Living Your Values – Client Workshop

Discover the five leverage points of values that require you to be intentional about

Company core values are not just a thing you do. Your values are something you live. This training is for the members of the Fast Growth Boardroom. It is designed as a workshop that you can share with your executive leadership team and HR team to spark new ideas to create new ways to “live your values.” Inside the workshop, we look at the five inflection points that connect to your values. You will get ideas that you can ethically steal (borrow) to improve the employee experience. Please don’t share this page or content with anyone outside your company. You do have my (Gene Hammett) explicit permission to share this internally with your team. I want to make sure you get value from it and love to hear how it impacts your company.

Download slides from the workshop.

 

 
 

Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.

Gene Hammett
So this is the first conversation that we’re gonna have around lived your values. I’ve got some slides prepared for you. But before we dive into any slides, and any kind of training and workshop kind of stuff, I want to, I want to go through a little bit of an experiment with you guys. If you were going to take this as seriously as you possibly could if you were going to truly put everything you’ve got into this 90 minutes together. How would you show up? I’m going to tell you one thing that I would, I would hope that you’d show up, I’d hope you show up engaged. That a good place to start? Nobody’s muted right now. So we don’t have a lot of background noise. But how would you show up? If you were going to get the most out of this experience?

Unknown Speaker
I’d say probably prepared with some ideas of what you’re hoping to achieve.

Gene Hammett
Okay. I love that. Anybody else wants to share with us? How would you show up?

Speaker 2
Well, since you started talking about I went ahead and just shut my email off. There you go.

Gene Hammett
Appreciate that. I think we would show up completely focused. And that’s, that’s, you know, I think a behavior behind that is shutting your email offer, or taking this thing and really realizing Okay, it’ll wait. Most things will wait if we really think about it. I, I start here, because I want us to be as focused as we possibly can. I want us to engage when there’s a moment for you to ask questions, or for you to share something, you don’t have to raise your hand with a small enough group here that we can actually do this really easily together, I will mute everyone if we’ve got some background noise, but it sounds great today.

Gene Hammett
So this is perfect. And the other thing behind this is, it just would be amazing. If you would reflect deeply on how some of these changes would change the way you engage with others, the whole organization would change because of what we’re talking about today, reflect deeply on something that you can take away from this so that there is value because this is not a training per se, this is actually a workshop, to go deeper into a topic that I really feel confident is important for companies that want to create growth. And living values is something that I’ve seen time and time again, that if we did a better job with it, that we would get more out of it. And we’d have more fun with work, and we and everyone would get along much better. So that being said, any questions before we kind of go into the little bit of framing of this?

Gene Hammett
All right, I appreciate you guys being focused, being truly able to engage where necessary, and reflecting deeply. Now, I do ask that I know not many people have this. And I really don’t have this very often. But if you have some paper or something you can write down on, it’d be a good thing to do. Because I think that the connection behind some of the ideas we have, maybe you have a question that you want to ask, write it down, and we’ll come back to it. So that being said, I’m going to share my screen. And I’m going to cut on a presentation that looks like this. Can you guys see this?

Speaker 2
Yes.

Gene Hammett
Living your values? We can see this, right?

Speaker 1
Yes.

Gene Hammett
So this is not just training, I’m not going to just be hitting you with a bunch of stuff. In fact, if we do this, right, it’s about 50-50. And how we engage with each other through the questions that the level of, of, you know, ideas that are thrown about and discussed, we would be about 5050. But the first part of this because I’m going to set the frame will be a little bit of me talking. And not much of you guys. You guys are okay with that. So, I frequent this place quite a bit. Many of you probably do. Home Depot is, uh, you know, a big brand. Do they have everything right now? But one of the things I noticed when I went in there is they do some things, right? They do some things wrong, too. There’s a little frustration I have, but I had a chance to speak with their CEO, Frank Blake. He’s retired now, but I had a chance to go into him and asked him specifically about their values. And one of the things that they do, I actually took this picture. These are the values that they put on the wall of one of their buildings, one of their stores, and it’s right outside the bathrooms. If you go to any Home Depot, you will see this has anybody ever seen this before?

Speaker 2
I don’t think I’ve noticed it.

Speaker 1
I haven’t either.

Gene Hammett
No, not I know you probably maybe you’ve never been to Home Depot because she lives in New York guys.

Speaker 1
I’ve been there but I have I’ve seen this before.

Gene Hammett
Okay, so it’s right outside the bathrooms now except because if the bathrooms, because that’s where the break room is, they want people to see this consistently. Now, this doesn’t solve their problems, but I’m bringing this up, because this is the context of, we’ve got to go from these words, into behaviors, right? So really the concept is how do you go from these ideas of values into the behaviors at which we are engaging with others? And how do we see them consistently across our companies? That’s a big idea, right? That’s living the values.

Gene Hammett
Now, this is a part of the, you know, the training and the workshops that we provide inside of fast growth boardroom. And I’m zooming out a little bit because I want you to have the context to why I’m doing this workshop. Some of you guys are members of this, some of you guys are invited, guests. Because either your clients, your bosses are part of what we’re doing, or you were just invited a special guest. But we are here to help you be the best leaders possible, invest with the boardroom to help you understand some of the contexts around leadership, around culture, and around people help you create predictable growth create a better place for people to work. And this is just one of the training that we provide around that I wanted to put some context, right, because it’s really important to understand what we’re doing here. And when we talk about values, I want to look at two different scenarios.

Gene Hammett
Now, some of you guys might be too young to understand this. But does anyone not know who Enron is. But just remember Enron, we remember Enron, right? They did one of the most elaborate cover-ups inside of financial, you know, malfeasance and whatever words go with this, that that really hard to understand how they would get away with that across the organization. But here’s what I believe in around this. They get away with it. Because no one was willing to speak up, no one had the courage. And really, they did not create a space where they were living their values. The funny thing is their top value, if you can see on here, integrity was one of the values that were literally etched in marble in their headquarter office, did you guys know this. But now you understand it’s not just about something, an idea that we have in his organization, we have to live it, we have to be very intentional about it. And that’s one reason why I’m bringing this up because this is kind of the so the flip side of this is a company called Patagonia. I use a lot of examples because I want you to really understand this. And probably you know who this is, if you don’t, it’s a billion-dollar brand with 3000 employees, to work there, it’s probably harder to get a job there than it is to get into Harvard. Isn’t it undergrad?

Gene Hammett
Think about that for a second, it’s harder to get a job at a place like Patagonia than it is to get in because there are so many applications. After all, people want to work for this organization because of what they believe in, and how they behave as an organization. This is Yvonne Shannara. Hopefully, I’ve got the pronunciation right. But they didn’t once do a study. He’s the CEO. He was the CEO that now is the He is the founder of Patagonia. They did a study. The employees are so independent that they’re unemployable anywhere else. Think about that for a second. What do you think that means? They’re unemployable anywhere else.

Unknown Speaker
It feels like they’re given a lot of autonomy and decision making and under, they can be entrepreneurial, and really, like, have ownership over their roles.

