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The purpose of the IT Leaders Council is to bring together IT Directors and Managers for leadership training, educational content from guest speakers, and peer discussions in a vendor-free, collaborative environment. IT Leaders Councils are currently offered in Indianapolis, IN and Columbus, OH, with more cities coming soon!
To start with a question. Raise your hand if you have been to the cemetery. National Park. I like like right there. We go. Those of you that have not been. I ask that you put out your bucket list to go and that the Asterix is promise me that you will not do a drive by when you go to the cemetery.
There are lots of people that park their car and they go and they get back in the fountain. I found myself there about ten years ago. My brother and four or five friends. We were going on a hike 20 miles, ten miles out and miles back. I was much in much better shape than I am today. Unbelievably, we're going through this strand of pine trees and it opens up on to this swath of granite that is undescribed.
I look up to the top of this mountain and it's all green. It looked like just the hand white and smooth this granite down to the valley of study. So we're walking out in the middle of this area, and we're looking at the blue sky. I turn around and I go, I have no idea where the trail is over there.
And I look on the other side of this swath of granite that's probably three football fields, maybe. And I say, I don't know where the trail is on the other side of the swath of granite. And by the way, this is six miles in. And I see this. This is what's called a carrot. CAIR in its roots go back to the Eskimos to find their way along hunting trails.
Essentially, these rocks were left by people before that had come across this. So I see this and I turn to my left. I see another woman that's 20 yards farther and another one that all of a sudden the path crossed this huge swath. It's much clearer that one. That's what you do every day. There are people in your life that have left rocks that you're still following.
And every single day, people that you interact with are following the rocks you lead and leave. And that's what we're going to talk about today. Now, let me connect this story with a personal story at our company. This is not about me, by the way, of non-technical person. Don't ask me any questions about software. I have very small software people that work with me.
We had two interns from Purdue a few years ago that were with us in the summer and I was having a very informal conversation with them because I really wanted to help them. And I said, Let me ask you a question. I am going to profile roughly profile three different types of people that are in your computer science classes at a pretty you tell me with.
All right. And of course I do the nonverbal. Yeah. Let me see this old guy. Let me see you do this. And I said, okay. The first is the kind of person that basically wears all black. Never looks at you in the in the eye is far more interested in what they're doing in gaming than anything else. They go from class to a computer and they're very distant and they're not.
I know that guy. I said. The second is somebody that's really, really smart and they'll talk to you. But if you ask the question, the first thing they do is make you feel stupid, that you don't know what they know, but they love to show people how smart they are and they love to make you feel like you don't know what what they know may not.
I said, Yeah, I know that guy too. I said, Now here's a third very similar to the second person. But the difference is that person gets energized when they teach you something. That person is really, really smart. But when they find something that you don't know, the teacher in them comes out educator and then comes out and they're fed by you getting to someplace that you couldn't get out.
Yeah, I know those guys too. I said, Who you think I want to hire? And they got really quiet. I said, I can't hire the first group because I can't put my clients at risk. I can't hire the second group because I don't want to fragment the culture that I have within the organization. I need teachers that are smart.
And I said to them, I don't know where you're going to get your next job, but just understand that whoever's going to hire you is going to think about that. That was me giving a rock for those guys, and that's what we're going to talk about today. What I hope is you're going to leave with a deeper understanding of culture, because I think that culture has one of those general perceptions that everybody goes, Yeah, I know what culture is, but they don't cultivate it.
The second thing is I'm hopefully going to leave you with at least one idea that you can take back and nurture within your education. All right. And the title is Culture Code. The periods are intentional. Think of culture in terms of care. The care that your team members feel and think of code in terms of signals sent, not ones and zeros.
What are the signals that are sent to the team members that you have that allow them to know that they feel part of something special? This talk is inspired by two books. Think of it like Cliff Notes. Those of you who are old enough for Cliff Notes. I loved both of these books. So what I did was I took bits and pieces out of them.
They're both awesome. In particular. Creativity Incorporated is awesome. And by the way, just as an aside, if you have any interest in Pixar movies, read creativity, incorporate. I'm fascinated by the number of iterations that they went through on the story of Toy Story before they got to the one that we love. I could talk for an hour on on that.
So quick activity. I'm going to give you 3 minutes. What I want you to do is talk at your table and score yourself from 1 to 10. How well do you think your team understands the culture of your organization and the culture of the team that works with you? One is, Boy, do we have some work to do.
And ten is everybody gets it completely clearly. So talk amongst yourselves. What I would like is to table average just to see where we all are. Okay, I'll give me 3 minutes, maybe three and a half, seven where you really do involve a lot of eyes on the one value of so getting a good conversation right. Let me get let me get a sense of one table averages.
