Chapter 6 & 8: Proven Tools for Intentional Culture Building PDF

# Chapter 6: The Proven Tools and Strategies to Build an Intentional Culture "I AM A BIG BELIEVER IN EARLY INTERVENTION AND STRONG INTERVENTION, BUT YOU HAVE GOT TO USE THE RIGHT TOOLS. YOU HAVE GOT TO USE THE RIGHT TOOLS, AND THOSE TOOLS ARE DIFFERENT FOR DIFFERENT SITUATIONS." -TEMPLE GRANDIN As...

# Chapter 6: The Proven Tools and Strategies to Build an Intentional Culture "I AM A BIG BELIEVER IN EARLY INTERVENTION AND STRONG INTERVENTION, BUT YOU HAVE GOT TO USE THE RIGHT TOOLS. YOU HAVE GOT TO USE THE RIGHT TOOLS, AND THOSE TOOLS ARE DIFFERENT FOR DIFFERENT SITUATIONS." -TEMPLE GRANDIN As you retrain your culture to think and talk in the language of your Core Values, you and your team also need to have the right tools to reinforce the culture you're building. Many business initiatives, even good ones, get tossed onto the failure pile because there was nothing in place to create consistent action and follow-up. The right tools give a business the habits and consistent behaviors that turn a vision into reality. In other words, you get Traction. EOS tools are the steady, organized way to ensure that you and your team are following through on purposely creating an intentional culture. Your organization needs objective tools and frameworks to make correct decisions about people. Leaders who are serious about intentional culture need these tools and strategies; otherwise you're just guessing. You may be feeling overwhelmed at this point in the book. You have a clear vision of the culture you want to create, but don't know how to get started. As the saying goes, "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." The EOS Process is designed to help you eat that elephant and build the culture you want, one bite at a time. ## What This Chapter Does and Why Many of the tools in this chapter are well explained in other EOS books (especially Traction, How to Be a Great Boss, and Rocket Fuel). Rather than repeat those books, we want to give you the basics of each of these tools in an order that's easy to follow. Think of this chapter as the quick-and-easy reference guide to what you and your team need to do consistently to get your People Component working to maximum effectiveness. All the EOS tools will holistically help you build a great culture but there are a few that will help you produce the biggest results in the least amount of time. We suggest putting a bookmark in this chapter and skimming through it anytime you're hitting a rough patch building your culture. If there is a problem, the likely culprit is you're failing to implement one of these key tools. Use this chapter as your quick guide to get back on track. Where appropriate, we will also add in explanations and comments to help with common trouble spots and potential traps that we see frequently. ## The Key EOS Tools for Building an Intentional Culture: The Five Foundational Tools EOS has twenty tools in the EOS Toolbox. However, we believe in the 20 percent that will produce 80 percent of the results. In other words, what are the tools that will drive your culture forward with the least amount of effort in the shortest amount of time? The Five Foundational Tools are that 20 percent: - The Vision/Traction Organizer (V/TO) - The Accountability Chart - Rocks - Meeting Pulse - Scorecard If you get your Leadership Team using these tools masterfully, you'll immediately begin seeing an impact on your journey to building an intentional culture. If you get 80 percent of your entire company using these tools, you'll make a dent in your universe. ### The Vision/Traction Organizer The Vision/Traction Organizer is the single most powerful way to document your vision and plan and get your team 100 percent on the same page with where you're going and how you'll get there. You must have a complete V/TO that your Leadership Team believes in and you use it daily to make decisions. **Intentional Culture Connection:** The V/TO is crucial for making decisions about the Greater Good. It provides objective standards and measures for what is the Greater Good. Without it, how will you judge if your intentional culture is pointed in the right direction? [See chapter 10 for more about this.] ### The Accountability Chart The Accountability Chart is a living and breathing document you use to create clarity for each of your people and what is expected of them. It's meant to be constantly updated and easily accessible to everyone in the organization. **Intentional Culture Connection:** This is your first concrete step in forming an intentional culture. You have to get structure in place, or you'll constantly spin your wheels. Then once it's in place, it needs to be constantly updated to keep the business intentionally headed in the right direction. [See chapter 3 for more about this.] ### Rocks Rocks are the three to seven biggest priorities in the business. Rocks help keep your company focused for ninety days. You have company, departmental, team, and individual Rocks. Everyone should be focused on at least one Rock per quarter. **Intentional Culture Connection:** Building an intentional culture without Rocks would be like trying to build a house without tools and materials or a defined project schedule. Your entire team needs to be working toward the V/TO, and Rocks are the specific tasks that are tied to the 1-Year Goals. Otherwise, your team is a random