Transcript of The Culture Delusion Everyone Regrets - Jessica Kriegel

Welcome to the Proven podcast, where we don't care what you think, only what you can prove. On this episode, Jessica and I attack culture. Culture by itself is a polarizing conversation, and that's exactly what this was. This was a conversation. There were agreements, there were disagreements, there were things we aligned on and things we completely view differently. But at the end of it, it changed how I view culture, and it gave me more insights to be a better leader and to help scale everything that I've done in my life. With that said, the show starts now. All right, everybody, welcome back to the show. I'm excited for today's guest. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Thanks for having me.

For the four or five people who are in the world who don't know who you are, we tell a little bit about who you are, what you do, and all of that.

You're giving me a lot more credit for being renowned than I actually am. You got a TEDx talk coming up, so it's getting much. It'll be my second. So yes, if you've seen my first one, which is called How to Get People to Give a Shit, then maybe you'll be interested in the second one.

Or not give a shit at all.

Yeah, Well, I mean, I think a lot of employees today don't give a shit, which is a scratcher for leaders. I am the Chief Strategy Officer at a culture consulting firm called Culture Partners, and I'm also an author of an upcoming book called Surrender to Lead.

Mazel to. So some of the stuff you've done, you talked about you've done TEDx Talks. What was your experience prior to what you're doing now? What are the things that got you here? How did you get to that journey? Just to give the audience an idea of why are we listening to her? What's happening? That's what we're trying to go on the- Yeah, good question.

I spent 10 years at Oracle. And at Oracle, I was the head of strategy for the head of cloud. I was one person away from our CEO helping lead transformation efforts, so expert in change and culture. At the same time that I was at Oracle, I went and got my doctoral degree in educational leadership and management and wrote my doctoral dissertation. It was quantitative research on generational dynamics at work, talking about millennials. Gen Xers weren't even on the map back when I wrote this dissertation. I went into that research thinking I was going to figure out what millennials want and how to engage and attract and retain them, which was what everyone wanted to know at that time. What I came out with was the realization that that's a bunch of stereotyping BS, and that ultimately we got to get away from talking about each other in those labels because they're actually limiting our ability to understand the underlying issues that are going on in the workplace. I wrote a book about that, and that blew up. I started a keynote career, which was really a side hustle at first until it started making more money than my actual job at Oracle.

Then I left and did that on my own. Briefly, enjoyed a job as a chief HR officer at a different technology company, and then ultimately sold my business to Culture Partners, and that's where I am now.

So when we talk about this, I love the idea of instead of being a broadsword, using a scalpel when it comes to people, it's like, Oh, this person is a Boston Red Sox fan, therefore they're this. And it just never works that way. Having that What are some of the things you found out with millennials and with all of that that are just blatantly wrong? Listen, if you're applying this in your environment, in your workspace, and you're using this brush for millennials or Gen Z or Gen X, or which I'm a fan of Gen X because I am one, so we are the best outside of the greatest generation. Clearly. Clearly. It's not like the boomers or the greatest generation who actually might be the greatest generation. What are the things that you found about millennials that people just are blatantly you're on about?

The brush is the word millennial. Anything that you associate with a generation, and it could be millennials or the greatest generation, even you saying maybe they are the greatest generation, you've already started brushing. So what I'm saying is that as a classifier is completely fabricated. I mean, first of all, the word millennial did not exist until 1990 when the grandfathers of this entire research, and I'm saying that with air quotes, research industry, invented the word. The years that define the millennials have changed, the stereotypes around them, the most common for millennials, which is my generation, so it's the one that hurts the most, is we're entitled, we're tech savvy, we're lazy, we want to save the planet. Gen Z is just millennials on steroids, they're ADHD, they have no interpersonal skills, they're completely addicted to technology. All of that is inaccurate. What makes up a person's values and character and behaviors, it is the experiences they've had that lead to the beliefs that they hold that are going to motivate the actions that they take day to day. That is going to be based on thousands of factors and hundreds of thousands of experiences. Not the arbitrary age bracket that you happen who have been born within.

That for some it's a 20-year-wide age bracket, for others it's 14 years. We understand that intellectually when we use other labels. You can't say, Well, Blacks are entitled and Whites are tech-savvy. But we've been It's been drilled into us that race, for example, is an inappropriate stereotype, and gender is an inappropriate stereotype. But for generation, it's just so socially acceptable that we don't even realize that's what we're doing. It's really ageism hiding in a generational label, and it's oversimplifying the complexity of human behavior. It takes you down the wrong path. It's just, stop. If we never said the word millennial again, I think that would be better. We'd be better off for it.

Yeah, I think it goes with the human behavior wanting to have a shortcut. It's just at the end of the day, we want to shortcut things. We want to say, Oh, you believe in this, you belong to this party, therefore, it's this. It's post hoc, therefore, because of it. It's like, We believe in this, therefore, this is what it is. It doesn't work in any way, shape, or form.

Yeah. Hedon Hedgefell called it in-group, out-group dynamics. I want to be part of an in-group. It makes me feel better. It gives me more self-esteem. In order to be in the group, there needs to be an out-group, and that's to other people. Let me just give you this test. No one has ever said, Oh, I wish I was a part of that generation. It doesn't matter what generation you are or which one we're talking about. No one wishes they were a baby boomer or wishes they were Gen Z. Everyone always thinks their generation is the best generation, which makes you feel better about yourself that you're in the in-group and everyone else, therefore, must be in the out-group. It's actually dysfunctional and destructive in the workplace.

In Hebrew, we say goyum or gentiles, which is the nicest term is then. That's the nicest way we could say it. When you say gentile, it's the general. General, it's them. It's that differentiation between it is what it is. It's not a good sign. It's not a good look. The next thing we're going to talk about is cultures. And talk about not a good look. It's 2025. We're wrapping up towards the end of it here. And as we walk into this, we've lost over a million jobs. And there's a lot of people in our space, in entrepreneurs, in running big businesses, the people that come to people like you and I that say, Hey, yeah, culture is important, but we don't know what culture is. And therefore, is culture more important than profit? How do they play off each other? Because I think at different levels, there's different answers to that. I'm really excited to get into that with you. It was the most favorite part of this. We're going to rip apart this from an entrepreneurial side, versus an academia side, versus a corporate side, because they are very different views towards culture. So for the people playing at home, what is culture?

