Want to Know What Will Make or Break your Company? Learn All About Culture Strategy with Vin Zeeland

Transcript:

Angie 

Hello, everybody, and welcome to no more Mondays. I’m Angie Callen, I’m your host, and I’m already having fun. And we haven’t even really started this conversation yet. But I’ve got to stop and ask you a question before we get into this. Do you know your corporate culture? And better yet? Do you have a culture strategy? A what, huh? A culture strategy? Have you defined what you want your business work or team environment to look and feel like? And have you taken conscious steps to create that environment? If you’re smiling and saying, yes, you’re about 100 steps ahead of the world, give yourself a pat on the back. But if you’re looking at your podcast screen a little quizzically, listen up because Vince Zeeland is here to tell you all about how to think about corporate culture and design an intentional one to align your team, drive growth, and elevate your brand. It’s what every single leader, business owner and executive wants out of their company. And if we tune into this subject, a whole lot of things are going to come together. So we’re going to unlock the power of culture right now as we welcome Vince Zeeland to the show. Vin, Welcome to no more Mondays.

Vin 

Angie, thank you so much, what a what an awesome show you have, I have taken the time to listen to you and your guests, you bring on some great quality people. And I look forward to this interview, really excited,

Angie 

I am excited, and you are one of those great quality people and I’ve got to give, I gotta give you all a little backstory like that, like Vin and I are new LinkedIn besties. And we stumbled across each other a few minutes ago, a few months ago, and have just keep, I feel like we just keep seeing more and more parallels between our different kind of thoughts and perspectives on things. And And long story short, we had to wait like two months to get this interview on the books. And so he and I were like, there’s like so much energy when we first came on getting all ready to kind of like, dig into this and, and as we do, let’s, let’s lay a little bit of a foundation for everybody out there. And kind of give them a little bit of your backstory, your career history, and kind of how you came into this focus of culture and culture strategy. Yeah.

Vin 

So I, I came up in a world of culture. I started my entrepreneurial pursuits at 10 years old. No joke, I decided that I needed a voice and I took drum lessons, I took up music. And and then I also learned that I was a really good salesperson at 10 years old. I was also a video gamer. So if you remember the original Atari games that came out, when you had like the Galaga and Pac Man and all that stuff, right? Well, I think it was the fourth or fifth grade. I told my mom, I said, I want to get a video game set. And she said, Well, you’re gonna have to get a job and save some money. I said better yet, there’s a competition. And if I sell subscriptions in the neighborhood, I’m gonna get an Atari said, Well, how much money do you have to raise us at $500? She goes, that’s crazy.

Angie 

A lot of money and like 1986 or whatever year we’re plus or minus talking about

Vin 

I was 15 and 86. So I would have been in that would have been in the or the late 70s, early 80s. Yeah, yeah. So she took me out neighborhood I went door knocking so I was a door to door salesman, and I raised so much money that I got first prize, which was the Atari set. After that, I went and picked up a paper out so that I could go buy a drum set. And so I began my career there. I took the next eight years in investing into my musical skills and at 18 or 17 I auditioned for a band out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They called me two months after I was 18 We hit the studio we hit the road and for the next many years we went eventually went international which was amazing.

Angie 

Who knew that was gonna happen just from this is this is complete side note. You had at 10 years old you had a goal right and it was like everything was going to conspire to help you achieve that goal and what an interesting foundation that was built from it in the good old work hard southern Canadian area of Wisconsin right right. So I’m curious when Okay, so when the music I don’t want to say the music died, but at some point music became likely less of the forefront and some of these kind of you know bigger professional corporate. What do we call them white collar jobs? Am I still allowed to call things white collar and blue collar? I haven’t figured that out yet. But anyway, yeah, I

Vin 

think it’s still politically correct to say that it

Angie 

so what happened is you made the move towards the white collar world, on from the from music and started getting a taste of, let’s say, corporate call ALL CHEER office environments and all those kinds of things. Yeah,

