Why Engagement Surveys Don’t Work: Climate vs. Culture

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Happy Friday the 13th, everyone. Welcome to our second Executive Impact event. My name is Kevin Spin. I am the Chief Growth Officer here at The Pacific Institute, and this executive impact is an event that we plan to put on every month. Last month we had Eric Spin, who is from CFG, who came and shared his experiences using, uh, our core curriculum over the past 20 years.

Today, I'm going to get a chance to introduce Cheryl Hicks here in just a moment, but we want to explain from a high level what we're trying to do with executive impact. So this is a platform for us. This is an opportunity for us to get high achieving leaders and experts and thought leaders like yourselves, like the people that are in this room together, so that we can have sessions like this that feature either successful CEOs or business owners, or leaders that have experienced success in the past by using our curriculum, by taking the principles that we've held near and dear for the past 53 years and implementing them in their organization, and then being able to see success. So, Cheryl's going to tell us a story. She's going to walk us through what her experience was, and she's going to really give us some good information about the difference between culture and climate.

And what we want to do is focus on those insights. We want to focus on the strategies that we've seen work for others in the past, and be able to share those experiences for professional growth in an environment like this. So I'm going to turn this over to Cheryl in just a moment, but again, I'm going to ask that if you are here, we would love to see you. We love the cameras on, keep that chat open because Cheryl's going to be asking you for some participation. I'll give you a hint in the first 90 seconds.

So get that chat ready. And without further ado, I am very excited to introduce Cheryl Hicks. She is our chief products and service officer, and Cheryl and I both joined Pacific Institute officially back in August. So we are very, very excited to be here co-presenting today. And without further ado, Cheryl, it is all yours.

Thank you, Kevin. Uh, great to be with you today. Uh, we're going to talk about something that's near and dear to my heart, which is, uh, really why engagement surveys don't work and the difference between climate and culture. And so if we want to go to the first slide, uh, so it is widely understood that engagement surveys often fail to deliver meaningful results. You can look at Harvard Business Review.

They did an article about, uh, these engagement surveys don't always measure what truly matters to employees. And, uh, things like trust, leadership quality. Gallup says that only 30% of employees strongly agree that actions will be taken based on their feedback. So here you've got got employees that provide feedback and they see little change in terms of action happening within the organization. And then you've got MIT Sloan who says, culture not engagement is a stronger driver of retention, innovation, and performance.

Hmm. Okay. So, uh, my question to you, I have two questions for you. So at the beginning of this, uh, executive, uh, impact, we asked you to complete a engagement survey. So, uh, what was your reaction when we asked you to do that?

And you can go ahead and put those comments in the chat, maybe one or two words of how you reacted when we asked you to do that. Oh, no, not another engagement survey. Yep. Common sentiment, right? Oh, surprised.

Oh, wow. You're asking me to do this? Okay. Uh, great. Another use, uh, useless one, uh, split.

Comfortable. Thanks, Bob. Eric. So it, uh, Eric, you were comfortable providing that Kate, uh, uh, uh, Kathleen, right? Surface level, uh, again, um,

how should I answer? Right? Uh, uh, you, you let, uh, what context am I answering this in? Uh, not willing to share since you asked for my email. Uhhuh, right?

Okay. Fear of repercussion. So lack of psychological safety there. Blah. Questions with no content, for sure, Dan.

Right. Okay. So now from your perspective, so you all get it right, uh, why do engagement surveys often fail, fail to deliver meaningful results? So go ahead and put some of what you think are the reasons why in the chat. Why might, from your perspective, why might be some of those reasons?

No action steps in implementation, implementation afterward. What the heck do we do with it? For sure. Um, hesitant to be truthful, very subjective to the individual. Exactly.

Don't share results while you guys are putting 'em in there fast. Don't share results with actionable and visible actions. Unclear as to purpose. People withhold their truth for sure. No clear outcome or desire once completed, inadequate re response.

Variation in answers, hard to determine what to do. Lack of honesty, fear of speaking the truth. Okay? Yes, yes, yes, yes. Leadership won't act on it.

