21:24
I think you need to try and help your boss be wildly successful. The good bosses and the bad bosses and they all appreciate it, and I've had good bosses and bad bosses, but I've always tried to be consistent what can I do to help them be successful, wildly successful? Sometimes it's do things that they don't like to do. Sometimes it's to do things they don't want to do. Sometimes it's try to take things away from them that they're not good at, because I can make them look better if I do it for them. So again, I don't know if that would be applicable in your situation or not, but I've been trying to do that for over 40 years to make my bosses look wildly successful.
Speaker 5:
22:07
I hope that helps.
Speaker 1:
22:09
I hope that helps. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for it and, mark, I gotta say like that's, that's a hard one to swallow for. Even help the bad leaders, help do your best to help succeed.
Speaker 6:
22:22
You're under that for you and let me say this you can learn an awful lot from bad leaders. I hope you're taking good notes. You're going to pay attention to the stuff that you never want. To do that to your people.
Speaker 4:
22:36
Yeah, I've learned a lot from bad bosses.
Speaker 1:
22:39
That's good.
Speaker 6:
22:40
That's good, we can learn a lot Let me say it this way I'm a better boss because of the bad bosses.
Speaker 1:
22:47
Let's bring Lizard Playup. Lizard, are you in the house?
Speaker 8:
22:49
There he is, hi, how are you Good, so I run smoothie shops. I have about six of them and about 70 employees. It would like 90. The problem I have, though, is how do you motivate other people to come into your culture? As far as getting more employees, I mean, we just don't have any applications. No one wants to work in our days. If they do, they don't show up to their first day, and then, if they do end up making it past the first two weeks, they don't end up clicking with the employees that are already there. So how do you overcome that battle of getting overran by the culture your employees have created?
Speaker 6:
23:33
So that's another really challenging and very big question.
Speaker 8:
23:39
I was trying to write down.
Speaker 6:
23:42
Well, if it was an easy question you would have already answered it. I got that, so I got it. I mean, we're dealing with the same thing, right. We have 3,000 restaurants and almost all of them would tell you they need more employees right now. So I got it.
Speaker 6:
24:00
I talked to our restaurant operators a lot who are having the same challenges, so I think the simplest way to address that actually goes. There's probably a two-pronged approach. One is to go to the content we were talking about tonight. When you create this culture that if you've got a clear aspiration, that you know exactly what your hopes and dreams are for your culture, you amplify those aspirations, which includes recruiting people who will fit within that culture, and I know you're having trouble getting applicants. I got that. There's a second part to my answer in just a second. The third part is you have to adapt the culture, and we're all doing that, right. The world's just dynamic and changing and so we do that.
Speaker 6:
24:51
But the second piece of the answer is we did some research a few years ago trying to figure out what attracts top talent to an organization, and I can tell you I was shocked that the best we could discern nobody had ever done that research in the history of the world Because we spent a lot of time trying to find it so that we could just buy it. And we couldn't find it. So we commissioned we think was the first ever study in the history of the world and we talked to top performers all 50 states, aged 15 to 65, to figure out what they wanted in a job. And what we learned is that we called them top talent, top talent. They want something different from typical talent. Now, typical talent aren't bad people, but they're not your A players. We believe that A players want the same things, and they want three things. First, they want a better boss, and what we mean by that is they want to be well led. Now you may be thinking well, doesn't everybody want to be well led? Well, perhaps, but for top talent it's a condition of employment. So if you want to attract and keep good people, they need to be well led. The second thing they want top talent. They want a brighter future. They walk into an interview with different questions. They're they're asking what am I gonna learn? How am I gonna grow? Now you say well, doesn't typical talent care about the future? Well, typical talent does care about the future. But their definition of the future is Friday, and top talent has a longer time horizon, and so if you can help them Understand what they're gonna learn and grow while they work for you and how you're gonna prepare them for a brighter future Probably not within your organization.
Speaker 6:
26:49
A very, very small percentage of the great people that come to Chick-fil-A stay with Chick-fil-A. Met Olivia is an example. You know very talented person. She learned some things at Chick-fil-A and she moved on. Well, top talent, they often move on, but what can you tell them? They're gonna, how they're gonna learn and grow.
Speaker 6:
27:08
And then the third thing, and finally, that top talents looking for is they want to be part of something bigger than themselves, and can you offer that? And so what we're trying to do to attract and keep People is to provide those three things. Now there's one last piece to that You'd have to tell that story, because if you don't tell that story, nobody knows that's your story. And so a lot of our restaurants who were already doing those things weren't able to recruit and retain people because they weren't telling the story. And so I Wrote about that in a book called talent magnet if you wanted more details, but I just gave you the gist of it better balls, brighter future and bigger vision. That's what top talent wants. So if you get, if you get a healthy and thriving Culture and you staff it with top talent, it will attract more top talent and you'll keep the ones you've got even longer. I know that's a lot, but that's a big question no, yeah, I just bought your book.