Vin 

I took a I took a shift. So Angie, if you look me up on online, if you look up the band, Scarlet rain, I had hair down to, you know, down to here. And I was I was probably about 118 pounds soaking wet with. So I was very athletic at that time. But it takes a lot of energy to play heavy metal, right? But when I left the music scene, it was all because grunge came in and took over the music scene, and metal kind of died on the vine. And so what I did is I went back to college, and I got my undergraduate degree in Theology of all things, right. And I became a, I became a church planting pastor. And what that means is, so this is a part of the corporate culture environment, but it’s wasn’t really corporate, right, it was, I left music as an entertainer. And then I went to create communities in which I developed leaders, and helping them become the best version of themselves through teaching and counseling and investing into others. So that was a 20-year journey that I was on. But then I went through a really bad experience. I was married for 27 years, and unfortunately had to have to, you know, break it off. And I had to reinvent myself, well, what do I do there? I went from Wisconsin to California took two years off and did organic farming. Everybody

Angie 

out there, because we have to just stop and say yes, then is a heavy metal drummer who became a church planter. I now feel a whole lot better about being somebody who loves Jesus and the F-bomb. I’m just gonna say it, right, like, and then now we’re talking about organic farming all of you out there, I hope you’re thinking like, is this really possible to do all of these things? Yes, it is. And it’s how it frames that unique perspective. So yeah, I’m curious about how organic farming and understanding corporate well, not corporate culture, but just workplace culture, there’s something there,

Vin 

there is something there. So that’s a really good point. I actually was church planting and did radio work and did a lot of really cool, interesting serial printer type work. But when I ended up in California, it was out of helping my oldest daughter and son-in-law with a difficult pregnancy. So being the good dad, investing into my son in law’s 20 acre farm, we spent the next two years living off the land. What I learned while living there, in the mountains, and growing food, was one I can live on very little money, eat the best, and also teach my kids because we’re a homeschooling family. So I was teaching my kids how to raise their own food, and survive if if you know the apocalypse ever comes. Right. And, and we have a dystopian world that we live in, you know, sort of Mad Max type stuff. Really, all joking aside, we did this with incredible outcome for our children and for ourselves. And then, long story short, we ended up moving back to Wisconsin for a little while I did a little more church planting, then we made a move down to Texas. That’s when everything kind of blew up. And I had to reinvent myself. So, I went back to school for a second undergraduate in psychology. Then I went on for a master’s in strategic communications and marketing. And then I’m currently working on my doctorate in strategic leadership.

Angie 

So if any of you out there are like, Oh, I’m 28, and I’m too old to go get an MBA, I’ve literally had 28 year old say that to me, please look at then he is a living example, that you’re not too old to do anything. And you and I were talking before the show about kind of what I think are shared personal experiences that we didn’t dive into yet. So you’re gonna get to hear it live. And in real time, kind of these shared experiences about kind of different cultures, small corporate, that sparked this inspiration to focus on culture strategy. Tell me a little bit about those specific instances. And when you really started to see some of the challenges and variations in culture. Yeah.

Vin 

So in in over a 30 year period. So let’s go back. So leaving the music world and then entering into the world of church, there’s people difficult people you have to deal with and you have to manage that and you know, consult them and coach them through and mentor them and, and all that and so there was a lot of honing and crafting My own skills as a young man in my 20s and 30s, into my 40s, I realized I needed to do more than just give my advice or counseling, I needed to learn how to coach. And so I, I took a step to become a certified coach in my 40s. And that led to along the way, in different areas I had in this is gonna sound crazy. But while I was a pastor, I also was an entrepreneur where I was doing businesses to keep myself and my family fed. And so I took up sales roles, and business development, and then I, it led into being a manager, well, I’m watching all the managers, and how they were treating their people. And I’m going, Wait a minute, now, this is just crazy. To see how how you all are just, like, I come from a world of like, love your neighbor as yourself. But I take it one step further. I say, don’t just love your neighbor as yourself, love your neighbor the way they want to be loved. Right? Because what if I treat myself really poorly? You know, what if I’m having a bad day? If I’m looking at the other person, I say, Okay, how do they want to be communicated to and how do they want to be loved? So when I saw how managers could just quickly cut them off and say, well, you’re at the bottom 10% I need to balance my books. So I gotta, I gotta unload some people in order to look good so I can get to my next level. I’m like, that’s insane. Like, especially in sales

