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Unbound is a weekly podcast, created to help you achieve more as a leader. Join Chris DuBois as he shares his growth journey and interviews others on their path to becoming unbound. Delivered weekly on Thursdays.
On today's episode, the seeds of culture, so that you can bring a positive change to your organization. Are you a leader trying to get more from your business and life? Me too. So join me as I document the conversations, stories, and advice to help you achieve what matters in your life. Welcome to Unbound with me, Chris Dubois.
Chris DuBois:Dan Bradeson is the founder of Leadfront Consulting, where he consults businesses on organizational culture and leadership. With over 20 years of experience, Dan has held leadership positions with with Fortune 500 companies and several nonprofit organizations. Dan is the author of the seeds of culture, and we are going to explore that deeper today. Dan, welcome
Dan Bredeson:to Unbound. Well, thank you for having me, Chris. It's good to be here. Probably hear that from everybody though. Right?
Chris DuBois:Yeah. Everybody says it. Usually, I wait for the follow-up afterwards if if people are like, hey. Thanks again.
Dan Bredeson:Yeah. Alright. Have you ever had anyone come on here? And, you know, it's really not a pleasure to be here. And I don't I don't really Yeah.
Chris DuBois:Just just I can't believe you asked me.
Dan Bredeson:Alright. What am I doing here? No. No. It is for us.
Dan Bredeson:It's it's glad we're able to to connect again.
Chris DuBois:Yeah. And, I'm excited for this episode, which I mean, we'll get into it since we get into the questions, but why don't we start with your origin story?
Dan Bredeson:Right. So, because it is I guess it's we start at the at the very beginning, since we're doing an origin story. It's not as cool as like, like Wolverine or like Deadpool's, origin story, but, it it is my story nonetheless, so I know I know how it goes. Because it it does kind of feed into into the book that I wrote and some of the ideas that I have around organizational culture and leadership. I grew up on a small dairy farm in Southwest Wisconsin.
Dan Bredeson:And, just, you know, grew up as a farm kid, ended up going to, University of Wisconsin, got a degree from there, didn't really know what I wanted to do with it, but, went abroad for a while, lived and worked in London for about 7 months, Came back, still didn't really know what I wanted to do, but someone had said, hey, you know, I think you'd be pretty good if you got into sales. So, went and got a job in sales. It happened to be in the insurance and financial services industry, which is not something that a person normally wakes up you know, when they're 8 years old and say, I can't wait to go out there and sell insurance. That's not one of the not one of the I wanted to pitch for the Milwaukee Brewers, man, but my my fast ball couldn't get a speeding ticket in the school zone. So the the, I I got into sales and turned out that I was I was pretty good at it.
Dan Bredeson:And it just so happened that the the type of products that we were were selling in and the market in which we were were selling those products was was business to business. So I wasn't like sitting at someone's kitchen table and trying to, you know, sell them a life insurance policy at 8 o'clock at night. I was, you know, working Monday through Friday Friday, business to business, employee benefits, those type of things. So how did that give me some input and some guidance and insight into organizational culture? Well, the products that I was selling in the sales process started with started all the way in the c suite.
Dan Bredeson:Presidents, owners, CEOs, senior vice presidents of HR. And I'd I'd often be sitting in in boardrooms or or in their office and and we're we're talking about implementing, you know, employee benefits plan for their employees. And and the subject of of organizational culture or the type of culture that they had in that company would sometimes come up. Sometimes I'd see it, you know, painted on the walls in the lobby as I was sitting there waiting to go meet with them. So, these these senior leaders in an organization would tell me what they thought the culture of the organization was like.
Dan Bredeson:So, hey, when you go to implement these plans, you gotta remember, you know, what the culture of our organization is like. Right? That's fine. And then I would work my way down through the organization, meeting with middle management, all the way down to talking to frontline employees. Right?
Dan Bredeson:And I was just there to talk to them about some insurance. But talking to frontline employees and I'm there to talk about insurance. They're there to talk about everything else. Then I would hear everything about the company and the way that it was ran and how they would do things better. Or or Mhmm.
