In this episode of Transform Your Workplace, Brandon Laws sits down with Daniel Strode to discuss the art of fostering corporate culture and navigating today’s rapidly changing work landscape. Providing insights from his recent book, The Culture Advantage, Strode sheds light on the pivotal part played by culture in propelling innovation, the essential role of a growth mindset in effective leadership, and the importance of placing your people at the forefront.
GUEST AT A GLANCE
Daniel Strode is the best-selling author of his debut book The Culture Advantage, a guide for fostering corporate culture and innovation. With extensive hands-on experience as a culture practitioner, he has provided global training and consulting services and taught the subjects of culture and innovation at universities.
A QUICK GLIMPSE INTO OUR PODCAST
🔊 Podcast: Transform Your Workplace, sponsored by Xenium HR
🎙️ Host: Brandon Laws
📋 In his own words: “The Transform Your Workplace podcast is your go-to source for the latest workplace trends, big ideas, and time-tested methods straight from the mouths of industry experts and respected thought-leaders.”
THE PACE OF CHANGE
In our latest episode, author Daniel Strode delved into the profound changes sweeping the modern business landscape. Strode said, “The pace of change has never been so fast yet, and it will never be as slow in the future as it is today.” This sentiment underscores the relentless speed at which societal and technological shifts are occurring, and this demands our attention and our action.
While companies once outlived individuals in the 1960s, the current landscape paints a different picture. There’s been a significant reversal, with humans now outlasting companies. Despite medical advances pushing the average human lifespan to around 83 years, the average S&P 500 company struggles to reach 20 years. Strode added that within five years, a majority of today’s prominent companies will likely fade into obscurity. This could be due to the simultaneous onslaught of multiple technological advancements in the “Fourth Industrial Revolution,” creating an exponential acceleration of change. So what’s the solution? Adaptation is imperative for survival in this dynamic environment.
PODCAST EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
Culture is Key
“I went around the world studying what made companies greater at innovation, and it became clear to me that it wasn’t the amount of money that you had. Certainly, it’s good to have money to play with, but that’s not the differentiator. It wasn’t the amount of time you had, because actually, when you have too much time to innovate, you probably don’t innovate fast enough because you don’t have pressure. And it wasn’t really the resources and the people you had either because talent is more or less democratized now. It’s accessible globally online to everyone. So in the end, what it came down to was the companies who had this culture of innovation.”
Defining Culture
“‘Culture is the way we do things around here, but especially when no one is looking or listening,’ as I say. It’s always that end part of the sentence which is really important to me because I think any company can post a corporate culture on their walls and say, ‘Here are our values. Here are our behaviors.’ But if you don’t actually do it and do it because you believe it’s giving you value and you want to do it, then it’s not going to work.”
It Takes Time
“You can start to change your culture tomorrow or today. That’s not a problem. But you also need to have patience. You don’t just have all of the ingredients when you’re baking a cake and expect the cake to be made straight away. It does take time. And for me, it’s the same with the culture. First, you need to decide what your culture should be. Then, you move into an education and an awareness approach or status where people just see the values on the wall, and they start to get to know them and be familiar with them. Then, you move into [changing] the processes [and] performance. Let’s adapt our reward and recognition — those policy or process actions. And then you get to the holy grail, which is ‘Now, we’re living it, and we’re really day-in and day-out displaying those behaviors, that culture,’ but it’s a process, and it does take time.”
The Growth Mindset
“Make sure that your leadership team or your managers don’t rush to give advice to people. So the old style of leadership was always, ‘I have a problem as an employee, and I go and knock on my manager’s door, and he or she gives me the answer.’ But that’s not the style of today, and that’s definitely not a growth mindset. The growth mindset approach is ‘I will listen to your problem, and I will help and coach you so that you find the answer and the solution.’ So if you do that, you’re well on the way to having psychological safety and growth mindset in your company.”
Living it Out
“At the end of the day, your culture can be written into a policy, but the policy is not alive. It’s the people in your company that are alive. I really, really do think you have to put your people first. You have to treat them exceptionally well. You have to make sure that they can live your behaviors and your culture and your values and be ambassadors for your company because you’ve given them the environment and set them free. We’re no longer in this micromanagement world. We’re no longer in a world where we have to check the productivity of everybody and measure the outcome because they’re ten hours in an office. We are much more output-based.”
Recognizing What’s Working
“Something that gets traction is peer-to-peer recognition — so just recognizing when people display the behaviors of the culture or do the effort that you want them to be doing in the moment, real-time, because again, as we already touched upon, what gets recognized does get repeated, and I think that helps reinforce the culture. […] Then, of course, you can go all the way through to monetary recognition or taking people to sports events and those kinds of things. But I think you don’t have to do that. I think sometimes it’s just nice to have a personalized email or letter from the president of your company, and sometimes those things, you can underestimate the impact.”
Walk the Talk
“If you have a culture that’s written down, and you want to establish it, you have to lead by example. What that would mean is if you want ideas from the shop floor, the next meeting you have, let the most junior person speak first. […] If you want people to speak up, make sure you’re not the one who speaks first because everyone is going to say ‘yes’ and agree with you. So those things change the dial. And you do hundreds of those things, and suddenly, the company changes, and it changes very fast and very significantly. I think as a leader, walk the talk. Make sure your actions are consistent with the culture. And I don’t mean 99% of the time. I mean 100% of the time.”
LEARN MORE
Find Daniel Strode’s recent book, The Culture Advantage: Empowering Your People to Drive Innovation, on Amazon or reach out to the author through LinkedIn or his website, danielstrode.com.