Angie 

teams. Yeah, and not to dog on salespeople out there but even even come even companies who have broader, uh, you know, intentional corporate cultures and strive for healthy ones, that can often be dis railed in the, you know, derailed in the competitive nature of, of the sales org in a company and you experienced that firsthand? Yeah, for

Vin 

sure. So I call it churn and burn. So salespeople are a dime a dozen is what I’ve heard, in the leadership circles, well, if we lose one, we get another, and we’ll hold on to them until they stop producing, well, I made a correlation, there’s a reason why they stopped producing, what I found is they start taking away their incentives, they give them they d incentivize them, and then they expect them to perform at a higher level. Well, you’re not gonna get the performance until you dupe, the next salesperson who comes in was promised the world and then all of a sudden, they go down. Right.

Angie 

And I experienced this, I’ll give you kind of another lens of which this came and kind of, you know, almost what it looked like, I started my career as a civil engineer in the, you know, late 90s, early 2000s. When and I would say that a lot of this still exists that the AEC, or architecture engineering construction world is, is kind of the poster child of what we’re trying to change about corporate culture now and it, there’s more awareness around it, but it isn’t, it hasn’t changed enough. And you know, 20 years ago was I would, I definitely, you know, was smack in the middle of gender pay gaps, and probably borderline, maybe not even borderline harassment in the workplace, because it’s, you know, you’re a woman and I was I was in my 20s. So young woman, in a male dominated environment, going out to construction sites, and just really seeing that kind of like, authority, authoritarian, autocratic, and, and somewhat misogynistic culture, that is that I know women are specifically fighting again. So it’s interesting how different industries kind of fall victim to different, you know, idiosyncrasies of culture. And I think the foundational piece that I kind of want to lay to springboard us further into this conversation is that there is more awareness around those pitfalls and challenges. And there are some people out there trying to change it, you’re one of them. Yeah. And so I would love your thoughts, and kind of just your perspective on, you know, if we, if we want to use the word culture intentionally and not the it’s a terrible culture, right, you know, what is that? What is that? And how can we have a strategy around it and why is that important? Right?

Vin 

Well, think of it this way. You’re an engineer. So you design, you design a car, or you design a product. It takes intentional thought you sit at a storyboard or you have a brainstorming session, and you want to make that change. Well, first of all, strategically i My top strengths are strategy based. So are you for familiar with the Clifton Strengths, Gallup? Okay,

Angie 

so Jake is my number one, right?

Vin 

So mine is like, connectedness input learner ideation. Communication. Strategic. Whoo. Right? And then it goes in

Angie 

there. I used to have a Whoo, it’s gone because I don’t think I care anymore.

Vin 

It’s probably because you’re married Jim. Yeah, that’s probably

Angie 

1. I knew I knew we were gonna dog on Jim at some point. Jim took your womb away. Yeah, no, no, no, I’m gonna give him credit. Jim became my blue. Okay,

Vin 

there you go. When I found in psychology, and I’m taking all these assessments and in looking at the strengths, one of the things that I wanted to do is I want to go back for my masters and then do the LPC be a family therapist. I decided against it because I thought, well, if I take the positive approach, and I help people find their strengths, rather than listening for hours on end to people’s problems and getting emotionally dragged on myself, what if I took the positive approach and said, This is where you’re strong. This is where you’re weak, but let’s focus on your strengths. Now we can help elevate them out. Right? I get them out of the weeds, get them out of the troubles, and get them back on the road to success, or at least moving in the right direction. And that has worked for me.

Angie 

Well, and I think that’s a really great, let’s say even tool, or approach, just like a fundamental starting point. If you just have no culture, or it’s not intentional, or it’s bad, right? Yeah. It focusing like Don’t try to change it all at once. Right? Sometimes starting at the bottom. And building up is a good way to impact culture. And also, I’ll say a way that we as individuals within an environment can have an impact there if we’re not the person at the top, creating some sort of intentional strategy. And I think putting it Have you ever read traction, you have books back there? And I think they’re the exact same ones I have. So I’m like, traction is probably in there somewhere. No,