We end up where you are in the back. Why don't we get one job which requires we got a seven. Alex What? Your table. We all learn they're doing the math. I have a dramatic reduction in seven year 3.8. Okay. When slots are sevens, about six, six, seven, seven. I want to look at my table. Awesome. Awesome. If you're here, if you're at a seven.
Feel good about yourself. If you're anywhere lower than a seven. Understand that you've got some work to do. But here is here is the key. And please, this is the one thing that you take with you. I'm good. I'll use Kent as an example. Your culture is not what you say it is. It's not what is on your mission statement.
It's not in any of your handbooks. It's not strives to be crazy. It's not your mission statement. It's not your core values. It's none of those things. We're all nodding. We all understand that, But we don't live it. And here's the example. If I had if my son was best friends with your top employee. Okay, And they're having dinner.
And my son said, So how's work? What comes out of that employee's mouth has nothing to do with anything that's written on your website. Anything that's written on performance reviews at it. It's not that your culture is not what you say it is. It's what they say it is. Please take this into your heart and engrave it on a tablet because human resources creates material like crazy.
That is not a culture. That's what we're going to talk about in the book. Believe me, you don't want a situation where more candor is shared in the hallways and in the rooms where fundamental ideas are being hashed out. This is moving us into how culture affects problem solving. So what happens to the water cooler? What set up the water cooler may not being may not be said anywhere else.
And you want a culture that is open and free to share ideas. We're going to get there. All of us can't get past this. We have an emotional side of our brain. We have an informational side of our brain. I'm not going to go through the fight or flight response too much, but there's nothing you can do about it.
It happens instantaneously. So you have an emotional reaction, an informational reaction. This is my attempt to be a software guy. Let's look at an if one mistakes. Okay. So if I'm in a meeting and I feel safe and I feel like I'm a trusted part of the team and I feel like I belong and I'm appreciated, then I'm going to share ideas without hesitation.
Trust me, this if then statement is a fact. If I feel like I belong, I'm going to share ideas without hesitation. The thing that I want you to realize is are they not sharing because they don't feel safe? And here's what happens. People choose one of three options, only three options in an environment. So we'll use Kent's team again.
So tense. Got a team of six people sitting around a conference room table. They're trying to solve a really, really, really big problem. There's one person in the room that just recently got promoted in that in that discussion. Okay. Not everybody's appreciated the fact that this guy got promoted. Everybody in the table is going to do one of three things.
They're either going to protect and defend themselves. Meaning if that person challenges an idea, they're they're ready for the fight. And you're all much smarter than me. And a lot of smart people work for you. So you're going to see a lot of us defend my idea. My idea is right. That's option one. Option two is they're going to distance themselves and they're going to tune out.
We've all been in those meetings. We've been in those meetings where you just want to go. They won't. Why? Because they're protecting themselves. And the last one is people engage being vision and they create. Now, obviously, that's what we want, in my estimation. Seven meetings out of ten. This doesn't happen. Seven meetings out of ten. You're trying to figure out if you're even thinking about this, why somebody is protecting themselves and causing other people not to talk, why this person is distanced and you're not getting here in the book Culture Code.
Given that our sense of danger is so natural and automatic. Organizations have to do some pretty special things to overcome that natural trigger. And they do. And I love what was said. You strengthen the team by creating a sense of belonging. Anybody can kick down a bar and it takes a special carpenter to build one. Now, I don't know about you, but I've been in places where the bar was kicked down.
I worked for an organization where the president was frustrated by somebody, and you walked into their office and he goes, Hello, Is there anybody in there? And ten people saw him do it. What does that do to a culture? You all are building a bar and every single day it's not it's never finished because you're going to hire somebody new or you're going to promote something or somebody is going to retire.
Now there are group dynamic cues that foster belonging, and I'm going to use belonging intentionally here. This doesn't mean Kumbaya. Everybody's going to have a group hug. That's not what it means. It means I I'm glad to be here and I feel like I'm a part of something special. These are the cues. And you and you've been in meetings where you've seen these things happen.
Number one is energy. There is a palpable sense of we're doing something cool in that meeting. Everybody is contributing. And there's a there's like there is an exchange of something wonderful happening. The second thing is individualization. This is the hard one. When you look into Creativity, Inc., they create on the talk about this and they create groups from all different roles.
So if somebody is in a different role and I know I don't know as much as you do, I feel like you're listened to me. If there's a sense of belonging, you will start. You've heard us say everybody says, Oh, no ideas are bad ideas. That's true. Only if the person feels individually appreciated and feels like he can contribute.
