one culture is where the steve i'm going to start off with this question what are the two most misunderstood words in corporate america that's an easy one and they weren't always this way but the two most mint misunderstood words in corporate america today are culture and accountability believe it or not culture because everybody talks about it in every conversation with every leader i think i've ever had in my thirty eight years of helping businesses build great cultures that wor always come up but it means something different to everybody and no one ever takes the time to google it or look it up in the dictionary to find out what we mean by business culture organizational culture so it it runs the gamut from what kind of food to eat an india versus mexico you know what do you do what do you do downtown you know do it downtown at the theater on saturday night to caterers and ping pong tables in the you know takers on friday night after work ping pong table in the break room and free dress codes on friday or any other day of the wait i got a guess that culture means something different the way you're talking about and that's what we're going to be talking about throughout the show what about accountability well countability  comes from our high arctic cold leadership history before the millennial generation set us back on our rear ends and made us rethink what it takes to have an effective company and in essence the traditional mindset of accountability whether it's a leader or whether it's an employee or a follower we grew up with the perspective that what accountability means and again this is the below the surface definition culture is always below the surface is i'm the boss here's your job description it's my job to hold you accountable now go do it now from may prefer armas perspective or a motivational perspective anyone that's ever studied psychology knows that restrict motivation or motivation that has a strong have to associated with it you know generates resulting behaviors you know avoidance pushback head nodding and smiling everything's great buzz but nothing ever gets done and there's names for these in terms of ways to measure all of these but in fact just look at at tax time you know are you chomping at the bit to go file your tax return only if you've got a big refund coming but if you don't or if you think you might need to pay we all wait till the last minute look at the post office lines you know you know the nothing more april fifteenth because everybody waits to the last minute because we get it it's not something it's it's a have to it's not a want to now that in the case if i'm a leader and i'm leading people who have in their minds even though i might be the most empowering equipping leader in the world but in their minds their belief is this guy's job is to me to make sure that i do my job or i don't do my job then the response that you get from that type of understanding is less than effective not converse lee studying all kinds of high performance teams you know an athlete in sports in the military in business the best example that we found historically and it's been around for a long time is the blue angel flight team you know years ago there was a discovery channel show it's not even on google anymore it's that old but they went inside the blue angels and the interviewed the entire team the culture that they run on is a culture of service a service to each other not customer service but how can i help the guy in my left in my right improve how can they help me improve and how can we all work together to be able to serve our ultimate customer whoever it is and they've even moved it down to a how does one what is accountability mean in a culture of service and a culture of service w accountability means is i'll be accountable for that you know regardless of what my level of hierarchy is in the organization please hold me accountable because i know by you doing that it helps me improve and it helps the team i accountability is not policing its free will voluntary people raising their hands saying we all want to win together we all want to improve together and therefore accountability is something we all need so tell us what we don't see tell us so we can wow what a way to start the show yeah and so our lead so let's get to exactly what excellent culture is as your company cultures has been around for about thirty eight years in a in a variety of different configurations with the purpose of helping businesses and organizations create cultures that when and it's really interesting because the winning has never changed it's always been part of humanity and certainly the american dream but the way that you go about winning has changed drastically so well a good friend of mine one of our marketing experts and i were chatting not long ago and in the course of the conversation we talked about as opposed to an authoritative go do this or else kind of a coach and that the reason for that was because what vince was committed to was not hierarchical coaching or authority or authoritative i'm holding you accountable now go do your job coaching he was committed to winning and in this day and time folks don't respond to the whole you have to hold you accountable authoritative figure anymore i mean just the politics look at t is possible but it's so revealing when you look at human behavior and what really causes functionality and excellence and what brings about winning from a team perspective let's let's get to the definition of culture then th you promised well that if you know just google organizational culture and what you'll find is it's the shared beliefs the mindsets the habits the attitudes that govern how people behave at work and in short how we get things done and how we get things done is not based upon the best practice it's based upon whatever is in the minds and the belief system of the people so you could have a culture where the dominant belief of the people is  were supposed to sit around to be told what to do and you could have an impairment or unit leader who's belief was well my job is to encourage and equip and empower folks guess what's