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Rethink Culture is the podcast that shines the spotlight on the leaders who are rethinking workplace culture. Virtually all of the business leaders who make headlines today do so because of their company performance. Yet, the people and the culture of a company is at least as important as its performance. It's time that we shine the spotlight on the leaders who are rethinking workplace culture and are putting people and culture at the forefront.
00:00:07:13 - 00:00:32:21
Andreas
Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. Welcome to another episode of Rethink Culture, the podcast that shines a spotlight on leaders of businesses that people love to work for. My name is Andreas Konstantinou. I'm a micromanager-turned-servant-leader who developed a personal passion for workplace culture. At Rethink Culture, our mission our mission is to help 1 million companies create a healthier, more fulfilling culture at work.
00:00:32:21 - 00:01:17:10
Andreas
And our latest project is the Culture Health Check, which is an online service that lets you measure your culture so you can manage it. Now, today, I have the pleasure of welcoming Joseph Michelli. Joseph is an expert in organizational culture and customer experience, and he's known for his work with some of the world's most recognizable brands. He's author of several books, including works about the cultures of companies like Starbucks, Zappos, Ritz-Carlton, Mercedes-Benz, and Airbnb, which help us understand how these leaders have created a lasting and impactful culture at their companies.
00:01:17:12 - 00:01:30:21
Andreas
And he also told me he started his career as a radio host at age 13. And, he's going to tell us all about that. Very welcome to the Rethink Culture podcast, Joseph.
00:01:31:13 - 00:01:40:07
Joseph
Andreas, I want to just give you a bravo on what you've done in this podcast and your journey, and what you're doing to help people build great cultures. Thanks for having me.
00:01:40:07 - 00:01:49:05
Andreas
Very welcome. So let's see where we start. What took you to that journey of writing, what is it, 7 or 8 books now?
00:01:49:20 - 00:02:12:19
Joseph
It's actually 13, 13 now. Yeah. So I think the journey, the journey started with my mom and dad, really, in the very beginning of my life, who said, you're not put on this earth to be served. You are here to serve people. And if you serve people well, your life will be fine. And if you get all hung up on whether or not people are serving you well, you will not have a good life.
00:02:12:21 - 00:02:36:14
Joseph
And I think that's always been a part of who I am. This notion that we are here to create value, and it is through the value that we create that we become valued. So I think that's been at the core of it all. It didn't necessarily mean that I woke up one day from that and said, okay, now I'm going to be in customer experience creation and design or work with great companies.
00:02:36:14 - 00:02:47:11
Joseph
This is obviously a circuitous path that got me where I am. But the driver was always that sort of philosophical belief about our purpose on the planet.
00:02:47:11 - 00:02:52:14
Andreas
And you have a PhD in psychology. How do you go from that to studying workplace culture?
00:02:53:05 - 00:03:21:07
Joseph
So I was working as a what would be a system psychologist. I was training to understand how complex systems, whether it was families, systems or organizational systems, affect the behavior of individuals within the system. So the ecosystem influences. So I was studying that. I got a call when I was in graduate school, from a professor who said he had been contacted by a guy who had a little fish market in Seattle, Washington, that was not doing well.
00:03:21:12 - 00:03:46:08
Joseph
And they wanted someone to come up there and understand their organizational system and culture and how they could make it better. I knew nothing. The guy who in Seattle had no money, so my professor didn't take the job. They sent it down to the lowly graduate student. I went up there, I worked for fish, and we ultimately created a workplace culture that I wrote about in my very first book about business, which was called When Fish Fly.
00:03:46:14 - 00:04:08:18
Joseph
And it was cultural lessons on how to engage your team so they could create an engaging experience. The Pike Place Fish Market is the name of the tiny little fish market. It's 1400ft² of retail space. If you were to go online and search for them, you'd see that they throw fish there. There are a lot of antics that they do that really engages the customer.
00:04:08:18 - 00:04:29:22
Joseph
But it's I mean, that's the throughput of it all. The DNA of it is creating a culture where people are empowered to own their space in a relationship with the customer, where they take care of one another and treat each other with a great respect that then exudes out into the experience of the customer.
00:04:29:22 - 00:04:34:00
Andreas
What's a story you remember from Pike Place?
00:04:34:19 - 00:04:57:01
Joseph
So imagine me coming up as a consultant in a group of very burly fishmongers, people who, you know, typically work on fishing boats, but on the off season, they're on land and they're there, selling fish because they have some knowledge of fish. So these burly guys in waders, and we are standing around saying, look, guys, we are near bankruptcy.