It's the way that people think and act to get results.

Okay, that's simple. How important is culture now when things are on fire, when we're the hemorrhaging jobs?

Well, how important is it to you as an entrepreneur how your employees think and act to get results? I mean, it is the most important thing. I sympathize with the leaders who think that people in profitability or culture in profitability are these two opposing forces that we need to balance and find the right equilibrium so that our profitability can soar and our people will thrive. That's the narrative out there because we think in extremes, and people often advocate and evangelize in extremes. There's a whole bunch of culture experts out there, quote, unquote, that are really just bleeding heart, touchy feely, do the right thing folks that want you to make the world a better place. They're advocating for Things like, bring your authentic self to work. My opinion, that's a terrible idea. Do not bring your authentic self to work. Bring your professional self to work. Your authentic self can talk to your husband about that. There's the people who are saying, we need to Even the DEI thing, for example. Let's talk about DEI. The idea that we need to make people feel included is pretty no-brainer. The idea that we want diversity of thought in business is a no-brainer.

But people have taken that, slapped a label on it, made it a program, hired a DEI head, given it a budget or not a lot of the time, and then run a bunch of metrics. That doesn't change the way people think and act. If you care about DEI, it's about how do you get people to believe that that is important, and then you can move the needle on that, but these programs don't work. Culture people are out there saying, be your best self, do the right thing, the The consequences may be a little bit of profitability, but that's the right thing at the end of the day. And business leaders are looking at those folks and saying, you guys have no idea what it's like to run a business. It's just not how it works. It's not how I want to run a business, because if I run a business that way, I'll be asked to leave eventually. As an entrepreneur, maybe you can hold on with gritted teeth until the bitter end, but it's not going to help your business. Let me show you how the two can live in harmony and actually both can be better off together.

We know that results are what we're looking for in business. That's like the be all end all. You could be the nicest, most humble leader on the planet, but if you're not getting results, no one's writing a Harvard business review case study about you, and no one's writing home about anything that you did, no matter how wonderful you acted. Results are the be all end all of leadership success. We know the results come from the actions of people at your organization. That's where most leaders stop. They actually just focus on, What do I need people to do in order to get the result? That's what leads to burnout and exhaustion and micromanaging and this illusion that you can just mandate people to take action at work and that that will get you a result. That is That's just bad leadership. You got to ask yourself the question, what motivates people to take proactive action? What moves people to offer that discretionary effort that you so much wish that they would give you at work? The answer is their deeply held beliefs. If they believe in the company, and they believe in you as a leader, and they believe in the product, and they believe in their ability to impact the bottom line, and that makes them feel good, well, then they're going to offer you all of the discretionary effort because they feel fulfilled by working here.

That's the level that you have to operate at. Tapping into people's beliefs, going back to my TEDx talk, it's how to get people to give a shit. You have to get them to believe that they care about what your company is doing. If they don't care, then they're just phoning it in and they've quiet quit and your profitability suffers. As a leader, how you tap into that belief layer is all of our beliefs come from the experiences that we've had. The experiences we had with our teachers, with our family, at school, with our past employers, with you, those experiences shape the beliefs I hold, and that's what gets them to take action, and that's what gets you a result. You have to align all of those elements. You as a leader, cannot really control your people, but you can control the experiences that you create for them. When you create intentional experiences that will shape the right beliefs so that they take the right action that you want them to take so that you can get a result, you unlock We studied this with Stanford, 4X profitability. I mean, the companies that were stuck in that action trap of just what do I got to do, they grew on average in a study we did over three years, 10%.

Companies that operated at the belief layer, they at the same three-year period, grew by 42%. It's 4X growth when you operate at that belief level. Oh, by the way, your people will actually be super fulfilled and interested in the work they're doing because it's what they believe. Here's where profitability and people or culture can both thrive instead of, let's put a bunch of money into a Napa retreat where we're going to fly everyone in a hot air balloon and give them a pizza party and get wasted together so that they're, quote, happy. Then we go back to work and nothing has changed in how we actually impact results and actually it cost you a bunch of money.

So there's a lot to unpack there. And so you go into the idea of beliefs versus, Hey, I'm going to throw you a party. My question is, where does ethos come into? Where does hiring come into? And also, when we talked about DEI and all of that, when you get into a situation and you're a smaller business, we've got a couple of people that they're 9, 10 people shops, and they're doing $100 million a year, versus these behemoths of companies that are just so inundated with ineffectiveness. Because at the end of the day, it's the people who execute. In my world, it's the people who execute. We'll figure out the plan later. We execute. We're not going to sit there and say, Are you pretty? Are you nice? Do you feel fulfilled? We execute, and we hire on level. So it's a completely different ecosystem, and it's a completely different ethos, because either we execute or I can't feed someone else in the organization. It's very simple as we do this. So if you're fulfilled, that's great. That's adorable. I love that. I'm going to try my best to meet your needs, even though there's a hierarchy of needs that you might be driven by significance, while this one might be driven by certainty or wherever they are on that scope.

As someone who runs organizations, I've got to be balancing that. But at the end of the day, if someone isn't fulfilled, it's more important for me to make sure that we're hitting numbers so I can feed that other person's kids. That's my job. I have to make sure that we hit our goals so I can make sure I pay for their things.

When it comes into this- If you have someone who's not fulfilled working on your team, are they giving you 100% So I don't ever expect anyone to give me 100 %.

I think that's the difference. I don't think anybody ever would give 100 %, because if I walked in, and please correct me if I'm wrong, if an employee is absolutely 1,000 % giving me 100 %, they probably are wearing a green hat and are about a foot and a half tall because they're a leprechaun. They don't exist. Most people are going in and they're executing, regrettably, enough to keep their jobs or to meet that next pain hit that they want to get rid of. Hey, I want that next goal. I want that next thing. That's what they're trying to do because I will not be their first job, and I probably won't be their last job. That's just the end of the day.