Uh, these are great. Absolutely. And so then the question is, why do we keep doing it? Why, why do organizations keep doing this? So let's talk just at a macro level about what are those reasons, uh, why engagement surveys, bail.

So one is, the first one is it's symptoms only. So it's really, um, it's perception at a given moment in time. And it's really missing the why. So it's not getting to root cause, okay? It's symptoms only.

Another reason why is, uh, lack of action. You guys identified that in spades, right? So, um, employees, uh, get disillusioned with, oh no, not another one. Um, because of the lack of action. Another reason might be it's infrequent that we do it annually.

Um, and so, and then along with infrequent is it's a lagging indicator. So here's what happens. We go and we do this survey, we get the results back, and then we analyze 'em, we share 'em, then we get to action planning. And it's six months later. So the data's old, right?

And remember, it's a snapshot in time. And so what happens, the organization, uh, attributes. Well, the reason why they answered that way is because this was going on at that moment in time. So they dismiss to a certain extent or justify away what they're getting. And that's in part why there's a lack of action.

'cause it's a lagging indicator, it's infrequent. Um, okay, let's go to the next one. It's poor design. So you guys saw that, uh, it was funny when, um, my colleague Kevin and I were prepping for this. I said, Kevin, go on and chat GBT and let's see.

Ask him for a generic engagement survey. Well, that's what you all filled out. And clearly it's not going to tell us anything about, uh, you know, what, uh, meaningful, uh, it's generic questions. There's biased scale, there's recency scale. Uh, one size does not fit.

All right? Um, okay, uh, let's see. The next one is, we talked about this psychological safety. So someone put it in the chat, right? Fear of, uh, repercussions and therefore we get superficial, uh, participation, right?

Okay. Um, the next one is, it's too quantitative. So we, these engagement surveys try to reduce human experiences to numerical series or scores. And the reality is, us human beings, we're complicated creatures. There's a lot going on in there.

And so to expect that we can summarize it in a numerical score once a year that we, uh, try to advance is, is, uh, difficult. And so, uh, that's this two quantitative and missing the qualitative. And then ultimately it ignores culture.

And so where I want to go next now is to talk about the difference between climate and culture. So like a, um, iceberg. We've got above the water and you've got what's really going on below the, below the water. So you could think about climate as, uh, above the water. It's the shared perceptions of how things feel in an organization at a given moment.

It's influenced by external factors, leadership's, policy, workload, what's happening in that moment. It's short term and easy to change in the moment. It's what most organizations try to act upon. It's a symptom of a deeper, uh, issue, which is culture. And so now let's look at what culture is.

So it represents the deeply ingrained beliefs, norms, and values in the organization. It's how we're supposed to act to fit in and survive in this organization. It's harder to see and change. It's has long-term implications for performance. It's a better predictor of performance, and it's more, uh, sustainable over time.

Okay? So I like the iceberg analogy, but I like the tree analogy better. And here's the reason why. So if you think about the leaves as the climate, so it's visible, there are immediate conditions of the organization. It can, it can show health vibrancy, response to external factors.

It's what employees feel and can change seasonally with external influences, right? So here we are, uh, the leaves on the trees right now are, have fallen off. We're going into winter, right? And so you can see that it's, there are external environmental factors that are affecting what goes on in your business. And therefore you see it in the leaves.

It's the climate. Now you do, culture is the roots. Okay? So it's the deeply embedded beliefs, values, and norms of the organization. It's foundational, it's shaping how the organization grows.

It's unseen. It provides stability, nourishment, and direction for everything above ground. So if you think about business cycles, right? So there could be times where you're in a, in a down business cycle. And so what happens, you know, there's this hard push to, uh, work through it, that's the leaves.

But what enables those leaves to respond in those, uh, difficult times is what is down below in the roots. Okay? Those, that's ultimately what's going to show up when the going gets tough, right? So the key takeaways from this are strong culture roots sustain the visible climate, ignoring culture weakens the organization. And, uh, investing in culture alongside with understanding the climate, those causal factors.