00:04:57:03 - 00:05:17:16
Joseph
Your owner, Johnny Yokoyama, just recently bought a wholesale business so he could get fish direct from the boats into his store and cut out the middleman. He was taking a very supply chain oriented strategy. But because of that, he lost an immense amount of money. And we now need to figure out a way to help this place thrive.
00:05:17:21 - 00:05:41:08
Joseph
So we're in this cooler. Just burly guys in a cooler with dead fish all around us. And I essentially said to them, you know, guys, we need to we need to listen to each other. We need to come up with solutions. We have to all co-create our culture our our business. And these burly fishmongers looked at me like, what in the heck has Johnny just done bringing this lunatic in?
00:05:41:13 - 00:06:04:07
Joseph
And one had the audacity to say, you're absolutely nuts. I mean, none of us are going to be able to co-create your culture or create a great experience. We are losers. That was a quote, quite literally, and one of the other guys in the room took offense to being called a loser. I thought he might have been true about me, but, he took offense about it and they got in a fistfight.
00:06:04:09 - 00:06:32:19
Joseph
So we've got a culture where they've never had a business meeting where the first articulation of strategy and thinking through brainstorming ends up in in us having to pull people apart. We had to set rules like, you can't use physical violence during a meeting, right? I mean, it was that level of primacy of things. But over time, because we ascribe to the importance of listening to the people who get the job done, which I think is a critically important part of leadership.
00:06:32:21 - 00:06:56:19
Joseph
And building a great culture is getting the people who do the job to give you input on how the job can be done better, because we did it following a philosophy of the great philosopher Paul Tillich, that the first act of love is to listen, and Johnny's willingness to listen more and more and more, even when people were coming up with particularly crazy ideas, that's what got us out of it.
00:06:56:19 - 00:07:24:08
Joseph
So I think for me, the memory is our first effort to listen was a disaster. But by the end of it all, that brand turned around from being fourth out of four in fish sales in that geographic area to being number one out of four and having a greater cumulative sales than the other four put together. So my message here is that we started at the bottom in almost every way you can.
00:07:24:10 - 00:07:55:21
Joseph
And because we engaged a process of building a culture that was participative but ultimately still relied on Johnny to make the final decision, this was not that they decided what to do, they were the ideation engine. And Johnny was ultimately the final decision maker in an entrepreneurial business because he's the one who had to make payroll. We ultimately transformed that business, and we created a very engaging customer experience in the process. And that led to the world famous Pike Place fish becoming world famous. Despite being a small little retail space.
00:07:56:01 - 00:08:18:12
Andreas
Right. It's a very beautiful one as well. And everyone's very tidy about, you know, where they put their fish and how it's all organized and laid out. And so it's very nice to to see and watch. You've also written a book on on parenting. Joseph. And do you draw do you draw parallels between parenting and organizational culture?
00:08:19:01 - 00:08:39:16
Joseph
Yeah. I think, you know, none of these things come with handbooks, right? Like you you know, guide, dummies guide to parenting. Maybe there's one out there, but, you know, for most part, we learn on the fly. And for entrepreneurs in particular, I think are notorious for doing as much as they possibly can on their own until they hit a wall.
00:08:39:16 - 00:08:57:05
Joseph
And then they have to seek out some kind of information specific to that wall and so they can blow through it. For me, the same is true with parenting. We think we know it. You know, we had parents, we all had parents, right? So we got some template. Sometimes our our thinking is, well, I'm not going to do what my parents did.
00:08:57:07 - 00:09:19:09
Joseph
And other times, well, I'm going to do it just like my parents did. And in either case, it's not necessarily evidence-based on what's going to result in the greatest outcome. And so we do need to study it. And I wrote that book almost so that I could be studying as I was on the job and trying to learn some things that I could maybe teach myself.
00:09:19:09 - 00:09:43:15
Joseph
And then hopefully find some benefits. And that whole book was about using your sense of humor and play to survive parenting, and also to develop a resilient, adaptive child. So, but I must say, you know, I look back on that book now and I look at my kids in adulthood and I think, boy, I think I need to do an update because there are a lot of things that I learned that I didn't say in the book.
00:09:44:04 - 00:10:02:06
Andreas
Is there a mistake you see leaders making? So you've seen a lot of businesses, but is there a mistake you see leaders making again and again? And you, you say, oh, yeah, it's that one, and one that's kind of straightforward and easy to fix, but people still keep making the same mistake.