Vin 

it’s actually not, I’ve never heard of it, you’re gonna like track

Angie 

you’re gonna like traction. Okay, it’s much more opera operative than it is strategy. But one of the things they talk about is the right butts in the right seats. And that is, I think, fundamentally somewhere, we get it way wrong, because we’re trying to either be the right but for bright seat, or we’re trying to bend somebody to be in a seat, they may or not, they may not be wired to glory in, right. And if you can activate those strengths and align the seat with them, that’s just a really nice baseline starting point to then potentially have that ripple effect up. When it comes to culture. I’ll

Vin 

give you I’ll give you a really good example about that. Angie, so being a father of four daughters, my my two daughters right now we’re in college, but I have one daughter, that she was lost. I mean, she graduated high school, she said, Oh, Dad, I’m gonna take a gap year, I’m gonna go have some fun, I’m gonna work and save some money and blah, blah, while it was spent behind the screen playing video games. But the cool thing is, we had her take the Clifton Strengths Assessment, and she rejected that. She said, I’m not that. I said, Yeah, you are. I said, you took the assessment. You answered the questions. That’s who you are. She rejected it for about two months. She came back. Very broken, and said, Dad, you’re right. This is who I am. I was just denying it. And I said, I know. She said, Well, okay, I want to go back to school. That’s a great. So now she went through trade schools. She did about a year in trade school, she applied for college. She’s now a freshman in college at 24 years old. But it was because she finally accepted who she was. And you know what she’s doing? Fantastic. She’s taken on five leadership roles in her trade school. And then when she went on to college, she’s part of a whole group of people who are who are servant leaders. And she’s just doing great. 85% of all American workers, adults, will say adults do not know what their strengths are. They don’t know what their gifts and their talents are. And what I believe is once you know, your strengths and your talents, and then you have now a clear, concise purpose. And you can start working towards the things that you’re passionate about, rather than I’m just going to take this job because I need to do something and this seems like it’s interesting. And then they get into it and then they find out oh, I hate this.

Angie 

You brought up a topic that comes up a lot here on Mr. Mondays and you brought it from a different angle, which is the purpose, conversation, purpose, passion, why whatever term for it identifies with you the conversations that we have here, it has become very obvious that if you if you understand what that purpose or passion or y is, and you and you also know how you want to use it, how you want to how you want to pair it with your strength, but you’ve also known, then you are already about 80% of the way ahead when finding an employment environment that will support that, right, because all of that is foundational to values and values alignment is the second thing that comes up here a whole lot when it comes to matching culture and, and values and purpose. And that’s a whole this whole little ecosystem that in some ways may sound woowoo. And y’all know I am not woowoo, but it’s actually very, very practically based, you just have to spend take the time and intention to really get in tune with what yours is, and then how that applies to a work environment and reflects in the culture, right?

Vin 

Well, when you become introspective, when you really take the time to work through who you are, then you can stop compromising. Who you’re going to invest into and spend time with now you become confident you are now not just a directionless wave in the sea. Now you are you are driving towards a goal because you have to really start thinking about where you want to land. And when I’ve coached others, I say, let’s work. And let’s engineer it backwards. Rather than just say, Okay, this is my starting point. This is what I needed to go to do to go forward. Let’s look at what’s the end goal. And let’s work our way our steps backwards, and see if we can find a starting point.

Angie 

I’m a big fan of reverse engineering. Yeah. And the book, the one thing I love, I

Vin 

like books. And one thing is a great book. It is

Angie 

everybody out there can’t see us. But if you see the preview of this, like, I obviously have my fancy, dancy bookshelf, and Vince got stacks of book back there. And I just recognize I recognize covers right off the bat. The one thing is exactly what you’re talking about. Because it can be because sometimes we can we figure out what that, let’s say wayfinding point is we know, we know the thing we’re trying to reverse engineer, but it can feel so far away or so onerous or overwhelming, if you really try to tackle it, and you don’t reverse engineering is just too too big of a thing to try to try to achieve. And that the book, the one thing and what Ben and I are talking about is basically reverse engineering, all these little micro things, or mini mini milestones that kind of keep you engaged towards the bigger thing, because inching yourself forward is still is still progress. And I think sometimes we lose sight of that in in a more societal culture to bring closer back into this of instant gratification. Yeah,

