031 : Cultivating Workplace Culture That Adapts and Grows with Robert Glazer

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Culture is a codification of values. In the business world, it is also used as a marketing vehicle. Oftentimes, there is a disconnect between employer brand (how a company is marketed) versus employee experience (what people within the organization go through day by day). The bridge connecting both is honesty. A company that owns its values will retain more of the right people than one that projects itself a certain way in order to keep up external appearances. According to our guest: “What you want from a culture is alignment. A great culture is what the people are believing, saying, and doing.”

As a company scales, it is imperative to have a framework on which its culture can adapt and grow. Ideally, making up this framework are these elements: vision to provide a clear direction for the company, goals and targets to attain that vision on a practical level, values which anchor each and every action taken, and consistency and clarity to make sure that the entire team is on the same page throughout the process of shaping the culture.

Steve Chaparro and Robert Glazer discuss how leaders can cultivate an authentic culture in the workplace and own the values that serve as its foundation. Stay tuned.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

  • Factors that “bad” company cultures have in common
  • Why companies should own their values
  • How COVID-19 brought the flaws and shortcomings of many companies to the surface
  • Using the “Mighty Five” framework for creating and scaling culture
  • Getting your people to buy into your vision, goals, and values
  • Hard lessons learned on Robert’s leadership journey
  • Considerations around hiring and firing
  • The four elements of capacity building within an organization
  • A brief overview of partner marketing

Resources Mentioned in this episode:

About the Guest:

Robert Glazer is a serial entrepreneur. He is the Founder and CEO of Acceleration Partners and the Co-Founder and Chairman of Brandcycle. He is also a columnist for Entrepreneur, Forbes, Thrive Global and Inc., and author of the bestselling book Performance Partnerships (2017). Robert speaks to companies and organizations around the world on topics related to business growth, culture, capacity-building, and performance.

He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Business, Industrial Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Sponsor for this episode:

This podcast is brought to you by Culture Design Studio. This is where I help creative organizations transform their cultures from being controlling to being collaborative. If you want to know more about I provide facilitation and coaching for your creative team, reach out to me at CultureDesignStudio.com.

This episode is also brought to you by DesignThinkers Group, USA, an innovation support. To learn more about DesignThinkers Group, go to DesignThinkersGroup.us.

Full Transcript: Powered by Otter.ai

Announcer

Welcome to the Culture Design Show where we feature conversations with leaders and thinkers who are passionate about culture and design. Now, let’s get started with the show.

Steve Chaparro 

This podcast is brought to you by Culture Design Studio. This is where I help creative organizations transform their cultures, from being controlling to being collaborative. Now, here are some of the things that I’ve learned. Your creative talent demands a co creative culture in order to produce their best work. But there’s a problem. So let’s see if we can recognize some of these signs. There’s no framework to move your culture forward. You have high turnover and low morale. There’s increasing toxicity across all levels. There’s team engagement and satisfaction that are on the decline. There’s a misalignment between the employer brand and the employee experience and there’s poor communication about expectations and values. So if you want to learn more about how I provide facilitation and coaching for your creative team, reach out to me at culturedesignstudio.com

My guest today is Robert Glazer. He is the founder and CEO of global marketing agency, Acceleration Partners, and the co founder and chairman of brands cycle as a serial entrepreneur. He has a passion for helping individuals and organizations build their capacity to elevate He is also a compliment columnist for entrepreneur, Forbes thrive global and Inc, and he is the author of the global best selling book performance partnerships. And the Wall Street Journal and USA Today best seller elevate his newest book Friday forwarder releases in September of 2020. Robert, welcome to the Culture Design Show.

Robert Glazer 

Hey Steve, excited to be here.

Steve Chaparro 

Well, I love chatting about, you know, when I have guests on I love hearing about their professional journeys and the same is my interest for you. Share with us if you will, your professional journey and how that all started and what were the ebbs and flows of that.

Robert Glazer 

Let’s see. So out of school I’m now the age where I have timed myself in sort of three booms and collapses. Yeah, so I graduated right in the in the late innings of the internet bubble, the first internet bubble, I guess 1.0 started working in strategy consulting really liked work got involved in the tech practice what like working with kind of high growth companies, companies that were moving quickly doing things went on then to sort of try that from a couple different angles, which was the consulting side of the strategy consulting side, I worked at a venture firm and an incubator sort Helping the investment support side and then went and operationally helped launch a business for three years. And I came to really understand especially in consumer businesses and lifecycle businesses, how important customer acquisition was to the, to the success of a business and decided to start a company that supported other businesses and customer acquisition.