00:10:02:20 - 00:10:23:09
Joseph
As it relates to culture, I think they conflate amenities with culture. So you see companies, you know, I got to, I'm going to put a break, you know, ping pong table in the break room and I'm going to get this and I'm gonna have a massage therapist come in and do chair massages. Yeah, I think those are all nice amenities, but they aren't culture.
00:10:23:11 - 00:10:44:00
Joseph
You can have a terrible, terrible place to work and have all kinds of wonderful bells and whistles and perks for people. And so I try to get people to think about, why would I care to work for you and give my maximum effort on your behalf? And it's probably not going to be because you have a better espresso machine in your break room.
00:10:44:02 - 00:11:05:04
Joseph
It's going to be the way you encourage me to have mastery. It's going to be the way you encourage me to be autonomous in the way I do things. It's the way you set a purpose that I can believe in, and that you care about what I want for my life and make sure that my own personal purpose aligns with what you're trying to achieve in your business.
00:11:05:07 - 00:11:19:21
Joseph
To me, it's much more about understanding who you are and who you have attracted to your business and helping them see a path to greatness for themselves while you have the privilege of having them in your building.
00:11:19:21 - 00:11:24:13
Andreas
And is that straightforward to explain, or you need the research to back it up?
00:11:25:00 - 00:11:40:02
Joseph
I think intuitively we get it. I think most people get it. I think that you need to show data to show that it pays off financially. You know, it's the same about customer experience. I tell you, you know, you really want to treat your customers well. People go, yeah, of course. And oh, by the way, I do. I mean, I'm just great.
00:11:40:02 - 00:12:01:01
Joseph
My company is amazing, right? And then if you dig in a little bit deeper, you say, well, look, when push comes to shove and you have incentives here to sell things, you're willing to treat customers badly in order to sell things, right? Like that's the reality. If we get right in the data, we look at your customer engagement levels and we look at the percentage of new customers come into referrals,
00:12:01:05 - 00:12:33:09
Joseph
we're just not seeing it. When I measure your employee net promoter score, I look at how likely is your employee to recommend your business to their family and friends. If they were qualified, would they consider your business? When I see low employee net promoter scores, I need I need to bring that data to them to say as much as you think you have a great culture because of your espresso machines, your employees, only 1 in 10 are willing to tell their friends and family that they should consider a job with you.
00:12:33:09 - 00:12:50:08
Joseph
That's your employees. So yeah, I think you always have to start with the intuitive goal of making the world a better place, which most of us carry with us. But then you have to backfill with data, particularly when people make decisions that aren't necessarily congruent with that belief.
00:12:51:05 - 00:12:57:01
Andreas
From all the big brands you worked with, which is the one you've learned the most from, would you say?
00:12:57:15 - 00:13:18:18
Joseph
Oh my gosh, if you have more than one child, it's like asking which child you love the most. They're very different things that I learned from people, right? Like I don't know that I can quantify one over another, but I'll tell you things like Howard Schultz taught me that we're all in the people business. You know, when I first asked him, you know, what business are you in?
00:13:18:18 - 00:13:44:03
Joseph
I expected him to say coffee. He said, no, I'm in the people business serving coffee, not in the coffee business serving people. When I When I work with Tony Hsieh, I think I probably learned more about the fact that you can be an introvert and create an amazingly engaging, playful culture. Like that, to me was surprising, because I almost always thought that great leaders were charismatic and extroverts and highly verbal and... Not Tony.
00:13:44:03 - 00:14:14:18
Joseph
Tony was shy, but he was also the guy there at the front when you came into any event shaking everyone's hand, just quietly and gently, right? It wasn't that loud, "take the hill with me" people sort of voice that you often think about with leaders. So I think that's a huge lesson. The Ritz-Carlton taught me that there's a fine line between cult and culture, like you need to reinforce cultural tenants all the time, to the point where it's almost like people are drinking the Kool-Aid.
00:14:14:18 - 00:14:39:00
Joseph
Every morning we get up and we do daily lineup, right? And we all stand around in the Ritz-Carlton. We read off the same playbook or prayer book or whatever you want to call it, and we reinforce that we are Ritz-Carlton. I am a lady or gentleman of the Ritz-Carlton. I exist based on these service values of uncompromising cleanliness, all the way up to creating a mystique that drives loyal customers.
