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Skot Waldron:
Hi everybody. Welcome to another episode of Unlocked, where we talk about unlocking the potential of people so that we can unlock the potential of our organizations.
Today I've got Jim Kerr, one of the foremost thought leaders on culture development. He's worked with a ton of different organizations, big and small, and he has a lot of experience in this world. He has just released a book called Indispensable. In that book, he lays out six core components of being an indispensable organization, one that your customers can't live without. I love that connection between company culture and customers not being able to live without them. There is a direct connection, and if you haven't figured that out yet, then listen to this interview with Jim and you'll start to understand why those components are so important. He lays out these six components, talks about how they're connected, talks about why they're important.
It's really, really great to hear from a thought leader like him. He's appeared in Fast Company and Business Week and Bloomberg. There's some really good insights in here that I would love for you to pay attention to. Get ready. We're going to go ahead and start this interview. Let's roll.
All right, Jim, welcome to the show. We're excited to have you.
You have a new book that just launched there behind you called Indispensable: Build And Lead A Company Customers Can't Live Without. You are super focused on the culture of an organization, but you're talking about building a company customers can't live without. I love that mostly because I come from a background of external marketing and brand and design and that world of sales, and now I'm focused a lot on the internal development of cultures and teams and communication styles. Tell me about that dynamic and why you're focusing on that customer word in conjunction with being indispensable as a company.
Jim Kerr:
Well, yes. Thanks for that question, Skot. Again, great to be here with you.
As far as tying it all together, I think that the ultimate customer experience metric is am I running a business that customers can't live without. Culture is an element of it? It's one of the six that I talk about in the book. I try to provide an agenda for leaders to follow in this book that's based on 30 years of doing high-end management consulting work. I've included the things that I saw work at some major companies, and I also talk about some things that didn't work so well and hopefully provide some lessons for folks to learn by as well. Culture is a centerpiece of any good business I believe, and it's all about behavior. When we talk about culture, we're talking about how people actually operate and behave within the organization, and that strikes customer experience, it affects how people work as a team, it determines your results at the end of the day.
SKOT WALDRON:
Have you seen examples in maybe past client work or organizations you've had a hand in where there was a poor customer experience because of the culture?
JIM KERR:
Sure. I don't want to name names here, but I will say this, if the culture isn't strong, if it doesn't define what good looks like, you're liable to get just about anything happening on the front lines. And when we think about the customer experience, it's really delivered by those frontline workers who are representing the brand and interacting with your customer base. So if you're not able to institutionalize a culture that's based on trust, that has all kinds of reinforcement of the values of the organization and so on, there's no guarantee that you're going to get great behavior on the front end. People are going to just kind of do what they do, and sometimes the customer is going to suffer because of that lack of focus.
SKOT WALDRON:
I always talk about this thought of the people that we pay the least, are the people we are trusting with our brand the most. When you think about just your grocery store down the street. How many of us are going to interact with ... we got Kroger down here ... How many of us are going to interact with the CEO of Kroger or even know who the CEO of Kroger is. We're not. We're going to interact with that employee and that's what's going to create our experience of that brand as we go forward.
JIM KERR:
Absolutely right. Right. Some of the work that I do with clients on this is it really starts with a vision. It's not just a simple statement; we will be the best grocery store chain, to kind of riff off of your example. We'll be the greatest, most wonderful grocery store chain in the land. I mean anybody that's in that business will have a similar kind of thought built into their vision statement. You need something more than that. You need a store. You need to help people understand where they fit in. It's got to be compelling and engaging. That kid that sweeps the floor at night has to be feeling like they're part of something special and see how what they're doing and what their contribution is, matters. The only way you can convey that to people I believe anyway, is through storytelling.
So you've got to be able to define what wonderful grocery store chain looks like and go further and explain here's how we work. These are the tools we use. These are the customers we support. This is how we support them, et cetera, et cetera. People have to be able to see themselves being successful within that story.
SKOT WALDRON:
So is this a little bit of what you talk about in the book? You hint at this type of thing, you call it the indispensable paradigm and what that is. Can you lay that out? What is the indispensable paradigm? How does that work and how do you lay that out in the book for us?
JIM KERR:
Yes, Skot, thanks for that question. There's six elements to it.
The first one is leadership and it's really about being able to create a leadership philosophy that's engaging, that's inclusive, it's transparent and so on.
The second piece, of course, is the vision. So it's kind of what I said; you've got to be able to provide a compelling vision that people want to be part of, something that they can rally around.
The third part is the culture. How do we get people to behave in a way that enables success in the organization, that enables the leadership team to achieve the vision that they've laid out? The fourth piece is people, and it's there that you need to be able to get the right people and align them around what you're trying to accomplish.