This is the language thing. Call it that. They're executing enough to keep their jobs. Correct. Now, there's The core that they could give that would be that discretionary effort, the extra proactive nature of idea generating or process improvement, the thing that goes beyond the scope of what they need to do to keep their jobs, which makes the A player. That's the top talent person that you want all of them to be like that, that are sometimes a little bit more difficult to manage because they expect more, because they produce more. The people who are doing that are fulfilled in the work that they're doing. The people who checked out are doing the bare minimum or not. I'm not talking about fulfilled as in, I love you, you love me. I'm talking about, I want to fulfill the goals here. That's what moves me, and therefore, I'm going to do more than just the bare minimum. That happens at their inner belief layer. You can't just control freak people into doing that. They're going to do the bare minimum until you call them out on it. We're actually talking about the same thing. I think we agree.

Yeah.

My question is, when do we do it at the hiring level?

At the hiring level, yeah.

When you talk about operators or in the sale of communities or special forces operators or even small businesses, we hire very quickly. We fire faster. It happens very, very... So in my world, I will incentivize people. If I hire you and you don't like it, I will pay you 90 days to go away because it will cost me more money than to deal with you. So we move through it very, very quickly. We hold people to certain expectations. We walk through, say, What do you think you're going to do? This is what you like to do. Boom, let's go. There's this whole concept. There's a book, it's a great book by a guy named Jocke Willick. It's called Extreme Ownership. And it's pushing down decentralized command. And what I have found is in high-end corporate environments, it doesn't execute well because it's just such a big moving chip versus a smaller vessel. So I'm curious with the studies the stuff that you've been given back because on my world, we don't worry about DEI. We're not big enough. We're moving too quickly. We're going to hire the best person for the job at the time.

If they continue to execute, they get to stay. If they don't, I wish them the best on their journey. So we move very quickly. I'm curious with your research on what you've done because you've done our house stuff. You've done stuff with Oracle. These are big behemoths that you're moving around with a lot of different personalities, a lot of different moving pieces, versus most small businesses that are less than 100 employees. Have you seen a What's the difference between the two and how do you execute in that environment?

There's obviously a difference because at scale, there are different problems that you need to solve for, and so it's more of a numbers game. You can use a scalpel in a smaller organization What I do, we're a small organization, we have 40 employees, and then let's call it 40 employees. When I'm hiring someone, what we've done is, first of all, we've completely abandoned the idea of culture fit because Culture fit is what a lot of entrepreneurs think of when they think of... They're thinking, who would I want to get a beer with? That's what they really mean when they're talking about culture fit. That's a complete waste of your crime. It's probably going to have you end up hiring people that are just like you, which can be useful, but you already have you. Wouldn't you like to get someone not like you and you might learn something? We focus on purpose fit. When I do an interview, the first I ask is, What's your why? Then they usually will give me some canned what sounds good based on what the job role is. I'm really moved by product marketing or whatever, and it's so BS.

Then I say, No, no, really, what is your why? Why do you wake up in the morning? What do you think the meaning of your life is? I get them to open up at a deeper level about what their why is. Then I tell them our why at the company level. Our Our company's purpose is to drive results by activating your change. If you were to join us, this company, and help us try and achieve that purpose, do you see how it would tie to your why? Do you feel like you're fulfilling your personal mission by helping us with this organization's mission? Now we're talking about what really fulfills someone, what moves someone, where they're going to actually give a shit rather than just, Okay, I'm going to be an execution junkie. Then eventually, you get to burn out if you don't actually care about what you're working on. It's how do you create... When we're trying to drive accountability within organizations, the first two questions I ask a leader is, number one, how are you doing on results? Because That's what matters more than anything. Then number two, and how's your energy level? Because for a lot of people to drive the results that they want to hit, it's incredibly draining.

It's draining for you as an entrepreneur. Imagine how draining it is for the people who don't own the company. You have to find a way to take accountability that doesn't eventually run out. That's really what we're about doing, is creating that purpose is fuel. The purpose is what gets people to wake up in the morning and be like, I'm all in again.

So do you have a filter that you use when you're hiring people? Because the wise stuff, we could get in a battle on that one. I'm sorry, I don't need to get the confrontation on this one. I wrote a book about it. I did. I had a four-star general back me on this one. I will give you that if you want. But we can go into that. The question I have is, is there a filter that you have? When you're like, Okay, I've gone through the hiring. I understand culture. I understand that culture doesn't make sense in any way, shape, or form. I don't want to hire someone like me because they're probably going to give me a similar answer to a problem. I need a different answer to the same problem. I need to have more aspects. I need someone to get in my face and say, Hey, no. Here's this other thing you haven't seen. I'm like, Perfect. Thank you. That's what we're hiring for. But do you have an overall filter before you hire someone and say, Look, this is our thing. If they hit this, the people who are listening to this could use?

Skills. I mean, what we don't do is, for example, degree requirements and all of these old-school ways of measuring whether someone is, quote, qualified. We do skills aptitude. Once we have that basic skills confirmed, then it's purpose fit. That is the filter. I mean, if they care about the work that we're doing, I feel like I'm going to get a lot more out of them than if they're just like me and seem nice and could be part of the crew here.

The filter we use is if you're hiring this person, if you're the hiring manager, and you got sick, God forbid, and this person was needed to perform their job to make sure your children could eat, would you hire that individual? We have found that adding that filter into our ecosystem has made our hiring process more effective. We keep people normally on an 80 to 87% rate when we started adding that filter versus our churn and burn that we used to do. Is making people look through that accountability.

How do you check for that?