Gene Hammett
Ah, these were some really big words there. I love that. They have they live the values they really do. These are some of the values I found when I was talking to researching this company. And I bring this up because it’s a well-known company. But reuse, reduce, repair, reuse, recycle reimagine. It’s probably not the best picture of those things. There’s a sentence or two with each of them describing what they are. And like, look at this repair thing. We help you repair your Patagonia gear, you pledge to fix what’s broken. They ran an ad that says don’t buy this jacket. Does anybody remember this campaign? A lot of press around it because they literally said don’t buy our stuff. How many companies out there saying don’t buy our stuff? Well, what they believe what they live, is they live by the values that you should prepare the jacket. You don’t need to buy a new one. And they built an incredible company because of this and the people are really aligned around the values together. Just to take this just a step further. Yvonne was talking about values and he said I really want it to outlive me and For the next 100 years, that’s how important they are to him. And so we’re going to dive into what that means inside of today’s workshop. Again, going back up a couple of levels, I want you to answer this, anybody, you know, can speak up here, but what would it feel like to be the best leader you can be?

Unknown Speaker
I’ll go first. I think being the best leader, what you feel is you can go, you can bring more good influence to the people around you. And I like the idea of lead by example. So if you’ve been a good leader, you can really bring what you believe, you know, what, what, what you believe in values and bring to the group that you’re into? Well, I guess I’m still talking about saying, Do I influence people around you?

Gene Hammett
I love that leading by example and influencing others. How does it feel though? How does it really feel? Who else can share this? How does it feel to be the best leader?

Speaker 2
Keep feeling happy and satisfied?

Speaker 1
Feel powerful?

Gene Hammett
Yeah, you would feel powerful. Anybody else wants to chime in here?

Speaker 2
Yeah, Gene, I think he’d feel happy and satisfied. You’re living your life.

Gene Hammett
Would it be enjoyable to come to work?

Speaker 1
Yes.

Gene Hammett
If you were truly leading others, would you be getting a lot done? If they’re raising their game to the next level? Would you be getting a lot done?

Speaker 1
Yes, yes.

Gene Hammett
Perfect. Yeah, that’s the reason why we’re here because I want you to understand some context. But in leadership, that is not just about, get the work done, not just about executing, but it’s about how we make others feel, how we inspire them to raise their game, and how we lead them to do that. In all the work I do, I’ve tried to organize the real concepts around driving growth with companies, I think most of you guys know, I work primarily with fast-growth companies from the Inc 5000. The founders and CEOs and their teams are all people that I connect with weekly, and many of them are clients, and really fast growth boardroom caters to that set of people, what I want you to have the context to is, when I think about growing companies, you’ve got to get a few things, right, you’ve got to get the team, right, you got to get the right systems. And you have to be in the right place as a leader to make this happen.

Gene Hammett
Now, I talked to a lot of my companies that are already have grown pretty fast, maybe they’ve doubled in the past year, maybe they’ve tripled their revenues, but they really want to create predictable growth. And so when I think about this, I think I call this the predictable growth model, you’ve got to understand how all these things fit together. And this context allows us to understand when we go deeper into living the values in this workshop, where this really fits into everything. The problem is a lot of people have an ineffective team, either they have an incomplete team, or they have people that are not playing at the fullest level, they’re not taking real ownership of their work. And there’s some space between what is possible, and what is reality. Also, in systems, we have incomplete systems, as companies grow, we have things that are missing, I have a lot of my clients that come to me and say, you know, we need to be a little bit more corporate. I don’t think that’s what they’re really mean. Because they don’t want the bureaucracy of corporate, because they’re all mostly small companies like you guys. But they want structure, they want processes, and they want things to be systematized because that’s where we get predictable growth from. And one of the big issues is, leaders are so focused on everyone else, that they fail to grow themselves, they become idle. And it’s dangerous when you as the leader of a company, are not growing as fast as you want everyone else to grow and not as fast as you want the company to grow.

Gene Hammett
You’ve got to go beyond what’s just right their kind of coming at you and be intentional about it. So what happens from here? Well, we’ve got to create empowering teams, we got to create teams that truly are, you know, taking ownership making decisions. And really working through challenges. We want systems that are evolving. In fact, we want team members that are empowered to create better systems over time, because the systems that got us to where we are, have to improve. This is in marketing, sales, operations, everything, and then leaders must expand. I’m going through this because I want you to understand the full context of we’re not talking about all this today. This is such a big topic, but we’re going to shine a light Don’t know exactly what this means. So again, this is a lot of data to be thrown at you. But empowering teams, when people take ownership, you have the right coaching in place that are developing people, you have the right rituals, the systems, you have the right foundational elements like mission, vision, and values, that’s the MVP frameworks are very necessary for you to create systems, I’m going to share with you some of those today, processes, and every leader must make a mindset shift. Even if they are already successful, even if they’re, they’re worth a billion dollars. There are mindset shifts that are necessary to want to continue to grow. And that’s one of the big areas, I work on energy management, getting people to really focus on what’s most important, removing these things around the energy that drains them, and closing the gaps in their skills that are necessary for them to really, to play at the next level.

Gene Hammett
Now diving into this whole concept of, of values. I just took this off the internet like this is this is something we see. Maybe people aren’t in the offices right now. I think most everybody’s kind of in their own little spaces, which is fine. I think not a year, you’re probably still in the office, right?

Unknown Speaker
I’m an office.

Gene Hammett
But they put their values on the wall, as good as this sounds and in you know, having something as a reminder to people. Do you guys believe that? That’s enough? No, it’s

Gene Hammett
Yeah. So you think it is helpful?

Unknown Speaker
I think it can be?

Gene Hammett
Yeah, I think it can be too. It could be something that you you, you walk someone out to the wall and say, hey, what does it mean, to respect others? This is something we believe what does that mean inside of our work? But it’s not enough? We’ve got to go beyond that. We also adopt Because ultimately, if you don’t that ends up being a board that people are looking at as contradictory, right? Oh, yeah. How many times do you think the Enron people walked in and saw integrity? And they knew right was not right. But my point,

Gene Hammett
Absolutely. Yeah. And that’s, but we have to be aware of that. Now. I think what we’re going to talk about today is how do we go beyond this? I’m kind of curious about your companies, and I think the biggest company here is Peggy your 200 employees. Do you think everyone could tell you the values?

Unknown Speaker
I think everyone we have five core values. I think everyone can tell us at least three.

Gene Hammett
Okay, bad.

Unknown Speaker
I know sometimes I get caught up on them. I’m like, what’s that fifth? Um, but I think everyone could tell us at least three.

Gene Hammett
Not bad. I think it would. I don’t know if that’s good enough. Hopefully Today we’ll learn some ways to reinforce getting them to learn all of them. But more than just getting to learn what they are. We want them to understand how they apply to who we are, and what we get. Anyone else has thoughts on it? Could you? Do they think every person in your organization would tell you the values? No, no? Okay? No, it’s an opportunity for improvement. memorizing them is not enough either, just that he could tell you the values. What’s the value that you guys like inside your organization that you have that you just really feel like, defines your organization? What’s one

Unknown Speaker alliance with the organization? Did you say?