Vin 

yeah. Well, you know, talking about intentional culture, strategy design. It begins with that ecosystem of self, that introspection, but then you start to look at, well, who can I serve? How can I serve? You know, who is my tribe? So that’s one of the intentions that I plan to write a book around the culture strategy called Finding Your tribe. Because a lot of the times people don’t intentionally go out? Well, first of all, look at themselves, because a lot of the times, well, there’s been studies done on this, where if you put some a group of people, by themselves, say you take a group of people, and you’re going to do a study on them, you take one person, put them in the room with an electric probe with a button, you attach it to the hand, and you say, now sit for five minutes, and just think silently, with no other noise around you. But if you start to feel uncomfortable, go ahead and hit the button. It’ll give you electric shock, or a static shock, right? Well, funny thing about that. That study was there was one guy who went in and he just tapped the button constantly. For the whole five minutes. He couldn’t stand to be alone with his own thoughts. You have to find a way to take the time to introspect. Look at who you are, then start thinking about who do I want to align my life with? Who do I want to invest into that can be companies really intentional? You have to really dig deep and say, Is this a compromise of my mission, my vision and my values? In in, look at their mission, vision and values and see if they align, and find out if other people can actually tell you what their mission vision and values are. Right.

Angie 

And that’s the kind of thing we’re talking about when it comes to knowing yours. So so you can identify others. That’s right. And, and the whole that I love the introspection piece of this, you all have heard me talk a whole lot about spending time with yourself, I’m a huge get outdoors fan kind of person. Because we are more distracted and have more stimuli nowadays than we ever have. And that stuff does not support introspection and reflection very well. And if it if it takes an I will be the first one to tell you, I’m not good at it, which is why I go do outdoor things where there is no service, because it forces me to say, Oh, great, I can’t look at my phone right now, I can’t go look at what’s happening on social Saturday on LinkedIn, right, because we are in the back country, and I have no choice. So if it if it takes some sort of forced accountability, even if nature is the one helping you out, those are steps that are important, I think to you, and and I think there’s another piece of this conversation that would be good to bring in is that these are all things that we as individuals can do to almost identify our own individual culture and culture needs and, and affinities and alignment. But I would love to, to kind of bring in the other side of the coin here. And let’s say let’s say you’re at the other end of the of the hierarchy, and you’re somebody at the top. So what are some very small practical things a leader or a business owner or an executive could do to start being a little bit more intentional about culture, if they’re not right now?

Vin 

Well, I have written plans for corporations, especially one of the most difficult corporate situations you can run into is mergers and acquisitions, where you have two cultures coming together. So you have a buyer, and one being bought. Okay, so as they’re coming together, you have two very divergent cultures, they’re, I mean, they’re just when they come together, they’re just not going to fit together, they’re going to butt heads, it’s going to come from a very different place of experience. So what I have told, leaders is, first of all, before you make the purchase, or if you’re let’s just say you’re just an existing company, doesn’t even have to be merger acquisition. As a leader, you have to have, it comes down from the top, everything flows down from the top, as a CEO, as a CEO, all the C suite people have to be in alignment. And they have to know they have to know and they all have to adopt it. Okay? It has to be simple. Make it simple. So that even the, the if the language trickles down all the way down and is sifted through down to the janitor. Okay. And I don’t want to pick on janitors. I mean, that’s a fine job. I was one when I was in high school, but to say that, from the CEO all the way down to the janitor, who is really important, they need to be able to understand that language and say, Yeah, I value that this is this makes me feel like my job is important. And that can be that can go all the way up through the ranks. Right? So my advice to and I hate to use the word advice, the direction of nation read, my recommendation is always keep the language simple. Have make sure that you’re not just casting your vision as an individual, as a CEO, but you have the buy in of every single person. And if you don’t have the buy-in, it may not be the right culture for them, and they’re going to have to move on. But let them do it voluntarily. Yes.