Dan Bredeson:One of the first questions that I would ask when I would sit down and talk to an employee would be, so so how long have you worked here? And and and they would they would tell me that I have been here 20 years. Well, why? Why I was just naturally curious, like, what keeps you coming back to work here every day for 20 years? Or sometimes he'd be like, yeah, I worked here 6 months and it's 6 months too long.
Dan Bredeson:You know? Well, why is that? Why don't you like working here? So in just going about my day to day sales job, I I saw every different level of an organization, like, each and every day, from the c suite down to frontline employees. And, you know, just by asking these these questions, like, how long have you worked here?
Dan Bredeson:What do you like about working here? And why? I I started to learn a lot about, you know, the perceptions of what a culture is in an organization versus what it actually is. And like a lot of things is if if you're good at sales, they're often gonna turn around and ask you to show other people how to sell. So I did that.
Dan Bredeson:So I was leading a small team and then I was pretty good at that. So then I was leading a larger team and then progressively larger teams until finally I'm, you know, kind of removed from the sales process. And now it's just about culture that I learned along the way? Like, you know, those those, culture that I learned along the way? Like, you know, those those, clients that I had that were, you know, really winning in both performance and with culture.
Dan Bredeson:What did they do that worked? The the clients that I had that were losing, either culturally or financially, well, what were they doing? Don't don't do that. And I tried to put some of that into the organizations that that I led. And I eventually, ended up going back and getting my master's degree, in organizational leadership and learning.
Dan Bredeson:So that gave me sort of the academic flare for, you know, looking into it. I saw the very practical, you know, aspects of organizational culture. I took that with, you know, I I did some research on organizational culture. I've always been fascinated by the intersection of leadership, culture, and an organization's performance. Did some research on that in grad school.
Dan Bredeson:And then I married that up with the beginning of our origin story, which is, you know, my growing up on my childhood, growing up on a farm to kind of come up with a different paradigm with how leaders can think about the culture in their organization and how that ultimately impacts the way that they lead and the performance that that organization is gonna get. So that's the origin story.
Chris DuBois:Alright. From a dairy farm to organizational, culture building.
Dan Bredeson:Yes. Yeah. Exactly.
Chris DuBois:So I'm going to throw you for a quick loop. I want to get into your book. But for this is like a personal thing now. I'm working on my definition for culture and just trying to, like because everybody has their own kinda take on it. I'm partial to Seth Godin, Says, like, people like us do things like this.
Dan Bredeson:Mhmm.
Chris DuBois:And and just always resonated with me. But I'm curious what your definition for culture is so that I can hopefully add it to my repertoire. Sure.
Dan Bredeson:You know what? It's not too far off of Seth Seth Godin's, and and I'll be real honest. It's not a it's nothing that I invented. It actually there there's a couple of organizational consultants back in the back in the eighties. They came up with what I thought was the most succinct definition of culture out there because there's a lot packed into those seven letters.
Dan Bredeson:Because when you're talking about culture, you could be talking about, what are what are we talking about? It covers everything from religion to food to music to, you know, if someone just says culture, you know, languages, what exactly does that mean? You know, music, there's a musical culture though. When it comes to organizational culture, what I hit upon, for the book and then as part of the definition is how we do things around here. So and then those things are everything.
Dan Bredeson:So if someone is wondering what the culture is like in an organization, well, it's how we do things around here. And those things are everything from the way that we hire, the way that we promote, the way that we demote, the way that we fire, the way that we walk, the way that we talk, what we what we the way that we dress, the way that we talk to customers, the way that we talk to our peers, the way that it it's it's the everything. It's how we do things. It's when you go to a a new hire orientation, if you join a new, you know, a new organization, they're gonna be telling you what we do around here. But then when you actually get outside of those four walls of the new hire orientation, and then you're interacting with all of your peers, that's when you're gonna learn how we do things around here.
Dan Bredeson:They're gonna tell you what what we do. You're gonna learn how we do it when you're actually interacting with your peers. So you said Godin's was like how how people like us do things around here, something like that?
Chris DuBois:Yeah. People like us do things like this. People like
Dan Bredeson:us do so that, you know, very similar to the this is how we do things around here. This is when you're in this group, this is how we do the things around here that need to get done.
Chris DuBois:Right. Yeah. I think a lot of it comes down to that that standard that you set and that you hold hold everyone accountable to because that becomes how you do the things. Right. So let's talk seeds of culture.