Gene Hammett
Yeah, this is like really just like, when you hear it, says, This is who we are. Peggy, you go first, what is Yeah, I

Gene Hammett
Love that anybody else has a matter, it’s our value inside your company that you just absolutely think defines who you are guys are

Unknown Speaker
in our company we have to news be accountable and be compassionate these to us not only to our, you know, what we, we bring this valuable knowledge is not only to our employees, also with our clients, I think because we are a sales organization, maybe it’s also organization, I think, and be accountable, be passionate to our clients is very important to maintain the relationship that sees how to drive the sales, organization, vision go long term, the relationship between AWS and clients,

Gene Hammett
I’m going to come back to you because I remember when you guys were Nona is from Universal processing, which is one of our clients. And they did a rollout of their values when we recast them as a part of working together. And we’re going to come back to that in a few minutes. Thank you, Donna, for sharing that. Why are values important? Let’s really think about this for a second. And really started to analyze this. Why are they important? They’re the rudders of the organization to be like a boat without a rudder. If you didn’t have something to provide direction, you’d end up just going around in a circle. Yeah. Love that. What else would we share? Why are they important?

Unknown Speaker
I think, to my understanding, it’s more like the same that you believe in, you know that. Like, everybody has the same goal. What do you think that’s right, what’s the endgame? What do you think you want to achieve? So it’s like, it’s like the guidance, you have to put everybody together? Like what you believe in? Yeah. Why am I sending

Gene Hammett
love that. And ultimately, it’s difficult to be intentional about something you give no attention to. So if it’s not front and center, you’re not providing attention to it. And then you certainly can’t be intentional on that attention. I haven’t heard a phrase like that. And forgive my handwriting. But I wanted you guys to experience this together. If you’re riding around with me. One of the biggest reasons why we want you to live your values is because it helps us make decisions. When you’re not in the room when the founders not in the room. How do you expect people to make decisions? If they can replay back in their mind what a value is like a move and matter? Then they understand we got to move quickly. Peggy shared you know, she’s a perfectionist at heart, but she’s you have to keep reminding yourself. We’re going to move forward no matter what. Right, Peggy?

Speaker 1
Yes.

Gene Hammett
I love the fact that you guys are sharing this with us. And I wanted this to just kind of take a moment here. Is there any other reason why you think that we should be living the values, something we’ve missed?

Unknown Speaker
Well, I think they’re almost at the heart of the employee experience as well. It’s the heart of who your company is. And I think we talk about rotters but the values where I work as I feel connected to those and it helps me feel connected as a person to this larger organization and the people I work with.

Gene Hammett
I absolutely think that is beautiful. It is the heart of the employee experience. You guys are doing better than I could have put this together. And this is the idea of making this a workshop not training because I think we can all add pieces to This puzzle. And that’s what we’re going to do for the rest of this. I, I want to hit this home because I really think that one of the things I’ve seen why this is important is you call it the guardrail, or the rudder, I actually think values are a guardrail. Gotta spell it, right. They provide insight into how we are supposed to make those decisions. And in fact, one of the things I’ve seen, that’s really important when we’re talking about empowering people, is if we don’t let employees think for themselves, then we’ll be surrounded by people who can’t think for themselves. Do you guys see that? fast-growth organizations will completely be stymied. If that’s the way they run consistently, we want to make sure that we’re allowing people to think for themselves, and if we have these, these values we live them, then we have a chance to really create a place where people feel empowered, and they’re able to make those decisions. That’s a great point. Because if they don’t guess where all the questions go, yeah. And if you answer the questions, there’s the dangerous part, you want to be helpful, and you answer the questions. What do you teach them to do next time they have a problem? To you? Yeah. Never-ending cycle. Yep. And if you have a value that allows them, to really push beyond that and figure things out for themselves, then you can point to that value inside that conversation. say, Okay, good. I could we could talk about the answer and what to do next. But let’s back up a second. Let’s take a moment and look at the values of the company. And what do you think we could do next? Does that make sense? I am, I had a chance to have some really famous people on the podcast before so Growth Think Tank, if you haven’t listened to the podcast, some of the people that are in here have been on the podcast before. But I had a chance to talk with Seth Godin, if you’re in the marketing world, you probably know who Seth Godin is, Oh, goodness, he wrote purple cow and permission-based marketing. And he’s got 18 bestsellers, as far as I know. And every one of them is just incredible. And I had a chance to talk to him about leadership. And he said this to me, and it sticks with me today because he said, if if I have to tell you what to do, I can always find someone cheaper to do it. That’s a writer down, right. If I have to tell you what to do, I can always find someone cheaper to do. I’m not saying use that inside of your conversations with someone who comes to you with a problem. But I want you to think about that. If you always tell them what to do. You’re missing that opportunity, Kylee. Is this resonating with you, you’re being quiet. Are you still here?

Unknown Speaker
I’m writing the book suggestions in the podcast down right now. Okay.

Gene Hammett
And I’m going to add kind of a bonus thing down here too. And then this is the core of the way we’re talking is it’s not a one-time thing. What do you guys think I mean by that?

Unknown Speaker
Well, so exercise you do with your employees to get their feedback, and then you post the words on the wall?

Gene Hammett
Yeah. Yeah. You’ve got to make it a part of every day you get to live them. Alright. So, all that being said, we’re gonna look at five different areas. Five inflection points are what I typically prefer two. The first one is hiring. So let’s talk just for a few minutes about how can we live the values in our hiring process?

Unknown Speaker
I think you can ask behavioral questions around the values, you have to see if your candidates embody those values. Perfect.

Unknown Speaker
So I actually recently went through the hiring process right after we workshop, our values for pts, okay, and pts works with a dentist in the medical field. And one of the things that we really decided on that it was more important for the employee to fit within the company, we can train dentistry, we can teach you the systems. But if you don’t fit in, and you don’t get our humor, and one of our big priorities is fun in team building. If you don’t fit in, then that it doesn’t matter what you know.

Gene Hammett
Yeah, if someone’s not fun. And you know, before the hiring process, they’re probably not going to be fun down the road. Is that fair to say? or? Yeah. I mean, let’s be, let’s be honest, like fun. Does it mean you’re funny, it means you can, you know, laugh with others, you can see an opportunity to really let go and enjoy yourself? Some people can’t do that. And if that’s an important value to the company, then you want to make sure that you’re bringing in people that have that fit. Side note here. One of the questions I asked, I don’t ask this in every interview, I’ve had over 500 interviews with founder CEOs from fast-growth companies. And sometimes I asked them, what’s their biggest mistake? About 50% of the time, they will say, I used to hire for skill fit. Now I hire for culture fit. This fits along perfectly with what we’re talking about you guys get that? Because this is a workshop, I want to drive a little bit deeper into this one thing asking a behavioral question. Let’s workshop this a little bit, what’s the value? That that you guys need to have a question for? What’s anybody come up with this? Well, one of our values genes is we don’t have this written on the wall. But we tell people this all the time, you are the CEO of your day, I’m gonna ask you, just so that we’re all on the same page of this, what does that mean? To us, that means that you are empowered to solve the day’s problems in the way you see fit, you’re empowered to make decisions have to come and ask that question. I love that. And this is different than what we talked about the other day, Mike, Mike’s, you know, when the fast growth vendors members here, and you’re talking about your values, but now you’ve actually said okay, now this is really one of our values. Right? Right. So I’m gonna ask someone else, and really, this is open to anyone other than Dawson and Mike, because those, you’re in the same company? How would you ask a question? and behavioral type question to see if someone is the CEO of your day? If they believe that? What would be a question you could ask?