The next piece is really about trust. You've got to be able to build trust so that you can empower people to do the right things. Again, using your example of the grocery store. People have to know what good customer service looks like, and then they'll be able to provide that to your customer. So it's being able to build trust and empower people to do the right thing.
The last component, this is one that often gets forgotten, but it's the idea of being able to introduce a change framework that's repeatable so that whenever we introduce change, whenever we're trying to make something work a little differently, we do them in a very consistent way so people aren't reinventing the project every time; there is one. Because change is happening all the time and we've got to be able to introduce it in a consistent way that people can recognize, and they know how to implement change. That's the last component.
It's those six pieces they make up the paradigm. And if you do those things excellently, you will build an indispensable business, one your customers can't live without. If you're weak on any one of those, you've got work to do, because you need all six to inter-operate, to be able to really be integrated in a way that delivers this wow experience.
SKOT WALDRON:
That is interesting. So leadership, vision, culture, people, trust, and then that change framework?
JIM KERR:
Right.
SKOT WALDRON:
Do you need to do them in that order?
JIM KERR:
No. Again, great question, Skot. The reality of the situation is you're doing all these things all the time, so they're really in kind of parallel. You're adjusting across all six of those domains, depending on what's going on in your marketplace, the challenges to your particular business has and so on. There's adjustments being made across the board. If there were an order of events, obviously the vision becomes something that becomes critical, but you need the right leadership. Culture's important, but you need the right people. Trust can only be had if I've empowered people, if I've prepared people for what's needed that kind of thing. They're interdependent, but there's not a particular order.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay. Yeah. We should all be working on these things all the time, so that does make total sense. Is there some way that we can measure this stuff or understand what we're not doing so well in or what we think we are doing well in? Maybe we need an awakening in some areas. How do we go about evaluating that to understand what we need to do and focus on?
JIM KERR:
Sure. The thing that I'm promoting right now, it's kind of a tag behind for the book is the Rapid Audit Series. You can see the signage behind me. The notion is that you can audit yourself across those six dimensions of indispensability and be able to determine pretty quickly where there's weak spots. And then depending on the outcome of that audit, you can apply focus and be deliberate about improving those particular areas.
What my experience has been with a lot of the clients that I work with, and keep in mind, I work with the upper-middle market up through the Fortune 250s, so they're bigger companies, they've got bigger budgets, there's thousands of people that work in those businesses, so when we introduce a change or a transformation effort, it's pretty big. It spans across geographies in many cases. So you've got to be able to quickly assess where are we today across any of those six things in order to build the right kind of program to make adjustments, to improve on those, to transform them.
SKOT WALDRON:
Is there any one of those that you find that people are generally weaker in across the board? Is there one that always kind of ticks lower than others?
JIM KERR:
Again, interesting question. I would say this about it, I think it's totally situational. Some places come in and they've got a very rigorous strategy and plan for execution, but they may be really weak on culture. They may not have aligned the culture with what they're trying to achieve as a business. Another place might have a wonderful culture and everyone gets along and it's transparent and it's highly effective teams, but they don't have a vision story. They're doing good work as they understand what good is, but it's hard for an individual employee sitting in a cube someplace to completely feel comfortable that they're doing the right thing all the time, because no one's told them what the overarching vision is, what we're trying to achieve. It varies from place to place.
I would say this though, and just kind of riffing off your question a little bit more, Skot, I would say that the vision storytelling is one that I see a lot of resistance to. I think part of that comes from sort of the old line leadership philosophy that says all that touchy, feely stuff is motherhood and apple pie and there's no real value in spending time there, but I would argue that if you don't tell people what you're trying to accomplish, how do you expect them to accomplish it. They need something that they can relate to and understand and live by, and that's where the vision stuff comes into play.
SKOT WALDRON:
Totally agree. Just in my world and the marketing world, but also doing brand strategy for companies for a long time, I've tended to gravitate towards, I guess, things you can't touch, like I haven't done the advertising type work, the direct ROI from this day to that day, I can't see how many people bought something from one day to the next, but I'm into creating a long-term strategy for organizations internally and externally and I have felt that too. We're so, I guess, short-term focused that we get in this mode of, "Well, if I can't see results in three days, then why am I doing this?" What happens is that it does affect the people.
I saw this other chart by Simon Sinek, he posted this thing where he's got on his Y-axis, he's got money, so growth of a company, and then on the X-axis is time. He's got two lines; he's got a Y-line ... he's always the start with Y guy; the purpose, the vision ... and it's going up, and then you're what line, the thing that you do every day. He's got both lines going in parallel at the beginning.
