Rethink Culture

"I can tell you from experience of… 11 years in a healthy, good culture way versus, winning at all costs... It feels a lot easier. And winning comes a lot easier. It’s a lot more fun. I’ve developed a lot more meaningful relationships in the business… people stay longer because they like it here... Don’t underestimate the power of impact that you can have on families outside your four walls because of the values you live and breathe every day inside your four walls… that can be world changing if we do it on a big enough scale…"

S03E07 of the Rethink Culture podcast shines the spotlight on Jason Lippert, third-generation leader of Lippert, a $4 billion company with 15,000 team members. Known for its growth in RVs, automobiles, watercraft, and prefab homes, Lippert transformed under Jason’s leadership from a “win at all costs” mindset to a caring culture, reducing attrition from 125% to below 30%. Jason highlights integrity as essential for building trust, urging leaders to follow through on promises. His cultural transformation at Lippert began with small, impactful actions, like facility improvements, that addressed employee needs and built momentum for lasting change.

Jason emphasizes that CEOs, not HR, must own workplace culture, as leadership shapes values and behaviours. Through initiatives like the Leadership Action Plan (LAP), Lippert supports employees in setting personal and professional goals, fostering value, accountability, and a positive ripple effect on families and communities. Jason’s daily practices of reflection and inspiration keep him focused on leading a values-driven culture, echoing Bob Chapman’s belief that business can be a force for good, with small, intentional changes driving meaningful impact.

The podcast is produced by Rethink Culture (rethinkculture.co). Our Culture Health Check helps you turn your culture into a competitive advantage, with data.

Production, video, and audio editing by Evangelia Alexaki of Musicove Productions.

Listen to this episode to discover:
• Why integrity is the cornerstone of leadership
• Why CEOs must own workplace culture
• Jason’s step-by-step approach to cultural transformation in his company
• How Lippert’s Leadership Action Plan (LAP) fosters growth and accountability
• The ripple effects of business beyond the workplace, on families and communities
• Jason’s faith-based personal habits for staying grounded and aligned with his values
• The power of meaningful workplace relationships
• How business and workplace culture can be forces for good

Further resources:
• Jason Lippert’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-lippert/ 
• The Purpose Driven Life, by Rick Warren: https://www.amazon.com/Purpose-Driven-Life-What-Earth-ebook/dp/B008EGV4BQ

What is Rethink Culture?

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.

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, we’re on a mission to help a million companies create a healthier, more fulfilling culture at work. And our latest project is the Culture Health Check that lets you measure your culture so you can manage it. Today, I have the pleasure of welcoming Jason Lippert. Jason is a third-generation leader of Lippert and LCI industries, a $4 billion publicly traded company with more than 15,000 team members. Lippert is a company known for its impressive growth in the recreational vehicles, automobiles, watercraft, and prefab homes market. Under Jason’s leadership, the company has undergone a significant cultural transformation from ‘win at all costs’ to a culture of caring. And he’ll tell us more about that. And as a result, the attrition in the company dropped from 125% to below 30%. Jason has four kids ranging from 12 to 21 years old. And he was telling me earlier, he fondly remembers his two-week trip with an RV, that must have been a large RV, during COVID. So very welcome to the Rethink Culture podcast, Jason.
Jason: Andreas, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. The RV was actually 25ft, so we were all crammed into a pretty small space for that two weeks, but it was a lot of fun. It was an adventure.
Andreas: So where do we start? Tell us a little bit about when you took over the company. That’s where I would start. Because you’re a third generation, right? So when did you take over the company? And how did your childhood prepare you for this passion on culture?
Jason: Yeah. So I took over the business technically in 2003. After I graduated from my university in Oxford, Ohio, I went right to the family business and started welding and just learning the business from the ground up for a couple of years before I got any assignments. So, but by 2000, my dad had already sold the company and was ready to move out, preparing me to take over. So, you know, between 2000 and 2003 is when I started to really take the reins. And we were, at that point in time, growing the business in the RV sector, which was a brand-new business for us at the time. My childhood was, you know, really prepared me for leadership just because my parents were just solid parents. I mean, they really, you know, instilled values at an early age, brought faith into my life in an early age, and just, you know, kept me on the straight and narrow and focused on the right things. So I didn’t have to completely pivot. You know, by the time I was trying to figure life out on my own. So I owe them a lot.
Andreas: Was there someone who was influential in your life? Or was there an event that was influential in who you are today?