'cause those are things that, that, um, can help you to move the, the culture. Uh, so you need both, but culture is more likely to impact the long term. And this is in part why I think organizations struggle with engagement surveys that just don't give 'em, you know, substantial organizational transformation. Does this make sense? Yeah.

Okay. I'm seeing nodding. Okay, so now let's go ahead and, uh, I'm going to, I got one more slide. All right. So to bring this home, you can think about culture as the leaves that are seeable noticeable, easy to measure.

They're, they can, they can change with the wind. They're flexible. They're less effective lever to create long-term organizational change. They're focused on past and present orientation and their perception, their perceptual.

Whereas culture is, this is how it feels deep in the organization. It's embedded. It can be difficult to measure. Although our, uh, partner, human Synergistics has, has created a beautiful tool, uh, that we utilize that, that, uh, can take that difficulty and, uh, make it easier to understand. Culture is stable, it's resilient, it's a more effective lever, it's future orientated, and it's cognitive.

It's tied into our beliefs and, and our values and what we hold important. Uh, my colleague Kevin, uh, I'm going to turn it over to you. You have a beautiful, he's a, he is a gem with analogies. Give them your analogy. Uh, Kevin, Yeah, those that have worked with me a little know that my love language is analogies.

So we try to simplify things when we can, but one way that we kind of look at this is climate. Because it's so visible. It's like looking outside and seeing a sunny day. You know exactly what you're going to get. It's really easy to measure.

Culture is a little bit more like humidity. You can't necessarily see it. You don't know by looking out the window that it's a humid day, but you can't miss it when you walk outside. And that's what culture is like. You can't necessarily always see it visibly, but when you're in an office, you're in a building.

When you're with an organization that has a really strong culture, you can absolutely feel it just like the humidity. And you can't maybe put your finger on it. But that's what culture really is. It's that thing that can really create that feeling. It's just unseen and it's underneath, but you can't miss it when it's there.

Just like a humid day in South Florida. Thanks, Kevin. Uh, okay, so now, uh, do we have a handle on, uh, understanding the difference between climate and culture? You guys think you get, you get that? Okay, so then if, now that we un we have that basis of understanding what really is organizational culture.

And so, uh, our definition of that is, it's a system of shared beliefs and values that can lead to behavioral norms that guide the way members of an organization approach their work, interact with one another, and solve problems. That's the definition of culture from our perspective. And so why do leaders focus on it? Well, because they believe that evaluating and improving organizational culture is a competitive advantage. You've heard the saying, you know, culture eats strategy for breakfast.

Well, there's some truth to that. If you can get all of your team members rowing in the same direction, sharing their gifts to, uh, uh, grow customer value, team member, uh, satisfaction, and you know, then ultimately it's going to help with organizational effectiveness. And so let's look at the description at a macro level of constructive, right? It encourages, uh, members to work to their full potential. It values quality over quantity.

It fosters creativity and curiosity in a place, uh, in place of conformity, it believes collaboration and cooperation lead to better results. Then competition, pitting employees up against each other. Why don't we all want to be successful versus just some of us? It emphasizes the bigger picture. And so culture is the best predictor of an organization's ability to execute its strategy.

And your culture either works for you or it works against you. There's a, um, a, uh, organizational development guru. His name is Edgar Schein, and I love one of his quotes. It's, if you don't manage culture, it manages you and you might not even be aware of the extent to which it's happening. So what don't you know that's going on within your organization?

Okay. All right, let's keep moving. So now, now that we understand a little bit more about these, what it is ex at at a macro level, it's how people think they're supposed to behave or act within your organization to fit in and survive. So how do you impact it?

Well, the first thing is, is you want to understand it. So you gotta understand the concepts of culture and its underlying behavioral norms. We're going to unpack those, uh, in a little bit more detail here in a minute. Then you want to describe what is the ideal culture you want? And then you want to assess, diagnose what is our current reality?

What's the culture we have? Because now we've got a gap. And so now we know what, uh, what, what our baseline is that we want to improve. Really important to articulate the need for cultural change in terms of the outcomes important to your organization. If it's helping, you know, uh, your customers, uh, add value to your customers, helping your team members and communities to be their best, ensuring the long-term health of your business, you need to understand articulate why this work is important.