00:14:39:00 - 00:15:00:23
Joseph
The point is, the ritualization of culture is critical. And so Ritz-Carlton would teach me that. Airbnb taught me that you have to have a culture, a core culture, that you can influence people who you don't control. So if you think about the Airbnb world, most of the... everything is just an exchange on a interactive, digital experience.
00:15:01:04 - 00:15:22:15
Joseph
And so I don't control whether or not you, as the host, deliver hospitality the way I want. And as a guest, you know, I can be very rude to the host. So how do I influence a culture that tries to have concentric influence out to people who are just part of your ecosystem, but really not under your control?
00:15:22:17 - 00:15:36:01
Joseph
So there are lots of things that I learn from every single brand, and I think we should wake up every morning with that mindset. What can I learn from Andreas today? Which is why I will ask you a question sometime during our time together.
00:15:36:01 - 00:15:46:13
Andreas
Please do. Yeah. Whenever you like. And I have a next question for you. Which is, which is the company you'd love to write about?
00:15:48:05 - 00:16:16:06
Joseph
I think I just did. I'm writing. It'll be about next year. It's about Amazon. So. And it's about Amazon's health service division because I consulted for a company called One Medical, which was purchased by Amazon for $4 billion. I also wrote about Amazon because Amazon acquired Zappos, but never really formally about Amazon, more about Zappos, and a little bit about the transition under Amazon's influence. But I think I really have always wanted to write about Amazon.
00:16:16:06 - 00:16:30:16
Joseph
People probably want to write about Tesla. Anybody who's kind of on that cutting edge, you're trying to figure out how do they do it? You know, yeah, I think those are the companies that always are interest to me, but I don't have one that I need to go and write about.
00:16:30:17 - 00:16:58:21
Joseph
I mean, wherever life takes me. And as long as there, they have to have three things in common. They have to treat people well, in both the customer and the employee. So I guess that's two things. And then they have to have a global presence, you know, at least a global recognition. I've made a few exceptions to that along the way. But for the most part, that's what publishers expect because they want those resale rights in various languages across the world. So those tend to be my main criteria.
00:16:58:21 - 00:17:10:19
Andreas
The leaders you've worked with and studied did they take a linear path to the intentionality of the people they care for or was it broken up?
00:17:10:19 - 00:17:35:22
Joseph
Heavens no. I mean, they are all, they are people who are born to care about the people as they do. But I think most of the intentionality around culture becomes the realization that it is the force that keeps everything together. You know, some people have that maybe more intuitively, but I think the intentionality of it all is a function of the necessity of it.
00:17:36:00 - 00:17:56:11
Joseph
And some people never get that, like they never understand this is necessary. So they create transactional businesses, and then hopefully they can jump to another transactional business and ride that for a while and jump to the next one. But if they're going to sustain and they want to stick around for a while themselves, you know, they need to create a workplace that the people want to come back to every single day.
00:17:56:11 - 00:18:19:04
Joseph
And so, there are maybe a few that had that, but most of them are just like... I'll give you the classic example. Tony Hsieh had a terrible culture in a company called LinkExchange. And he sold it to Microsoft for a really pricey amount of money. And then they wanted him to stick around and they gave him a golden, you know, package.
00:18:19:04 - 00:18:35:16
Joseph
And and he got out of there in a year because he didn't like the culture of the company he created, even though he would have made an intense amount of money sticking around through the contractual transition period. So he made a commitment at that point. The next time I ever start a business, I'm going to create the culture right in the first place.
00:18:35:18 - 00:19:06:08
Joseph
And that's what Zappos was. It was a fundamentally different approach to creating a culture that he failed on earlier on, and fortunately, he was able to sell it before he had to live in it. It's kind of like building a house, you know, using all the cheapest material and then realizing, oh my gosh, I have to live here. And I think many companies, many leaders come to that point that, oh my gosh, those shortcuts on culture are costing me big time in terms of, you know, discretionary effort of employees, for example.
00:19:06:18 - 00:19:13:01
Andreas
Have you experienced the case where culture helped a company through a high pressure situation?
00:19:13:17 - 00:19:38:14
Joseph
Oh my gosh. I wrote a book called Stronger Through Adversity. All right. This book is about... it was written in the middle of Covid. It has 140 leaders. Now these are really impressive global leaders. It's a CEO of Verizon for example, Hans, Hans was there. So Vestberg. It had the CEO of Target, which is a major retail store in the United States, Brian Cornell.