Chris DuBois:Mhmm. What are they?
Dan Bredeson:So the, it took me a while to come to that because when I first started, you know, listing out what the different seeds of cultural well, let's let's actually back up for a second. Where did I come up with this idea for seeds of culture? Where'd that name come up? It in all of the interactions that I had or many of the interactions that I had throughout my career, I noticed that there was a lot of organizations that were just kind of missing it. Right?
Dan Bredeson:The way that they were going about the culture in their organization was just not really working as it was leaders trying to build the culture of their organization. They would the story of a failing organization, it's it's it's a pretty common story. Meaning that if performance is down, you know, what typically happens in the organization? Do they fire every employee, or do they bring in a new leader? Could be a sports team.
Dan Bredeson:It could be a nonprofit. Could be a for profit organization, whatever. If it's underperforming, they typically get rid of the new leader, get rid of the leader, bring in a new leader, and that new leader comes in and makes a lot of grandiose promises up to and including, we're gonna build the culture around here. We're we're gonna transform the culture. We're gonna change the culture of this organization.
Dan Bredeson:So obviously, there's sort of this passive understanding that that culture impacts the performance of an organization. But they're they're often talking about it in construction terms. We need to build, transform, mold, change the culture and, you know, that that that can work for a while. They'll they'll change the morale of the organization, but if they don't really address it properly, the old old culture bubbles to the surface, under performance happens again, and then we gotta get now we gotta get another new leader in here. So the it kinda struck me that the most successful leaders that I worked with treated it as an organic process.
Dan Bredeson:It it culture it was more about nurturing the culture. It was about growing culture. And anything that grows, I know from my days on the farm, but anyone kinda knows this, is that it's gonna come from seeds. So what what are the the seeds of culture that are gonna grow up into the, you know, the type of culture that's gonna impact the performance of an organization? So that's why they're seeds.
Dan Bredeson:And I started on the outline, I had about 20 of them. And then like 20 different ideas of things to throw out there. Like, what are some good things that a a cultural farmer can plant that are gonna grow into a culture of commitment? And the way that I narrowed it down to the 7 seeds that I came up with is I did what I called the absence test, which was in the absence of blank, are you going to get a culture of committed people? And if the answer was no, well then that must be included as a seed of culture.
Dan Bredeson:So the first one is effective communication and putting it to the absence desk. In the absence of effective communication, are you going to get a culture of commitment? The answer is no. If you get really bad, crappy communication, you're not gonna get a bunch of committed people. They're gonna be wondering, you know, what's what's the real story.
Dan Bredeson:And and effective communication define in 3 ways which is clarity, consistency, and transparency. If you're not clearly communicating, if you're not consistently communicating, if you're if you're if you're not, you don't have transparency in your communication then it's it's not gonna they're fostering the type of culture that you want. The second one is ethics. Pretty self explanatory. There's, you know, there's you can win financially in an unethical culture for a while on the short term, but you know, we we don't need Woodward and Bernstein anymore in order to to find companies that are that are unethical.
Dan Bredeson:It's, you know, someone with their cell phone can put it on the internet and you're going to be on blast before you know it. So you can't really hide your bad ethics for too long nowadays. So I know I wouldn't want to commit myself to an unethical organization, and most people are in the same boat. The third one is psychological safety, which is that that is the ability to communicate and interact with your peers without fear of embarrassment or reprisal if you happen to make a mistake. And it's it's operating without fear.
Dan Bredeson:The, 4th one is is I call it diversity is a good start. Meaning that diversity isn't just about checking boxes or having, a diverse group on on your team, which is very important. You also have to continue going towards till you get equity and then actually inclusive. Because if you when you have inclusion, then people are bringing them full selves to the organization. You're gonna be able service many more markets.
Dan Bredeson:It's just gonna be a better organization for everybody. The next one is generosity. I found that the best leaders, the best culture farmers that I've run into are extremely generous. That's gonna foster a culture of commitment. Number 6 is autonomy.