going to happen the leader is going to get very very frustrated because he keeps trying he's busy trying to empower and equip people who really believe that they're supposed to be told what to do in there what he did for command they're waiting for a commander a shout from above and so they just sit there and smile and nod their head and tell the boss said everything's wonderful or the reverse so is the way you hire then in today's business culture today being two thousand and sixteen is a different today than what it was just five years absolutely you know the reason that it's different is because  cultures don't work like they used to except in maybe a few very significant very highly specific dangerous industries where they need a really smart expert to be able to get people to instructions but those don't even work if you don't have the mindset of the followers being of the mindset that gosh we really need to know what's right to do and then do it it's about the collective mind sets of leaders and followers and the relationship that exists together which is why gallup has told us that you know what in the last two years after preaching about him porton engagement is we improved a whopping half a percent from seventy percent to sixteen point five percent disengaged we still have eighteen percent of people who tell the confidential survey that they hate their jobs and the most common reason for hating their jobs they hate their boss jim clifton who wrote the cover memo on the last gal instrument and results you know cause called this new generation of managers bosses that are hated the managers from l and people don't really quit an organization they quit a boss and the other thing that's so unique is the boss is nobody wakes up in the morning and says oh my goal is to be the manager from hell today they don't know they are a manager from hell nor do they know what they're doing to cause people to back up and do the opposite of what they ask so it's just kind of a cycle so what's the difference between winning and losing in business today that well you know you have your traditional measurements which are you know profitability you know quality safety customer service or customer satisfaction you know in essence anything that causes the business to grow prosper and be sustainable for the long  mean those those are kind of the same they've never changed they've never change they're never going to change but what has changed just like in the analogy between the vince lombardi style of coaching and the pete carroll style of coaching which changed is society and mindsets and generations and belief systems and they always will yeah yeah exactly i'll give you give you another big one the millennial generation today's accused by many experts as being the narcissistic generation which i don't fully i agree with but when you look at the  psychology and the sociology behind it we had a brilliant pediatrician in the fifty's who wrote a book and told dr benjamin spock bestselling book i think it sold over fifty million copies in almost in an all time best seller second only to the bible and what he told pitts was that children were devoid and self esteem and that they needed to grow their self esteem so for the next fifty years every educational training program every  corporate training program every personal developed program has all been about building the self esteem of the individual just what we've overdosed on self esteem and now we have a whole generation me me me what's in it for me narcissists they're telling us that technology with selfies in my you tube channel and look at me look at me look at me have actually you know worked against us now many would tell you that because millennial is are the victims of this technology burst and being raised by parents who overdose them on self esteem unknowingly are really stuck but i find it just the opposite i think if if you know how to communicate and work with millennial as there are future because if you study the research even further what zx more than themselves is their purpose and you help a moon deal or a team get aligned with their purpose something that resonates in increases effectively what they can do and help them be part of a team that is serving a greater cause and being functional you've got the most put to potentially most productive group of of generational people on the planet well let's talk about changes that are that are happening as we talked to before the show about microsoft and you talked about the changes that are happening there and it really reflects just what you're saying it has so microsoft's great organization we've had the opportunity to serve them a number of applications over the years just had one of their maybe they may be  great but they did have this reputation where their innovation was seemed to be lacking yeah exactly so we just had one of their executives ten one of our workshops to the first one he came to was twenty five years ago now he's long since retired and his comments were same timeless principles they always work when you apply him properly ok so microsoft originally was a tech company but it was basically built on the best product you know nobody could compete with windows and even in the court system you know bill gates won one the case to be able to have a monopoly on the operating system and it was amazing yet as as time went on in the company grew and now we've got all these divisions which are you know x box and was talking to the other day one of one of the leaders of the minecraft division which is an acquisition and it's become so broad and so diverse all still about tech but some hardware some software some applications you name it the new c e o side in adela is all about building the culture of team and what did evolve as a highly competitive silo driven organization now under nadella as a leadership is moving in a direction of of collectivity in the service and team and very much because that's the way you win two thousand and sixteen that's the way you win this hang in there with their purpose and working toward their purpose is the most passionate driver in their