Over time though, once you get to a certain size where your revenue grows, your why, because you get so big, you start to not focus anymore on the people. You're not getting people anymore that believe what you believe, that'll take a pay cut to build this dream, to build this vision. And now you're just hiring people to keep the ship running and to keep making the widgets. So your why planes off over time, but your what keeps going up. Now, you're hiring people just to do a, what job where there's no buy-in, there's no passion. I'm just making this thing and I don't really know why I'm doing it. I'm just doing it.
JIM KERR:
Yeah. Great. Great point. What we tend to do on the kind of work that I get brought into help with is we revitalize an organization typically from the vision standpoint, and then that drives down into other transformational efforts where we can come in and say, "Okay, well, we're going to change the way we manufacture this product," so that gets into transformation and process design and all that stuff, which I also help with. But without a vision to be sort of that true north, it's almost impossible to make the right guess at what you need to do next.
So helping people understand the why I think it starts as soon as a new hire walks in the door. It's got to be part of an assimilation program that you drive that helps people really understand not only what business you're in, but why you're there and how they fit. This is absolutely critical. How they fit and will make a difference in helping the business succeed. And then what happens for them? What do they get when the business succeeds? There's that kind of thing that to your point, I think we often lose. And then it's guys like me that come in and help the leadership team resurrect that and promoted again and kind of center the organization.
SKOT WALDRON:
Really good. You end your book using this phrase, "Keep it real." What's that about? Why do you end the book that way? What does that have to do with being an indispensable organization?
JIM KERR:
Yeah. Skot, the thing is I will have taken the reader from beginning to end through the book and I've outlined the six main pieces. By the time you get to the end of the book, the last reminder, if you will, is to be you. You still have to be you as a leader. So I'm writing to that leadership audience, whether they're an emerging leader that's just early in their career, or the stodgy veteran that's about to retire. If you're reading this book and you're buying into the model that I've outlined, you also have to remember to be authentic. And if you're not, I think people can see through disingenuous people. It's one of the tools that we have as human beings walking on this planet is to be able to understand that, and I think disingenuous leaders fail.
So if you're going to pull this off, you've got to be real. You've got to do it your way. You've got to help people see who you really are; warts and blemishes included, all the great things you are as a leader, but also all the warts and blemishes that every human being has and show that vulnerability. I think by doing that, you gain followership. That's so critical in trying to pull off any big thing. You've got to have a team of people there all working together to make it happen.
SKOT WALDRON:
We see that a lot or we're seeing that a lot, I guess I will say in the external marketing world. I mean the emergence of social media created this vibe of un-authenticity, this cloak of, "You're only catching me at the one second on my best day and now everybody thinks my life is amazing." And now we look at that, we're like, "Ah, that's not real." Advertisements, the Dove campaign with women, Photoshopping things. There's this authenticity that's starting to come out now with corporations wanting to appeal to that market.
We look at that from the external standpoint, we can learn something about our internal cultures. You could say, "Well, that mindset doesn't change." We're dealing with internal culture and leadership and people. It's the same. The same people buying things externally are the same people that are buying into a company vision, buying into what I do every day. That's critical to understand for organizations when they're building those visions.
JIM KERR:
Yeah. Absolutely. The thing is we all want to be part of something bigger than ourselves. There's a reason that we go to church. There's a reason we're part of our communities. There's a reason why we join clubs. And hopefully there's a reason why we join companies. I think it's on a leadership's back, it's a responsibility of top leaders to provide that vision that people can buy into and want to be part of. It's as much a community building as any other thing you could be doing in your life.
For me, yeah, we've got to be able to provide that, and then we have to deliver it in an authentic way so that people believe it. If they don't believe you, then there's going to be a trust issue. And guess what? That's one of the six parts of the indispensable paradigm. Now you've got a trust issue you've got to fix and so on. These six parts are all connected. It's like I say, it's based on 30 years of doing this kind of work with some of the biggest organizations on the planet and seeing what worked and what didn't work.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay. That makes sense. I see what you did there, bringing it back to trust and now the six ... That's cool. That's interesting to see that being put into action. It's like, "Oh yeah, that's a trust issue," and that comes back to being an indispensable organization, so totally get it, man. Totally makes sense. It's really cool.
One of the things you say is is the biggest mistakes that companies make when building company culture is not being deliberate when they're building their company culture.
JIM KERR:
Yeah. Right. There's a six step process that I outline in the book that walks a company through resetting their culture deliberately. It starts with a strategic framework; what are we trying to accomplish, and so on. Then it goes to a baseline; where are we today across the cultural dynamics. Then it goes into a vision; what's our vision for the future culture of the organization. And then a gap analysis; determine the difference between where we are today as defined in the baseline and where we want to be as defined in the vision. And then translate those gaps into projects and programs. That's the fifth step of the approach. And then lay it all out in a timeline and make sure you create a governance model to maintain the set of initiatives you've identified so that you can evolve through implementation of those things to the culture you've defined.