Dan Bredeson:You know, providing people the the means to to have a certain level of autonomy and feel like they they have personal agency in where their career is taking them. If you can give them a bit of autonomy, they're going to be more committed to the organization. And then finally, it's mutual accountability, which is I refer to as the hybrid seed of culture. Meaning that if you've got the other 6 working together, you're gonna get this level of mutual accountability where the organization polices itself. If someone comes in who's counter to the culture that's been growing there, the their peers are gonna hold them accountable before, the leader has to come in with any type of, like, you know, inspect what I expect type of accountability.
Chris DuBois:Right. Awesome. So I guess those are 7 things that everyone should be doing. What are how can, like, a leader come in and kind of identify some of those unhealthy aspects of their, you know, their culture?
Dan Bredeson:The so if you're trying to figure out, you know, what's kinda what needs changing, right, Or what are gonna be the signs that maybe there's some some cultural problems? Turnover is gonna be a big one. I mean, maybe that's obvious, not so obvious, but, you know, during the great resignation, a toxic culture was identified as the single biggest predictor of turnover. MIT did a study on it. It was interesting that, you know, we we often think that people are gonna leave one job and go to another strictly for compensation, but compensation ranks 16th on a list of reasons why people quit a job.
Dan Bredeson:Toxic culture is number 1. Compensation is 16th. Actually, culture is 10 times more likely to predict turnover than, compensation. So there's that, absenteeism is another big sign that maybe there might be some cultural issues. Quiet quitting, that's been kind of a buzzword, you know, that's been going around.
Dan Bredeson:Is it not so much anymore. It's kind of funny how things like the great resignation and quiet quitting are like buzzwords when the economy is going like this and the job it's a red hot job market. As the job market starts to slow down a little bit, there's there's there's less talk of that because there's less folks willing to quit their job if they're afraid they can't go find another one. But quiet quitting to me, it's really just employees who put more no more effort into their jobs than absolutely necessary. Quiet quitting is doing just the bare minimum to keep you from getting fired.
Dan Bredeson:I would define that as really just a lack of commitment, lack of commitment to the organization. So but if you can kind of sense that there are folks just doing the bare minimum in order to hold on to their job, that's a sign of some some toxic culture. A lack of performance if the organization is starting to underperform. You know, this has been something that's been studied and known about since the eighties. There was a, 2 Harvard professors, Cotter and Heskett, that they found that good, strong, positive, culturally affirming, organizations, you know, they had 4 times the revenue of organizations with a toxic so it it's been around for years.
Dan Bredeson:In 2020, MIT did did they they released their their latest list of culture champions. And they found that folks that were on their list of culture champions, you know, they outperformed the S and P 500 by 4 times. They now outperformed Nasdaq 2 times. Like, they if your organization is starting to underperform, it could be a cultural issue. Is there gossip?
Dan Bredeson:Is there gossip? That that's a good sign. I goes to be a bad sign or a good sign that there's a bad culture. How about that if there's gossip going throughout? And then, another thing is a lack of what's called OCBs, and something that I touch on, in the book, which is organizational citizenship behaviors.
Dan Bredeson:And, OCBs would be going above and beyond, helping out your fellow coworker, staying a little bit longer, arriving a little bit earlier. Basically doing things going above and beyond to, to help the organization. So if you have a lack of OCBs, that's a good sign that you probably don't have a good culture in place. Let's go. I've got so
Chris DuBois:many so many questions here that I I wanna get into. I'm trying to figure out what what would be the most valuable for, for everybody. I guess knowing all these things, knowing that you can have such a large financial impact just by paying attention to culture, What would you say is the the quickest win, I guess, that someone could have, like, if they had to address one thing today to just get it on track that would make everything else easy as far as culture building?
Dan Bredeson:I would start with and and I would start with understanding that the leader needs to grow the culture, actually not build it. I would I would say if the leader can start with the mindset that there's not going to be a quick fix, but how about a place to start? And understanding that the the growth of culture is is going to take time. And a place for leaders to start would be starting today, start thinking about culture in terms of being a farmer and not a carpenter. Don't try to force culture into the organization.
Dan Bredeson:That was kind of the the, you know, the seed of an idea behind the whole book was that an organic process is is going to take time. And but you can start by first being a good culture farmer. I mean, that that there there are, kind of six attributes that I have seen of of successful, you know, culture farmers. So if you were to start today, I would probably start by accepting if you're a leader, accepting the responsibility for the culture. It's not something that that you can pass on to someone else.