Unknown Speaker
I mean, I would give them an example. So for example, the person that we just hired is the executive assistant, ensuring that they’re able to prioritize and make their own decisions. It’s okay if you have these things going on. Someone’s coming to you for this, someone’s coming to you for this. You’ve got a phone call and an email, how do you prioritize those things? Just to see, see if they’re able to make those decisions on the fly with limited damage?

Gene Hammett
That’s a type of question. We were actually asking them to do it on the spot. I love that. Are there any other types of questions that you could use to determine behavior? potentially have them describe a past event with an employer or a work colleague, something that maybe stretches them or causes them to make a decision? Do you just pass experience? Perfect. We’ve got to be able to ask these behavioral-based questions. Here’s the kind of special tip that I would give in this. You can do this on the fly. Not recommended, or you can be intentional. If you know what the values of the company are, and you’re living them, you could have two or three questions. And actually, you know, was interviewing someone. So I’m going to share back some of the things that people have said in the sense that they keep a Google document. And so they will keep a library of questions based on the values. And they will let whoever is is interviewing that person pick the questions that they want to, and let them customize it the way they want to, but they, they have to have some support. Because it’s not just you interviewing them. If you want to be intentional about this, you can support your managers, does that make sense? That you have that library of questions that allow you to understand the behaviors, you can have a little workshop and say, Look, we want to hire the right people. This is why it’s important. And we want to ask questions to see if they’re a natural fit.

Speaker 1
I love that.

Gene Hammett
Perfect. I think you can actually look at the resume of someone if you’re really looking through the lens of your values. You can look for places where they are in alignment or not in alignment with the values this might be a little bit harder. But it is an area. I know the funny thing is a lot of people aren’t looking at resumes. Have you guys heard this that much?

Speaker 1
Really, yeah,

Gene Hammett
Now, all I show you today is we’re only going to go through the second V in MBB the values, and we’re going to be looking at frameworks, and we’re going to be looking at rituals. Any questions on this so far? No questions? Come on one question. I told you this will be interactive, or you’re gonna get a copy of this. Yep. Sure. Thanks. Great question, Webber. Great question. We’re going to quickly go to the rest of this. But I just want you to take this in. This is just a simple way for you to understand how does this impacts our business? How does it impact our bottom line? Well, today, we have four futures in front of us, we can do what we’ve always done, and everything will probably be okay, it’ll all work out. We could take a little bit of what we have today, and we could create something good. I hope that you’ll go Beyond Good and create something that’s a competitive advantage. If you want a culture where people are truly playing at the next level and engaging with their work, you want to make some of these changes, and you want to adopt them and you want to make sure that they really pay off. And the other future is you have a dangerous place where you could drift into a place where it’s toxic. You could not be paying attention to some of these things. And you can miss the opportunity. You This is this shows up when we are we have lower retention rates than we want. We’re losing the opportunity. We’re losing market share, we’re not growing as fast, we have probably some toxic elements. And this, the simple thing is small changes now can make a big difference in your future. It doesn’t happen overnight, you know that? You don’t lose weight overnight. You don’t change your revenues overnight. It’s small things that happened today that will allow you to do something bigger tomorrow.

Unknown Speaker, not enough. And it’s helpful.

Unknown Speaker yeah. ends up being an A d motivator instead of the motivator?

Unknown Speaker
was gonna say I’ve got one on the tip of my tongue, we have a value called move matter. And it is the toughest value for me to live every day because I’m a perfectionist. And yet it is who we are. We make decisions, we move forward, you can always pivot you can, you know, sometimes walk back from things but we move we matter. We don’t have analysis paralysis. And it is a value that we absolutely love.

Gene Hammett
So, and I’m not suggesting those books, because those books are really not much about what we’re talking about today. Seth Godin is just a profound thinker. And he says really interesting things. And that was just something that that podcast episode, I think, go back to that before you ever read his books. Let me ask you guys, we were talking about why it’s important. But I want to kind of make a very distinct. What are some of the mistakes that happen? When do we think about values? What are those mistakes? And there could be more than three, but let’s just get three out here. Maybe you establish the value only because it’s flowery. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a cliche or a catchword. Do you think that’s what every other organization is doing? So let’s, let’s implement the same value. Because it sounds good. Yeah. Love that. Are your employees just don’t know what they mean. Yeah. I’m gonna write that down here.

Gene Hammett
employees

Speaker 2
I don’t know.

Speaker 1
expand on that. I think sometimes, companies can say that they want to do one thing, but they don’t do that internally for their own employees.

Speaker 1
You don’t live them.

Gene Hammett
Let’s take this a little bit deeper because I think a lot of people misunderstand that. Who can I know Peggy’s Peggy’s director of HR for, you know, one of my client companies? And it just really, you get a lot on your plate with a couple of 100 employees, right, Peggy? So you understand what behave? What these questions are? Who, who else could add something to this about these questions, or give us an example.

Gene Hammett
but a lot of people now go out to my wife is in recruiting or was and they go to social media. Yeah. Really good to see. And that’s the reason we got to be careful, right with what we what we’re sharing in our all the stuff that we can put out there. Are we being portrayed the way we want to and we could be rolled out of situations based on what we believe and I do believe that we want to bring in people that are a fit, culturally? Going back to what Kelly said if they’re not fun and you believe in being fun. They’ll probably never be fun.

Speaker 2
That one that’s my favorite.

Gene Hammett
I ever have fun as not only a value inside of fast growth boardroom because one of the things we do together is gone race Porsches or go do fun stuff. That is something I really believe because people need to engage together and beyond just the context of what’s going on. So no, ever never lose your sense of humor Managers think that’s huge. I want to take this a little bit further because I think a lot of people misunderstand this. But let me pause here for a second. Are you guys getting much value out of this so far?

Speaker 1
Yes.

Gene Hammett
We’re about halfway through you guys being focused.

Speaker 1
Yes.

Speaker 1
You guys being engaged? No, we’re asking questions. Do you guys like the iPad thing that you can see these notes? Or do you want me to just cut my camera on? Even on?

Speaker 1
Yeah, I left the notes.

Speaker 1
Good. Yeah.

Speaker 2
Good. This is good. Yeah.