Jason: I mean, I would say, you know, as I came into the business world and started growing our business, we were a $100 million business at the time. And the business that I started, that’s our core business today. I mean, as a kid, I was, you know, in my mid-twenties, starting a manufacturing business. And I had all these customers that were, you know, the leaders in those businesses were much older than me. And they all, you know, took to me and helped me learn things and help me grow and develop. And it really, that’s really what, you know, influenced my business path and our success as a company, you know, early on, was getting connected to those business leaders at ten, 15, 20 years more experienced than me. And just helped me stay on the business path for, you know, successful growth.
Andreas: And when you took over the business, when was it that you realized that the ‘win at all costs’ culture wasn’t for you?
Jason: I would say that after I took over the business in 2003, it was about ten years, ten years until we made that pivot.
Andreas: And was there, like, an inflection point? Was there an ‘aha’ moment?
Jason: Yeah, there definitely was an inflection point. You know, I would say part of it was just, you know, the historical, you know, winning every year with respect to, you know, what investors thought of us, what our peers thought of us, what the industry thought of us, what our customers thought of us, what our teammates thought of ourselves. I mean, we were just winning all the time. But you know, part of the coming to that conclusion that things need to change was as like that winning; it never, it didn’t feel fulfilling to a lot of us that were, you know, that had been doing this year after year after year; it was like, okay, more sales, more stock price growth, more divisions, more acquisitions, more people, you know, that was great. But it really, you know, I don’t think fulfilled the purpose that God had in my life or has in my life. So I kind of reverted to prayer, and that, I didn’t kind of; I reverted to prayer and faith in that time period. And just that, my prayer was really simple. Just there’s got to be more than, you know, this hollow feeling of more revenue growth and stock price growth and, you know, success, however you wanted to describe it. And the answer came through: Hey, look, Jason, you got, you know, 15,000 families that probably impact, or at the time was maybe half that, but, you know, 6000 families that equates to maybe 40,000 people. And what are you doing with the lives that I stewarded to you? And so that got me really thinking and about at that time, I got introduced to Bob Chapman, read his book, you know, really was enamoured with his 20 minute podcast that said everything, you know, truly human leadership, everything you need to know about what real culture needs to look like and lightbulb came on and it was it was a clear turning in my ways and redefining what winning look like.
Andreas: Do you remember what were some of the things you decided to change?
Jason: Yeah, I mean, at the very beginning, it was we didn’t have a set of values. You know, we didn’t have no way to define our culture. So if we wanted to have like, this great culture, we had to explain what that was. And the easiest way to do that, and one thing I tell any company that’s out there struggling with this, if you want to define your culture, you know, define the values first and then live those values out and make sure everyone’s aligned. And if you’re, if people don’t want to be aligned and some people are just stubborn and don’t want to change, some people think it’s, you know, a bunch of crap, and that we’re just here to work and to get a pay check and go home, you got to rally everybody around the values, if you want to really create momentum and progress there with respect to impacting people’s lives in a positive way. Because the worst thing you can do is let the people stick around. They don’t want to align to the values, and then it just ticks everybody else off. It frustrates people. So making the values... setting up the values and then making them consistent was, you know, probably the most important thing we did as we set out, you know, to embark on a culture journey.
Andreas: And your values I’m reading here are honesty, integrity, teamwork, and a positive attitude. How do you make them consistent? How do you execute on the values day by day?
Jason: Well, first of all, people need to know they’re not just words on the wall. You know? You have to, you know, we have them on, we have them written on laminated cards that people wear or carry with them so that they’re always reminded of what the values are. They’re not just sitting in the walls in the office or maybe in a cafeteria. And then we have, you know, we put resources to a culture team. So we have leadership coaches all over the business who do nothing but teach our frontline leaders, you know, what the values are, what the core values are, what leadership is defined as in this company. How do we define leadership so that everybody knows what the expectation of a leader is whether you’re...
Andreas: How do you define leadership, by the way?
Jason: So it’s really simple. We took 60 of our general managers and plant leaders across the company. We sat in a room, and we said exactly what we just talked about. We have to define leadership. It has to be understandable. Because truly, if you sit 60 people in a room and say, define leadership, you’ll probably get 60 good outcomes, but everybody’s defining it differently. So we did the very same thing we did with a core values journey. And we put all these great things on the wall, all of everybody’s ideas. And then we gave everybody five votes, and we said, what are our five leadership values? So as a team member, you’ve got to have in the lineup the five core values. And as a leader you’ve got to line up to the five leadership values. And it’s humble, coachable, it’s effective communication, are effective communicator. It’s being courageous. It’s being a great motivator. So, you know, we put those things on the back of the card. So you’ve got our card here, you know, with the core values on the front and the leader leadership values on the back. And they’re just kind of a true north for people. So they understand what’s important. And, you know, also, we spend a lot of time praying, say, if you can’t do these things, then it’s really going to be really hard to be a team member here over the long term because we have to have everybody lining up to these. And by the way, they’re really good things. And there’s good outcomes for your team members. There’s good outcomes for your family, families, if you do line up to these things.
