Last week I talked about building a foundation for success. This week I was walking the walk, immersed in the concept of building healthy cultures. I have long been interested in developing nurturing cultures, so once again I was in my sweet spot. The fun began late Monday afternoon, meeting a founding partner to talk shop and other things over cigars and Guinness Draft. One of our primary topics was the values we need to reinforce to build a better culture and company. He is a big proponent of the 5C model, but I will save that for a later date.
Tuesday morning, I facilitated the monthly meeting of the Business Executives Networking Group, The BENG. Gregg Burkhalter was the featured speaker. Greg positions himself as the LinkedIn Guy. He’s an advocate for personal branding via LinkedIn. Before the meeting, Greg told me that he’s been doing more work for corporations, helping their employees become effective LinkedIn users. I found his revelation shocking. I remember when people were reluctant to join LinkedIn. They feared their employer would see their profile and think they were looking for another job.
Greg said that employers realize that their employees are their best ambassadors. Now, they encourage their employees to become active on LinkedIn. Apparently, this has become an upgrade to many cultures. The cynic in me would say “it’s about time.” With so many people using LinkedIn, employers don’t have much choice. It makes sense to embrace LinkedIn, gaining leverage through their employees’ accounts. At least it seems to be a positive step in the right direction
Wednesday evening, I enjoyed a cigar and a beer, or two, with a millennial friend, Chris. Chris and I met through a mutual friend. He was about to publish his book on millennial happiness and I had just published mine. He’s since built a consulting career as an expert on the millennial condition. Our meeting was meant as check-in and catch-up. Chris said that he’d recently completed a presentation to Google and delivered a Ted talk. Currently, he’s moving beyond Millennials to the larger population of career professionals. Eventually, we moved on to discuss the similarities and differences between Millennials and Baby Boomers from a cultural perspective. Chris, like me, is involved in helping companies create more effective cultures.
Thursday morning, after closing a deal to recruit another consultant, I moderated our Executive Leadership Team meeting. Although I facilitate these meetings, I try to avoid dominating the discussions. I want to ensure that everyone’s voice heard and respected. From a leadership perspective, I like Nelson Mandela’s example, be the last one to speak. I believe these values are appropriate for our culture.
Later that afternoon I met a potential client whose company is going through Chapter 11 reorganization. I was referred to them to help engineer a turnaround. The meeting was mostly a “getting to know you” session. It seemed to be dragging on until I asked their opinion about what needed to be done. The meeting became much more productive after that. The CEO became animated about the need to penetrate a different segment of the market. She told me that their primary business development function was her networking through trade associations. They weren’t doing much of anything in the way of electronic
Friday, I facilitated our monthly member’s meeting. The speaker was Josh Sweeney of Epic Culture. Epic Culture works with companies to build better cultures and thereby, improve performance. The topic of his conversation was “Culture First Hiring.” In other words, focus on
It isn’t often that I’m able to spend an entire week working on my favorite issue. Building a healthy culture is most gratifying. Yes, it was a good week!
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Jim Weber, Managing Partner
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Author of: Fighting Alligators, Job Search Strategy For The New Normal