Gene Hammett
All right. So here’s what I want to do. I want to do a little exercise because I think this is really interesting is a lot of people miss understand what values mean, we’re hiring people that are just like us. But that’s not really the case. So let’s look at it this way. Mike, I’m gonna use it as an example. In some cases, you need to hire people who were detailed, detail-oriented. Now for you guys don’t know this Mike Cena in the accounting world. That’s probably a big part of your hiring when your production team is that right? It is. If they’re not detail-oriented, they probably don’t last very long, do they? That’s right. We also need to hire people who have a little bit of a creative approach to it. Would you agree that there are some roles inside your company that require a little creative approach? Or do you have none of those roles in your company?

Speaker 2
No, I completely agree with you.

Gene Hammett
All right. And then we have an influencer. Right. Dawson is one of the top sales reps there and is also a partner at the company. Dawson’s an influencer at heart said, Okay, if I say that Dawson calls you out there. So, there may be three different roles inside of organizations. Peggy, can you agree that inside your company, you’ve got kind of at least these three maybe even more different types of people?

Speaker 1
Yes.

Gene Hammett
Kaylee, same thing with you?

Speaker 1
Yeah, definitely.

Gene Hammett
Nara. Oh, how about you?

Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Gene Hammett
Am I missing someone? Because I’m not able to see you guys, because we’ve got the way to screen share is going? Is this just Who’s here? I’m not missing one, right? Okay. So here’s what I want you to think about. If you have a value, I’m going to use one of my values, because I thought about this in advance. And I don’t want us to do this, completely of this, but one of our values is to elevate the experience. One example of this is most people who do a podcast, invite people to come on the show. And they don’t tell you much about it, you just show up, and then they try to figure out what you’re going to talk about. But we actually have a pre-interview process, we actually talk to people to get a feeling for what they’re best at. And we answer their questions. And most of the responses back are this is so amazing.

Gene Hammett
Most people don’t do this. I really appreciate you taking care of this, and doing it this way. Is that a good example for you guys? You may not understand the podcast world, but it’s just not normal for people to do pre-interviews, they just jump right in and start recording. So if you have a detail-oriented person, how would you ask them to elevate the experience? And Mike, you can chime in on this? Because you’ve got a lot of people that are in production? How do you elevate the experience when you’re detail-oriented?

Speaker 2
Well, I think one of the things you do is you a way to make the interaction between our company and our customer. On the customer least intrusive. I don’t know if I can spell the least intrusive, so not time-consuming. I mean, I think that’s a good one, Mike because if you think about it, we are not we are their employees, but we’re not their employees. And we’ve certainly been hired to do a get a project but we are, you know, at the behest or, you know, we’re controlled by their communication, their bandwidth, their timeframe. And so but at some point in time, you do have to push back and say,

Speaker 2
Listen, if you want this done, you’ve got to get to it. So there is some politics, there’s some creativity you get from them what you need, ultimately to fulfill on what they’re paying for me. I think that’s a great point.

Gene Hammett
Now, you take someone creative and they have the same value. How does that show up for them? Peggy, you got a lot of creatives on your staff. What how does that show up when someone’s willing to elevate the experience?

Speaker 1
Yeah, that Oh boy. It shows up when it With a creative, yeah, when with us because we deal with external clients as well, I think it’s by, with Gosh, all I can think of in my head gene is it’s just, you know, they may ask for a wireframe, but we go above and beyond with that, right. Like, it’s not just a wireframe we present. So the experiences and just what they’ve asked for, but it’s not doing a good job of…

Gene Hammett
Let me because I understand the world of creativity because I work with a lot of clients in this area. When you have a creative and you’re hiring in this process, you may ask them, Hey, when you’re asked to come up with, you know, a campaign for a client or some ideas, how do you go beyond expectations?

Speaker 1
Oh, I’m sorry. We’re still in the hiring part.

Speaker 1
Oh, my apologies. Okay. Yes, absolutely. Yes.

Gene Hammett
So you guys get the idea here that there’s a, you can have someone who is in a certain role, and they have to have certain skills, and this is the way they are, but you want to see if they’re aligning to the values of the organization?

Speaker 1
Yes.

Gene Hammett
Get that? Yeah, sorry. Since we have one real, you know, salesperson on here, that’s just a tremendous influencer. If you were interviewing someone that’s going to elevate the experience and who’s an influencer? How would you do that? Dawson, I guess it would try to find a way that topics and discussions or scenarios that may become animated. Now I want to see it because we’re very much about communication and relation. It’s one thing to be detailed. But if you can’t be relational, it’s probably gonna come across too much like a robot is just a process procedure type of person.

Speaker 2
So for me, I want to find topics that that animate, to see what they would be like because they’re out there interacting with other humans. Right. And ultimately, we have professional services or consultancy. It’s not so it’s not always about the job. It’s still about being a human. Right. And being relational. I don’t know if that answers your question.

Gene Hammett
I think it does because I understand the context behind it. Does it do work for you guys? Yes. Do you see how hiring is based on a value fit? And a culture fit? isn’t it about everyone being detail-oriented, or everyone being creative, or everyone being a certain way? These are just three scenarios that I thought I would kind of dive into, and use a value to show how it shows up differently for each of those people? You gotta see that right. Any questions on this? I’ll take that as a no.

Speaker 1
I just want to say Gene is someone that like, this is part of my world. Yeah, this is one of those things that requires intention and takes time. And that’s why I think the library is such a good thing. This is a really good exercise.

Gene Hammett
Perfect, be intentional. That’s really what this is about. Like, I had so many things I want to bring up today. But if we are truly living values, we are not reacting to the moment we are being intentional. And the rituals and the frameworks that I’m sharing with you today are just ways you can be intentional. And you can go beyond this like there are things out there, there are so many things that from the podcast, I couldn’t share with you, I had my team go back through a bunch of interviews to be able to pull this stuff out. And I wasn’t even able to go back to these examples.

Gene Hammett
So we’re just having this like workshop style, where it’s just you and I talking. But there are so many examples of little different things you can do. And we’re only going to scratch the surface here today. But this is about being intentional. I’ll leave you with this because we’re still in this number one hiring employees don’t leave their values at the door. They come in with them. I’ll give you a big one inside of this just for you to reflect on its ownership. This idea comes from hundreds of interviews with founder CEOs of fast-growth companies, that they want people to feel like owners, the example that Mike gave us about, you know, everyone being the CEO, right up here, you are the CEO of your day.

Gene Hammett
That’s about being empowered and solving problems making decisions is all feeling the owner. And one question you can ask in this is to tell us about a time that you didn’t hit a big goal. And what was the reason for you not hitting it? Because people that take ownership are not blamers? Great point. They’re not victims. Yeah. And if you want to understand where people are, and ownership is a big important piece to what you’re doing. You want to make sure you can get to the heart of that because if they completely say, you know, I set a big goal for losing some weight one time and I didn’t do it. And I didn’t do it because my wife kept me Whatever, they blame someone else when the reality as they put the food in their mouth, they made those conscious decisions, or maybe subconsciously, but they did not show up in a way that was aligned with that goal. And you want someone to take ownership, you want someone to respond with that I set this big goal out there. You know what, I didn’t take the time for it, I let my life get busy. I was the reason I didn’t hit the goal. Does this bring it home for you guys?