life and they would much rather be part of a purpose that aligns with who they are then they would get paid more money better benefits i mean how's that for a switch the last twenty years you know that makes so much sense considering the fact that i've had so many different business leaders from around the world come and say the business is the driver of social change our millennial ways more responsible if you will toward society while i would answer that question a little differently what i would say is that business is the driver of social change but people who are the try for a big spends and you know it's all about the people and if you want to go deeper it's all about the belief systems of the people and you know what do they believe about what's going to be most effective what do they believe that's going to be an effective is what they believe consistent with the mission and vision of the organization is of the line do we believe that that we just you know we don't like this job but we want to keep it because it's a good source of income so we nod our heads smile and give up to the boss all the time but deep down inside we hate we do and can hardly wait to get home and go do what we really love to do which again is another trend i mean and present it in a number of small business start ups who are folks that used to be employees and figured out a way to contract you know contract with their former employer to you know deliver product and service better so he's hiring different today oh very much so how so well if you look at you talk to hiring managers they're all about you know looking for and finding the best talent for sure and that hasn't changed much yet it's not just the best talent but how effectively can that talent perform on our team how do they fit with our culture look at companies like zappos who you know are known you know for building a great culture but they built that from the start you know their founder had in his mind in his heart a vision of the values that th ey wanted to build this call sure on and they were consistent and well researched and thought out so they hired people who held those same values and you take you know a general motors or ford or a toyota or  even a market microsoft has been around for a few years that can start over or they could if they wanted to but it doesn't make economic sense and hire people that have your values or let's just say if you did hire people that had your values  values of what gets gets things done more effectively and wins today are different than they were you know even five years ago and it keeps changing so big teams are essentially divided up now and big companies are divided up in the little teams so is it like a bunch of small businesses well working against us it depends on the organization i mean the common of the common scenario that you know the two common driving factors of what really makes high performance companies work well today is collaboration as you mentioned you know elaboration you know is is is just critical so it's about collaboration but it's also about innovation so who can think of the next best product or system or process or way to solve a problem faster than anybody else and all you have to do is go on netflix and watch apollo thirteen the movie again to get a good view of what human innovation is really like you know in that scenario it was do or die you know it was do or die and the leader although he was a very forceful leader in that case that was necessary basically said too bad it's your job to put a square peg in a round hole around where whole and thanks to duct tape and an innovative mindset innovative culture if you will they collaborated they figure it out and save the lives of the astronauts and it's you know it's been a benchmark story forever but it tells us something about human behave and especially i mean with technology everything keeps going faster and bigger and faster bigger and faster and bigger but the downside of that is with the largest enemies of great culture largest enemies are speed and growth and the faster you know the faster you grow and the more people that you add the more human beings have a tendency to stop doing what made them successful in the first place and when we're so busy running on the treadmill of getting the job done that we stopped doing what made us successful in the first place it's only a matter of time before enron in fact i had the opportunity not long ago to visit with dr alice min who's a well known you know author former head of research for the boeing company now a noted professor and has interviewed like a hundred you know senior executives from the biggest companies on the planet and what al told me about his interview with the executive who was the whistleblower at enron about their culture is what she told him was that the thing that they never wanted to hear was bad news don't give us any bad news if you can imagine that if the culture you know the organizational mindset becomes we don't want to hear bad news  can you correct if you never hear the bad news how can you do anything but stay in a silo and tell yourself how great your over and over again if you never hear the bad news yet and according to d and to the executive he interviewed that was that was that company's demise because they did and again culture is always sneaky it's below the surface you never know when it's going to hit you but it's always there that's why it's critical to always be paying attention to what's really going on what people say on the confidential surveys not just to the boss and what they say about the deeper things not just to gauge men but effective what's driving their effectiveness because you can as we said earlier you can have a happy engaged everybody who did each other culture and go out of business especially today when everything's moving as fast as it is and you know if your competitor thinks of something faster than you did you'd be gone in the blink of an eye you talk about innovators before in the stereotypical innovator is someone who sits by himself and thinks up stuff and then just goes and does it he's the stereotypical