Dan Bredeson:And and here's an interesting thing, Chris, is I can't think of a single instance where I was working with an organization or it was brought in by a leader of an organization that was underperforming. And I can't think of a single instance where I was brought in by an existing leader who pointed to culture as the problem. And I think that's because they kind of subconsciously understand that they are the ones responsible for where that culture is. So it's like if they throw the culture under the bus, they kind of understand that they're kind of throwing themselves under the bus. It's always someone else's fault.
Dan Bredeson:Right? But one of the first things I get them to do is just accept responsibility for the culture. And first thing, you know, I call these the traits of successful culture farmers is start to make it a priority. Start to talk about it, you know? When I will be sitting in those lobbies waiting to go talk to potential clients and I saw that the cultural values were on the wall, that's a good start.
Dan Bredeson:Right? That that's a good start, but it can't be where it ends either. Just putting it in your your, you know, your your annual review or putting it on your website under the about section. We believe this, like, yes, if you're going to espouse those values, you gotta make sure that you're living those values and making it a priority as well. I would ask leaders if they're looking for a place to start is, you know, what's your affinity for people?
Dan Bredeson:That's another one of the traits of successful culture farmers I've seen, which is do you actually like people? You would think that liking people would be a prerequisite for leading people, but that that's not always the case. We I've run into plenty of leaders where I'm like, man, do you even like people? Like, what? Maybe you shouldn't have been in the people business.
Dan Bredeson:And and I think it's, you know, they probably were very enthusiastic and loved everybody when they were first promoted, but cynicism can start to to creep in when you start seeing people performing at their worst versus, you know, their best. So if you can just recognize that, hey, I need to maybe re up my affinity for people and then really start by humbling yourself and going at it with an awful lot of humility and curiosity. There's been times in my career where where maybe my affinity was wavering. My affinity for for people was, you know, wavering a little bit. And the organization I was leading, I can think of one time, we really got humbled by the marketplace.
Dan Bredeson:And I was like, I I gotta check myself here. What's going on? What am I doing in your organization? And kind of the marketplace bringing me down to earth and and making me humble. It also made me curious about the folks that I had in the organization and and learning more about them and where they're coming from, what their goals are.
Dan Bredeson:So that would be the second thing I would say. Maintaining your authenticity. You know, people are looking for real things. They're they're but without that that hustle and grind culture that we got out there, and there's so many people out there trying to be influencers for this and that, it's really easy for for leaders to end up as just some kind of fake version of, you know, some hybrid of this person they saw on Instagram and this other person that they they they follow on LinkedIn like, you know, be yourself, you know, be the best version of yourself, but really, you know, be be authentic. Credibility, you know, do do you if we're looking at things we can look at today is, do you have any blind spots?
Dan Bredeson:And and do you have have you put anyone into a leadership position who maybe wasn't ready and and you didn't do anything to help get them ready? You know, if you if you promote someone, the entire organization is looking at you if if you promote someone too early. Make sure that you're always bringing value as well.
Chris DuBois:I
Dan Bredeson:have, you know, another part of of being a good culture farmer is integrity. So I put credibility and integrity together like this for culture farmers in that. Credibility is the reason why people will start listening to you and integrity is the reason why they'll continue listening to you. If you don't have any credibility, people are gonna be asking themselves, well, why am I listening to Dan? Why am I listening to Chris?
Dan Bredeson:Right? But if you can find ways to always bring value to every interaction that you have with them, that's gonna be making deposits into your credibility bank. Now if you lie to them, if you don't follow-up on your word or you you promote someone who really shouldn't have been promoted, well, that's gonna be withdrawals from your credibility bank. And then when, you know, integrity is pretty self explanatory. You know, I remember one of the earliest definitions I saw for integrity was doing the right thing even while no one's watching, which is good.
Dan Bredeson:That's fine. I prefer to think about integrity as doing the right thing because everyone's watching. As a leader, you're on a pedestal. People are watching every decision that you make, everything that you say. So that's why it's really important to do the right thing because everyone is watching and that's gonna impact your credibility as well.