Speaker 2
Yep.

Gene Hammett
Alright. So number two is we won’t spend that much time here. But onboarding, why is onboarding an important piece of values? The expectation, there is that rather, again, what is something we can do better in the onboarding process that allows us to truly live the values, spell it, spell it out, don’t assume, okay, that they know it, that, you know, they’re going to be who they were in the interview process, they’re going to do what they say, Here’s let me give you some suggestions. Because this is maybe a little area where we’re not that familiar thinking about it, is you want to make sure that beyond just giving them the laptop, the phone, email, address, the benefits, and all that stuff. Beyond that stuff, right? You want to make sure you take time to discuss values.

Gene Hammett
This, if you’ve got a really small organization, this might be an hour, if you’ve got a bigger organization when you were hiring in three or four people in a certain day, and you’ve got an A set onboarding process. It might be a little bit more than that. Does this make sense? taking time to discuss the values?

Speaker 2
Do I think we analyze the values and try and determine if the person has bought or has the characteristics? So once they’re on board, we don’t really.

Gene Hammett
Yeah, dive deeper into this is what I’m putting a spotlight on for you. Because if you really think about this, you can take time to discuss the values. Right? discuss each one you can do, you can bring in examples. If you really want to take this a little bit further, you might even bring in employees that have demonstrated, right their behaviors are aligned with this, and let them share their ideas and even a story. Does this make sense?

Speaker 2
Yes.

Gene Hammett
You can use some of the things that I’m going to share with you a little bit further, that allow you to get on the same page with everyone. But you want to be intentional about the onboarding process. Here’s what I would ask you to do, if I was if we were really being direct around this you want to live them out in reimagining onboarding. reimagine it so that it’s the best it could be. Here’s the one thing I would if you were really taking this to the next level. Imagine what that person says when they go home. And they either share this with their family, their spouse, their friend, the roommate, whatever it is, what would they say about your onboarding process? Would they say got my laptop? Got my phone? I’m good.

Speaker 1
I got to meet some great people today. I learned a lot about that company and what they stand for.

Gene Hammett
Yeah.

Speaker 2
Excited for tomorrow.

Speaker 1
And I’m excited about tomorrow.

Gene Hammett
Yeah. I’m excited about tomorrow. If that’s the thought you want to leave them? How would you reimagine the onboarding process? If you believe in the fun? Would you organize something fun for that first that day doesn’t have to be a big thing? We’re not talking about spending a lot of money. We’re talking about just being intentional about how we show up for them. If you believe in elevating experience, and that’s a part of your value, would you not elevate the experience of that onboarding process. Here’s one example from the reason I do these interviews is I get so many examples. But somewhere in the interview process, they figure out what their favorite cookie is. I don’t know how they do this exactly. without it being so you know, on the nose. But when they show up for the first day. They have cookies for them. Oh, your favorite cookie.

Speaker 1
That’s amazing.

Gene Hammett
Yeah. Our favorite treat doesn’t have to be a cookie. Another guest actually said, for people to get to know each other. One of the things that they do in the onboarding experience is they said we want you to cook your favorite cookie for everybody in the office. And so that everyone will come to your desk and get a cookie and you guys can chat for a few minutes. So you cook your favorite cookie. That’s a different idea. Right? Do you guys see that you can be intentional about this and take it to the next level? Is this helping you guys? I’m excited about tomorrow. All right, we’ve got number three here, we’ve got leading, these are inflection points, five inflection points, how do you lead people so that they are living the values? What are your ideas?

Speaker 2
Well, I think there’s got to be an intentional, driven regular effort to do it. Yep. A lot of times, we just let things go, you know, if the work is getting done, if clients are happy, we tend to not pay as much attention to those employees that that, you know, accomplishing those goals, but they need well, they need coach, I write down here because maybe I’m trying to understand what you’re saying, but you want to make not make excuses. I say this phrase a lot inside of my coaching because I want leaders to really understand this one thing. And it’s this, but it read, you get what you tolerate. Does anyone know how this really plays out in their life, especially in leadership?

Speaker 1
If you accept excuses for works not done, then that’s what you’ll get. If you don’t reinforce the behaviors and the values regularly. Like I have a leader who calls out we’ll send an email, thanks for showing there’s no I in the team by stepping up and doing this like specifically calls out the values when they are when they’re praising them for the work they’ve done and things they do. And again, it’s more for behaviors than accomplishments. So I, you know, if you, if you’re, I guess I just said the opposite of what you mean. But, you know, it’s…

Gene Hammett
because they’re not tolerating it. Right? reinforcing that. So one of the things we have to be as leaders have to be really intentional about this, how can we create experiences that allow us to reinforce the values and not tolerate people getting out of alignment with them? One way to do that, and this is, this is what I was talking about from a framework standpoint is I call this the CB framework because it’s contracting behaviors we’re running close to, we’re going a little bit slower than I wanted to today, which is good. I think we’re getting into the heart of this. But I want to walk us through this very quickly. Give us a value that you guys wouldn’t walkthrough on this. And I need someone to go really fast.

Speaker 1
Create positive energy.

Gene Hammett
Create positive energy. Okay, I need at least two ways that we can be that is aligned with this. What are behaviors that are online with creating positive energy,

Speaker 1
Bringing a solution to a problem instead of just a problem?

Gene Hammett
solution? Perfect. Give me another behavior that’s aligned with this. Maybe pitching in to solve a problem that’s not yours. Perfect. Now, there’s a flip side of this, right? not aligned? What would we see if we are not bringing positive energy?

Speaker 1
complaining about the problem over and over? Instead of coming with solutions?

Gene Hammett
Yeah. What else would we say? Kaylee, or Nana? Whoa, do we say

Speaker 1
oh, I was saying blaming other people like point fingers? Who other people?

Gene Hammett
Yep. Let me pause right here for a second. This is a framework called the Seabee framework. Very simple, contrasting behaviors. Imagine taking someone that you need to lead to the next level, you can do this as one on one conversations, you can do this in small groups or bigger groups and saying, hey, let’s all get on the same page here. What are the aligned behaviors for this value? And what are the things that are not aligned? Do you see how this creates a conversation that allows people to live the values? Yes. Another tool that I use inside of this is just to go a little bit deeper with this. And I call this the sunburst or the son diagram. When you were a small child, you Drew’s sons that look like this, right? Pretty simple. Give me a value. Something else besides creating positive energy? Kelly, what’s one of your values that we could talk about? Um, we talk a lot about being

Speaker 1
ambitious self-starters. We’re still working on our exact values, but

Gene Hammett
that’s some of the lists of the words that we were charged. Let’s help her with this a little bit. And this is the exercise exactly the way I would deliver it with the team. If we’re being self throwers, what are the things we see across the organization, so you guys just pitched me a few things, short things, little phrases?