Andreas: Were there any sacrifices you had to make as you shifted the culture?
Jason: Absolutely. You know, like I said, you’re going to run into people that just don’t want to change. And, you know, change is hard for people as is. We all know. So, you know, we try to coach and develop people, but we’re not going to wait forever. Because if we wait forever then we have, you know, we have, you know, turbulence in the environment. And, you know, we don’t want to drive good people away because we have so much tolerance for not good behaviour or people that don’t want to line up to the mission, you know, the values. So, so certainly there’s a lot of, you know, there’s always, in the beginning, there was a lot of respectfully moving people out of the company and helping them find, you know, a job or work someplace else because we needed to have, you know, as many people as possible lining up with the values, living those out every day. And as you know, that’s not that’s not easy to do. So that was probably the most difficult thing. There’s some long-term team members that had to leave because they just wanted to come and put their head down and do their thing and not, you know, not worry about everything else. And that’s just not an option here. We do better when we collaborate. We do better when we’re all moving together, you know. And we had promoted a lot of leaders over the years that they got promoted because they were on time every day. They were at the job every day. They had pretty good attitudes. They knew a lot about how to make whatever part they were in charge of. But we would promote people. You know, I think companies do this all the time, you promote people based on those things all the time. But those, none of those things make you a good leader. So it was redefining the definition of leadership because, you know, in our company, we have a thousand people leading about 14,000 people on the front lines of our business making parts. So if we don’t get leadership right at that critical level, it doesn’t matter if our executives or some of our top-level leaders really know what good leadership looks like. If those thousand that are leading the 14,000 don’t figure it out and don’t understand it, you know, we’ll just kind of be walking in circles.
Andreas: What are some of the ways or techniques or systems or habits you use in the company, besides values to instil that culture of, I think you call it, culture of caring?
Jason: Yeah. So a bunch of different ways. But I would say to give you a couple examples is putting resources in a culture and leadership department. So as we were talking before the show, you know, HR, they can’t possibly do everything that’s needed in culture development and leadership development. They got full time jobs that are very demanding. And they’re all over the place. So, you know, we said, hey, look, if we’re going to have a meaningful culture in leadership department, we’re going to start with we’re going to start with somebody in culture that’s going to help us lead and manage culture, report out to the different areas, including HR, and work hand in hand with all the different leaders in the business to make sure culture is moving in the right direction. So we hired one, then we hired two, then five, and we got, you know, 27 people in that department to that, including the Chief Culture Officer. So, but one of the things we do is we spend time coaching those thousand people on the front lines. You know, we coach them around just, you know, how to be an effective leader for their team. We do serving events. So, you know, every leader is responsible for setting up a serving event for their team. We feel that, you know, people that serve and are serving regularly, you know, are the, you know, they’re going to be better team members, ultimately. We’ve just seen a direct correlation between, you know, the productivity and the effectiveness of our work teams and the amount of serving that they do as a team. Man, it’s good for the community. So it’s just one of those things we can make part of doing business. So those are some of the things that we do in terms of, you know, making sure that we’re on the right path for culture. We do a lot of, we do a couple team member surveys a year that are, they give us a lot of good feedback and information right down to the cell level, any of our 140 facilities so that we can see, okay, which teams need the most work, which leaders need more coaching? So those are some things.
Andreas: And out of curiosity, how do you balance the role of the HR team with the culture team? Are they completely separate? Do they have an overlap? Because normally the two roles aren’t like, I mean, HR doesn’t technically intersect with culture. Well, we don’t, I think, in the business world really have a clear divide between the two.