innovator is not somebody that's necessarily team oriented and that person exists in today's world what you just described is a high performance research probably the best sports we've seen all this always in team sports probably the best sport to look at that's teams basketball because you have specialists who are like you know specialization of labor you know nobody can bring the ball down court better than the point guard nobody can different talent differently talented folks mesh together to be able to not just recognize but honor and celebrate the difference says and the uniqueness and the talents of the others who don't have the same talent shoes it's actually it's on a ted talk given by a former british ambassador who talks about the global power shift and what he's talking about is the difference in the way people behave today particularly the power of networking that seems to be the same thing as collaboration the same thing well it's millennial is driving networking that enables them to work with people around the world is that what's happening in syria very much so especially when you have you know with what's happened with with competition in the global economy and you know trade outside national borders like it is and you've got you know teams in seattle working  with team in new york and somebody in india somebody in china and they're all online at the hour that crosses where they all happen to be awake and honestly summer's day in absolute you know late summer getting up early and it's about working together to to collaborate and build you know is serve customers better build a better mousetrap innovate in a way that your competition hasn't thought of yet and do it for the lowest possible price and be able to deliver the highest possible value you know to the customer because that's who that's wins you know now with that being the case you know both collaboration and ovation are critical and the cool thing about when you put collaboration and innovation to gether and get it working well then synergy happens and synergy is the old one mule could pull ten thousand pounds in a way and don't pull twenty they can pull one hundred thousand pounds and i'm not sure if the numbers are right but the principle is in any scientists in the business can tell you that that's true physically in science but it's also true mentally and emotionally you know you see it every year and in the playoffs of all of the team sports you know it's the team that not doesn't necessarily have the most  talented individual you know le bron james most talented individual but the team didn't win because they got outpaced by another team at least in that season so it's no longer the most talented individual it's the best team and if we can get both the best team and the most talented individuals both that's great but sometimes highly talented individuals are terrible team players you know if they're if they're egotistical and egocentric and narcissistic and it's all about me forget about the team we talked about a essentially a business cultural revolution that is happening we had a cultural revolution here in the united states in the one nine hundred sixty s did is there anything from that that we are seeing in our business combs revolution what i describe is is you know we talked about what we learned from dr benjamin spock and remembered for too long now it's what we learned from j f k and forgot because j f k told us in the sixty's to you know  ask not what your country could do for you as what you can do for your country and if you follow his family history his mom was the matron of service and in was all about the value of service and today you look at just the high performance teams in sports who are very visible and you listen to the interviews after the game it's about a culture of service you know how my serving the guy in my right and helping him succeed and i serve in the guy or gal in my left  one other factor that again we're finding that is just critical what we hear from leaders time and time and time again is you know they love the content because it's all about facilitating change and making it work and team and organizational effectiveness you know four point eight nine on the scale of five on the evaluations but what they get the most out of in the process is not the content it's the table discussions you know it's the conversations with other leaders like them relating face to face about how do we apply this principle how do we  problem how is it worked with my team has it worked in my life human beings who are so technology oriented we missed the value of face to face interactive human communication and were starving for i mean everybody  every business person who's listening to this interview can identify with the fact of when they send thirty or forty or fifty e mails back and forth and never solve the problem and it could have been solved probably with one five minute conference call where everybody is on the phone together interacting or a video call or better better yet a face to face meeting i mean you look at communication you know in the statistics that drive communication the reason that we're so ineffective today compared to an area where we were much better historically is because words are only open only ten percent effective in communicating tone of voice and body language make up the rest of and my gesture you know come here and stay there they get the stay there one is a line to gesture but it gets you confuse so your tendency is to follow the nonverbal not take that take that to the next step our lives are spent e mailing texting posting and you know we want people to be spending time watching this show because we've come to the end of the show steve i want to make sure that we get your web site up and fantastic information thank you very excellent cultures dot com make sure you listen to the podcast cultures live blog as because we have interviews with a good one hundred of the best leaders on the planet who are really making this happen that is there for anyone who wants to listen and study to capture everything you can and take it to the next level