Speaker 1
take initiative.

Gene Hammett
What else would we say? ambition? What else would we say? Everybody be a part of this? A caring? Perfect. There’s no wrong answer to this. I mean, I guess we could rephrase things. And I’ve used this with I know I use this with not I don’t know if I’ve used this with everyone else. But give me a couple of more

Speaker 1
decisive

Gene Hammett anything else. tenacity? sets. Repeat that. tenacity.

Unknown Speaker
Stop me Sorry, can ask what’s that word means?

Gene Hammett
tenacity means I’m willing to push past the challenges. So almost like resilient. I love the fact that you’re willing to ask that not because I’m not a is Chinese. I’m your nationality, Chinese. But your English is your second language, right?

Unknown Speaker
Yes.

Gene Hammett
She’s the CFO of a growing company. And that’s just the courage to ask something like that. It’s just, I love the fact that you’re able to do that. This son diagram is a way for you guys to get on the same page. Everyone talks about alignment, we talked about some of the problems is people don’t really understand what the value is. But do you take the time to say, here’s what we believe is the value, and talk about these things? This is what I mean by going deeper and living the values. It’s not leadership is not just about execution? And did we get the work done? Looking at the metrics, and what’s next, it’s about stepping back and saying, okay, here’s what we really believe we believe in being self-starters, if what does that really mean to us? What would we see? When we’re being a self-starter? Do you guys get that son diagram? You guys with me so far?

Speaker 1
Yes.

Gene Hammett
With you? Yep. Alright, so inside of the next one is developing, I’m going to be very respectful of time here, we’ve got about 13 minutes left, we’re really coming to the end of this, there are only five of these inflection points. But let me just kind of give you guys a little taste of this so that we can speed through that is that okay? Um, I really love the fact that we’re engaging and really talking about this, but I want to make sure that you walk away with a full picture of this and just some ideas that you can move to the next level. So if you’re really developing your people, then you want to make sure that they are consistently getting a feel for what’s going on inside the organization through the values, there are three areas that I really think that you can, you can pay attention to there, probably more behind this. But inside meetings, we can do something that allows us to live the values.

Gene Hammett
A couple of examples, one of them is shoutouts. So I have a client of mine who, who talked about, you know, creating and crafting values and wanting to make sure that we’re going to live them and I gave them this idea. At the start of every team meeting, they take three to four minutes. And they take one of the values, and they discuss it. And they’re really looking for a shout-out who is representing or demonstrating this value. Does that make sense? So three, four minutes, shout out. It’s really peer-to-peer recognition. Do you guys see that? You guys with me? And so you want to make sure that you are consistently doing this, I have another client of mine who did this. And the executive team level, they literally, you know, I know everything’s busy. It’s a 45-minute meeting. And they go in and they spend three or four minutes and saying, Who on your team is demonstrating our values, and they share these stories, and they might share one or two?

Gene Hammett
Do you see the power of that to do it consistently? Another way to do this is to recognize, and I know that that is a recognition thing, but that’s an in specifically in meetings. You can have slack channels, or other tools that you use for messenger or we chat, whatever it is where you talk about that I had one client talk about, they had four values, every quarter, they really go deep into it full three months of talking about one value and demonstrating that and having workshops around those values. slack channels are just another way to do this. You can change this by week. However, it works for you and your organization. push past your thinking of it won’t work and just figure out ways that we can share images or maybe even stories of something that people are doing. Peer to Peer recognition really does mean something not just to individuals, but you know, leaders notice that and others want to be recognized. And so they’re showing up in different ways. Another area behind this is rewards. Almost everything we’ve talked about has been free. But if you reward people for knowing the values, it’s a good fun thing you can do, you can give away gift cards, you can give away, cash, you can give away, time off, whatever it is, make it fun, don’t make it come, you know, too competitive, per se. But if it would make people want to realize what they are, you can also recognize people through different types of words, and different types of things are really doing this.

Gene Hammett
One of the clients that I had, or one of the people I interviewed, said, 50% of their bonus, each year was tied to one value. And I thought it was such an important value that I made it one of our values in our company, but it’s doing it. No, let me back up, get it done. Do it right. 50% of one employee’s value or across the entire organization is how do they rate on this one value? You guys think about that for a second? rewards people, you know, you reward people for doing the right things. This was very important to them the depth behind this and he gave me a story. He’s like we had a top sales rep. who consistently quarter after quarter was killing it. Well, what happened was, they reflected on.

Gene Hammett
They asked him to do a special presentation at one of the quarterly meetings and he wasn’t prepared for it. So someone else had to fill in for him. And so they weren’t him and said, Look, next time we want you to do this presentation. And he’s like, okay, fine, the next quarter, he did not do the prep, he didn’t prepare again. He said I was too busy making sales. That’s what you want me to do. They thought about it, and they talked about it, they weren’t willing to tolerate him, not getting it done, right, not truly participating the way they want him to. And they fired him. The top sales rep across the company fired him because of this. And they did this because it wasn’t aligning to the full values. And what they realized he wasn’t really the top rep he was actually cutting corners and making promises. And they didn’t found that until they actually let them go. So if you really want to develop people, you want to make sure you’re consistent about this. The other inflection point as we wrap up today’s workshop is exciting when you’re letting people go typically, it’s because they’re not aligning to the values. Is that fair to say? You guys with me? Yeah, absolutely. That’s,

Speaker 1
that’s a lot of questions behavioral.

Gene Hammett
So I want you to really think about what that means when you’re planning for trying to get off my trying to get my camera back. When you’re really looking at people because there are way too many times we keep someone when we shouldn’t. Um, and we really want to make sure that we are not that we’re aligning the values consistently across the organization. I’m trying to cut off my share. Not working for me. Here it is. It’s off, I can see. Okay, so what we really been talking about here is all these different inflection points, there are more things you can do it around really living the values, we got just a few minutes left. Because have any questions about living the values? Well, I think it’s hard to do if you if you’ve not, like me, haven’t spent a lot of time in your career doing it. It’s a shift in your behavior. So I think that’s the biggest challenge for me. You know, I’m not letting you off the hook here. But I know your background in accounting, and you’re the, you know, co-founder of a fast-growing company. But getting the right people and keeping the right people critical to the success of your business fair. Correct? Yep. And you want to make sure that you’re intentional as you can about the values. We talked about why they’re important, the guardrails, and people making decisions, they should be able to go back and say, let’s take that self-starter. What would a self-starter do when a bass with this problem should be pretty easy? It’s like, Okay, I gotta get moving. I can’t just wallow in it. Right. Right. And so, yes, there may be some new things that you’re learning and awareness around this, but it really isn’t important. So I want to ask a question, and really love your participation. How sold Are you on the importance of living values?

Speaker 1
I’m totally sold on it, and how do I get others on my bandwagon?

Gene Hammett
How do you think you get them on?

Speaker 1
I think you do it by example. I think you do it by showing the impact. I think you do it by modeling. Um, you know, for some business people, I don’t know if there’s some ROI to show around around that because everyone’s got their own triggers, I guess.