It's for less of a less scientific way. But as you've gone through it, you've asked them about performance. Okay, this is a problem. How would you do it? Okay, if this happens, how would you fix that? Instead of going after their why, we go into what their effective resources are. What would you do in this situation? We do mocks, then we give them tests. Hey, here's the thing. We have this going on. We'll pay you to do the test. Go run this. Get back to me on whatever that result would think would be. That result, no matter what you do, no matter who you are, if you're the interviewer, if you're the owner, if you're ever... You're never going to think the other person's result is 100 %. It just is what it is. That's okay. Even if they get to 80 %, that's a win. That's a grand slam. Because as you said before, we label ourselves as, Hey, I'm Gen X. I am the best, or I'm a boomer. I don't want to be that because I would love to be in the greatest generation. I was like, That to me, is... They win all day long.

The problem is they didn't have air conditioning and the Internet. So I'm like, Okay, time-wise, it's a little bit different on that. But for me, as you go into it, it's going to say, Okay, I'm always going to feel I can do better. Then I find someone who just completely kicks my butt, and I'm like, Okay, now how do I get this person as part of the team? And this staff is going to become partners in the org or something of that nature. We run them through tests because if we're sitting about and we're talking about platitudes about how do you feel and what is your why and those type of things, we haven't tested their execution. We've gone through and we've changed the hiring process saying, Okay, this is a real problem we have right now, how would you have fixed it? What would you have done?

So you think that people's why doesn't matter in hiring?

I wish it was just me. But the first and highest decorated four-star general, that was a female. There's only been two 34 of them. We just did a talk, we were on stage, and I asked her, I said, I wrote a book about that who is more important than why. Can you help me out with this? You directed people in situations where if I mess up, we lose a couple of hundred million dollars. It's okay. It's not the end of the world. If she messes up, we all die. So it's just the end of the ball game. I asked her, I said, I go, How important is why? Because I've had this battle multiple times. And she goes, Who influences the why? The why by itself is irrelevant. So for example, I was on stage and I will not say said person's name, but this individual believed that the wife was the most important thing. I was hot-miced at the time. I was walking off stage, I went, Oh, God. I was hot-miced. He said, What was that? I was like, Oh, I'm so sorry. I apologize. He said, No, you just crushed it. I'd love to hear your insight.

I said, No, dude, it's really disrespectful when I do this. This is your life's work. Please let me go step over here and shut up and just be viewed as a complete a-hole. He's like, No, I'd really love your insight. I'm like, Well, I spent eight years in a hospice watching people die. Let's show a raise of hands. How many of you want to be in better shape and know why they want to be in better shape? All their hands went up. I said, Cool. How many people know why they want to have a better relationship, better sex life? All their hands went up. I said, Cool. I said, How many people in this room know why they want to make 2 to 5 million dollars There's more than they're making right now? All their hands went up. I said, Cool. How many people have actually done it? And the hands went, This is what it is. And I'm like, Knowing your why doesn't change. You have to change who you are. So if you know why you want to quit smoking, you're not going to quit smoking. We have the data on this. If you change the identity to I am a non-smoker, things change, and you have a drive towards that.

The why by itself gets influenced by the who. So who, regardless, is more important than why. To put it in her words exactly, of course, our general, who influences the why. The why by itself is wasted.

So you're talking about a state of being rather than a state of doing?

No, I'm talking about an identity. So for example... Yeah, I'm talking about an identity. So you're one version of you when you're executing in your job. You're another version of you when you're having naughty naked time, whatever it is. If you switch those up, work is going to be really interesting or inappropriate, or naughty naked time is going to be really, really boring. That's the It's a high-level idea of it. To get more into it, there's a version of you that is an unstoppable force. There's a version of you that, if you're challenged, will come out. There's a two different versions. There's another version of all of us that don't think we're enough. Not tall enough, not short enough, not blonde enough, not fernan enough, not curvy enough, whatever it is. Each one of those have different whys, and they're both fed. Being able to tap into those on command is what creates the movement. Take Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan is an individual who operates a very specific way in very specific environments. He could turn it on and off and on and off. He doesn't need that version of him when he's eating or hanging out with his friends.

It's a different version. Being able to turn it on and off on command will influence results more than what we have found a why, because why is we found, or platitudes. They don't work. Who you are as an identity has more power.

Yeah, so that's interesting. In our research at Stanford Graduate Business School, we wanted to measure the type of culture that wins the most. Is it an execution-focused culture? Is it an accountable culture? Is it a people-first culture? There's eight big categories of culture that we tested. There was only one that was significantly correlated with increased revenue growth, and it was an adaptive culture. If you zoom out, you realize it's not actually execution-focused or people-first or accountable culture. It is the one that is able to switch from one to the other and then back again. To be adaptive is to be able to pivot according to the context of the needs of the organization, whatever is going on with your competitive landscape, your funding circumstances, and so on. When you can adapt, that is actually what wins. In the same research, though, we looked at 243 companies and their revenue growth over the course of three years to see, okay, we looked at their purpose, we looked at their strategy, which is the execution piece, and then we looked at their culture. The ones that won the most were the ones that were aligned across those things.

When you have, maybe it's yes and, right? Maybe it's not why doesn't matter, execution matters.

I just think it's an order. I think it's a yes and, 100%.

It's a yes and, right? When you have a purpose that aligns with your execution plan and aligns with the culture, which I define as the way people think and act to get results, you're unstoppable. Sometimes, though, what happens is your need to execute shifts, right? Technological advancement suddenly Now we've got AI. We've got to change our execution style and plan and approach because we're in a brand new world. Well, if your culture doesn't shift or your purpose doesn't shift, well, now you're out of alignment. That's what the research showed. There was three times stronger results growth over the course of three years when you had alignment versus non-alignment. Let's agree that perhaps they could both be important. You probably lean more heavily towards the execution. I am someone who, while at a personal level, if I spend the next 10 years trying to make the world a better place with better workplace cultures, and I'm moderately successful, but I was able to distill my why, I would be more satisfied with those 10 years at a personal level than if I was able to create a bunch of money creating electric cars and doing something that I don't really care about.

But that's just my personal preference difference. Whereas you're probably more focused on driving results. I'm a little bit more focused on surrender and the state of being and my spiritual connection. I don't know, but it feels different to me. What you're saying doesn't really appeal to me. Absolutely. To adapt is probably the key, right?