00:19:38:20 - 00:19:58:06
Joseph
It had just massive leaders and global brands. Starbucks included, Godiva, you name it. And without a doubt, every single person in that that I interviewed, the 140, were saying right now is where our culture pays off. If we didn't build it before the crisis, we are in no way able to do it now.
00:19:58:06 - 00:20:17:05
Joseph
It's like creating a parachute after you jump off a bridge, right? It's if you don't have it with you when that crisis comes, you just don't sustain. You can't pivot quickly. It's a chaos. So I saw it then, and most of the leaders I talked to just went back to the basics. Who are we? What do we value?
00:20:17:07 - 00:20:35:23
Joseph
You know, what's our mission? Let's make our decisions based on our mission. Let's not panic. And that's I think that's when you really saw it. Which gives me a moment for you too. But this is my question for you. So I know that you had the kind of the accidental path toward culture, right? You did the... you did that.
00:20:36:05 - 00:20:54:21
Joseph
But why do a podcast about it? I mean, to me, it's one thing to have that epiphany, build it into your own culture, be happy with the fact that you came to that wisdom. Leverage it to your advantage. That's the other cool thing. Let's keep it to ourselves because we figured it out in our own business.
00:20:54:21 - 00:21:04:17
Joseph
We don't want our competitors to do it. Why give it away? And I have an answer for that myself. But I really am curious because, you know, just run your great companies, right?
00:21:05:09 - 00:21:40:11
Andreas
So I initially was very unintentional about culture. As I mentioned to you in my... in our pre-show and before we start recording. But as I became more intentional, I was reading the headlines, I was heavily influenced by Western media headlines of, you know, successful entrepreneurs and there was not a single headline about a successful entrepreneur who was on the pedestal, who was in the spotlight because they've built something people love to work for.
00:21:40:11 - 00:22:01:20
Andreas
They've built a business people love to work for. It was all because they raised X amount of money, because they hang out with Steve Jobs, because they built cool technology, because they exited, because they're now, you know, billionaire or whatever. But it was never because you built something that people love to work for. And why is that important?
00:22:01:20 - 00:22:27:12
Andreas
Because we spent all of this time talking about why customers are important, but we don't spend the time talking about why employees are important. And it's not just that employee, happy employees will result in happy customers, which is the Zappos premise, among others. But it's the fact that you're responsible for the lives of so many people that work for you and working in the business you own.
00:22:27:14 - 00:23:04:02
Andreas
And how can you make them more fulfilled? You know, there's the humanity side. And before we even get to the performance side, which you said you said before, you know, you cannot build a culture to help you deal with adversity. You have to have great culture in order to survive adversity. So I started the podcast to make a long story short, because I wanted to, in my own small way, help, shine the spotlight on leaders who are creating intentional cultures that people love to work for and who really care about their people.
00:23:04:04 - 00:23:32:00
Andreas
I had Bob Chapman just last week on the podcast, and he really is an amazing individual. The the CEO of Barry Wayne Miller. And he's like an apostle or a prophet for how business can be a major force for good, touching the people that work for the business because they work for the business 40 hours a week.
00:23:32:00 - 00:23:48:08
Andreas
And if you could help them lead happier, more fulfilled lives, they would pass on those ripple effects to their families, their communities, their spouses. And that would have a massive effect, positive effect for society.
00:23:48:14 - 00:24:08:16
Joseph
Yeah, I I love that pivot, right? I mean, I love the two pivots. So one pivot to culture and then the pivot from just understanding the importance of culture to actually helping others because of the impact that has. There's a book about the leadership revolution which talks about that, you know, our influence is a function of our effort times our scope.
00:24:08:18 - 00:24:28:04
Joseph
Right. And so when you do do these podcasts, your effort magnifies your scope by a function of all the people whose lives you touch beyond what you could do in the in the confines of your own, your business, and the employees you have in your business. So I just I'm excited that you do this, and I'm grateful to be a part of it today.
00:24:29:03 - 00:24:39:04
Andreas
What was a mistake, a leadership mistake you've experienced, which resulted in a major learning moment for one of the leaders you've studied?
00:24:39:22 - 00:25:04:16
Joseph
Wow. So I started thinking of myself here as opposed to mistakes that others have made. But but I think, you know, when I was working at the Ritz-Carlton hotel company and consulting for them, we were so hung up on what our legacy was and what the brand was permitted to do, that often we just weren't in touch with what people needed and wanted in the now.