assortment of human energy arrows pointed every which way. ### Meeting Pulse Having a great weekly Meeting Pulse is the key to making sure everyone is in the know and is staying accountable to achieving results. Each week you come together and review your numbers and priorities, and get an update on your people. You review your To-Do List and solve your key issues. **Intentional Culture Connection:** Haphazard cultures have haphazard meetings. Which wastes a lot of time and energy and often keeps you going in circles. The structure and consistency of Level 10 Meetings are a perfect reflection and match of an intentional culture. ### Scorecard A Scorecard helps you have a complete pulse on the business. A great scorecard is five to fifteen numbers that are leading indicators to how your business is doing. Each person on the team has at least one number they're accountable for delivering to the business each week. **Intentional Culture Connection:** Without objective accountability standards, people can stay in the wrong seats forever. Scorecards are a way to gauge if someone GWCs their seat. ## Rocks Here's an excellent summary of the concept of Rocks from the book How to Be a Great Boss: “These are quarterly key priorities (often referred to as goals, objectives, or initiatives). We prefer to call them Rocks. It's vital that you and your direct reports agree on the one to seven most important priorities that they must complete in the next ninety days.” How to Be a Great Boss also gives the five cooperative steps of the Rock Setting Process: 1. Share your company's Vision/Traction Organizer (V/TO) with your annual Goals and quarterly priorities (Rocks) with all your people. 2. Create your team's Issues List—topics that include obstacles, barriers, problems, ideas, and so on. 3. With the company's Goals, Rocks, and your team's Issues List as context, ask your direct reports, "What do you see as the most important things to get done in the next ninety days?" Discuss and debate as a team and come to an agreement on the three to seven priorities for the next ninety days. 4. Make them SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely). 5. At the end of the Rock setting process each of your direct reports should be clear on their Rocks for the quarter. ## Level 10 Meetings Behind the name Level 10 is the reality that most people rate their meetings as mediocre at best. On a scale of one to ten, they're usually a four or five. The Level 10 Meeting does exactly what it says: bring meetings up to the highest level. The secret to raising your meetings to a higher level is to use a proven, repeatable framework that maximizes effectiveness and efficiency. Some good rules for effective Level 10 Meetings: - They're scheduled for the same day and time each week, and they always start and end on time (see weekly Meeting Pulse below). - Leadership Team meetings should be ninety minutes. - Departments can vary but are usually one hour. - Generally, three to seven attendees is the sweet spot for an effective, productive meeting. The agenda should be the same each week: - Sharing personal and professional bests/good news check-in - Scorecard Review: five minutes - Rock Review: five minutes - Customer/Employee Headlines: five minutes - To-Dos: five minutes - Identify, Discuss, Solve (IDS): sixty minutes - Note: IDS is the heart of a Level 10 meeting. The person raising the issue has the responsibility to clearly identify it. Then the team discusses it, with the objective of getting to the root cause. After a thorough examination of all the details, the team decides on the best way to solve the issue permanently. - Conclude: five minutes A quick note on the conclude step of the Level 10 Meeting. This is one of the most important steps of the Level 10 Meeting and the most often missed. It's vital to culture building and driving organizational clarity. In Patrick Lencioni's book The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive, he discusses the importance of overcommunicating to create organizational clarity. He gives the following tips to communicating key messages: - Repetition - Simplicity - Multiple Mediums - Cascading Messages The concluding step of your Level 10 Meeting, throughout the organization but starting with your Leadership Team is your opportunity to drive organizational clarity. You start by recapping your To-Dos and each member of the team sounding off, “Got it.” Every member of the team must be clear on their marching orders for the week. You then decide if anything was discussed or decided in the meeting that needs to be communicated to anyone outside of the team. Make sure those messages are simple and clear. We suggest you send out that message using multiple mediums (e.g., Slack message, phone call, or email a video). Someone on the team takes a To-Do to send the message. Finally, you rate the meeting one to ten, with ten being the best. If anyone rates the meeting an eight or lower, you ask why so that the team can course correct and you get better and better each week. ## Weekly Meeting Pulse The Level 10 Meeting isn't just for the Leadership Team. The teams within your organization also need to commit to a regular weekly meeting. It normalizes steady communication. Without that, focus can quickly dissipate. Committing to set times and days for weekly meetings for all your teams is a best practice that's a good Weekly Pulse to establish. When