Close. There's a couple of leaves that we did, a couple of brushes that we did there. So for me, I focused on the identity of the individual and what they want. Some people want to make the world a better place. I love that. Some people want to buy ridiculous cars and make a bunch of money. Okay. Whatever feeds your cup, that's your thing, whatever makes you happy. What drives me on a core when I work with stuff is I want to make it so that people who will never meet me, that I'm going to help a guy who helps a guy who helps a guy who maybe holds the door open for the guy that changes the world. I don't need the significance to fill my cup. That's not what it drives me. I fill my cup up in a very different way. Knowing each one of the identities of the people that I'm working with and what drives them, and if they are willing to lead for each other, that becomes important for me. That's where I'm like, Okay, you might want to go and make the world a better place and awesome, or you might want to go make more money than you ever can possibly spend and then put a man on the moon.

I don't care. I really don't care. As long as you're nice to people and you help them out, I really don't authentically care how you get there. Just try and be nice to each other. But in a business, my job is to make sure that the people that have trusted me to give them a is to make sure that I can feed them. At the end of the day, I want to make sure they can eat. Again, I spent eight years in a hospice with 350 single moms. My job is to make sure that their kids could eat. If someone is ineffective, I'm like, I'm sorry, you don't get to stay. I've got to make sure that Susie can feed her kids. I need to make sure that's... So it's very driven by protecting the people underneath me. That's who I am and my identity. That's how I run. That is what drives me. Because I have that identity, that influences the why. The rest of it, the making a bunch of money, it's impossible. I've done it. Okay, it's next. What's the next thing with that? I think this goes into the question I was going to ask you before this, which is when you talk about purpose, you talk about what is the org's purpose, and you do that, how do you identify the difference between an org's purpose versus an individual's purpose.

Well, the org is the collective. It's the why the business exists, and the individual's purpose is what they find their personal. It's their prime mover, that concept of prime mover. It's what is the thing inside you that's moving you, the origination of movement within you? And mine has changed significantly. It used to be money and power. I used to just want to be super rich and famous. I mean, for more than a decade. Then I had a spiritual experience. I'm also a volunteer at a… Well, you don't volunteer, right? You work there. Do you volunteer at the hospice?

Or were you there? I work there, and then I volunteered after, and then I volunteered at other organizations, a lot of it with nature and a lot of it with women who have been battered. It's a lot of what my volunteer works from it to.

Okay, so I'm an end-of-life doula, and I volunteered a homeless hospice, and so we had that in common. But that was something that old me never would have considered wasting my time at. A thousand %, yeah. Why would I... It was like, eeuw. Homeless people, no. Dying eeuw, right? I had a spiritual experience that created a wildly new identity. I mean, I had a completely new personhood evolve and get created, right? And so then now, and I didn't really have anything to do with it, I think it was a spiritual experience that was like, something happened to me, really. Now, my purpose is to serve God and others. The making money and being rich and powerful is not the goal at all. In fact, I think is probably going to take me down the wrong path.

Got That I rely on.

I have seriously considered giving up my entire career in this world because it feels like not spiritually aligned. I love that. Going and working in a hospice environment. Then I think about, Well, how can I best serve God and others. I do have a platform, and I do have the ability to influence. Maybe I'm here not by coincidence, and I'm supposed to do something, but maybe not. I'm getting a master's in divinity right now when I graduate. Maybe I will give it all up. We'll see. And I might have another radical transformation of my identity in the future.

No, I don't. Yeah, absolutely. Who shows up? So I agree. And there's this great moment where Matt Damon, he had just won the Oscar, and he's sitting back in his hotel room, and his date was passed out. This is his story, not mine. He was passed out on the bed, and he's sitting there looking at the Oscar and this pizza that was leftover. And he had this moment where he fast forward 70 years in his life, and he was an old man, and he goes, Imagine if I had spent my whole life trying to get this. How empty I would have felt. Because no matter how big the hole is inside me, this isn't going to fill it. I have found that people who have been successful, who have made an enormous amount of money, they get to that moment, they're like, Okay, that didn't fill me up. That's not what it was. Whatever it is, some people want to see Mother Teresa and Volunteer at Hospice, which please volunteer hospice for those of you who are listening, go do it. Just even for a week, it will fundamentally change who you are as a person.

It will help you face something that we all are going to have to do. It is what it is. I may never go and do an Indian food restaurant because I don't like Indian food, but I'm going die. So we all get to do that. Please do that at one point in your lives. It will fundamentally shift who you are. And some people want to get back. Some people just want to live alone. It just is what it is. I just want to live a life of peace and quiet. Other people want to become potas and do weird things to the White House. So we have these different things. But I think the journey, you said a new identity showed up. I'm finding that in life. My identity changes pretty routinely now at this point. Every five to 8 years, I'm like, Oh, there's a new version of me. And each time as I get older, I think I tell people, When I was 30, 35, I thought I knew everything. At 39, I knew I knew everything. At 40, I knew I was the biggest idiot on the planet, and I had no concept, even had a time, my shoe, and I was absolutely useless.

The more I've experienced with life, I'm like, I don't know, crap. I'm like, I don't know. Which is the main reason I do these, which is like, Hey, let's have these conversations. This is what I think it is. This is what you think it is. Awesome. Where's the truth? Because there's three sides of every story, your side, my side, the truth. Having the vulnerability and the authenticity to say, Hey, listen, I found this. This is what this study said. This is what I found. They don't match. Cool. Let's put some holes in it. Let's figure out how to do that and see how that comes from.

Well, exactly. I think that's one of the greatest pitfalls for leaders today is they think they know everything, and they direct people according to what they think is best. So they have a... So bad. The new I have coming out, surrender to Lead, is all about that. Surrender in this context is not to give up or to let go or wave the white flag. Surrender is to let go of the illusion that you had control in the first place. You didn't. When you understand that and you don't know best, perhaps, and you can surrender to the collective higher knowledge of the people on your team, or if you are spiritual, surrender to a higher power that will guide you down the path that you need to go down, even if it's completely different than you thought, or whatever it is that you are, whatever your belief system is, that's actually the unlock that interestingly, when I finally stopped trying to be rich and famous is when I started making more money and becoming more famous than I did before.