But but doing it for my own company, because I had sort of become someone wants it unemployable in a nice way, from other businesses actually always thought I would jump into one of those companies that were pulled in, but but I realized that well, growth companies often have not great culture, and I liked, I liked sort of working on that type of business. But I, you know, I was interested in building my own sort of company. And, you know, we started to sort of grow unintentionally and then realize we were sort of locking onto something and then the partner marketing field and, and I had sort of an existential moment at a million dollars in revenue where it was, you know, six people kind of doing everything.

This is a growing company, I’m an entrepreneur, do I want to do this stuff like, I don’t like HR, I don’t like rules, all this stuff and, and so it is conscious decision of like, if I’m going to grow the company, I’m gonna grow a company that like I want to go to work at each day and and try to find you know people and do things better and different and so I would say there’s what we do but I think how we do it is the real manifestation of what we do. We’ve just we’ve done some really interesting things from you know, people strategy, culture strategy, being 100% remote for 13 years, which is gone from something we used to hide to now getting asked to speak and write books. So it’s been quite a, it’s been quite a shift in the last three months, as the greatest work from home experiment ever, ever done is out there.

So I I just became very passionate about aspects of culture, I actually didn’t believe in culture. And early on, because I just saw these companies, I saw the crap on their walls, I saw how people behave, I saw there was no context. And I also I had sort of a sort of defining moment of that as well. And it just sent me on a journey to understand what culture actually was, and how to build a great company, based on a great culture.

Steve Chaparro 

That’s fascinating, I think, to even hear that if culture wasn’t something that you were particularly passionate about, because maybe that there were bad examples out there were, I mean, just in general, what are some similarities that you saw either one at the companies that you went to work at or other companies that have, you know, like, you know, that are startups and that have exemplified some bad culture? components? What were some examples of the bad things that just left a bad taste in your mouth?

Robert Glazer 

Yeah, so I mean, there’s the famous Patti McCord thing about, you know, Enron’s core values of integrity and respect and all the things that would like not gay but but I guess it was part of it was definitional. So I’m very values based. And when I realized that actually, like culture was sort of codification of values like and how to bring that together that was key, but it was really more how the how culture was being used as a marketing vehicle like I said, like office after office of the frame saying when integrity and isn’t like and like talking these people these company like no one acts like there’s no one behaves like this, or just being never discussed never being an issue, kind of sort of arbitrary. I guess I really didn’t have any good role models. I worked in a company that essentially had a terrible culture right out of school. And then I worked at a startup that that really was was was fine but didn’t have a defined culture and and then another stuff did nothing. Fine culture and I just I thought it was more of a marketing. Yeah, based on how I saw people using it.

Steve Chaparro 

Yeah. And that’s and that’s a very common thing that I see as well that there is this misalignment between what some might call the employer brand, which is that marketing side of things, this is your external story that we’re telling people about what it looks like to work with us. But then there is the true employee experience, what people are actually experiencing day to day those norms, those values that are, as you as you said, that are codified and kind of like, like I know, this is what you say, Mr. Founder, Mr. charismatic founder who lose people over and, you know, get people to come over and join the team and even invest money in us. But when you go into the insides, the underbelly of the company, this is what it really is. And I think that that I think I’ve heard similarities about sometimes that’s true for startups, and in my world of kind of the creative agency world are the creative lead companies. That could also be true because you might have this charismatic leader that has again wooed people over.

Robert Glazer 

Yeah, this is the part I don’t get right. I think the person is either not self aware or has not gone through that process, because I’m not sure anyone would want to be disingenuous. I just think that they don’t understand what they’re saying and what they want, right, which is, I always say like, a lot of times people introduce me and they rattle off all the awards. It’s a great place to work. I’m like, just to be clear, I think we’re a great culture and a great place to work for like 2% of people. I think 98% of people would tell you like, not that we’re inauthentic but like not a good place to work for them based on their needs and what they’re looking for. What I don’t see enough people doing is just that honesty.