every person in your organization is participating in their regularly scheduled Level 10 Meetings, you'll increase productivity, communication, and team health across your entire business. You'll free up your Leadership Team to be working “on” the business versus being bogged down “in” the business issues. A Weekly Meeting Pulse will help you create an open, honest, and transparent organization where your people are solving their own issues. Having a great meeting pulse will help you create a self-managing business that will take you to new heights and help make your vision a reality. Every one of your meetings, especially your Leadership Team meetings, should be exciting, intense and make you tired, but most of all, they should never be boring. ## People Analyzer This simple, powerful tool checks for team member alignment with your culture. Here's an example: | | Help First | Grow or Die | Be Humbly Confident | Do the Right Thing | Do What You Say | |-------|-----------|------------|----------------------|-------------------|-------------------| | Herb | +/- | + | + | + | + | | Rita | +/- | +/- | + | + | +/- | | Curt | + | +/- | +/- | +/- | + | | Diane | + | + | + | + | + | List team names down the left-hand column. Across the top, write in your Core Values. Then for each person, identify how well they live each Core Value. If they live it out most of the time, that's a plus (+) rating. If sometimes they do and sometimes they don't, that's a rating of plus/minus (+/-). And if they don't live that Core Value most of the time, that's a minus (-) rating. The power of it is that it doesn't overcomplicate evaluations, but still provides an accurate assessment of a person's Core Values alignment. We will touch on this a bit more in a later chapter. ## The Power of the People Analyzer Certified EOS Implementer Randy McDougal remembers his first experience with the People Analyzer. It did not go as expected. In his words: “I remember one of the first times I heard about EOS it had to do with the People Analyzer. One of our leaders had heard a talk and came back very excited to try it out with our Leadership Team. He explained how the People Analyzer worked, and all was going great as we analyzed each other. “Then 'Jim' gave me a minus rating on my favorite Core Value: ‘Creative.' Outwardly, I kept my game face on, but I couldn't believe it. I loved being creative. So when another leader and partner jumped in and reassured me, ‘Jim just doesn't see all the creative things you do.' "I thought those reassuring me were doing me a favor, but they weren't. It took me some time to realize Jim had given me a gift. Although I still believe I was creative in many instances, with Jim, I didn't exhibit creativity. In fact, I was always impatient for him to get to the point. I could suddenly see that my intensity and focus was undercutting me and the organization. "I learned from that experience that every bit of feedback, no matter how I perceive it, has value. To be a great leader you have to learn from every team member and consider all feedback seriously." ## Quarterly Conversations There is an entire chapter in How to Be a Great Boss dedicated to Quarterly Conversations, and it's well worth a read. We do want to add some additional thoughts based on our own experiences. Nothing we say will contradict any of the great advice from the earlier book; we want to deepen and complement what is already out there. If you're completely new to this idea, here is a quick rundown of the basics you need to know: - A Quarterly Conversation should happen every ninety days for every team member with their direct report. It's an informal, relational, one-on-one meeting. - At its heart, the conversation is all about what's working and what's not working. Use the concepts of the 5-5-5 explained below to make sure you stay focused on what matters. - Here are two great questions to help people open up: “How have you been able to use your strengths this quarter?" and "What kinds of things are preventing you from using your strengths?" You may be surprised by what these questions can reveal. - Meetings should be on each person's calendar well in advance and be scheduled for a location outside the office. ## Use the 5-5-5 (Core Values–Roles–Rocks) as Key Touch Points During Quarterly Conversations The 5-5-5 gets its name because companies on average have five Core Values, five roles for each seat, and a person usually agrees to somewhere between one to seven Rocks, so we'll average that out to five. The triple fives just makes it easier to remember. The 5-5-5 helps you stay focused on what's working and not working with a team member. It creates the context for your informal Quarterly Conversations every leader and manager needs to have with each of their direct reports. Your meetings, planned conversations, and informal communications should heavily revolve around the 5-5-5 topics. That should be no surprise since Core Values and Roles set the tone for how you do what you do, and Rocks are the specific things that need to be done. If you aren't paying enough attention to the details of the 5-5-5, you've lost focus on what matters. ## Ways to Get the Most Out of Quarterly Conversations Any direct report should be going into a Quarterly Conversation with the mindset that it's truly a conversation, meaning a two-way street. You shouldn't go in with preconceived notions of what the person will