Dan Bredeson:And then, finally is just maintaining the energy to to be a good leader. So if if you're trying to get something started, I guess this is a long winded answer to to your question, which is, you know, where do you start today? You start on yourself. Right? And making sure that you have the energy in order to go through this this cultural growth, this this farming of culture.
Dan Bredeson:I break energy down into 3 things. There's the mental energy, which is always keep learning. Oh, you know, you're never you're never through learning. I I believe it was attributed to Kennedy, something along the lines of that. The leader who is through learning or the the leader who's finished learning is finished kind of thing.
Dan Bredeson:The physical energy to maintain, you know, the, just the the physical energy to do this work, you know, it can be exhausting. And also the the emotional energy. Emotional energy is, you know, it's a combination of resilience and optimism. K? Can you can you maintain your optimism?
Dan Bredeson:That's kind of your emotional offense and your emotional defense is gonna be your resiliency. How resilient are you and how can you mend without breaking, so to speak?
Chris DuBois:Right. Yeah. Everybody needs that optimism. It's why would you follow a leader without it? But so okay.
Chris DuBois:So we talked ownership being that critical base, and that's something I I saw in the army quite a bit, the people that took ownership of their culture because it is truly the one thing the leader owns in the organization, that culture. And you could see, right, the ones who took ownership of that culture really made that organization stand out because they took it personal when things weren't going well. They, like, they wanted to fix it. Now in a larger organization, you get, like, subcultures, right, where it's, you know, we got the sales team, we got the marketing team. How do you kind of maintain that ownership knowing that each, each of those individual cultures, it's going to change a bit because of who's leading those organizations.
Chris DuBois:So, like, do you have some I don't know, an approach, like, for kind of making sure the organization as a whole is still kind of in line with that while still letting people foster that smaller group, you know, kind of I don't want to call it tribalism, but No.
Dan Bredeson:It's it's You know
Chris DuBois:what I'm saying?
Dan Bredeson:No. The subcultures are subcultures are probably the most organic part of of the larger culture. And, studies have shown that sub the subcultures have a larger impact on a person's commitment to the organization than even the larger, broader culture. So it's something that to be aware of. And best way to describe that is that, you know, your particular department supervisor might be awesome, even if the boss that they report to sucks, you know, that that person might be a jerk, but, you know, maybe you have a great leader of your particular department who does a good job of buffering, you know, buffering the corporate BS that may be coming down or vice versa.
Dan Bredeson:Maybe you've got a great CEO who's out there, and but, you know, your direct supervisor is a real jerk. That's gonna impact it doesn't matter how great the CEO is if you're the person that you how often you're actually gonna interact with the CEO, like never, you know? It's not like they're walking by your desk every day patting you on the back. If your direct daily supervisor is a jerk, that's really gonna impact your level of commitment to the organization. So what leaders can do is simply be aware that there are going to be subcultures that come up.
Dan Bredeson:It's really more about disabling negative subcultures than encouraging positive ones. Because they're gonna come up on their own. They're gonna happen. It's I would also question if have you really planted the seed of diversity if you don't get subcultures? If you don't have folks who are, you know, if everyone walks, talks, and acts the same, then how diverse really is that organization?
Dan Bredeson:If how do you really have psychological safety in that organization if if people aren't a little bit different? I've led I have led, the island of misfit toys on more than one occasion in my career. It's it's the it's the team that's a little bit more quirky. I'd like to say that we had the most fun. But, it it's going to be there.
Dan Bredeson:There's, you know, if it gets out of, you know, too negative or too far outside the bounds of how we do things around here, then the mutual accountability that has grown will take care of it.
Chris DuBois:Right. Yeah. That makes sense. I guess, at what size do you think an organization starts to have subcultures and how large do those subcultures have to become before they're, you know, someone to pay attention to?
Dan Bredeson:That's a great question. I don't know if you can put us Yeah.
Chris DuBois:It's hard to quantify.
Dan Bredeson:Yeah. It's it's hard to quantify that. The number that popped in my head is that when you get 3 or 4 people together in any one particular team, they're gonna start, you know, taking on a life of their own. What from your experience in the army, what where would you put the number?