Speaker 1:
28:18
Thank you. Thank you, lizard. All right, let's bring up another guest for another question. You got time for a couple more questions mark, I do. All right, cool. So we have a lot of a birdie, love a birdie. Want to come on up here to the mic right here in the the sub stage.
Speaker 9:
28:34
Hi so perfect. I'm wonderful, thank you. This is great because I have a leadership training that I'm facilitating next week and the topic is managing self organizing teams. Okay, and I'm going to present this wicked question to the leaders that I'll be training. The wicked question is how do I manage or lead a team, yet still promote Self organization? Right, you can see how that's a dichotomous question. Do you have any tips for me that will help me in this, this training that I'll be facilitating?
Speaker 6:
29:13
there's a term that Was used years ago called a self managed team. It might be similar, very similar, and I do actually like that language because I don't believe in self led teams, but I do believe in self managed teams. I think every team needs needs leadership. I think my advice to you is to be as clear as possible on the roles. So I have led quite a few self managed teams over the years and role clarity I think Is is one of the keys to success and you get to. I, as you would imagine, put whatever you want on the various lists, but I tend to put things like vision, boundaries, resources on the leader side.
Speaker 6:
30:09
Right and I put things like problem identification, problem solving, accountability, performance enhancement on the team side, perfect. And so Again, one way that I've tried to make that point in the past to somebody Often a leader who's struggling to let go, it's like if there's, if there's, a performance problem, whose problem is it? Or the leader thinks they're supposed to say it's my problem. So well, no, that's their problem because they're supposed to manage performance. Now you've got to go to them and figure out why they're not managing performance. That's your problem. So I think role clarity is one of the real key. In fact, they're only, in my mind, two big keys to make that work. One is role clarity and the other is the competency of the team members. And so if they're not ready yet, the leader has to stay engaged and stay involved until they build sufficient competency, and then the leader can can pull out.
Speaker 9:
31:09
Perfect. I'm so glad to hear you say that. That makes me feel very confident in what I have planned For my leadership team. Great Thank you.
Speaker 6:
31:17
Good, one more thing. Yeah, uh, robert birdie, if you want a reference, check out the secret of teams.
Speaker 9:
31:26
Okay, yeah, I will thank you. I appreciate this.
Speaker 1:
31:29
Yes, awesome, thank you. Thank you. All right, we're gonna do one more question before we get ready to get close to the end of the Event tonight. Let's go ahead and bring up dynamic dragons. You want to come up dynamic? How are you?
Speaker 7:
31:41
Good, I was. Um, you're talking about uh toxin in culture and I was wondering Well, not on a leadership outlook, but you know, as as one of the people in one of the uh on the Lower levels of it but what would you, uh, what do you do in a situation where you can't speak with the higher ups and those managing the culture? I don't know how to explain it, but they, they, they have a Ideology that's also kind of toxic. So when you try to address those with them, they just turn you away.
Speaker 6:
32:16
Yes, that I think I understand what you're describing, and it's it's a very challenging situation. Um, it's very, very challenging. I mean I go back to what I said earlier I have been in situations, maybe not as severe as what I sense you're describing, but I actually have talked to leaders about how can I help you and this team be more successful. I mean just a direct assault on I want to serve you, I want to serve this team. What can I do? And you may decide you can't continue there.
Speaker 6:
32:58
It may be so oppressive, and that would be unfortunate, but at some point, that leader has been given the authority for that team and you can only do what you can do. I would say, though, at least take good notes. As I referenced earlier, you can learn so much from a bad leader. It's painful, but those, those are lessons that will serve you well, potentially for the rest of your life. And I will say this the research is very clear when people leave organizations, they rarely leave the organization, they leave their supervisor, they leave the person that is impacting their day to day work, and so that's one reason that we are now trying to give additional energy and emphasis to how do we serve the frontline leaders better, because they're the ones that have the greatest impact on the employee base at large.
Speaker 1:
34:02
I have to. I totally have to agree with you because I know Olivia knows this. There's a lot of things that with me running Killer B that I've learned, I've shared with her and I've shared with our team. I was like this is the reason why I'm always trying to encourage and try to equip them and help them and we send out reports weekly with some team members and ask them, like, give us your highs and lows, Like we want to know what's going on in your life. I mean, there's times that we've had people on the team who's who's lost the pet and it's like those are important things and it shows them that we realize they're a person too.