say. If you're truly there to serve them, you need to hear how you can help them. In short, it's a great way to keep the circles connected in your organization by maintaining clear communication, collaboration, and accountability, especially between a manager and their direct report. Remember that the point of a Quarterly Conversation is to build a great, trusted relationship that's open, honest, and vulnerable between two people. Here are some quick tips to build trust during a conversation. We understand some of these may seem basic and obvious, but sometimes it's doing the simple things the right way that builds a great culture: - Active listening: show genuine interest in your direct report by giving them your full attention, maintaining eye contact, nodding when appropriate, and paraphrasing or summarizing their points to demonstrate you understand. - Empathy: Put yourself in their shoes and try to understand their feelings, emotions, and perspectives. This will help you connect with them on a deeper level and build trust. - Ask open-ended questions: ask questions that encourage the other person to share more about their thoughts and experiences. - Be genuine and authentic: Be yourself during the conversation. People can sense when you're not being genuine and this will damage trust. - Maintain confidentiality: if the person shares personal information, make sure that you don't disclose it to anyone without prior consent. Since listening is an emphasis, make it what you do first. Start by letting them share and show them by your actions that they have your full attention. This is one of the reasons that an off-site location is key-you don't want to be interrupted by people sticking their head in the door, the office phone ringing, and so on. The whole mood and tenor of the meeting is also that you want the team member to know that this is a chance to be open, honest, and vulnerable. When you're digging for answers to what's not working, you don't want them feeling defensive. Along these same lines, a Quarterly Conversation is never the place for a Strike conversation (see 3 Strike Rule below). If some kind of disciplinary action is needed, that's a separate meeting. The Quarterly Conversation should be something both parties look forward to and never be dreaded. But that's not to say a manager should come to a meeting unprepared with no facts. Actually, the opposite. If there are things that need to be discussed and addressed, you must bring specifics, especially for team members who need more accountability to stay on track. Having examples and stories to support your thinking and observations are key to understanding. If you say something abstract like, “I need to have confidence you'll be completing your tasks on time," that's too general. As author Brené Brown says, "Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind." You owe clarity to each person that you manage, so instead come prepared with a statement like, “Your weekly reports were turned in more than a day late on eight out of thirteen weeks this quarter. It seems you're struggling to meet those expectations. Let's talk about solving that issue." You're actually being more loving to the person in front of you when you're specific. It gives them clarity on what needs to be fixed and precision on how to improve up to the standard. To let them continue to flounder aimlessly isn't to their benefit, and not helpful to the Greater Good. A good standard is to aim to bring at least three specific examples of a behavior or issue that needs to be improved. The same goes for the reverse. Bringing at least three specific examples of what a person is doing well is very motivating and shows that the manager is truly noticing and appreciative of good performance. A quality Quarterly Conversation also has a feel of narrowing from the general to the nitty-gritty details. You start with the view at thirty thousand feet, very relaxed and getting the person in front of you to simply talk. As they say things, you begin bringing the picture into sharper focus with good questions-this brings things down to about ten thousand feet. Eventually, you get very specific about their Rocks and measurable goals. Think of that as bringing it down to the ten-feet view. That's an excellent conversation. It's also important not to think of Quarterly Conversations as one-size-fits-all. There can be a tendency to think that spending more time in a conversation with one team member over another is somehow playing favorites. Or that you should be equally vulnerable with all, and vice versa. That's a false idea of leadership rooted in a bureaucratic idea of a workplace. You're aiming for a workplace built on relational foundations. And relationships mean that different humans have different needs, capacities, and personalities. While you shouldn't give short shrift to any conversation, some folks may need a thirty-minute coffee break, and others may need a ninety-minute lunch. And the specifics of the conversation, while always revolving around "What's working" and "What's not working" can have a lot of freedom within those parameters. ## Delegate and Elevate As we discussed in chapter 2 in the section on finding your Personal Core Focus, the Delegate and Elevate tool is one of the most powerful tools in your journey to creating an intentional culture. When anyone reaches their capacity (the number of things they need to