And then you want to identify the strategies for promoting a more effective culture within your organization or subunit. So the beauty of, uh, using this, uh, the tool that I'm about to show you is you can look at it at a macro level for the whole organization, and then you can start to dive in and really look at it on the subunit level and the, and the things that are going on. So identifying those strategies. And then the last piece is you, you need to align leadership beliefs and behaviors to lead to the ideal, not continuously reinforce the current cultural norms that exist. Make sense?

Macro level. So understand, describe, articulate, identify, align. That's where you start going in the next slide. Okay. Behavioral norms.

So I've talked about this a little bit. So what are they, right? So there are things that are observable. Customs, ceremonies, stories, heroes, other observable patterns. When things happen, people do things right?

So those are observable norms, behavioral norms in an organization. But then you have the unobservable. These are assumptions, values, beliefs, and ideas that are shared by members and reinforced by leadership action. And so the middle ground between those is what we're calling behavioral norms. So these are the consciously held notions that all the behaviors that all members understand are expected of them to fit in and survive within your organization.

And so you can see there, there's evidence within the organization. These are a lot of times the unwritten rules. So the words that people say don't necessarily match the actions. So real simply, here's one. So we say quality.

So we say safety, quality, delivery cost, right? In that order, that safety first, quality second, delivery third. But what the team members here in a production environment is, uh, quote unquote get, get the workout, get the workout, get the workout. They're not reinforcing, but is it the, you know, it's, it's what underlyingly is being told to through leadership to team members reinforced. It applies to all members.

They're shaped by their shared beliefs, assumptions and values. It leads to general patterns of work related behaviors and attitudes that may be observed. And it guides the way members approach their work and interact with one another. Makes sense. So does everybody kind of understand now what behavioral norms are?

Yeah. Okay. So let's keep moving 'cause we're going to unpack this in a little bit more detail. Alright, this is group participation now. So interaction part, I'm going to turn it over to Kevin.

Yeah, what I'm going to ask everybody to do is, if you've got a smartphone, you can go ahead and scan the QR code that's on the screen there. This is going to bring up a tool that we're going to be using. If you'd rather do it on your second screen or your device there, we just put a link in the chat and you, you're welcome to click on that. But we're going to give everybody just a couple of seconds to open that up. Don't do anything when you get to the page yet.

I'm going to leave that QR code for just a second, and then I'm going to share my other screen so you can see what you're supposed to look at. If anybody doesn't get access into that, please just put your request in the chat and myself or Anna will send you the link again. But when you open up the page, you should see this.

This is a tool from our partner, human Synergistics, and Cheryl's going to walk you through how to complete this tool and give you just a little bit more clarity. It is a very, very easy tool to use, and you're more than welcome to share this link with your teams and other folks. But Cheryl's going to walk us through in just a little bit more detail. And I'm going to participate on my end so you can see what it looks like. Beautiful.

Thanks, Kevin. So this is called a circumplex and, uh, it, it, it has 12 styles. You can think of it like a clock. 12 o'clock is at the top of the, of the, uh, image, and that represents satisfaction needs. And six o'clock is, uh, at the bottom and that represents security needs. And then you've got on the three o'clock over on that side is people orientation.

And then on the left, uh, task orientation. So we're going to go one by one through these. And what I'm going to ask you to do is on your own screen, think about your organization as I give you these descriptions and just, you're going to click in the box and it'll put, uh, a, um, wedge out to where you believe it is today. And so you could see the, uh, the wedge is broken up into, at the very center is zero or never all the way out to 100. And so the first two rungs are never, or almost never, when I give you the description, the second two rungs are sometimes or more often than not, and the last two rungs are always, or every time.

Okay? So let's just start at style one. So style one is, um, humanistic and encouraging. And this is that members are expected to be supportive, constructive, and open to influence in dealing with others. And what that looks like is that team members, whether they're members or leaders, are developing others and serving as, uh, a mentor.