If not, he's going to shut up like we saw a few slides ago. And the third thing is future orientation. What that means is all the team members feel like, You know what? They're solving something really cool. And this became real to me when I was reading about Toy Story because they went through multiple iterations of that script concept, multiple things, and again, read the break of up.
You're going to be blown away about things that they thought were like in the final production that came off because they were all saying, We need to make this the best it can be. It's not about whose idea was, it's about what we want it to be. That's future orientation. So let's talk a little bit about us. What I do when I interview people.
Yeah, I'm a software guy, but when I interview candidates, I tell them, Look, we're looking for three things and they're all of equal proportions. Every single time I'm looking for culture, I'm looking for contribution and I'm looking for aspiration, and here's how I describe it to them. So I spent a long time. We're not a big company. I spent a long time caring for employees, caring for their families are good kids are, and building an organization that appreciates them as people.
And I'm not going to bring somebody in that's going to hurt them. The second thing is I'm hiring you for a particular role. So if you do that role 50% well, but I need one of my other guys to come behind you and kind of clean it up and fix it. That's that doesn't work for any of us.
And the third thing is, I want you to be just as excited about the organization as you are about yourself as a person. That's the future orientation. Meaning, when I sign a new client, that's really not in your purview. You're an Android developer, and I signed my client. You're just as excited about it as everybody else because you want to see the company grow.
That's what I want. Now, let me give you a painful learning example.
We had a candidate and we put that as a priority. This guy said, I'm really good at this. I'm really good at that. I'm really good at this. And we said, Boy, do we really, really need that kind of a gut feeling about this one, But we really need some help. It took less than two months for that person to knock down the Jenga thing and call for employees and say, Why are they doing this?
You're all we we we did not make a good decision. What I'm telling you is whatever this whatever you have, understand that culture should be just as important as, in my view, as contribution and aspiration. So I want somebody that's a catalyst for future momentum, culture, momentum. I want somebody that's productive and I want somebody that's energized by the team, not just energized by themselves.
This is going to be hard for you because ego is very prevalent in it, and maybe that's good in your organization. We try very, very hard to be humble. So this is what we're looking for. Getting the team right is necessary to getting the ideas right.
So let's talk about how Pixar cultivates ideas. They build what's called a brain trust. They grab a group of people from different disciplines. The people on the brain trust will come in and out. They agree to be part of the brain trust because they want that future orientation. So what happens or how are they guided? The first thing that if you're a part of the brain trust, the first thing you have to understand is you better not be too attached to your own ideas, which is really hard because if you're trying to solve a problem and somebody thinks that they know the best way to solve it, then they're going to they're going to go
back into defensive mode. So if you're going to be part of this brain trust, don't be too attached to your ideas because your identity is not your idea. Your identity is how you help us as an organization move forward. Do not judge the value of your contribution on another your idea and attitude. This is another one that you've probably seen millions and millions of times.
Somebody leaves a meeting, told me, Yes, they bought my idea, so therefore I feel better. Was it at the expense of the goal of the organization? Don't know. It was my idea. So I feel good. Put all your attention on the problem. Keep your focus on whether the idea thread is advancing or stagnate. Years ago I was in a meeting with and like you, I work with very smart.
There are people that can change the tenor of meetings by the questions that they ask by diverting subjects. And you almost don't realize that you started here and you ended up here. Those people are not focused on the problem. Their focused on what they want to do. And this is hard if you're part of a brain trust. Here's the problem.
That's all we're doing over here. Ask the question is is stressing the problem or is it something that you have to withhold quick judgment, which is also really hard? In my in my earlier time in creative services, I worked with a brilliant, brilliant writer. This guy invariably knew more about the clients that we served than the clients did.
But his gift and I put this in quotes, was everything that you suggested to him. He would tell you three reasons why you either should be careful or shouldn't do it. And I don't. I loved him. He passed away years ago. I loved him. But what I wanted to say to him is, look, with that energy, get to solving the problem, not telling me what I should avoid.
He couldn't withhold it. It was part of his DNA. As you wait to find a break in the banter in order to make your point. Don't stop listening to what's going on. I would say from a human dynamic standpoint, I think everybody in the world wrestling with this. We can't help figuring out what we're trying to say. I want to tell them this story.
I want to tell the story in a way, your brain is off somewhere else and you might have missed something really, really important.
I loved the fact that you don't have to ask permission to take responsibility for quality and innovation. So what Pixar is basically saying is, if you're part of a braintrust or even if you're not, if you are not, if you have an idea that's going to bring that story forward. If you have something that's going to take us to the next level, then I want to hear it.