00:25:04:18 - 00:25:25:22
Joseph
So we were so concerned about the legacy of Ritz-Carlton. I'm going to do this example specific to to customer experience, but you can use it in any others you think about. We are the Ritz-Carlton, right? So that's how... and that boxed us in. So, for example, it was about the same year that Airbnb came into play. I think it was about 2008.
00:25:26:00 - 00:25:49:15
Joseph
And I was in the CEO suites. We were in Chevy Chase, Maryland. We were talking about, could we serve beer in a bottle at a Ritz-Carlton? That's the conversation we were having, right? We must preserve presented in a chalice in an elevated service moment. Right? That's who we are. So here we're having this conversation about something.
00:25:49:17 - 00:26:17:17
Joseph
Customers were coming in wanting that to have the beer served in a bottle. They just wanted their bottle of beer. And we were fighting it because we thought our brand was bigger than the wishes and needs of the people that we served. And you know, to a long story short, at the same year Airbnb is, you know, two guys in Seattle, oh, sorry, in San Francisco are renting out an extra room in their in their apartment and putting two air mattresses down and serving people pop tarts.
00:26:17:19 - 00:26:39:03
Joseph
And so now we have air bed and breakfast, started or Airbnb. And the air mattresses were a key variable in the air part of the definition. They were willing to do whatever it took at whatever basic level of customer need, removing pain points to execute. And I think just in general, what is that thinking in our heads?
00:26:39:03 - 00:26:57:11
Joseph
It says we've always done it this way. Who cares what the person needs in front of us? We've always done it this way. And that's true in the in the employee space as well as the customer space is why people fight hybrid work, for example. We've always done it this way. We've always sat next to our employee, even though we were...
00:26:57:11 - 00:27:16:01
Joseph
We had bad supervisors who weren't necessarily supervising the work product, just sitting next to them somehow gave us great comfort that we weren't supervising their work product. And I'm not saying everybody thinks like that about hybrid work, but I do. I think we have all kinds of pockets of that. We've always done it this way. And the question is why?
00:27:16:03 - 00:27:40:16
Joseph
And then when you have that answer, the question is why. And when you have that answer, the question is why. And if it really stands up to those three levels of why introspection, then fine. But if it doesn't, you got to really challenge. Why do we always serve beer in a chalice? Why is that the right thing to do? Why? Why are customers wanting something different? Why are we not? I mean, the more you do it, the realize like this is not a big deal.
00:27:41:12 - 00:27:48:07
Andreas
Do you have a position on hybrid work that you just mentioned? Because the opinions are divided on this one.
00:27:48:07 - 00:28:05:17
Joseph
I think we need to be around people. I think complete remote work is very, very hard. I mean, it's very convenient. It's very, very hard. So I do think hybrid work is something I'm still a fan of. It depends. Some obviously, some jobs, you don't have the choice. You have to be with people. It's a necessary function.
00:28:05:17 - 00:28:24:14
Joseph
Some jobs have far less need for that. And so it is always based on the need of your people, the need of the work, and the ability to make sure that you have a cohesive team. I think the biggest challenge for hybrid work is culture. It really is hard to onboard people who you've never sat next to.
00:28:24:16 - 00:28:44:03
Joseph
It's really hard to feel a community only through this channel. I'm not saying you can't do a lot of it, but boy, it's really wonderful when you do have some time to come together in community, maybe come together and do something in a community project, right? Like we do work together at a food bank. My goodness, that's great.
00:28:44:03 - 00:29:03:07
Joseph
So if you're going to do hybrid work, you better find some ways to supplement. If you're going to do remote, you've got to find some ways to supplement it with some hybridization. So people have interactivity in the face to face as well. That's my belief. But I think the data is there too, really, old school managers who think everybody has to be together all the time. The data is not supporting you.
00:29:03:21 - 00:29:11:10
Andreas
So if we're not... If we're remote, it's harder to… for the culture to persist. Is that your thesis?
00:29:11:10 - 00:29:13:12
Joseph
I think it is my thesis. How about you?
00:29:15:22 - 00:30:01:07
Andreas
I have a different view. Which is that, culture is the set of attitudes and specifically behaviors that we see at work. And a lot of the behaviors in a physical workspace are, you know, in person. When we are remote and full remote and my other business is fully remote, we essentially have to replace and substitute alternatives for everything that is... that occurs in a physical setting, including watercooler conversations, including a a smile or a smirk, whatever it might be.