Every time.

Every time, right?

Every time. I don't know why, but every time.

It's something. It's karma. Who knows? It's also off-putting. You can tell when someone is trying to get something from you or get something something from the universe, and it's like, I'm not interested. When they're not trying to get something from you, you lean in a little bit. You want to learn more. It does make sense. It feels counterintuitive, but it is actually how you unlock that potential that you're currently not getting.

It's surrendering the ego without getting too touchy feely on this. It's just letting go and saying, You know what? I thought that we had to do A, B, C. I've hired this individual. I hired them well. Let's find out what they did. And they did X, Y, Z. I'm like, Okay, it worked. I never thought of it that way. Awesome. And letting go of that ego of saying, All right, life's going to happen for me, not to me, and I'm going to go through this process. That is a very scary thing to do, is have that unbelievable vulnerability. And on the other side is absolute strength.

And that ego mindset, it's a scarcity mindset. It's a fear-based mindset. And that's the mindset that has taken hold in corporate America today. It's why we've had over a million layoffs since the beginning of the year, because people are scared and they're trying to get ahead of and control a situation that is not controllable. And the solution is, now we will get touchy feely, is the opposite of fear is love, is to come from your heart, is to be of service, is to be giving rather than taking. That's actually how you make a ton of money. Not to say you can't make a ton of money when you're running a fear-based organization. I've worked for those organizations, right?

Yes, we all have.

What could be possible if you didn't, and even if you didn't succeed, at the end of the day, will you have lived a better life? That's just for you. It's a nice to have, but yeah.

It's the idea that I know what to do more than anything else, or I know the answer. Once I got rid of that, because I have a minor in theology, and you're getting your masters, and we talked about this a little bit before we got on the call the first time, the idea that I don't know is a good answer. That's okay. If it's God, Buddha, the magic chicken, the dancing monkey, or a floating donkey, Whatever makes you happy, awesome. I don't know also works. If you're like, I don't know. I think there could be something there. I also don't have any evidence of it, wait. Are you being a good human being? Are you trying to help out other people? Are you trying to deliver a service? Are you trying not to be a dick? Then I don't care what you believe in. I don't care if you believe in a bowl of spaghetti. As long as you're kind to the people you meet and show up honestly and connecting to them, hugely important. For the people, as we've gone down I'll try to bring it back a little bit more for corporate America and for entrepreneurs out there who want things that are proven.

What are things that if they realize their culture is a little wonky, if their ego has built it a little bit, if there is that resistance and that challenge, what are some of the things that they can implement immediately? Some steps that they go, Hey, you know what? I screwed up on this. I got to let go. I got to release my ego a little bit. I don't necessarily love my employees. I definitely don't love what I do. I love the result. I love the fact that I can feed my kids or I can fly first class if we can fly anytime soon. But I got to let go of this. What are some of the things that we know that no matter what organization you are, no matter what size you're at, these are proven, you can do these things?

Yeah. The number one driver of results is clarity of those results. Number one, you may not have a team that is as clear as you think they are on what the number one, two, and three goals are for the organization. I say this because I can tell you stories of being in an executive meeting with the C-suite of Fortune 500 companies, and I'm looking around the room at these very well-paid executives who are long-tenured, theoretically the best leaders in America. This is a true story. We're in a room, it was like a drugstore retailer They had just come off of a struggle. They were having some struggles, let's just say, financially. We get in the room and we said, Okay, what's the number one goal here? What are you trying to achieve by the end of this year? They were like, Profit margin. Great. What profit margin goal do you have? The CMO writes his hand and he's like, 3%. Great. Then the COO says, Actually, no, it's 5%. We're like, Oh, okay. The CFO goes, No, actually, it's 7%. We look over at the CEO and it's awkward, obviously, and we say, So What is the profit margin goal?

And he says, Well, it's somewhere between 3 and 7%. Oh, God. Oh, my God. Everyone starts laughing.

What?

Those were all true numbers, right? One number is the number they told the board, one number is the number that they had set employee bonuses, and one was what they actually put in their projections. I mean, so if your people don't know what you're trying to achieve, how can you hold them accountable to achieving those things, and how can they put their discretionary effort into that thing? You got to get clear on results, number one. Once you do that, the tendency is to then go into this action trap. What do we got to do? Okay, 5% profit margin. We're super clear on that. What do we got to do? That's the wrong approach. Which, ask yourself, if culture is how people think and act, ask yourself, Okay, what do we need people trying to get that profit margin at this company to believe in order for them to collectively use their intelligence and their discretionary effort to help us achieve that? What do they need to believe in order for us to get 5% profit margin? If you're trying to move people to AI, for example, what do you need them to believe? Well, you probably need them to believe that AI isn't going to kill them, their families, and take their jobs.

A lot of companies are having trouble implementing AI because everyone is resistant to AI because of fear. There's a belief that needs to shift if you actually want things to change. Once you figure out the beliefs, name them, identify what those beliefs are label them, talk about them at the organization level so that we can get on the same page about, Here's the shared beliefs that we need to hold. We own the outcome. We standardize to scale. Whatever the belief is that's critical for your success. Then you have to surrender your need to control people and create experiences, because the only thing you can control is yourself. Create experiences that will drive those beliefs so that you can get people to take the action. The experiences you can start with, recognition, storytelling, feedback. If someone is not owning the outcome, you have to give them the feedback about this. Let them know that they're not owning the outcome. If they are owning the Come recognize them for that. Then tell the story about it. Hey, Charles owned this outcome by doing the following thing. Let me tell everyone the story about it and explain to them how it will tie to the result we're trying to achieve.