Jason: It’s true. Because there is really no set rules or, you know, good cases out there where it’s being done. I just don’t think it’s being done that much. But what we’ve done is said, hey, look, you know, culture is going to be responsible for, you know, developing, you know, doing the development of our leaders across the business. Our leaders ultimately have to, you know, coach, and develop their players, you know, the 14,000. But our leaders are the ones that need all the coaching. So our culture department is made up of, you know, leadership coaches, personal development coaches, chaplains, a philanthropy team that kind of coordinates and structures all the philanthropy that we do across the business. So those are some of the... both are some of the areas that that culture is responsible for in our business. HR is, you know, they’re doing a lot of the administrative stuff and a lot of the, you know, maybe, get involved when there’s issues and things like that. But, you know, they’re working hand in hand with the culture team. They’re working lockstep. They know it when it comes to personnel issues and people. They’re talking to each other. You know, we have culture and leadership people assigned to the same plants as our HR people. So those two people, you know, or multiple people would know each other and talk to each other on a regular basis. So when there is that little bit of overlap with personal development that they are in sync with one another.
Andreas: Thinking out loud, is this a model that you think is generalizable to medium sized or large companies? Because HR is struggling to embrace the culture world, there’s no good precedence. There’s the early adopters, but the mass is seeing HR through compliance and administrative lens.
Jason: Right. Yeah. So, you know, my take on that is, like I told you earlier, HR is just too busy to have... I mean, any business leader would say culture is the most important thing in our company, but yet we take that culture, and we throw it on top of, you know, the HR. Most companies do and they just can’t handle it. It’s just too much. So, you know, I liken it to Sales or IT or HR or Finance. You have specialists in those areas. You would never run a good business without people specializing in those areas. So you know, why would you, why would we do the same thing with culture and just say, yeah, give it to give it to a different department? So, you know, while there’s no great... I mean, we might be one of those, you know, companies that have, you know, and we’re happy to talk to businesses. We talk to businesses all the time. As a matter of fact, we got an external arm of our culture leadership department that just does nothing but coaches and helps other companies that are trying to figure how do we... How does culture fit and how do we make it its own department where we’ll help other businesses? You just reach out to us. But, at the end of the day, you’ve got to have a separate focus on that if you want to make progress. And my two cents is just start with one person, you know. You can have... every business can afford to hire a person on that area. Start with coaching. You know, start with coaching your values and your, you know, what leadership should look like and get everybody aligned on that mission. Because to me, that’s the foundation which everything else is, the performance and every other key metric is built off is that how good is the leadership and how good are the values? So start with one person, that’s what I’d say.
Andreas: Is culture one of the things you personally feel responsible for? Like, what are the things that are top of mind for you? Like what do you, as a CEO, concentrate on?
Jason: Yeah, yeah. So I own the culture from the get-go because that’s just... I can always ensure that it has the legs that it needs and it’s going the right direction. It’s not something I’d recommend, you know, giving to somebody else who doesn’t, who really... not lead the business. I’m sure there’s scenarios where that could work, but I think there’s a better chance of owning it, when the top-level leader owns culture and leadership and decides, okay, here’s what we’re going to do next. And here’s what here’s what good looks like and here’s what works and here’s what doesn’t. And just keep everybody aligned with those things. But you know, other things I work on or, you know, our strategic, you know, initiatives and you know, there’s M&A or whether it’s, you know, or our business strategy, spend a lot of time with customers. And I do listening sessions every week in our plant so that I can spend time with our team members across the... across our global business. Those will be some of the things. And I’m always talking about, you know, what’s on the front of my mind with respect to culture and leadership, when I’m sitting in front of our frontline leaders across our different business units because they need to understand the most, what the what the goal is there. Too many companies, especially manufacturing companies, I think that, you know, it flies too high in the atmosphere for people on the front lines of the business that are making, you know, making or manufacturing parts, or components like we do, for them to really, you know, grasp it and then do something with it, understand why we’re focused on it.
Andreas: Have your customers seen the difference? Have you had customer feedback that something’s changing?
Jason: Oh, for sure. I would say in a couple different ways. You know, 80% of the RVs are built right here in my backyard. So, you know, we’ve obviously made a lot of noise with culture and leadership. It’s hard for our customers and supplier peers and competitors even to not know that we’re working on these things because we’re so visible in the community with our community service, which is part of our company. We’re all doing talks to our customers. Our customers asked us to come in and do, you know, talks to their team members about what good culture and leadership looks like and a little bit about our model, kind of like we’re doing now. But it’s really easy for people to see what we’re doing and notice the differences. And ultimately, I would say that we wouldn’t have been able to grow from a billion where we had, you know, 6000 or 5000 people in 2013 to 5 billion in 2022. We couldn’t have escalated with a 125% turnout. The math just doesn’t work, right? I mean, if we had 6000 people and we try to do a business that would require 15,000 people, means that we’d be turning over 20,000 plus people every year, 225%. And that’s just not sustainable. We might have been able to do it, but our product quality would have been horrible. Our safety record would have been horrible, our efficiency would have been horrible. So our results would have been not so great. But I would argue that I don’t know that we could have stair stepped up to 5 billion without working on our culture and watching our turnover drop. So that we could take time interviewing everybody that comes in versus say, hey, look, call the next person on the application stack, and get them in here. And that never works out well, you know.