00:30:01:09 - 00:30:43:17
Andreas
You know, other modes of communication of celebrations. So, what we're doing in my other business is we simply have the rituals that allow people to connect and bond and celebrate and coordinate. They're not perfect, but a lot of them make up for the otherwise physical interactions. And the benefit, of course, is that if you are able to hire people working from anywhere, you tap into the talent that shows to be in a, you know, sunny location, let's say. And they're actually top of their market. That you wouldn't otherwise be able to tap into.
00:30:45:02 - 00:31:11:20
Joseph
I don't disagree with that at all. I think that the advantages of completely remote work are exactly as you articulated them. I think the efforts to build culture in them are exactly perfectly articulated. Right? Like that's what you need to do. If I can, I'm going to create nexuses for some interaction. Whether that's even just if I can bring everybody together, you know, again, it's not always practical in some work settings, I get that.
00:31:12:02 - 00:31:36:13
Joseph
But if I bring them together for an annual meeting or quarterly meetings or regional meetings, and sometimes it's regional meetings, if it if it means I have to go to them, across all these different work sites so that I can have personal interaction with them, I'm still going to do it because I still believe there is something different about breaking bread with people than there is in just breaking bread online.
00:31:36:15 - 00:31:55:11
Joseph
So so I'm... I think we're in agreement. I don't think you have to. I don't think I think you can run a business with a good culture remotely. But if you can, I think you strengthen the business with interpersonal contact and maybe not daily. Not not like the old school where we felt like we had to sit next to each other.
00:31:55:11 - 00:32:15:19
Joseph
I think that that has been debunked. And quite frankly, in my business, a lot of it is, you know, me doing remote meetings like this with you, I wouldn't be able to do an interview with you if it weren't for this this format. But other times with my clients, even though I'll do a bunch of meetings that I would have otherwise traveled for, I still am trying to make that connection with them.
00:32:15:21 - 00:32:26:15
Joseph
You know, occasionally, quarterly, whatever it might be, in an interpersonal way. And I think we just have to realize that about human beings. We do crave that from the people that we spend so much of the time with.
00:32:27:06 - 00:32:35:13
Andreas
Yeah. And we're wired for that through mirror neurons and lots of other, you know, physical devices that were built with.
00:32:35:17 - 00:32:58:04
Joseph
But I can tell you, there are people who do it really well. Steve Cannon from Mercedes-Benz is one of my favorite people who leads remotely. He has people bring in an item to their meeting, you know, that has specific sentimental value to them. You know, they bring in something like this, you know, somebody somebody wrote a book about being a storyteller, created this mug on storytelling and says, I am a storyteller.
00:32:58:04 - 00:33:16:03
Joseph
Anything I say, anything you say may end up in a story, right? Like, I would bring that in to a meeting and it shares a little about me. And while this mug meant something to me, and I like the idea that somebody called me a storyteller and that anything you say can be used against you in a future story, right?
00:33:16:03 - 00:33:27:21
Joseph
Like it's just... But he does that. He does that sort of bring something about you. And it's an object that enables us to talk about what matters. Right? Because whatever I selected is relevant.
00:33:28:04 - 00:33:32:19
Andreas
What's one thing you had to rethink recently that you changed your mind on?
00:33:33:19 - 00:33:56:14
Joseph
Why, this is not a good one. I don't like this at all. That work is your worth. You know, I've spent most of my life working 70, 80, 90 hours a week. I just have. I made excuses for why I couldn't be available to my kids. At this thing or another thing. I, you know, my wife stayed home, so I justified the fact that at least I was providing.
00:33:56:14 - 00:34:36:18
Joseph
I mean, just all of that. Now, as a grandparent, and watching how quickly life goes by and how quickly my kids have, my kids' kids are growing up, I really wish someone had just grabbed me by the lapels and said, kid, you could have been just sufficiently successful and not done all this overkill. So I pray that for everybody I meet that they find some kind of balance, where they're successful and they have pride in their work, and they work hard and they have determination and all that, but they stop and really question, do I need to do this? Is everything going to be okay if I don't? I rethink that all the time.
00:34:37:12 - 00:34:57:15
Andreas
And so you've been you've been very successful at places where a lot of people would crave to be in. Next to the CEOs of, you know, some of the best brands out there. Have you done the best work of your life? And if not, what's holding you back?