The lore or the narrative of organizations is a powerful motivator of behavior as well. Telling stories, recognizing people, giving feedback when they fall out of line or in line with demonstrating the actions you need them to demonstrate that align with the beliefs you want to nurture is how you ultimately get the results.

As a leader, as a manager, that come in, people listening to this, how do you get them to let go? How do you get them if they haven't had the spiritual awakening or had the experience or done the time in hospice, Please volunteer at hospice. If they haven't done those things, how do you get someone to have the confidence to let go of the rope? It's like when someone does bungee jumping, they're going to test that line multiple times before they go. What is that testing of the line that they can do?

First of all, we help them understand that there is a reality in which we operate. That reality is not something that you can change or influence. There's stuff that's within your control and stuff that's not in your control. We actually call it you're either above the line or below the line. Below the line is playing the blame game. It's victimhood. It's pointing fingers at someone. It's waiting and seeing. It's like, That's not my job. Someone will tell me what to That's where a lot of people operate when it comes to accountability. We don't want to be held accountable in the corporate workspace because we usually are only held accountable when something goes wrong, and we're in competition with one another. I don't want to be associated with something that went wrong because I'm hoping to get that promotion. We operate in that place, but there's a better place to operate. First, it's revisiting how we think about accountability. If you go above the line, and instead of being a victim, you ask yourself the question, What about this can I control? What is within the scope of my influence? You focus there. Then you can take action there, and you have, without even realizing it, surrendered all the things that you're usually pointing the finger out.

Well, the Trump administration. Will the Trump administration, will the executive team set the wrong budgets? Will the marketing team didn't get me what I need? That's the blame game, which is focusing on all the uncontrollables. Here's four questions. When someone comes into your office with the problem, first question is, what's going on? Then they tell you the problem. Second question, What about that can you control? Get them to tell you what is within their sphere of influence. Then, Okay, well, what else could you try? Then get them to brainstorm and then say, Great. What are you going to do by when? Now they have just surrendered all of the things outside of their control, and you didn't have to use any touchy-feeling language. You're actually focused on what can you execute upon. It's like magic. When you think about accountability that way and you make personal choice to focus on what you can control to drive results, well, now you've unlocked something at an organizational level.

I think the magic of what you just said also is you didn't tell them your plan and then make them go execute because they're not going to. As they go through it, they came up with a plan. Therefore, when there has issues with it, they're like, Oh, crap, this was my plan. This wasn't Susie's plan. I have to change this crap. They're going to be more fluid with that because they're taking that ownership of that plan. Because, again, you could have told them to A, B, and C, but as they're doing A, B, and C, which work for the last five years, it's not going to work now because things have changed, because that's just Murphy's law. In the military, it's called the Green Weaning. It's going to happen. However, if it's their plan, they're going to adapt with it because they understand the result. I love that you brought up the C-suite, how they didn't understand the same goals. I love how, as I've gone in organizations and seen this, that gets exponentially worse the farther you get away from the C-suite. You walk into one org and you're like, Hey, what is the goal?

And 15 different people give 15 different answers. And you have that moment. You're like, Come on, guys. And that's where I think it's important the leader or the person who's running that unit takes that ownership and says, Okay, I have failed to articulate this. And I think communication, I'd love to ask you about this, I have found that people don't communicate and speak the same language. For example, you and I both speak English, but we don't speak the same language. Because if you and I were in the car and we're driving and you go, Hey, do you have to go to the bathroom? You didn't ask me if I had to go to the bathroom. You just said, Hey, I really do it on a bathroom. Could you pull over and go to the bathroom? If that's how you speak, versus if I'm in the car, I'm like, I got to pee, let's pull over, type of thing. We communicate differently. It happens in couples all the time. If Susie's dating Jane, Jane doesn't speak Susie. Susie definitely doesn't speak Jane, even though they speak the same language. So in the org, how do you get past that?

How do you build a culture that respects the fact that everyone speaks the same mother tongue, but not the same language in any way, shape, or form?

Simplicity. You have to really simplify what is usually a complex set of documents and roadmaps, project strategy, process maps, right? I mean, you've got the purpose of the organization, which I do think is important. You've got the strategy, you've got the goals, and then you have the cultural beliefs that you think people need to hold in order to achieve all those things. What usually ends up happening is you get this mission, vision, values, thing, and then you've got 10 confidence and then you have eight different slide decks with the quote strategy. They're changing all the time because oftentimes the strategy will change before the end of the year, and you send out an email and you call it understood. The first thing we do is to get clarity of results. We simplify what the results are. We make it meaningful, measurable, and memorable. We actually put all of that on one slide. We're like, this is the core narrative of who you are as an organization. When people join the company, they'll see the slide. When you're doing your town hall, they'll see the slide. We call the executives of the organization, the chief repetition officer.

Every single meeting that you have, start with that. Say the why we exist, what we're trying achieve or strategic drivers in the cultural beliefs. Say it every single time and you will feel like a fool and do it anyway because it's not about you. It's about making sure that everyone else is clear. Without fail, if you start every meeting with that, people start to get that that is usually lacking because it's posted on the internet and you're hoping that they check.

Right, because they're never going to check. I think you said something really important there. If you feel like a fool and that's stopping you from doing something, you shouldn't be in a management position. You're operating out of ego. You shouldn't be there. Get out of the way. You're going to be. That's okay. Anything that goes wrong in the organization is 1,000 % your fault. Anything that goes right in the organization is 1,000 % their fault. So you always push that out and you take it. It is what it is. I'm curious because you've used result and results. So you've used the plural of that. When an org goes in this and you define purpose and you define results, have you found a difference between having a single result or results? How have you found that flux?

Yeah, the best practice that we use with our clients is you have one result that is the longer term three to five year result that gives you the finish line for if you have executed on your purpose, then that's where you've ended up. Then we also identify three key results, which are this year, that will show you if you are on your way towards achieving that broader vision. There's both. One big result, and then three incremental results, which we call key results that will show you if you're on track.

Got you. We love threes, the three-legged stool.