Andreas: So for the attrition to drop down that much, it means that people really internalize the message. Your vision on culture to their everyday work lives. How did that happen?
Jason: The accountability because people would realize that we’re serious because we would exit... Again, we would respectfully, take people out of the business who didn’t want to and didn’t want to pivot and move toward the new culture. So eventually we were left with a more pure, you know, group of people that believe in. And ultimately, nobody wants to come to work and be miserable, right? Nobody wants to come in... I mean, that’s a miserable life to come to work and deal with people that, you know, live counter to good values every hour of the week, in some cases right next to you while you’re working all day. That’s frustrating for people. Nobody wants that. So I think, you know, the one of the reasons our turnover dropped so rapidly is because our team members saw that we were serious. They saw me out talking about it on a regular basis. And then at the end of the day, as we, you know, I think people wanted to, you know, they want to live like that during the week. They don’t want to be miserable. So I think a combination of those things said, hey, look, this is what I’ve been looking for. I’ve been waiting to work at a company, you know, my whole life, where people just do what they say they’re going to do and the values on their wall, they’re just not words. They’re actually values that every human being in the business aspires to live by. Now, you’re not going to be perfect, and you’re always going to have people that walk into the business fine one day and they come in with personal issues that are, you know, traumatizing them or a bad situation that happened. And they come into the business a little bit different the next day. Well, guess what? That’s life. And that’s why we have a culture department. So we can deal with some of those things.
Andreas: And the other test for a people-centric culture is the hard times, and Covid in this case. How did you deal? And did you have to fire any people? How do you handle that?
Jason: Well, you know, we had, you know, a couple of our leisure businesses did really well through Covid, so we actually had to hire people through Covid. Other businesses, you know, that relied on some government contracts and things like that, they did slip. But, you know, we would typically, in those situations, even the downturn that we’re going through right now on the RV side, that’s, you know, that’s going on in our RV business. And we typically just tick back days. So instead of working five days, we work four, we don’t have to terminate anybody. If somebody wants to leave because they need more hours, and we understand that. But typically, what we found even through this last, a little dip in the RV business, is that we have, I mean, we have a significant amount of people continuing to stay. Our turnover is still very low, even though we’re working four days in a lot of our business units because of where the industry is at. So, you know, people have a choice on where they want to live and work. And what we found is, I think what’s been proven in a lot of surveys is that, you know, people want to stay with good companies. It’s not all about the money.
Andreas: Absolutely. And you talk about four days a week as if something is completely natural. But for most of the business world, it’s like heretic or unconventional. What were some of the things that, you know, you take for granted now but were really hard decisions for you culture-wise?
Jason: You know, watching some people that have been with the business a long time. And really, we would have said before that period of time, we would have said, man, they helped us get here. You know, they helped us get to where we’re at today. And it’s true. But, you know, you know, we’re on, we’re going on a journey. And the journey called for a change in the way we looked at culture and the way we’re going to live our values and treat people. And we felt we could win even bigger if we did that. We built this great group of people that’s not churning and, you know, a revolving door all the time. And we get this great nucleus of people. If we built toward that, we would have a more sustainable, better business. It can grow, a little bit easier or a lot easier, over time. And, you know, it caused us to have to make some tough decisions because what we knew was that, you know, if we would let people not buy into the culture and the values and do whatever they wanted, like I said, it would frustrate really good people, and the really good people would continue to leave. And we didn’t want that. So we had to make some sacrifices. So that was one of the hard decisions. You know, it wasn’t popular. You know, we, you know, a lot of people just want to come and get their work done and go home, like I said earlier, and, we had to slow people down and say, no, this is important. You know, we know you took that leadership job because it was an increase in pay, which is good. But now it’s going to require you to do some other things. And there’s been a lot of tough conversations there, too, because, you know, if you want to lead, it’s not about just being the person that got promoted because you were the next man or woman up. It was because, hey, look, we need these leadership values to exude from your leadership each and every day. Because what we believe in our company is that if every one of our 15,000 people leads themselves better, they’re going to be better for their teams at work. The business is going to do better, and ultimately, they’ll be better for their families at home that they go home to or whoever they’re interacting with outside of these four walls. If they’re leading themselves better and working on values that are good, you know, it’ll impact people positively once they walk out these doors. And I think that that’s, you know, that’s, that can be world changing if we do it on a big enough scale.