Angie 

And I think you bring up the good point that if you if this isn’t something that’s already in place in your organization, beginning to roll roll it a culture strategy is the it beginning to roll something out that is intentional, like this will create a little bit of an organic riff. Right and it doesn’t mean you have to necessarily go, you know, plucking heads out of there because people can choose whether they want to stay and adapt or stay unaligned or anything like that, but there will be some challenges. It’s not just like, hey, we have a culture now and y’all are gonna love it. It doesn’t. It’s not an immediate solution, but it is a very important strategy to implement and I love have the idea of that kind of three point thinking about at the highest level align throughout all of the organization adopt. And then, you know, the overall picture is to make it simple enough to adopt and align. Because how many times have you seen a one-page mission statement from a company? And you’re like, that’s not a mission statement? That’s a short bio, right? Like, that is too hard forever. The it has to be easy enough so that when we played telephone with two soup cans and a piece of yarn in 1983, it would have gone from start to finish the exact same way.

Vin 

Well, you know, when I was thinking about my company, creating the culture strategy, I was challenged, well, what is your message? Right? What is your message? And it’s really very simple. Connecting culture strategically. Well, what does that mean? Well, I design so these are the services I provide, I design, your strategy, I align your team, and I elevate your brand. Pretty simple. Now everybody knows what I do. They may not know how I do it, but they know what I do. Right? And so when you think about inside outside messaging, is what you’re saying to the world, to your customers, different than what you’re saying to the people on the inside. And there’s a really simple way to check that. Go online to Google if you have enough people leaving you Google reviews, and they’re your customers. If you are below a four-star, well, you pretty much need to fix your messaging or your service. Well, that leads to the inside messaging, that’s the people who are serving your customers, right? How is is that messaging aligning, right. And that’s what I tried to bring this holistic approach to pulling it all together. And making it having continuity all the way through, right, continuity

Angie 

is a great word to talk about and, and that you bring up a really good point about it should go all the way around. And it should be, it should be authentic and genuine. Because we’ve all gone to company websites where they list their values, a certain one that we all get packages from every day that has 16 of them comes to mind. And you really have to think, how do these look in real in reality every day? How can a company live 16 values every single day? Is this a smoke screen? Or is it something that is truly integrated into the culture of a company, and that’s where I think we overthink, 1616 values, overthink, and complicate something that if simplified becomes a lot easier to message. And I think that’s a good word to apply to all this, right? A lot of this is in the messaging and in the delivery, right? And if we simply, if we simplify that and look at the full cycle, do people inside my company buy into this messaging and align with it? And are we showcasing and genuinely delivering our services or engaging with people in a way reflective of these things? That that if all of that can work in harmony together? You’re you’re doing something right? Yeah.

Vin 

I have watched so many different companies who I mean, they’re brilliant people very intelligent. There’s a reason why they’re successful. But one of the things that I have seen is they leave so much money on the table. And they do it willfully. They say well, the most important thing is my bottom line or our bottom line. And we we’ve got to get this sales team up and running and we’ve got to get our finances in order and we’ve got to have all this operational, you know, strength and we’re just gonna we’re just gonna power forward, right? But I say Yeah, but you your culture sucks. When they’re like, Well, so what? And I’m like, do you have high attrition? Yeah. How much is that costing you? Well, it’s expensive. I said right right up there with taxes right, your taxes are probably high and then your then your next expenses is employees, the cost of employees, but what they don’t think about is what it costs to lose 10 20% year over a year of your employees that quit because your Cobra company culture staying Next. And what if you could take and save all those people? I’ll give you a good example I, I worked with a call center. And that call center, I took on the project, they had about eight to 10 people on the in the call center. And they had two directors, two managers, a corporate trainer, a team lead and another team leads. So they had seven people over eight to 10 people. Well, that’s micromanaging. So now you’ve just increased your cost, right of of managing that group, it would take just one person to run that team. Well, when I came in, I took on the project. And what I did is I went through each individual and I sat down one to one, and I asked them, Do you have all the tools that you need? Have you been trained? Well, and let’s go through a series of other questions. So when we got to the bottom of it, at the end of it, they learned to trust me immediately. And they said, four, four out of the, we’ll call it an even eight, four out of the eight people said 50%. Now, I’m ready to quit my job. I said, Give me two weeks, and I can change your mind. Well, turns out two weeks later, we’re going through all this rebuilding and building the culture. And then I’m finding out that there’s turf wars, I call it turf dumb, this is my turf. This is my kingdom. And I’m going to lob shots at you across the bow and I’m going to you know, we’re in the same company, but I’m going to come after you. And it was back and forth. And what I did is I learned to bring the teams together and communicate. And all of a sudden, they started seeing 200 400 1,000% increase in in sales and customer service satisfaction. It was insane to watch such a radical change. In all that to say, it can be done. If you design it, if you let it go rogue, what you’re gonna get what you’re gonna get. Yeah,