It's a way to help companies be focused on and specific to improving their cultures. It's a tried and true methodology. I have literally done it probably a couple of dozen times with varying companies. The biggest was part of the Marine Corps. Some of the smaller ones are startups that have brought me in to help them get going on the right track. It works. I provide plenty of examples in that chapter in the book that shows just exactly what each one of those six parts of the methodology delivers to an organization.
SKOT WALDRON:
Very cool. Where can people get a hold of the book?
JIM KERR:
Well it's available at your favorite bookstores for sure. If you're ordering online; Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop. There's even bulk orders that I've set up through my website that it will allow you to get deep discounts if you're ordering a bunch of books. What I'm finding is a lot of organizations are actually buying dozens of copies and they're using it in a couple of different ways. They're using as part of a training. Sometimes they're using it in lieu of training. Sometimes they're hosting their own book clubs, so they're giving it to staffers to read and then the staffers come together and talk about it. I know this because I'm starting to get invited to speak at some of these book club kind of things, and some of these training kind of things that's centered around indispensable.
So there's all different ways to buy it and all different good options for you if you want to buy in bulk.
SKOT WALDRON:
Very cool. If people buy your book, I'm going to put a link in the show notes where people can actually fill out a form-
JIM KERR:
Yeah, registration form. What that gives them access to, Skot, is the six parts of this Rapid Audit Series that's kind of shining behind my head. It's a six part video, one for each of the six parts of indispensable. It's a short video that lets you self-audit across those six dimensions of indispensability, and then it gives you a score. It helps you understand what you're doing well and should continue to do, and where there might be some weak spots that need your attention.
SKOT WALDRON:
Awesome. I love audits. Audits are awesome, but if we don't do anything with them, then they're pointless, right?
JIM KERR:
Yeah. Well, that's true enough.
SKOT WALDRON:
I love that. You're giving people the free videos, free access to the end of the Indispensable Audit, but they got to buy the book and then fill out the form and then go get access to that, right?
JIM KERR:
Absolutely. Yeah. All I'm asking for in there is a receipt number. So if you've placed your order online, cut and paste the receipt number in there. That's part of the registration form. And then bingo, you got brought to a page and saw right there. There's no downloading or anything you have to do; you'll just have access to the content.
SKOT WALDRON:
Beautiful. How can other people get in touch with you if they want you to come speak at their book club?
JIM KERR:
Yeah. Well, I'm on LinkedIn. I don't know, Skot, will we be able to provide some of the links in this stuff [crosstalk 00:27:35]?
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to put all those links in the show notes. I'll put your social channels and your bio all there so people can find out more about you.
JIM KERR:
Yeah, for sure. You'll see links. My website's really pretty simple. It's indispensable-consulting.com. You can always get in through there and send a note or give me a call. It'd be great to talk about this kind of stuff with anybody that's wants to build a company that customers can't live without.
SKOT WALDRON:
Beautiful, Jim. I love it, man. Great conversation and good luck with the book launch and everything that's going. This is your sixth book, so you're becoming pretty good at this.
JIM KERR:
Well, I don't know about that, but yeah, it is my sixth book.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah. Well, very cool. I'm excited for you and good luck with the launch, and thanks for being on the show and sharing your thoughts with us.
JIM KERR:
Thank you, Skot. It was really a lot of fun. Thank you.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay. Did you get those six steps to becoming indispensable? Starts with leadership, then it goes into vision, then we start working on culture, then we develop people, then we build trust, and then we work in what happens when we have change and building that change framework. Change has always happening. Organizations are always changing and how do we adapt all those things that we've done? We've put a lot of work into those other components and we don't want to crush all the work we've done with change. We have to understand change and what it means.
I love how Jim talked about the vision story and that buy-in. You know me; I'm a brand guy, I love vision, I love the storytelling aspect of what a company is all about. That's how we get customers, clients, employees, and team members to buy in to us as an organization. We want to buy from companies that believe what we believe. We want to belong to companies that believe what we believe, and that is what's going to drive us as individuals and that's what's going to drive us as organizations. It's going to unlock us and that's what's going to unlock our organizations. See what I did there.
All right. Thank you, Jim. Good luck with the book. Everybody, get that Indispensable Audit. That's a great gift. You got to get the book and then you can fill out that form, and in the show notes, I'll have that link there where you can fill out that form. Get in touch with Jim. He's got some information that he can share with you for a speaking engagement or anything else that you're doing there.
If you want more information on me, you can go to skotwaldron.com. You can also visit my YouTube channel; like, subscribe, share, do all those things that you do on YouTube. You can also find me on LinkedIn. I would love to connect with you there.
All right everybody, thank you for watching and listening to this episode. I will see you next time on Unlocked.
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