Gene Hammett
Let me ask you a question. And we have Mike, the accountant on board here. And we have CFO here Nana, does living the values affect the bottom line? Yes. Yes. It really does. I could tell you it did. But I wanted your impact. Kaylee, do you think it affects the bottom line of your company? Absolutely. Yeah. That’s one reason why you’re here today. I appreciate you guys spending, you know, 90 minutes with me, that’s a lot to ask. I really appreciate this. But what you’ve hopefully walked away with is something that you can really live with. And I want to answer Peggy’s question because I think it’s a very important question. How do you get others to buy into this leading by example is a big one. But another way to do it is to start small, start with your individual team, start with another team that you want to say, hey, I want to talk to you guys about this, let’s do something a little bit different. let’s create something that everyone could be could learn from, you get a lot of creatives in your company, you could find a team and say, Look, here are our values, how are we living it, you have a creative team and you have graphics people, you could have them create something graphically, that could be shared.

Gene Hammett
One of the things I ask clients to do sometimes writes, write their values down on these little three-by-five cards. Let it sit by their desk, I’ve walked into clients before six months later, an employee’s appliance, and they said, I’ve still got my card. And I know that I’ve got to show up differently. Because I’ve got this right in front of me. So there are small things you can do to get people to buy in. But you can also use these frameworks like this, the sunburst or the CB framework, contracting behaviors, you can have conversations, not just about the work, but about the values. Because all this makes sense. I see that we’re right at the edge of this, I want to ask you a question in each of you to answer me, maybe you can write down your paper, who would be one person in your organization that you would have a conversation about living the values? Who’s that one person that you would talk to? Who wants to go first? gene, can

Speaker 1
I ask you? What do you mean is made that person know about this and leaving the value where you want to discuss this idea with the person?

Gene Hammett
Yeah, just it could be discussing what you learn today, and how we can adopt this? Or maybe it’s how we could make our onboarding process better? I don’t know which…

Speaker 1
Oh, okay. I guess I’ll go first, I guess, in my head, there are two people. So it’s not just one because we’re kind of like a team, it’s everything. So I guess I’ll talk, I mean, discuss was my CEO and head of sales. In my opinion, it’s what really hard is, like, the sooner people the executive, they know, we know the values and where we want it to, you know, implement the value to the whole company. But the hard part is, is really, because we have so many like young kids employee, they just rush graduated from school. And I feel like they don’t really care about the value, you know, they just want to have a job and more like self-development. So I want to discuss with my team and to see how we what we can do and how we can implement this value really bring this to the whole company, the whole employee, make everybody want to, you know, think the same way that we think I love that stuff.

Gene Hammett
A little bit on that. Just because you have young people doesn’t mean that they don’t care about the values, fact. Yeah. What the studies have shown right now is people care more about a great place to work than they do about the money they make. They care about the relationships they have around them. And are they the young people who want to know that they’re growing and get the right experience more than the money that they’re putting in their bank? All right. I know anybody who needs to leave, I guess can leave but I want I’d love to if you’ve got a person that you want to talk to. I’d love for you to tell me who that is and what you would tell them about today’s presentation or workshop. Kaley, what would you say? All right, my person is pretty obvious to me. It’s the person that we just hired. He’s the executive assistant. And so yeah, he’s been on with PTs for a little less than two weeks. Yep. And I think our The pts is a great job, especially from Kyle down of really living those values and showing them, but really not just living them. But I’m being very intentional with speaking to them and putting a name and going right to the frontlines, the newest employee. Yeah. Who would you tell him? What would you tell them?

Speaker 1
Yeah, you know, I’d actually have a conversation with Denise. Because let’s say that again,

Gene Hammett
your CEO,

Speaker 1
yeah, he’s her CEO. And I think he believes, you know, he believes that culture is nothing more than conversation. And so I would like to, I would present it to him that, look, these are a lot of the conversations we can be having. And here are the things I learned. So I think there’s a way I would approach it that I know appeals to him. But I think it’s important to really make sure we’re continuing to deepen what we’re doing around culture and values.

Gene Hammett
Perfect. Mike, you could cheat and say, I’m going to tell Dawson but Dawson?

Unknown Speaker
No, I would talk to Paula right away. One of the things that I really got out of this morning, we’re always looking for people.

Speaker 1
And as you know, we have made some mistakes.

Gene Hammett
And I like this idea of integrating the values into the hiring process. And looking actively looking for those values on the front end, and then actively reinforcing them once they’re on board. So I talked to Paula, real talk to Paula today. Here’s what I leave you guys with that we just kind of just really wrap up today is values are not just a one-time thing. There’s something that we truly want to make consistent and find ways to align. I’ve shared with you a few frameworks, a few ideas that you can do. I didn’t share with you the one story I think that pulls it all together. There’s a brand out there called the Ritz Carlton hotels, we’ve probably either you have stayed there before, and you admire the brand, or you know of the brand. But Ritz Carlton is known for one thing, what are they known for?

Speaker 1
their service.

Gene Hammett
They’re known for excellent service. They are known across the organization with 1000s and 1000s of employees for excellent service. Do you know how they do that? So if you have any roadblocks about how do you create excellence across your organization, you do it consistently. I had the co-founder of Ritz Carlton on the show before twice. And his name’s horse Schulte says, and he shared with me how they do it. Here’s what it is. They have 24 service standards. So no matter how many values you have, I hope it’s less than 24. But they have 24. service standards of service. And what they do is every day every shift change across the world, they pick one of those service standards, and they discuss it for three or four minutes.

Gene Hammett
They give examples. Every day, it changes every 24 days to repeat the cycle. Because their theory is if we do this consistently, they will finally get it. And no one has an excuse for not staying in alignment with this because they have no tolerance for not having excellent service. Does this bring it home for you guys, you have less than 24 What can you do as an organization consistently, that allows you to live the values that are like make sure everyone’s in alignment. And this, I leave you with something that I hope will inspire you to make some small changes, most of them cost nothing, but they will create a better place to work, they will create more leads. within the organization, you will be admired as a leader, when you bring something like this inside the organization.

Gene Hammett
We didn’t get into the ritual side of it. Some of these are kind of ritually. But there’s more to discuss inside of all this stuff. But thank you for being a part of this workshop on living your values. This is a part of the fast growth boardrooms’ series of learning. But it really appreciates you guys being here. Do you have any questions? You can leave if you need to leave, but you have any questions. I’ll stick around.

Speaker 1
That was wonderful. Thank you.

Gene Hammett
Thank you, Peggy.

Gene Hammett
You guys. Take care. Kylie, was this good for you?

Speaker 2
This is awesome. Yeah.

Gene Hammett
I’m excited to go to work now. I appreciate it. And please give Kyle my regards and you can share with him the value of this and any of the insights around it. Absolutely. Thank you, Nana. It’s great to see you.

Speaker 1
Thanks, Gene. Appreciate it.

Gene Hammett
Bye guys.

Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.