Andreas: And you’re doing it at a big enough scale, I think, with 15,000 people, for sure. How tough is it to, or how challenging is it to take that, or your vision of culture where you really humbly live it and feel it and cascade it down to, you know, the 14,000, 15,000 employees of the organization.
Jason: How hard is it?
Andreas: How hard is it? And I ask because, you know, your attrition is, like, incredibly diminished. At the same time, I notice on Glassdoor your rating is above three, but it could be better. And it certainly is more... like it doesn’t feel that, at least the people who wrote these comments on Glassdoor have the same view of the culture that you have. So how can you bridge that disconnect?
Jason: Yeah, I’ll tell you, first off, I don’t pay attention to Glassdoor. I’m sure it’s, you know, it’s a good benchmark across companies, but at the end of the day, the only people that are sending comments to Glassdoor, probably some, there’s probably some disgruntled people out there. I look at the surveys that we do twice a year. Most companies I know don’t even do surveys. Or they might do them every couple of years, and we do them twice a year. And we’re really wanting to know what people are saying. We get answers to questions that are more, you know, that are kind of multiple choice. But we also get, you know, written feedback from people. And those are the ones that we go in and we can zoom in by facility, you know, and determine where the leadership has some opportunities and where we can improve people’s lives through better leadership and where, you know, maybe what we’re doing is really good and excelling. And maybe when you take some of those people and move them to some of the other locations that are struggling a little bit. But again, I look at the attrition number, Andreas, because at the end of the day, people get to choose where they go to work. That, you know, people vote with their feet. If they come in the door, most of them have a choice. This is a... our unemployment rate around here is pretty low. There’s jobs that are higher paying all over the place. But at the end of the day, I look at attrition. If our attrition was going up, I’d say, oh my gosh, we got a problem. But again, for people that are going on the journey, the first part of it’s the hardest. I mean, when I sat in front of the plants and said we were going to change, I had people look at me and say, hey, I’ve watched you in the weld shops. I watched you build this business, and I watch how you act. You’ll run all over people. And all I said was like, I know, I know exactly what I did, but we’re going to change the culture. We made a decision. The team, our team leaders are on board, our executive’s team’s on board. And this is the way we’re going and just, you know, watch that we do what we’re going to say. And as long as we do that, don’t throw stones. And we did exactly that. We did what we said. We made some tough decisions. And then the more we did that, people said, you know, we kind of had a load lifted off of them because they saw that, yeah, they’re actually doing what they say. We had people raising their hand saying, you know, we’ve grown ten x in the last ten years and the bathrooms are the same size. The toilets don’t work. The bathrooms are messy. The plant’s a mess. We need more room for our break rooms. You know, we’re sitting in the plant eating or eating out in our cars, and, you know, we need more refrigerators, microwaves, food options. They were right on everything. And we, like, again, we spent the money. We put our money where our mouth is. We put our actions with what we said we were going to do. And I think that’s what people, and especially in the front lines of manufacturing, that’s all they want, is they want a company where the leadership does what they say they’re going to do. That’s the definition of integrity. And that’s what... that’s why integrity is, you know, it’s in our core values because if we act with integrity, our team members are going to want to follow us. If we don’t act with integrity, they’re going to leave.
Andreas: What is in store for culture? Is there a pet project or something you’re passionate about and you’re working on?