Chris DuBois:Yeah. I was gonna say about 3 to 4. We do so there's a the span of influence or span of control rather when in the army where we'll never have more than 3 to 5 units within the, within the like command of the next higher echelon. And so, you know, you'll have 3 to 4 dudes who are in a team and then you'll have 2 teams in a squad and then 4 squads and a platoon. And so you're always trying to maintain that kind of size to keep things small, but you can see, even at a team level within a platoon that like one team might do things way different than another team, even though you're 36 guys are all interacting together on a daily basis.
Chris DuBois:It's like just that small group is able to, kind of take on a life of its own. Just interesting. And to be able to
Dan Bredeson:see it. I thought the kind of the military number I'd heard, and obviously I wasn't in the military, so you know better than I do, was like 6, you know. Or maybe someone just told me that, like, don't have more than 6 direct reports because then it gets kinda hard to, you know, hard hard to manage.
Chris DuBois:Maybe in the maybe in the navy, they're all in the they're all in a boat. It's easy. Right? You don't have to run very far. You just have to get one end of the ship to the other.
Chris DuBois:Yeah. Span it span and control for the, at least, in the army, 3 to 5. Yeah. Usually, 4. 4 is like that magic number.
Dan Bredeson:Yeah. Yeah. I just I don't know where I where I'd heard that, but I'm it kinda made sense to me because in my head, I was thinking of it in terms of like, you know, if there's if there's 8 hours in a day they're supposed to be working, like, you can kind of devote like 1 hour to each person and then a couple extra hours on yourself. I don't know. But that that was just how, the oversimplification in my head.
Dan Bredeson:But, yeah. It's if you have 12 direct reports, things start to get a little squirrelly. That's a technical term for you there.
Chris DuBois:Hard.
Dan Bredeson:Yeah. Yeah.
Chris DuBois:No. Definitely, you start losing a like, you you just can't pay attention to everything at once. So
Dan Bredeson:Yeah. That's where they get the is that how people get in trouble with their their lack of institutional control? And then that's how college coaches always get fired because it just there's lack of institutional control. Like, yeah.
Chris DuBois:Yeah. No. Definitely. So let's start. We have now moved into a remote environment, a hybrid environment, if you will.
Chris DuBois:I've ran an organization that was completely remote prior to COVID. So it was a little different as far as like no one was shifting to learning the new way of doing things. But, like, I guess organizations that do have deals where you can't see everybody every day and you're not necessarily building these connections and doing those things. What advice would you have for those organizations as they try to grow their culture and into something that actually flourishes when they, you know, don't have immediate access to everybody continuously.
Dan Bredeson:Yeah. It's it's interesting because a few years ago, if someone said, oh, that company has got a great culture, I mean, that they had, like, beanbags and craft beer on tap in the break room. You know? It it meant that you could bring your dog to work. That that was the definition of of culture was, oh, this is so cool.
Dan Bredeson:We play ping pong on our breaks. You know, well, COVID kind of took that away, didn't it? No one's showing up in the office. Doesn't matter what what all the great, perks are while you're there if no one's showing up anyways. And I think, kind of brought it back to what do what do people really value.
Dan Bredeson:I in I got a whole chapter kind of on the great resignation and what that meant from a cultural perspective. And it really for me, the the great resignation is 2 things. It was you could call it the great resignation or it could be just the great correction, could be the the labor market correcting itself after the world opened back up, or the great epiphany, meaning that when people were sent home to work from home and they didn't have to commute anymore and they got more time with their family, they had this epiphany that, oh, I kind of like this, I would prefer to work remote. From a cultural perspective, I say this is that by the definition of culture being how we do things around here, all of those things still need to get done whether I'm showing up at work or whether I'm I'm working at home. You know, I I, you know, I worked in a remote, environment for a while, and and I got onboarded remotely.
Dan Bredeson:I worked with all of my peers remotely. Is it easier or harder to make a connection with a person? That's probably a little harder remotely. So so you may have to go out of your way to, you know, to to make a connection. One thing that I appreciated about the the organization that I worked with was they made an effort for us to get together, like, once a quarter.
Dan Bredeson:And that was about all I I wanted because we often hear folks complain about when they're working remotely that that lack of personal connection, I don't see everybody so much or whatever. You kinda you can't have it both ways, meaning that you can't enjoy working from home and then complain that you don't get to go to the office. Right? Which which one is it? So what what's the happy medium?