Speaker 1:
34:36
But a lot of those things was learned from me being underneath bad leadership and wondering, wondering why am I here? You can approach bad situations, the situation at your end. Maybe it's your job or maybe it's your financial situation, Maybe it's your living situation that we can approach those and go. Why am I here? Or you can approach and say, all right, why am I here? Like there's a reason why you're still there right now and it could be for you to learn, because maybe later on in your life you're going to become a leader, and those are things that you want to take notes of. So I think that's such great advice that you were given and I hope that everybody's taken notes on that, because that is it's, it's true, it really is.
Speaker 6:
35:17
And let me say one thing about that you, when you say you may become a leader someday, I agree, but I want to put an asterisk on that. You may have a formal position of leadership someday, but you have the opportunity to lead without a title, without a responsibility. Yeah, you can you can provide leadership. That's great, that is that is so good.
Speaker 1:
35:40
Thank you, mark. Thank you, all right, so I know. So, guys, here's what we're going to do. We're going to get ready to wrap up. I'm going to ask Mark one more question before we wrap up. How can they connect with you outside of here, in the real life, like social media websites, and is there any way that we'll send out a link about to your book through the text? But if you want to tell anybody how they can get that, to feel free to go ahead and I'll give you two things.
Speaker 6:
36:01
One is a website called lead every day dot com and then my cell number, which we'll send this to you. If you ever need to reach me, my number is 678-612-8441. 678-612-8441. So between those two channels, you can certainly get in touch with me. That's awesome, and let me tell you guys like Mark here that's that's how I got in contact with Mark.
Speaker 1:
36:28
He's not joking, If you're thinking, well, ok, I'm going to go to Mark Mark here. That's that's how I got in contact with Mark. He's not joking, right. This guy's giving me a cell phone number. Like, really, you're at CMB Momentum at the conference. I was out there, we were leading digital audits, and he talked exactly about what you hear me talking here about rest and time to reflect, and I had been doing that all last year and that's what you talked about. And I was like, oh my gosh, I have to text Mark. And I thought, well, the worst thing he's going to say is no, and this was supposed to be a YouTube interview, wasn't it when we first started?
Speaker 6:
37:00
I think that's where we started.
Speaker 1:
37:01
Yeah, this is much more fun. Yeah, isn't it? I was like you know what, mark? What about coming to the motorverse? And so he's being legit with you. I mean, that's coming for me like he is truthful when he says that. Mark, before we go, usually I ask people like what is a key takeaway, would you like us to take away? But I'm going to do something a little bit different here with you because of your book and what we've been talking about, and I again, I love how, like the game analogy, and I would like to ask you, if culture rules, what are the basic rules of culture, of organizational culture?
Speaker 6:
37:35
I'm going to answer your question, but I want to. I want a two part answer. So, to answer your question, we found three rules Aspire, share your hopes and dreams for the culture. Amplify, which is always looking for ways to amplify the aspiration. And adapt to constantly be looking for ways to enhance the culture. We think those are the three irreducible, minimal responsibilities that a leader must do, because if you don't play by the rules, you're going to, you're going to lose, if not be disqualified, and you won't create the culture that you really want to create. But but I do want to close. It's not really appropriate for me to have an aspiration for your culture, but I do. And it seemed like this is the perfect place to tell this story. I include it at the end of the book.
Speaker 6:
38:37
Some of you are familiar with Steven Spielberg's movie Ready Player One. Yeah Right, we're kind of. We're kind of living that right. And Ernest Klein wrote the novel.
Speaker 6:
38:50
For those that don't know the book or the movie, the story takes place in two worlds.
Speaker 6:
38:55
It takes place in the real world and it takes place in a virtual world of the Oasis. And the hero of the of the movie is a young man named Wade Watson and Wade makes a comment about the Oasis that I think has a has a striking parallel to the cultures we're trying to create. Here's what Wade says. He said people go to the Oasis because of what they can do there and they stay because of who they can become. They go to the Oasis for what they can do there and they stay because of who they can become. And again, I have an aspiration for the cultures that you're building that they would be so compelling, so life giving and soul enriching, that they would attract people and they would attract them because of what they could do there, they could have a job and they could take care of themselves and their families. But I also want you to have a culture that, once people are there, they stay because of who they can become, and that is within your reach.
Speaker 1:
40:15
Wow, that is so good, so good. Thank you so much, mark. Thank you Really. Thank you for your time. Thank you for coming and joining. Hey, we have a new way that you can get updates about new episodes that are dropping in the podcast and if you're joining us in the metaverse, you can get updates about upcoming events and guests. So here's all you have to do Just text the word BUZZ to the number 863-262-7763.
Speaker 2:
40:40
Thanks for tuning in to the Stories we Live podcast and, before you go, make sure you hit that subscribe button, and we'd love it if you would leave us a review.