And even if we don't adopted, thank you for sharing. Thank you for bringing it forward. At the beginning of my career, I spent a lot of time in architecture and we talked about this earlier in our world, a balance between design and development is really important. Louis Sullivan is a famous architect in Chicago, and he coined the phrase form follows function.
It's actually form ever follows function. Most architects would say form follows function. I look at this as there has to be a balance between design and development. So we use technology as an example. If you have an application that works really, really, really well and never breaks down, but it takes somebody 5 minutes to look at figure out what what the screen, what to do in the screen next.
I submit to you a. Well, you know what I'm saying, Hayden. That's not balance. If you have something that's beautiful and easy to use but really performs no function whatsoever, then it doesn't work. So when you're putting things together, design should always be guided by the outcome of the tactical solution. It should always be thought about and consider not in a position of priority.
And, you know, early in my career in creative services, all the designer just wants to make it beautiful. That's not true. The designer wants to make it easy. The designer wants to make it sticky. The designer wants to make it simple. The designer wants to help you find what you need faster because you don't have time to mess around with it.
Try to figure it out.
One quick story, maybe two, and then I'll get out of your way. Has anybody seen the movie Who framed Roger Rabbit? Okay, so the story behind Who Framed Roger Rabbit is that is the very, very first Disney motion motion picture that had animation and live action together. So Roger Rabbit is a cartoon character. Think of him like a frenetic Bugs Bunny and Bob Hoskins was the guy that's interacting with Roger Rabbit.
Now, I heard this story and Disney never forgot it. This is I heard the story ten years ago when they were filming for Roger Rabbit. Obviously, you film about Bob Hoskins first and then you hand off the film to the animators. So there was a scene where Roger Rabbit is bouncing from wall to wall because he's a cartoon character and he's all upset and Bob Hoskins stops him in the middle.
What's him up against the wall and delivers a line to him? So they recorded, right? He turns. I don't know exactly what he says. His right shoulder hits a lamp in the middle of the room, and that lamp goes like this. Right. And the light goes up. And the light goes down. Light goes up. And the light goes down.
So they go. Cut. May send it off to the animators. Never forget this the way this guy from Disney talks about it, he said. So our animators had to animate a cartoon character with physical light coming up the body of that cartoon character. We'd never done that before. And he said, and he looked at all of us and he said, We could have blown that often.
You never would have known. We could have not thought about how, like, had a cartoon character. You never would have noticed. But we spent a lot of time thinking about what that looks like. So if you watch the film, you can see it go up Roger Rabbit's legs and that a little bit less and then a little bit less.
The point was Disney looks for quality that is not always seen. They will go beyond and to identify what's going to help something. And they call this process bumping the lamp. So what they do is they set up animation sessions as an example. We went to the Wilderness Lodge when my son was eight. So what they do is they say, okay, we're going to do a one hour bunker lamp session on checking into the Wilderness Lodge.
What happens in the first 15 minutes? And they call it bumping the lamp. So. All right. So the people get out of the car. Who greets them? What are they saying? What happens of check in, What's handed to the kids? They go through all of those steps. They do this on a regular basis. This is their model for innovation.
And they've been doing it ever since. Roger, When they. Every every process gets looked at and tries to they try to bump the lamp and stay innovative because you got to find develop support good people and they'll develop good ideas. If you've got a culture that feels future oriented, a future orientation with a sense of belonging and they buy into what you're doing, they're going to bring ideas to you.
Peter Drucker, Culture Strategy for Breakfast. What I think this means is it doesn't matter how much you put into the playbook. If you have a culture that is not going to either follow the playbook or is going to run counter to the playbook, it's not going to work. And at the same time that you have limited strategy, but you got great culture, you'll solve problems.
Before I close, Ted Lasso, for fans, for those of you that have not seen it, I promise you I'm not going to spoil it, but I am going to talk about something in there. So Ted Lasso was the coach of a Premier League team, but a soccer team in England. And at the very end, an author, journalist wants to write a book about what happened to the team.
And it's a wonderful series not seen and I could not recommend it more highly. So a draft of the book is handed to Ted, and he writes on it. It's called The Lasso Way, and he writes on it. One small suggestion I can't change the title. It's not about me. It never wants two things. What you heard today is not about me.
It's about the people that work for you. It's about the people that work for me. It's about what they say. And my question to you is, what rocks are you leaving? What rocks? You see along the way from your journey that has given you and your perception for today. And more importantly, what rocks are all of your employees leaving, looking for the person that's going to show up a month from now who?
Thank you. Doug, thank you.