Dan Bredeson:I found that for me, and this is just me, my sweet spot was seeing my peers about once a quarter. Maybe that could be once a month. So if a leader's looking at it like, all right, how could we, within budget, get folks together in a frequent enough time that they're going to feel this connection with everybody versus, you know, forcing them back to the office. I'm sorry. The term is welcoming welcoming them back to the office.
Dan Bredeson:You are they are invited to return to the office. When folks are forced back to the office, it just breeds resentment cause they got so used to working remote. But now if you're gonna invite them back, then, you know, say, Yuval, you gotta come in 2 days a week. Now it's 3. Now it's 4.
Dan Bredeson:You can you can find that happy medium. I would say, if you can find a way for folks to get together face to face once a month to once a quarter, that's going to kind of only those fears of or or those those concerns of I don't have a good connection with the folks. And you may think that, well, that doesn't seem like much once a quarter, you know, or or even once a month. Think about how fast a month flies by. We're busy doing all of the things that we need to be doing.
Dan Bredeson:We got we have family obligations. We have work obligations. If you want to create some connections, that's about how frequently I would suggest getting folks together, if that's a concern. Yeah.
Chris DuBois:Yeah. That makes sense. Alright. Yeah. Lots of awesome tips, wins, approaches for getting culture
Dan Bredeson:baked
Chris DuBois:into this episode. So, yeah, I think you delivered on the credibility and integrity side of this.
Dan Bredeson:Thank you.
Chris DuBois:But the so I wanna get into, 3 kind of final questions here. Sure. With the first being, separate from your book, what book do you recommend everyone should read?
Dan Bredeson:There's one that's on my desk right now. In whenever there's like a like a change movement going on. One that I've I pulled off my shelf recently is called Leading Change by John Kotter. I mean, it was it's probably close to 30 years old now, but it's been updated a few times. It really is kind of a step by step process for any type of organizational change, you know, even addresses like cultural things that have have to happen.
Dan Bredeson:So I'll give you 2. Have you ever, read the, the four disciplines of execution? 4 d x, that's another good one. That's, that's good when you need to, like, tactically, like, execute on something right now. The the idea being that strategy is knowing what to do.
Dan Bredeson:Execution is knowing how to do it. And so they've they've got a very tactical regimented process for how to get an organization to execute on something. And and it it it's so it's not dissimilar from, you know, leading change and kinda leading a change initiative that you need to make. There's an 8 step process that that Kotter lays out. It's a pretty famous one.
Dan Bredeson:And then the the forty x has been very good because it's it's, like, super tactical on what to do, to get an organization to execute.
Chris DuBois:Alright. I gotta check both of those out. So, what is next for you professionally?
Dan Bredeson:Starting to do more, more keynotes and things like that. Had a few organizations invite me in to kinda deliver a keynote message and then, you know, stay behind and and work with the team. So I'm getting into to doing some some more of that. And, yeah, that's kind of my keynote and followed up with workshopping and and leading discussions afterwards for senior leaders and organizations. Awesome.
Chris DuBois:And, finally, where can people find you?
Dan Bredeson:Find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on, danbredesom.com. Danbreedesom.com. That's how you can get in contact me, contact with me or or hit me up on LinkedIn or, Instagram, danbradisonauthor.com. Check them out there.
Dan Bredeson:The book's available anywhere that you you buy books. So Amazon, Barnes and Noble, probably the greatest achievement in my daughter's eyes was that, the book was available at her favorite store, Target. So that was and now daddy had made the big time, you know. Right. So, yeah.
Dan Bredeson:Seeds of Culture is a book, and it's available anywhere you buy books. Awesome.
Chris DuBois:Alright. Thanks for thanks for joining me.
Dan Bredeson:Hey. Thanks for having me. That was a lot of fun. Appreciate
Chris DuBois:it. Was it, like, a legit thanks for having me?
Dan Bredeson:It is. Actually, it is. Alright. Alright. That yeah.
Dan Bredeson:No. This was this was good. The I'd like to give a first conversation that we had, and then, this was just a continuance of that. So I appreciate it.
Chris DuBois:If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. And for more information on how to build effective and efficient teams through your leadership, visit leading for effect.com. As always, deserve it.