Jason: There is. And I would say to, you know, every company out there that’s contemplating a really meaningful pivot that it’s a step process. I mean, where we’re at today, ten years or 11 years now after we started, I didn’t, we didn’t see any of these things happening. All we saw was, look, we need to fix the break rooms. We need to fix the bathrooms. We need to fix, you know, some of these things that people are complaining. Once we got to those things and it was like, okay, now we can focus on the next step and the next step and the next step. And this has been a journey of thousands of steps that we’ve taken. And where we’re at right now is, and I’d say it’s our pet project. Our executive team’s super excited about this, but we want every team member in the company to have what we call a leadership action plan. We nicknamed it an LAP for Leadership Action Plan. But really what it is, it’s a personal professional growth plan and we want every human being in the business to have, you know, and realize that a) they have goals. Let’s get them on paper. Let’s just start with your personal goals. Forget about the business side. You know, we feel that if people are really improving their personal lives, they’re going to show up at the business better, the business is going to get better. So what are your goals and what are your dreams? What do you want to accomplish this year? And we just, once they get those goals down, we work on the actions behind those goals. What are you going to do? Then who’s going to hold you accountable? So, you know, we were, we’ve been three... this has been a three-year process. We’re at the end of our third year. And we’ll probably have about 70% of our team members by the end of the year that have a leadership action plan. And Andreas, I’m telling you, I’ve got a box of letters under my desk that have come from team members all over the business. And they just write to just say, look, I never knew like, I had goals and dreams buried inside. And I’m thankful that the company, somebody in the company wasn’t me, but somebody in the company, you know, sat down with them, went through the leadership action plan, and now they’re alive because they got goals for themselves or their family. Or maybe it’s a hobby or maybe it’s, you know, I want to start working out or quit smoking or there’s a there’s a thousand things people have written me on where they’ve, their lives have been, you know, maybe a little bit changed, like complete transformation because, you know, we’re helping them do that. They’ve never worked anywhere where they’ve had time and space to even think about their goals, let alone, you know, talk to them with people and leaders around here and, you know, ultimately find an accountability partner that can ask him every couple of weeks, hey, how are we coming on this stuff?
Andreas: It’s incredible to give someone that gift of clarity and vision, which is not, you know, to the person that gives, but it’s for the person that receives it.
Jason: And I think for the business, what you end up getting is you end up getting loyalty. You end up getting a team member that’s probably going to be hard pressed to ever leave if they’ve gone through this process and achieve some goals because they’re going to be thankful for that. And ultimately, I think that that’s what a business owes their team members, is like this. Everybody’s got to benefit. It can’t just be the business, right? Can’t just be the team member. But if we both benefit, I think, you know, it just makes it easier for people to say, you know, I’m going to retire here. This place has been great. I’ve never worked at a company that cares so much about me that they’re... in some cases, we’ve had to force people to sit down and do it, but once they do it, they’re like, you know, they’re like, this is this is this is great for my life.
Andreas: Yeah. It’s an ‘aha’ moment.
Jason: And think about everything that we’ve done hard in our lives, you’ve needed a little push. Well, that’s what we’re here for. And I think that our team members appreciate that.
Andreas: In my team, in the Entrepreneurs’ Organization, we did this very similar exercise which I stole from Mindvalley. So we have a three-part, like, sheet where you record what experiences you want to have in life, what areas of personal growth and where you want to contribute and serve others. So every... in Mindvalley every new employee does that. And then they put it on a wall, a physical wall, a digital wall. And that is this moment of ‘aha’ and clarity. But it’s also your calling card. So if someone wants to know a little bit about you before they come and talk to you, they look at your card and then, you know, they have a little bit of context and maybe they find some common elements and you have, you know, maybe even a new friend, if you have things that you share a passion for.
Jason: One of our, you know, part of our mission is just developing meaningful relationships with our team members. And that’s how you do it is sharing, you know, sharing some of that stuff. But it’s just uncommon in businesses today. Because, oh, that’s personal and this is business. Well, it’s like people are bringing their personal lives to work and you can’t just, like, drop their personal life at the door and forget about their personal life when they’re here 40 hours a week. It’s not going to happen. So embrace it. You know, develop relationships and probably the business will benefit. Probably the people will benefit. And that’s great, I think.
Andreas: And talking about personal growth, do you have any habits that keep you, you know, I guess motivated, positive, every day and get you on the right track? Is there anything that we can learn from your own habits, as someone who likes to grow?
Jason: Sure. Well, for me, it’s cantered around faith. I mean, I pray for about 15 minutes in the morning when I get up. It’s the first thing I do before I do anything. After I get ready and hit the drive to work, I listen to Rick Warren, who wrote The Purpose Driven Life, and he does a podcast called Daily Hope. I’ve listened to it; I’ve listened to it every morning for many years. It’s 15 minutes and it’s great for a short drive to work. Or a long drive even. So that, always, I was taking notes on the drive in this morning on a message he did on self-control. I thought it was really good. And then I get to the work, and I spend about ten minutes in Scripture and that’s, you know, that’s how I start every day. That gives me a good foundation, you know, to build the rest of the day off of my head’s in the right spot. My heart’s in the right spot. My mind’s on the right spot, so.