So go ahead in your circumplex, put a, uh, where you think that is for you and your organization today. And by the way, uh, at the end, you'll put your email in and this'll get sent to you. So you'll have it, uh, after the fact if you'd like it. Okay? So, uh, number two.

Everybody so far, everybody tracking any questions? Okay, thank you, Andy. I saw your head nod. I appreciate you. All right, uh, two is affiliative members are expected to be friendly, open, and sensitive to the satisfaction of the work group.

Never, sometimes, always go ahead and give it a score there. That's, uh, cooperation and promoting teamwork, satisfaction of the work group. Okay? Number three is approval. This is described as members are expected to agree with and gain the approval of and be liked by others.

So they're setting goals to please others and they're agreeing with others, even though it might not be how they really feel. It's more important to be liked than to be authentic approval. Okay? The next one, four is members are expected. This is conventional.

So members are expected to conform, follow the rules and make a good impression. Okay, so close, uh, closely follow rules. Resist change in new ideas. We've never done it that way. Resist, no.

Right? Okay. Dependent is five members are expected to do what they are told and clear decisions with their supervisors. They're dependent on their supervisors, uh, sanctioning the work that they're doing. So again, never, sometimes, always.

So they wait for others to act in this environment and they're being a good follower.

And then avoidant avoidance is, members are expected to shift responsibility to others and avoid being blamed for mistakes. So this looks like lay low when things get tough, stay away from the problems. Oh, I, not my fault, you gotta go ask my supervisor. I'm just doing what I'm told, I'm avoiding. Okay.

All right. The next one, oppositional. This is seven members are expected to gain status and influence by being critical and constantly challenging one another. So they're looking to point out mistakes. They're on the hunt to call people out to tell 'em you're doing this wrong.

They stay aloof and detached and they kind of debate for debate's sake versus debating for something that's going to come to lead to something better. That makes sense. All right, eight is power. So in, in a power style, members are expected to take control, charge and control others and make decisions. Autocratically.

So, so this, what this looks like for employees is they stay on the offense, they maintain tight control. This is where you might hear a supervisor say, do it, or else I'll go find somebody who will, you know, they, they, they lead with their position of power versus, you know, really engaging. Okay? Uh, nine, competitive. So this is, members are expected to operate in a win-lose framework and work against their peers to be noticed.

So this is where, uh, team members try to look good and outperform others. So this is, you could see this where you kind of pit facilities up against each other. Look at how great this facility is doing. Why are you guys not doing the same thing, right? Or salespeople or production employees, right?

It's a, it's a win-lose environment, it's competitive. And then 10 is, um, members are expected to avoid making mistakes, work long hours and keep on top of everything. So these are setting unrealistic goals and taking care of every detail. A lot of times in a perfectionist style, the leader's the only one that has the right answer. And the, and the team members are trying to do what they can to give them what they think that they want.

Perfectionistic. Okay? All right. 11 style is achievement. High achievement. So this is, members are expected to set challenging, but realistic goals and solve problems effectively.

So team members are working towards self set goals and taking on challenging tasks. So they're willing to take risk and grow outside their comfort zone 'cause they know that they want to do that, right? That's 11, 12 is self-actualizing. Similarly, this is, um, members are expected to gain enjoyment from their work and produce high quality products and services. This is a lot where intrinsic motivation comes in.

So achievement is purpose. What are we trying to achieve? And then self actual is self-actualizing is I'm getting better at things that matter. I'm growing my belief in myself to cause or bring about something better. And I choose every day when I come into work, I choose how I want to be.

That's self-actualizing. Okay? So everybody got their, their circumplexes. So I'm curious, what's the biggest color? Oh, yeah.

So thank you Kevin. So if you'd like a copy of this since we just went through it, go ahead and just pop in your, uh, email and hit email my results and you'll instantaneously have it in your email. We're not going to do anything with this unless you, uh, want to engage with us. So it's really yours, uh, to do with this you see fit. Uh, Kevin, let's go to the next page.

Um, and then I'll ask the question. So you might have seen when you did your circumplex that there were colors that came with the, uh, you putting in the answers. So the blue are what we call constructive styles.