accomplish begins to exceed the number of hours they can dedicate to work), something has to give. The wrong way-ignoring it or trying to work harder-leads to burnout, frustration, and quitting. The solution is the Delegate and Elevate tool, and it's one of the most powerful People Component tools you can have in your company's toolbox. When you or any of your people have reached capacity, have them repeat steps 1, 2, 3, and 5 from Personal Core Focus in chapter 2. ## Clarity Breaks One thing great leaders who build great cultures have in common: they set aside special time to remove themselves from the grind of the everyday and step back to get a wider view of their business. How long they go between Clarity Breaks varies, as does where they have them and how long they last. You need to find what is right for you. Remember this isn't you selfishly taking a break. You owe it to your team to take a step back, refresh and renew your vision, and see things more clearly so you can serve others better. Taking a Clarity Break requires no special tools or techniques. All you need is something to write with and a pad of paper. Sit down and let the thoughts flow. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to get the juices flowing: - Am I focusing on the most important things? - Do I have the Right People in the Right Seats to grow? - Do I have the culture I want and is it self-perpetuating? - Are my hiring processes designed to put our Core Values first? ## Measurables Also known as metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs), measurables are the numbers that you use to determine if you're winning. Once you define your number expectations, you have a clear-cut way of seeing who is meeting expectations and who isn't. Some business owners are already all over this, but some are hesitant to be hard and fast about numbers. It's actually showing more care and concern for your people when you give them clear expectations and they know how they're being measured. Leaving them with a vague feeling of not knowing where they stand is actually a much worse way to treat someone. One caveat here: KPIs in companies with unhealthy cultures become competitive, and not in a good way. Measurables within a healthy culture are used to create self-correction and accountability, not cut-throat competition. With a healthy culture, the conversation becomes, “the numbers are saying there's a problem. Why do you think this isn't working?" This is how we get people to level up, or find out they're in the wrong seat. ## The 3 Strike Rule The first action you should take with anyone performing below the standard is to share with them a completed People Analyzer. Give them a chance to improve-many will. But if that doesn't work, use this (excerpted from Traction): 1. **Strike One:** Discuss the issues and your expectations with the person, and give him or her 30 days to correct the problem. 2. **Strike Two:** If you don't see improvement, discuss his or her performance again and give him or her another 30 days. Sometimes by Strike Two it's already apparent that the person isn't going to be able to change. It's okay in these situations to say something like, “I'm not sure this is the home for you." You may be surprised how many times the person agrees and is even relieved that someone has spoken the truth that they already know. It can be the spur they need to find somewhere else where they're a better fit. 3. **Strike. Three:** If you still don't see improvement, he or she isn't going to change and must go. When the termination finally happens, all of those who are the right people will thank you for it and wonder what took you so long. The 3 Strike Rule is essential for systematically and unemotionally removing individuals who don't share your Core Values and cannot meet expectations from your business. The best organizational cultures consist of high-performing individuals who align with your Core Values. Allowing poor performers to stay too long will have the opposite effect, causing valuable team members to leave your organization. Is it always necessary to go through all three strikes? There can be situations where by the time you get to the second strike, you already know it isn't going to work out. This is when it can be good to tip your hand, so to speak, and say, "I don't think this is going to work out.” Oftentimes, this will lead to the person acknowledging that you're right and decide to move on. ## L + M = A All of the above tools need to be seen in the context of Leadership, Management, and Accountability. Chapter 5 in How to Be a Great Boss is the go-to on this, but a quick brush up could be helpful. The formula is Leadership + Management = Accountability. Some use the words leadership and management interchangeably, but they're different. | | | |---------------|--------------------------------| | **Leadership** | **Management** | | Working "on" the Business | Working “in”the Business | | Clear Direction | Clear Expectations | | Creating the Opening | Communication | | Thinking | Doing | You can see that Leadership revolves around working “on” your business and thinking hard about the direction you want to go. Management is working “in” the business and is about doing and communicating. It's the two together that will create Accountability. The expectations will be clear and thought through, and they will be communicated well and followed up on. ## State of