People remember threes. And this is our Balancing Act. If it was as simple as, you have to figure out how to grow revenue and cut costs and make the customer happy, and those are competing initiatives. You have to have more than just one because it will honor the reality, which is that there are competing goals within different parts of the organization.

I'd love to get more information on this because we've always said you have one master. It comes from Walton, who did it with Walmart. You have one master, we serve that master. It's not me. It is not anyone in the Our organization is one master. We have whatever that one goal, one result is, we serve that at all costs.

How do we get there? What's the example of a company's one master?

Walmart. Walmart was their master of the customers. They write the rules. We have to do whatever it takes to make sure that they are getting what they want at the best price, and everything else falls in line towards that. That's what we do. That was their design for it. That's not a goal.

That's not a goal. That's like an idea, right? What's the goal? How will I know if I have a How did he achieve that?

So in Walmart's situation was, he had better prices, better availability, and better customer service through that one experience. So they wrapped up that master.

But so can you talk about prices, availability, and customer service are three competing goals?

Not when you serve the One Master, which is a customer for one.

That's how one did it. Okay, but if I wanted to be great customer service, I'll knock on your door, I'll white glove treatment it. But that's not Walmart's business model because they also have to be low prices, right?

Right. Their goal was, their highest thing was, how do we serve them and give them best price possible? Because the only person that matters in that organization was a customer because they could fire us. Nobody else mattered. And since the customer could fire us, how do we serve them to make sure that they don't fire us? And Walt He built out and built his empire using.

Okay. I think that's like, we're- We're saying the same thing again.

We're saying the same thing.

There's one big goal, and then you can measure that big goal through three separate goals that feed up to that one master, right?

Right. It's interesting how different orgs, once you're giving this clarity to your point of chief repetition officer is, okay, I love that you guys want to do this in marketing. Awesome. I love that HR. Okay, never love HR. I love that finance, that's this. Sorry, HR people. We never get along. You have these things. Okay, I love that you want to do that. What's our one master? And then all of a sudden, the plan has changed. They just said, Okay, all right. Now we have to log in now. It just becomes that filter that we give everybody through. If someone's culture is completely fried, or they're worried about DEI, or they're worried about if they're woke, or if they're MAGA, or all the other labels that are just inundated right now, which are just getting in the way, how do you get someone to walk in and say, Listen, jobs are hemorrhaging. Economies are collapsing. Hariffs are making things interesting. It is going to get a lot bumpier than it's ever been. The AI innovation is nothing different than the industrial revolution, which was nothing different than the dot-com boom. This is change. This is just the next evolution of that change.

You're going to have to embrace it. There are people who didn't embrace the internet. They went bankrupt. There are people who are going to embrace AI and It is what it is. The job I had in college did not exist three years earlier because that's just... It was a dot-com boom. It is what it is. How do you help those people through it? How does your organization sit down and say, Okay, this is what we do. Here's how we build your culture. So you serve that goal, those three goals, that master, whatever it is for you.

Yeah. It's through clarity, alignment, and accountability. A lot of culture consultants will come into a company, and what they want to do is dig up old drama. They'll do some assessment or survey or focus group or interviews, and they're like, What's wrong here? What's not working? How would you do it differently? Then they come up with this master list of all of the problems and present it to the executive team and say, Don't worry, we can fix you, which is all backwards-looking and a waste of time. We start by saying, your culture is perfect. It is perfectly aligned to the results that you're getting right now. You are getting the results right now because of the actions your people are taking, which is because of the beliefs that they hold, which is because of the experiences they've had here. If you want to get bigger, bad, or better results, let's start there. What is the goal? Clarity of results, right? Number one. Then let's figure out what do we need people to do and what beliefs do they need to hold in order to get there, and what experiences can we create in order to drive those beliefs, to get those actions, to get that result.

That's the alignment part. You get clarity of results, and then you drive alignment by getting people bought in. You get them to believe in what the goals are and how you're going to go about doing that through the experiences you create. Then finally, it's accountability because that is the unlock. When people take accountability, and they do it by focusing on what they can control to drive results rather than figuring out who's to blame for what went wrong, which is the bad approach to accountability and why it doesn't work in organizations and why managers don't even want to hold folks accountable because it feels mean. Then you start to see that ownership that is where the alignment towards those results really begins to snowball into success.

There's a lot of moving pieces there, and I'm sure there's a lot of listeners right now that are like, Okay, I need more access to this. I need access to a book or insights, or I just need to pick your brain. How do people find you? How do they track you down? Because for a lot of people, this is overwhelming because they thought prior to this conversation, culture meant one thing, and no. And results meant none. No. They need someone to hold their hands. If they were wanting to track you down, if they wanted to get a hold of you, other than giving out your home address, please don't do that. How do people get a hold of How do they connect with you? Because they need more of this insight.

The entire process of driving clarity, alignment, and accountability is written in the book, which is coming out in January. It's available for pre-order now, and you can go to surrender2lead. Com to get that. For your listeners, I'll give you guys a workbook that we created, which is step one, that clarity piece in creating that one core narrative of your organization. If you go to builder. Surrender2lead. Com, and That has... It's a workbook that will walk you through what you need to get clarity on, what the best practices around that, how you can help spread that message to your organization, and then eventually create alignment and accountability around it. But that would be step one, that you should download, builder. Surrender2lead. Com.

Got you. If people want to connect you on social media, do you do that or you just refer them to go there?

Yeah, I'm on all of the socials. I've got a LinkedIn, I've got a newsletter called This Week in Culture that comes out every Wednesday. If you're interested in hearing what's going on these days, and you can find me on Instagram or TikTok, where just look up Jessica Kriegel.

Perfect. Thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it. Thank you for pushing back on everything. I really appreciate it.

Yeah, no, I appreciate the conversation. It was great. It was much more interesting than just being interviewed. We got into it.

Yeah, absolutely. While many leaders are still debating generational labels or micromanaging actions, the culture leaders demonstrated that intentionally shaping employee beliefs and aligning individual purpose the true engine for results. Stop implementing short term programs and start designing the experiences that drive discretionary effort and unlock four times profitability.