This is they're driven by purpose and participation. And uh, what it does for the organization is that it's organization sustainability, sustainability through members doing good, they're doing good work, they're bringing their gifts and they're sharing 'em to create or cause or bring about something better that's constructive, passive defensive. This is focused on the how work gets done and self-protecting. And so this is organizational vulnerability through members being good. It's more important to be good than to do good in a passive defensive environment.

Okay? I call this passengers on the bus. These are people that are on the bus going along, but they're not really engaged in helping and therefore they're not feeling satisfied. They're in protection mode. Okay?

Then you've got aggressive defensive, that's the red style, and that's focused on the what? It's very task focused and it's about self-promoting. So this creates organizational volatility that through team members looking good, right? Versus doing good. Okay?

Everybody kind of understand the three styles. All right, so now my question to all of you is, oh, we don't want to go there yet. Okay? So I'll give it, I'll give it one more. I'll keep going.

Kevin, go. Let's go to the next one. All right. So remember we talked about climate and culture, right? So now I want to show you how these things fit together.

So climate, I'm sorry, culture, let's focus there first, the two blue columns. So first thing is you want to describe what's ideal. So your espoused values and beliefs, which is how we should things around here to maximize effectiveness, and then current reality or current culture. The third row over or column over is the behavioral norms, how we are expected or implicitly required to do things around here. Climate is the shared perceptions that kind of go in between your current, I mean your ideal and your current.

And that's how we currently do things around here or how things are around here, perceptions. And then you have outcomes, which is also a measure of climate. This is the attitudes, this is the results of how we do things around here. Kind of understand climate culture. Okay?

So now let's look at a highly constructive culture. What does it look like? So the ideal is that members opinions and ideas are important and should be considered. The climate is that members perceive that they are involved in decisions by sharing ideas. The current reality of the behavioral norms are that members believe, uh, uh, they are expected to openly share their ideas and help grow themselves and the organization to satisfy their customers.

And the outcome is that members report high job satisfaction. That's a constructive environment. Now, in a defensive or passive or aggressive, the ideal is still the same members'. Opinions and ideas are important and should be considered. The reality is their perception is members have little influence in how things are done, expectations are told to the members and not openly discussed.

So I really don't want your opinion, just do the work. Okay? The reality cultural, uh, current culture is members believe that they are not expected to think for themselves and are rather, and rather they're expected to obey orders and follow, be a good follower, do what I asked. And so therefore, the outcome for them is their attitude is members change the way they think and behave while they're at work. They're not their authentic self, they're guarded, they're disconnected, they're disengaged.

Make sense? Okay. All right, let's keep going for the sake of time. So, uh, I love this Simon Sinek quote. So goes the leader, so goes the culture.

Okay? Um, what does that mean? So it's interesting, I just, my colleague Jim Johnson just shared with me a Gallup article that came out on December 3rd. And I thought, oh, this is, this is great. It's called the Great Detachment, why employee employees feel stuck.

Okay? So, and we're all experiencing this partly because of Covid and the crazy that went on there. And so what I really liked about the article, aside from them telling us why there's this great detachment, is where should leaders start their comeback? And so they provided two solutions. The first one is reset expectations and priorities.

So what their, their data told them was about half of the US employees, less than half know what's expected of them at work. It's not clear. That's feedback from the employees. Wow. So leaders reset expectations and priorities.

That's the first one. The second one is, leaders connect individual contribution to mission and purpose. So their data told them that us employees making the connection between mission purpose and their job was less than 30%, and it's getting worse. Okay, that's a problem. Makes sense?

So two simple solutions, reset expectations and priorities and connect individual contributions to mission and purpose. So now I'm going to tell you a story. So go ahead Kevin. So this is an organization that used this process with The Pacific Institute and, uh, utilizing the circumplex, uh, with Human Synergistics. And so back in 2014, they established their vision, their culture vision.

So it was high blue. They wanted employees fully engaged at their best and helping customers to succeed. They did their baseline assessment. It was, uh, it was in 2014. And what do you see when you look at the picture?

You see it's a defensive culture, both passive, defensive and aggressive. Defensive, and there's a little bit of constructive, right? So let me share a little bit more information. This was, uh, a subset. What you're looking at here is data for production.