the Company To build an intentional culture, your vision must be shared by everyone in the organization. To achieve this, we recommend conducting a quarterly State of the Company address where you share where you've been, where you are and where you're going as an organization. The Vision/Traction Organizer can serve as a guiding document for this address. When you're delivering your State of the Company first ensure that your Leadership Team is 100 percent on the same page with every word of your V/TO. Make sure everyone understands the implications of executing on your vision and they understand the pragmatic strategies you'll employ to achieve it. Remember: cracks in your Leadership Team look like canyons to the rest of the organization. A great State of the Company will create a compelling vision that your people will buy into. They will understand the implications of the vision on their personal lives and career trajectory. They will know their role in executing on the vision and be energized by it. Be clear on what every word means and explain each bullet point if you have to. It should be communicated impactfully and memorably in twenty to forty minutes. A word of caution: don't hold back on your vision. If you hold back on your vision because you're afraid it will scare people, you're acting out of scarcity and fear versus abundance and love. If you hold back, you'll end up with two V/TOs: the stated vision and your secret vision. The result will be disastrous. Be bold and share your true vision with your entire company. Please know that when you share your vision in its entirety, you'll be required to do some change management. Change is a constant in any business, and our approach to it can significantly influence our success. Jonah Berger, in his book Catalyst, provides a useful framework for managing change, known as REDUCE. REDUCE stands for reactance, endowment, distance, uncertainty, and corroborating evidence. These are the five key barriers to change. By identifying and addressing these barriers, we can make change more acceptable and less daunting for our teams. - **Reactance** refers to the natural human resistance to being controlled or directed. To mitigate this, it's essential to involve people in the change process, providing them with a sense of autonomy and ownership. - **Endowment** is about the comfort we derive from the familiar. To address this, we need to emphasize the advantages of the new, while respecting the value of the old. - **Distance** represents the perceived gap between the current state and the proposed change. To bridge this gap, we need to make the change feel more relevant and achievable. - **Uncertainty** is the fear of the unknown, which can be alleviated by offering clear information and reassurances about the change. - **Lastly, Corroborating Evidence** involves providing proof that the change is effective, which can be achieved through case studies, testimonials, or pilot projects. In the context of the State of the Company, it's crucial to communicate the vision for change clearly and effectively, using the REDUCE framework as a guide. This approach will help ensure that everyone is aligned and ready to contribute to the change, ultimately leading to a stronger, more intentional culture within the company. Many companies, including EOS Worldwide, conclude their quarterly State of the Company address by highlighting Core Values. Employees volunteer to recognize moments when their teammates have exhibited the company's Core Values and express their gratitude (called "Core Values callouts"). This practice encourages everyone to embody the Core Values, as people appreciate being recognized and celebrated for their contributions. These are the key tools and concepts of EOS and the People Component. Return to this chapter regularly and review all of the above. Are you and your team using all of these, and using them consistently? If not, you'll struggle mightily to install an intentional culture. ## Don't Fall into This Common Trap As you implement and make these tools a habit, there is a common stumbling block that can pull in the opposite direction of the positive tools and strategies outlined in this chapter. Understand how secrets and whispered complaints can undermine your overall efforts and then eliminate them from your culture. ## Be an Antisecrets Organization In our experience working with a wide spectrum of businesses, one of the most common instigators of people problems are secrets. Jim complains to Amanda about John's lack of accountability on the latest project, or Jane's chronic lateness, or Tom's dragging his feet on. . .well, you get the idea. But they don't really want anything done about it, at least if it requires any confrontation on their part. This happens across all levels of an organization-complaining has a wonderful way of going every which way. It's called triangulation, and it's toxic to building great, trusting relationships. EOS Implementers sometimes hear these complaints from individual team members directly to us. And we take a hard line on this. We tell the person, "If you're complaining to me, I am ready to listen. But be forewarned-I don't keep secrets." In other words, don't tell me anything you don't want me to address directly. The reason for this is quite simple. Drama and negativity are the inevitable travel companions of secrets. Secrets, whispered complaints, and purposeless