Angie 

that’s just the reality to have the wild, you’re gonna have the wild, you’re gonna have the Wild West. And sometimes some of us wish we lived on 1883. And many of us are glad we don’t. And I think you bring up a good point that like if somebody’s sitting there, like my culture is fine, no big deal. Look at your attrition rates and your retention rates, do accussed do an employee satisfaction survey, right culture begins from the inside. And that can be a really big indication of kind of where you stand. So if you need a litmus test, look at your people and start with your people, if you want to change, and then you can call them in for advice on how to observe recommendations instead of advice for a strategy on how to design your culture. And if you want to kind of get a little bit of more of a flavor of Vin and what he’s got to offer. You started a podcast on this subject. Right. Tell us more about that. Yeah.

Vin 

So that’s been a fun ride. So you know, I went through a riff, I was part of a large, fast growing company. They did a riff, I mean, they took everybody from the President directors, all the way through the learning and development team, a lot of managers. I mean, there was just a huge riff. And I saw that it was a culture issue. Right? So I said, Well, I’m going to create a podcast called The Culture Strategy. At the same time, I had already been doing consulting work on culture. So I created the culture strategy to have a conversation with CEOs and I’ve had a lot of them PhDs, organizational, you know, organizational psychologists, and I’ve had international authors, the author of the Go Giver, just recently interviewed Bob Berg of the Go Giver. Yeah. Yeah, I love Bob. He’s, he’s amazing. But I have worked with coaches and consultants in, you know, pulling them all together and having a deeper conversation about culture, and defining that because culture really is a very nebulous matter, because everybody has a different perspective on it. What is it? How do we define it? And I say it’s this taking ownership of your world and taking ownership to identify other leaders doesn’t matter titles. So to me, I’m going to say this. This is something that I came up with, titled people are not leaders. Tie Old people can become entitled because they think they’re a leader. Right? Leaders are people who take ownership of their world, it could be the janitor, and it could be the secretary, it can be a manager, and it could be the CEO. But it doesn’t matter what your role or your position is, if you’re a leader, you identify how you’re going to be a servant leader to others, and you’re going to elevate others.

Angie 

And that brings the the seat or the I would say the takeaway, in case in case you’re not connecting the dots here is just because you have a leadership title does not mean you are a leader, because there’s a huge difference between leading and managing, which is oftentimes what happens at those stages, if the human in the position doesn’t have the capacity or the mindset to lead and they want to control and manage. And that’s that’s also a point of intersection, right? If you fall into the I really like to take keep a tight grip, and you’re in a director role, you’re probably managing and you’re not leading, but you have the ability to lead and empower, which is a fundamentally different approach to it. And, and I think it’s so amazing what happens when you work with leaders, and you see that transformation, how much more amazing it feels for somebody to have given autonomy, and have people want to be motivated to work for you and to produce at higher levels versus a culture where they just feel like they have to write, that’s where that’s where retention goes up. That’s where productivity increases. And fundamentally, that’s why a culture strategy can impact your business’s brand and viability and growth, right, if we have to connect those dots, which we talked about at the beginning. That’s why it’s because you have more capacity, because your people are motivated, connected, and they understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. That’s

