Was bedeutet Unternehmenskultur wirklich?

0:00So if brand is what your reputation is externally, I think culture is kind of what reputation is internally. And so I define culture operationalized because I think culture is a very fluffy word. What does that mean? Right? It's the rules that govern reinforcement within organization. What do we reward? What do we punish? And so the thing is is that there's realistically there's like people have values because they're bundled terms that lad up many behaviors. If I said Rolls-Royce probably would have some value that's quality over speed probably, right? And so they would have that, but somebody would have to say like, well, what does that mean? Right? Well, we hope that we use this as a decision-making filter for how it affects behaviors on every situation so that when you're in the should I go fast or should I make it right, you make it right. And there are other organizations kind of like the speed uh justice and mercy, speed and quality, both of them are important and sometimes they sit diametrically opposed. And so it's like we have to say where do we sit in the gray so that we can duplicate decision-m across the organization. so that we can maintain the culture. And so culture uh you know Lelay says this a lot but culture I think this is a drer quote actually uh culture trumps strategy like twice a week and every day on Sunday. If you have a mediocre strategy but an unbelievable culture you will crush somebody who has a great strategy and a terrible culture because culture ladders up to performance and execution. And almost every business is limited by execution not strategy. Most business strategy isn't that complicated. Like let's do a really good job so good that people tell their friends about us and as long as we have enough gross margin we'll make money. It's not that hard, right? It's just that the doing it is the hard part. And so,

1:32>> so when we have these uh they are the spoken and unspoken rules, mostly unspoken. If someone shows up 3 minutes late to a meeting and there's 10 people in the meeting and it's supposed to be a marketing meeting, I'm there. If I don't say anything, I have now said we have an unspoken rule that if someone shows up 3 minutes late to a meeting, it's okay. I've I've reinforced that rule. Now, if I I've reinforced it by not punishing the behavior or at least calling it out.

1:56Um, on the flip side, if someone comes in and I berate them, that's also a way of changing behavior. Maybe not the right way to do it. Um, but I could then like, what do you do in that situation? Someone shows up 3 minutes late. Um, first off, you would probably sideline with that person, be like, "Hey, I don't know if you realize that you were 3 minutes late. What happened?" And they're like, "I was on a client call.

2:21Um, it went late. I'm really sorry." or I was on a sales call. For me in my organization, >> clients in sales like we'll take priority. So if you have a meeting and you're on a sale and you're about to close it, close the sale, [laughter] >> right? But if you were just doing nothing and we have this meeting, then this is the priority. And so the next time we hop on, I'll be like, "Hey guys, I just want to address something. John was late. He was late because of a sales call." Or when I DM' him right as he got on late, I would say, "Hey, make sure you say that." And be like, "Hey guys, sorry I was late. I was on a sales call." And then I would say that's fine.

2:53You're good to go. Always go make money. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And then I'm reinforcing the right thing. >> Yeah. >> Right. And so I think we're very big on rapid feedback um in the moment because that's how you train behavior. So if you look at >> if So there's tons of studies on this, but basically if you want to train a dog, right? Um and you want it to sit, if you have it sit and then immediately give a biscuit, it learns really quickly. If you have it sit and then wait 10 seconds before you give a biscuit, it takes like three times as many repetitions for it to learn that the that the sitting gets the biscuit.

3:26If you wait more than a minute, it never learns >> really. It just you can see the learning curve. The amount of repetitions just skyrockets until eventually there is no amount. But here's where it gets crazy. That biscuit is still reinforcing something just not sitting. It's reinforcing the thing that just came before it. So if we want people to do something, we have to change it in the moment. And so when we train and I think that we're we're a training organization. We're very good at training whatever skills um is engineering ways to give many feedback loops in a short period of time around uh specific skills. So I use sales because it's one that everyone understands. If you're training a script with someone at the if you if you let someone read through a script and then at the end you say hey you know here here's the things you could have done better blah blah. This is how 95% of people train. It's also doesn't work.

4:16>> We set the premise with you're going to read through the script and in the first 30 minutes we might get through a third of it and I'm going to probably stop you like 30 times and if that happens it means we're doing it right. So we set the premise that I'm going to interrupt you a bunch of times and as soon as you say the first line I'm going like stop. Say it again. Say it like this. Go again. And then they're like okay. And then they say it and I'm like awesome job. Do it again. Awesome job. Do it again. So I reinforce it as many times I can. Okay. Go to the second sentence. Right now do first and second. Right.

4:42right? Do second and third, right? And you keep working your way through until eventually they just say it like a whistle. They can sing it because they've also had so many repetitions and so many feedback loops that they're like, "This is what it sounds like when it's right." And I think that the vast vast majority of organizations have no idea how to train. And their entire training, their their way of getting talent is just uh let's hire 10 and we'll just see who works out rather than being able to take someone and level them up. And I think that the ability to train is one of the largest alphas that exists in organizations because if you can buy talent at at B skill and get them to A+ then you net the delta and profit between what you had to attract and pay the person to come and what they perform at. If you have to use a picking strategy, then you have to pay for ex for current market rate of the skill.

5:28>> And so you actually eat into margin because you don't know how to train. There are advantages to speed and sometimes it still makes sense to bring in the talent because maybe the training requires so much time that it's not worth it. And so from a hiring perspective because I we were just talking this is the theme we always want to hire for the smallest skilled efficiency. And so in low skilled labor for example if we have a cupcake uh bakery and I need somebody to work the counter that is pretty low skilled labor. And so if there's a number of skills that are required, being able to be on time, smile, be nice, those things are bundled terms that have many skills underneath of them, right?

6:06>> Whereas teaching someone how to use the register might take like 30 minutes. And so it makes sense to hire for attitude and then train aptitude when you have low skilled labor. When you have really high skilled labor, I can't teach someone 10 years of being a CFO for M&A. This is an extreme example, right? And so in that instance, we still hire for the smallest skill deficiency, but I can probably teach someone to be nice under these circumstances faster than I can teach them to be a CFO if they have everything that I want here. Obviously, you would want both, but the world isn't perfect.

6:41And so we just try to hire for the smallest skill gap. And attitude is a series of skills. And so instead instead of thinking of things attitude and aptitude, just think of everything as skills. And then we hire always for the smallest efficiency. >> Real quick, I'm going to show you the exact 10-stage road map from zero to 100 million plus that less than 1% of companies finish. I've now done multiple times. And so I can say with a lot of confidence that these are the stages as headcount increases that you need to get through. And I broke each of these down by eight different functions of the business, what the constraint feels like, like what are the symptoms of it when you're going through it. And then what steps we actually took to graduate.

7:18And we've done this across software, physical products, uh, service businesses, brick and mortar, all of this, and it works. And it's my gift to you. It's absolutely free. And so the link's in the description, but you just go acquisition.comroadmap. Just enter your info and it'll spit it right back to you. Offering.