00:34:58:01 - 00:35:36:03
Joseph
Well, I hope I haven't done the best work of my life because I got life ahead. Right? So, and I... If you look at some of the masters, you know, some of the greatest artists of all time, they did it in their final years. They benefited from all of that wisdom that had come along the way. What holds me back is the belief that I am old and that I am somehow or another, I need a way, I need to contract and make room for another generation. So some of my best work is coming. I've just helped a university here in the United States develop a master's in customer experience program. It's the first of its kind, to my knowledge.
00:35:36:05 - 00:35:58:06
Joseph
And so the shift is stopping thinking about what am I doing, but how can I help the next generation do it better. That shift is where I hope my greatest work will be. Because all of the work I've done now can be given to another generation to build on and do even better things with. That's the hope for my future.
00:35:58:06 - 00:36:21:06
Joseph
I don't have to keep doing it myself now. I've kind of. I've got the t shirt, you know? I know I don't have to prove anything else now in terms of can I help another company be successful? I've done my thing, but I can help other people help companies be successful. And it kind of gets back to that that scope impact, sort of conversation I mentioned earlier.
00:36:21:21 - 00:36:37:05
Andreas
And as we come near to the closing of the podcast, what is something you would whisper to the ear of a leader who's not intentional about the culture, who's what we could call culture by default?
00:36:37:21 - 00:37:03:11
Joseph
Yeah, you're you're going to be alone. You're going to be alone unless you understand that the only way you create anything is through people. You create profits through people. And if you don't understand how to help people work with you, you're going to be alone. You're going to be working against them. You're going to have a third of them working with you, maybe, just because they are incredibly professional and even though you treat them badly, they're just going to rise above it.
00:37:03:12 - 00:37:21:16
Joseph
You're going to have a third who are going to smile at you and act like they're engaged, but they're going to be disengaged. And you have a third who is working against you. They're going to be actively trying to turn everybody else away from you. So the bottom line is, you know, do you want to do this alone? Because if so, you shouldn't even hire people.
00:37:21:17 - 00:37:47:05
Joseph
Just run your own solopreneurship and give it up. But if you want to do great things with people, you better start with people. And then the rest of it comes through them for your shared good. That's it. It's simple as that. If you don't care about how people feel, they won't care about how you feel. And ultimately they won't care. If you don't care about their success. They really won't care about your success.
00:37:48:10 - 00:37:52:06
Andreas
Where is somewhere where people can find out more about you, Joseph?
00:37:52:13 - 00:38:10:20
Joseph
I am all over the internet. I'm mercilessly over the internet. If you put my correct spelling as you see it on the bottom of the screen there, you just search that you'll find me. I'm Joseph Michelli at LinkedIn. I'm Joseph Michelli on Twitter. I'm sure I'm Joseph Michelli pretty much anywhere you go. But, my name will also get you my website, which has all that contact information too.
00:38:11:03 - 00:38:20:16
Andreas
And is there some final words you'd like to leave us with or something you read recently that you think more people should be reading or anything else you'd like to leave us with?
00:38:21:10 - 00:38:44:04
Joseph
I recently read Indra Nooyi's book, My Life in Full. Indra Nooyi was the president of PepsiCo for 12 years. She's an Indian-American, Indian native, Indian native and came to the United States, tells a wonderful journey about her family culture. Tells a wonderful journey about adjusting to the United States culture.
00:38:44:04 - 00:39:12:12
Joseph
Tells a wonderful journey about trying to change the culture at PepsiCo for 12 years. It's a brilliantly written book. I strongly recommend people read it. But mostly what I'd like to say is thank you. Thank you for caring about culture. Thank you for not putting your light under a basket and coming to that epiphany and lighting your own light, but then making sure the rest of us could see it and it shines brightly through your podcast. So I'm grateful for that and for the time that you've spent with me today.
00:39:13:03 - 00:39:46:05
Andreas
Thank you. Joseph. Likewise. I admire the strength of your humility and your stories. And, of course, your accomplishments, your books. I definitely need to read at least one of them. And thank you to everyone who's been listening and giving us your undivided attention. If you have enjoyed the show as much as I did today in talking with Joseph, you can leave a five star review wherever you listen to your podcast.
00:39:46:05 - 00:40:06:05
Andreas
You can subscribe to any of the channels that you listen to. We're also on YouTube, if you're just listening and not watching. It helps the show. It helps others learn about culture and it helps the podcast. And, finally, if you want to find out more about how you can measure your culture, you can go to rethinkculture.co.
00:40:06:07 - 00:40:20:18
Andreas
And, like I love to say at the end of every podcast is, keep on creating a happier, healthier, more fulfilling workplace for you and especially for those around you. Take care.