The production employees in this organization, this was not the whole organization. This was one subset of the organization that was production. And so in 2017, they reassessed, and here's what happened. The production results got worse, they got 11% worse. So what you can see is there's less blue, there's, there's still lots of green and lots of red, but there's less blue, okay?

Less constructive. And so now that wasn't what happened for the whole org. So from 2014 to 2017, this organization was working on culture. So they were changing systems and processes. They were, were doing, uh, uh, you know, they were deal dealing with some of those, uh, causal factors or those climate things.

Uh, they were creating a common language within the organization around what they wanted to create in terms of constructive culture. And so we have a problem. So with the help of The Pacific Institute, they conducted an intervention called a Cultural Consensus building workshop, where they did focus groups specifically in production and operations. So they brought in operators, lead operators, senior operators, they brought in production team leaders, they brought in value stream leaders, they brought in, uh, directors of operations, they brought in the support staff,

engineers and those kinds of things to help them. This was in a manufacturing environment. And the first question they asked was, do you know what constructive looks like? Can you describe it? And, and everybody said yes, and they could.

So they knew what constructive looked like. They knew it was high achievement, they knew it was high self-actualization, humanistic and encouraging and affiliative. So then the question was, well then what's happening? Why are we not working toward this simple answer? My leaders aren't leading that way.

My leaders are coming in, they're so busy, our leaders are so busy that they're not taking time with us. They're coming in, they're asking us questions about, uh, why didn't you get that shipped? Um, uh, but they're not really problem solving with us. They're not working with us. They're not asking our ideas.

They're just coming in and asking us why didn't we do things? And then they're running off to the next thing. And so with the help of The Pacific Institute, we created a cultural engagement process where leaders spend time in the gemba, the place where work happens with the team members to understand their ideas, why are things happening and what are their ideas to fix them. And as a result of that, and that became daily standard managing for daily improvement, that became standard work that every day the leadership in production was going out and spending time having conversation with team members about their ideas to fix this, to fix the situation. Here's what happened In 2021, we reassessed, we saw an 86% improvement in the score.

Look at all the blue, still green and red, but lots more blue. Okay? So the moral of the story is this is what happened with the leader's impact. They focused on sharing the team vision, the compelling replacement picture. Where are we going?

Why are we going there? What are your ideas to help us to get there? How do we do it together? They helped the employees understand what they were doing and why it mattered. Connecting them back to the purpose and mission for providing those products and services for the customer.

They celebrated success. They asked for input. They, they were, they saw more taking of initiative. They collaboratively set growth goals. They operated as a team.

It was crazy, the organizational pride that came in that three years because the leaders were spending time leading and, and really connecting with the beliefs and the attitudes and the, and the ideas and the habits and the behaviors of, of their team members. From a business perspective, it increased retention, job satisfaction, employee referral. And from 2014, actually to 2023, they, the company saw a revenue three x and profitability over 10 x. Okay? The, this is the interesting one.

Before in 2014, they were probably, you know, 2,400 production team members. And then CO hit and the customers got nervous about supply chain. And so they started ordering in droves. And so their sales increased. They in one year, in 2021 hired 1500 production employees.

And how did they do it? In, during covid? They did it primarily through employee referral. Because the employees, that organizational pride, they were out there telling their neighbors and, and, uh, family and friends, uh, that where I work is different. They care about me, they care about, uh, the work that I'm doing.

They want to know my ideas and my opinions. And just that, that change in what they do matters and, and that they matter, created a different result. So there you go. That's the story. You go to the next page.

Okay, so connecting strategy to culture.

So now I'm going to bring it home and then we'll open it up for a couple of questions. So the shared beliefs and values, remember, this is what we talked about. What is culture? It's the shared beliefs and values guiding the thinking and behavior of the members. You can think about organization, culture, like organization, self-talk.

It's what they're telling themselves. And the organization's telling themselves about how decisions are made, the way we do things around here, what's normal, our way of life. It's the behaviors that all members understand are expected of them to fit in and survive. So now you go to the next slide. Okay, so this is what The Pacific Institute does.