Vin 

right. That’s right. One of the things that I would I would say,

Vin 

I have recognize, though, I believe starting at the top and getting the C suite and all the directors and managers aligned. Within the company, there is a strong desire for people to feel connected, especially after COVID. All right, people want to be we are social creatures, we we want to be in community, which is why I appreciate your social Saturday, the way your approach to it get connected, right? People want that during the week, if you if you look at the work life, the the lifecycle of the worker, it’s 90,000 hours, or 43 years, it used to be you could work 25 to 35 years in one job. Now it’s every four years, we’re changing jobs. And let me let me kind of button this up for you give you some perspective context. If I take a job, it takes me six months just to find the bathroom with with without a map, right. Then, after a year, I become competent. About the third or fourth year, I’m just starting to really get to know people at a deeper level. But then all of a sudden, something goes sideways. And I decided you know what the grass is greener somewhere else, and then I move on. And I may not have met my potential possibilities at that company, all because the culture hit me hard or something went wrong with the leader or the mayor or the manager, right? I think if we if we really adjust the culture and in place the importance on developing community within the corporation, you’ll find you’ll one you’ll be a magnet for high performing talent. They’ll say I want to go work for that company. Right? And you’ll have people who will stay and say, I want to stay at this company because I work with the best people on the planet.

Angie 

There it is. There’s the mic drop in the episode, everybody. That’s the fundamental reason we talk so much about this and why it should be more important than it is and why we need people like then to be out there kind of championing championing championing this. Yeah, say that three times fast, you know, this whole kind of thing. And I would love now for people to know, how do they find you? Right? How can they tune into the podcast, the work you’re doing with the consultancy? You know, how can people follow along and get more of this kind of, you know, recommendations as they consider this intentional culture strategy?

Vin 

Yeah, you can always connect with me on LinkedIn. I don’t have as many followers and connections as Angie, she is just out there, making it real and happening. And she’s got Jim just backing her up and all that. But you can connect with me on LinkedIn, I’m very active in that world. You can also go to the culture strategy.com, you can find all my services, I don’t just do coaching or consulting work. I also do marketing, I have a master’s in strategic communications working on my doctorate in strategic leadership. So, my education falls in line with what I can do for your organization. So you can find all my services, I if you want to start a podcast, I also help you get started in look at how to send your messaging how to set up the right equipment, and I’ll help you script, lay out the script in your messaging, I use a lot of really great tools. So you can find me on the culture strategy. You can find me on LinkedIn, I’m pretty accessible.

Angie 

And, of course, we will link all of that in the show notes at no more Mondays dot info. And as we wrap things up, which this could be like a 12 hour episode of all kinds of things culture, and then who knows where we would go, yeah. But as we wrap things up, I would love for you to give everybody out there kind of one last little takeaway. One last little pearl of wisdom on what your number one piece of advice to improve our life and career.

Vin 

Have an action plan. If you have an action plan that’s written out, know your strengths. And I’ll give you I’m gonna give a plug for a coach that I work with, I call her business partner company. So at strength ology brandy shade, which by the way, you should get her on as a guest. She’s amazing. But she has a software that gives you an action plan based on your strengths. And if you print that off, or you use it on your phone, you have a daily plan of what you need to be doing that will then hone and craft your skills, so that you can keep growing.

Angie 

Love it. And, you know, keep growing. That would be the in a nutshell piece of advice there if you want to, if you want to continually work towards career and life satisfaction, you know, that’s that good old cliche, the journey is the destination, right? I don’t think you ever reach it because it can that that that definition of satisfaction continues to evolve. But if you learn alongside of that journey, good things are to come. And this guy right here will help you learn in many different walks of life, one of which is culture strategy. Vin Zeeland, everybody thank you so much for being part of the No More Mondays movement and sharing just your your authenticity and your story and your experience with with culture today. This is a really important topic and I’m glad people out there people like you are out there, bringing even more awareness to it.

Vin 

Angie, thank you so much. It was so fun. Let’s do this again. And I want to bring you on my show. Because you you have some really great insight.

Angie 

Thank you. And we will make it happen and will blow you up whenever it happens. It does so you all can can stay tuned for the flip side of this conversation. And until next time, everyone thank you so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode and you’d like no more Mondays head on over to wherever you get your podcasts leave us a five star rating. Leave this episode a review. It’s a huge help as people like Ben and I continue to put out podcasts and inspire people into great cultures and satisfaction. If you want to leave comments feedback or drop a guest suggestion head on over to no more Mondays dot info where you also can find the links and show notes to today’s episode. And you will hear me again next week for another edition of no more Monday’s podcast.