venting are right at home in a culture rooted in scarcity and fear. If you want to eliminate this kind of complaining, you and your Leadership Team need to be the examples. Preach a culture without secrets and undercover complaining, and then practice what you preach. "If you're telling me this, we need to address it." And, "Why are you telling me this? Shouldn't you be bringing it up with this person directly involved?" Or another impactful question common in the EOS Implementer community "Are you going to tell them or am I? Because one of us is going to tell them." Do this a few times, and the message starts getting through. And once again, what you model will cascade throughout your organization. ## Reflection Questions 1. Are there any tools you'd like to start using, or get better at using, to enhance your journey to an intentional culture? 2. What's the average rating of your Level 10 Meetings? Are they effective? Are you solving five to fifteen issues per week? Is everyone open, honest, and vulnerable? 3. How well are you rolling out the Five Foundational Tools (V/TO, The Accountability Chart, Rocks, Meeting Pulse, and Scorecard) to every level of your organization? 4. Is every one of your leaders and managers consistently conducting Quarterly Conversations and using the 5-5-5? 5. Can each of your leaders say yes to each of the Five Leadership Practices and Five Management Practices (see Appendix)? "But everything happens for a reason! Declining revenue forced us to take an honest look at all of our people. Did they GWC their seat? Did they share our Core Values? From there, we were left with all the Right People in a lot of the Right Seats." Our company culture started out as a Happy Accident. We were a small team of less than ten people who all knew each other well, so it was easy to maintain a healthy culture. Things were hectic, as they tend to be with a rapidly growing start-up, but it was easy to get ahead of any “people issues" before they became a bigger cultural problem. At that time, I was self-implementing EOS based on my experience working with CJ DuBe' at a previous business. Naturally, our team grew as the business grew. Maintaining our start-up culture became impossible as more employees settled in and leadership had more to manage and less time to be involved in everyone's day-to-day. We hired with little strategy and got lucky with a few more Happy Accidents, but also a handful of clashing personalities. As frustrations intensified, so did growing pains. That was when we made the decision to bring in the big guns, and CJ joined as our Expert EOS Implementer. We were still bootstrapping and reinvesting every dollar back into the business, but thankfully CJ's coaching quickly paid off. As soon as we were properly Running on EOS, we were able to pull our team out of toxicity and chaos. At this point, we had around twenty employees, few enough that our Leadership Team could keep up with everyone's goals and help reach them. We stayed focused on our Rocks and Weekly Meetings, and with each quarter, we continued to flourish. With this newfound cohesion came another phase of rapid success. Our customer demand outgrew our size, and even though we had more of a hiring strategy than before, our urgency still made it difficult to find the right people and align them with our values. Our team grew four times in under a year, and we were onboarding faster than we ever imagined was possible. Several people were not in the right seats, Rocks were being abandoned, Issues were not getting solved, and as a result, business suffered. Six months later, we once again found ourselves in growth-induced cultural chaos. But everything happens for a reason. Declining revenue forced us to take an honest look at all of our people. Did they GWC their seat? Did they share our Core Values? From there, we were left with all the Right People in a lot of the Right Seats. We're in the midst of another growth period, but this time, we're intentional about each position we fill, and we use the People Analyzer to ensure we're making decisions aligned with our Core Values. There is no guarantee that we won't reencounter chaos, but we know that with an EOS-focused vision, it's a clear path back to the culture that makes us who we are. - Caleb Gilbertson, CEO for Imprint Engine # Chapter 8: The Crucial Role of Hiring "THE DEFINITION OF INSANITY IS DOING THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER AND EXPECTING DIFFERENT RESULTS." -ALBERT EINSTEIN Let's talk about pain, and let's be 100 percent real about it. No matter how big the payoffs of building an intentional culture, there is no way around some of the growing pains to get there. Letting someone go is usually painful. Losing a key employee who didn't fit Core Values but was good at their job is painful. Living through the temporary loss of revenue after letting go of a high-performing but toxic salesperson is painful. Businesses typically see some turnover as they drive changes to the People Component, and that's okay and often necessary. As people move to the right seats in an organization or leave because they're not aligned, openings are created. In addition, many businesses experience significant growth as their culture improves. This reveals more openings, too. Which brings you to another fork in the road on the journey toward an intentional culture. Sometimes old sayings are right on the money