We help clients, they helped that client that I just described, which I was a part of, they helped that client unpack individual beliefs and mindset that it, that influence behaviors. Then the company has strategies that they're trying to get aligned to create results. Makes sense? So if employees believe that their effort makes no difference, then they have to, or else they're disengaged, right? They're passengers on the bus.

So limiting beliefs, my effort makes no difference, creates overhead, resists change. And oh, by the way, as a human resource executive for many years, I don't think there's an organization that I've been in that doesn't say we don't have enough people. I will tell you, you might have enough people, you have untapped potential because you've got a bunch of people that are sitting in the red and the green thinking that they're not supposed to contribute and share their gifts and their, to, uh, advance the work and make a difference. The converse side is, my effort makes a difference. I want to, I choose to, I'm engaged, therefore I'm got liberating beliefs.

You see enhanced revenue driving innovation, increasing satisfaction, similar to the story that I shared a minute ago. And so this is how The Pacific Institute does it. We assess culture. Uh, and so what I showed you, the beauty of the, the circumplexes, it's not only for your organization, but you can look at it on an organizational level, on a team level. So you can look at it by facility, you can look at it by function, you can look at it by contribution level, right?

So there's ways to to, to, uh, diagnose that data. You can also use that same tool. So you're creating a common language to assess leadership impact. How are you as a leader actually? What environment are you creating by the way you're acting and behaving those behavioral norms so that you have tools and techniques to make a difference, to make a, to choose a different way.

And so that's leadership impact, management impact. So the next step is aligning leadership. It's engaging the workforce. And it is also looking at those systems and processes like performance management, like total rewards, like, um, upward and downward communication, those kinds of things. Those systems and processes that also need to evolve to lead you to where you want to go versus where you've been.

And so I'll leave you with this. If you've been on one of these, um, uh, uh, executive briefings in the past, uh, we share our flame. This is The Pacific Institute flame. And uh, it starts with unleashing personal effectiveness. So the me part of all meaningful and lasting change starts on the inside and works its way out.

Who can you change? You can't change other people, but you can change yourself. And so it starts on the inside. We is elevating leadership effectiveness in terms of, uh, through transforming ourselves, we positively impact the people around us. And then the last piece of the puzzle is achieving organizational effectiveness.

So once our teams transform, we collaboratively pursue goals within the collective group

towards limitless success. Okay, I think that's it that I had to share. I know, uh, I got it done, Kevin. Perfectly timed. Thank you Cheryl.

Very much this is how folks can engage with us moving forward. The next step is always the next question, which is what do we do from here? So if you'd like to engage with us moving forward, there's an opportunity for you to scan the QR code that's on your screen. I know this is the third QR code today, so keep 'em organized. But this is where you're going to get access to give us feedback.

This is where you can get a copy of today's slides. I saw a handful of cameras come up and as much as I'd like to think that you were taking a picture of me today, I think you were taking a picture of Cheryl's slides. So we'll send you a copy of those as well. There's also an opportunity to learn more about our curriculum, and if you hit submit on that email, you'll notice that there's an opportunity to click a link into my calendar and you can schedule time with myself or Cheryl moving forward. There's also the, uh, last opportunity there is just to give us a little bit of feedback.

And we always make the joke that we consider all feedback to be a gift, even if it's gifts we want to return, but we have an endeavor to get better and better at these presentations. So all the feedback that you can provide really means a lot to us, and we sincerely hope that there's an opportunity for each and every one of you to engage with us moving forward. Uh, share a little wonderful time finishing on time. In fact, we've got a few extra minutes, so we are going to stay on in case there's any additional questions. But if there are not any questions, couple things.

Happy Friday the 13th. Again, thank you so much for being here. We will be back for another Beyond Limitss executive briefing on the 10th of January. Normally we do those on the first Friday of the of the month. That's going to be the third.

It's a little too close to the holiday. So on January 10th, we'll be back. We'll send out that information. And once again, thank you everybody for being here and have an absolutely wonderful weekend and a really happy holiday. If we don't see you first, I.