Andreas: Wonderful. And as we wrap the podcast, what would you whisper to the ear of a leader that’s not intentional about the culture they’re building at work, Jason?
Jason: Well, I can tell you from experience of 11 years of doing it, both, you know, both ways, doing it 11 years in a healthy, you know, good culture way versus, you know, winning at all costs. That was our culture prior, for the prior 15 years. It feels a lot easier. And winning comes a lot easier. It’s a lot more fun. I’ve developed a lot more meaningful relationships in the business. And when people stay longer because they like it here, you can develop more relationships. So I can, I would say that, you know, you might be able to win without changing the culture, but it’s a lot easier to win, and it’s a more healthy way to win. And ultimately, I think you’re not going to change the world much, if you’re not really, if you don’t really have a culture that’s investing in your people and cantered around good values and consistent in the values and holding people accountable to values. I think those are the things that once you do that, you know, you help people grow and develop in the values of the company. And most values I see what companies have are good. They go home and that plays out in the families. And that’s where we need the most help, you know, probably globally, but especially here in America as a family unit needs to get healthier. And when the mom or dad is going home with having been around strong values for 40 hours a week, they can’t help it. You know, they can’t help for that to come out around their kids. And our kids and to grow up with better values that matter. Government is not going to do it for us, and education certainly isn’t going to do it for us. I think that business, you know, could be as Bob Chapman would tell you, a business could be, you know, a force for good in the world that the world really needs right now. And that’s my hope, is that businesses hear this message and realize there is a better way. And, you know, we can make a little bit of a dent with 15,000 people affecting maybe 45,000 people and families. But if every business just does a little bit to impact people through values and good leadership, and they take that home across the country or the world, I think the world starts to change for the better.
Andreas: Let’s all hope that. And any parting thoughts, anything you’d like to leave us with? Any book or anything that we can reflect on?
Jason: A couple of things that you hit on would be one, you know, the top-level leader needs to own it, and then the team needs to support it. You know, the executive level team or the top-level team in the business, you know, but the CEO or the owner or the president of the business needs to own culture. I’ve seen it not work too many times because the owner, the CEO, hands it off to somebody and it just doesn’t work out the same. But the other thing I’d impress upon people is just don’t underestimate, you know, don’t underestimate the power of impact that you can have on families outside your four walls because of the values you live and breathe every day inside your four walls. Again, the best compliments I get from our team members that come up to me and tell me how much they love the culture, how much they love what we do here culturally, or the leadership action plans and the personal growth plans. They come back and say, I’m a better mom because of this. I’m a better dad because of this company. And I don’t think, you know, of all the things we’ve accomplished in business, growing from 100 million to 5 billion over a couple decades, to me, that’s the best thing, is somebody coming and saying, I’m a better mom or a better dad to my kids, because I know that’s going to have a ripple effect for generations. And there’s too many companies out there beating on their people and trying to beat performance out of people, and they go home miserable and frustrated and anxious and angry in some cases. And how do you think that plays out in families? And I think if leaders just thought about the two, those two ways that they can impact families positively or negatively, I think that they might change the way they think about culture and that culture in their business.
Andreas: Jason, thank you for the inspiring ambition. And I think not just ambition, but also, you’ve put into practice everything you aspire for your culture, and I learned a lot. One of the highlights for me was this: how you’ve enacted the culture team separate to the HR team. And I realized that the CEO should not own HR, of course, but the CEO should own culture. And that’s a very good argument for why the two need to be separate. And yeah, I hope many more leaders listen to your message and, yeah. And like you said, and like Bob Chapman says, business has the potential to be the greatest force for good because we have people that are working in our businesses, you know, 40 hours a day. And who else has this potential to really make a difference in very small ways, but very small ways are what compound and reach, like you said, not just employees, but their families, their spouses, their children, the broader community. And we make everyone’s life a little bit, just a tiny bit more fulfilling in our small ways. So thank you for your time. Thank you for being here.
Jason: Thanks, Andreas, for having me. I appreciate it.
Andreas: And, to everyone else who’ve been listening, thank you for giving us your undivided attention. If you enjoyed this show as much as I did, creating it and talking with Jason, you can leave a five-star rating wherever you listen to your podcasts. And while you’re there, why not subscribe to the channel so you can never miss a future episode? Also, if you listened but did not watch, we have the video episode on YouTube where you can watch Jason and I. And finally, if you want to find more about how you can measure your culture so you can manage it, you can go to rethinkculture.co, and keep on, as I like to say, creating a happier workplace for you and especially for those around you. Take care.