Like, if you’re an ex competitive athlete, and you’re just competitive to the bone and you like it’s all about winning or losing great Awesome there’s a lot of people like that just tell people that you don’t say we value teamwork like you don’t you value winning. And you know what, there’s some companies that have created amazing new products and stuff because they value winning. And if they recruit the people who share that ideologically and want to win, win and lose and understand the bonuses go to the winner and the losers get nothing like they’ll actually be happy in that but the person who was told that we value teamwork is going to be like, this is bs you don’t value teamwork you value winning so so I just like we’re trying to be really clear about what we are and what we value. It’s not for everyone even when we say own it, I own it. Love that. Yeah, no. Tell you what own it means. Yeah, because and where that’s gone wrong with people who who like then sounding of own it, but they are not own it. Like own it means when I look at you like Steve, what should we do and we’ll make a decision. You need to make the call. You’re like, no, I gotta have a meeting and I have to consensus and like, that works in certain environments. That does not Not working on by men. That’s not how we operate. We expect you to be like, I got it and I’ll be accountable for it.

Steve Chaparro 

Yeah, I think part of owning it to me is is is a, you know, this is it. I like what you said that it’s not just about what we do, but it’s about how we do it, and how we do it. There are some really beautiful things about that. But let’s be honest, there’s a good and bad and ugly about everything, and bringing our whole selves and bringing our whole it whether that’s individually, whether it’s at the leadership level, whether that’s at the company level, it’s owning the good and bad and ugly of who we are annoying. Yeah, we need to work on some things. And as you said, this is probably only a place that’s good for 2% of the people out there. And that’s because we own all of it.

Robert Glazer 

Yeah. values. What you want from a culture is is just alignment like a culture. Yeah. Is what the people are believing is what they are saying is what they are doing. Right. Yeah, it doesn’t mean you agree with it. It doesn’t mean right. I’m like, I don’t but you should agree with none of it right? Like I don’t like cookbook which should be the same, but people can’t stand is when you think one thing you say another and then you do another and that’s what really drives them crazy. So we’ve got a lot of people who don’t like working guarantee don’t work out what I hope they would say, is a little bit like a running back who joined the passing team like, great guys, but locker room, you know, whatever, but like, they’re just not gonna they’re just not gonna run the ball. They’re passing team and so I’m just on the wrong team.

Steve Chaparro 

Yeah, the one of the things that I’ve been mulling around and I think I’ve heard other people say it is that, you know, right now, as of this recording, we’re still in, in the era of COVID-19. And, you know, this is a disruption as disruption to how we work where we work, what we sell what we do, all of that it’s you know, I think I remember my, my, when I was going through premarital counseling almost 20 years ago, our counselor said, Okay, what I’m going to do is I’m going to You Steve and your wife, Michelle, what we’re going to do in this pyramid, Oracle, marital counseling, your lives are like snowglobes. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to shake up the snowglobe. Because over the last years that you’ve been living, you’ve allowed certain things about you and your upbringing to settle to the ground and you’ve forgotten about them. We’re gonna rustle disrupt your environment, bring those up to the surface so that we can deal with them so that you don’t necessarily take them into your marriage, or at least you know, that they’re there. I feel like COVID-19 has done that for us in our workplaces, that it’s it’s shaking up our cultures. And I and you know, with even with layoffs that have happened, I have this question that whether people who have put up with and tolerated things about the cultures or companies that they’ve worked with, that they may or may not be tolerant of that moving forward. What are your thoughts about that?

Robert Glazer 

Yeah, I mean, there’s some people that have Be afraid to do something. But I always said like, like, one of the things we’re talking about is a leadership team. You know, the first time you see like a judgment issue in someone, like a core thing like that, it’s likely a very bad barometer of future things to come. And so I think, you know, to the employees who ignored those things, or to the employers who ignore those things, and then you apply some pressure now, there may be some people are afraid to act right now given you know, it’s scary out there. But I think people have made some decisions, but like, I waited long enough, and I shouldn’t have waited. I think what we saw, you know, is is, to me, this is just like, I’ve been like a massive like, cylindrical machine, right? Where I think you had some people you had a belief or kind of, you know, aligned and strong and maybe not, and basically like, it just sort of stuck them to the middle or pushed to the outside, right. I think you started seeing the best of people and apply a little pressure and you See, you see the cracks, like if someone has bad judgment, and you apply a little pressure, you know, he gets really bad.

And so for us that’s been that’s been really illuminating. But I think that’s a two way street. Right? That’s, that’s the employee seeing that with their leader or seeing that with a company, I worked at a company where the leader was great when it was great, and then it got bad and Wow, you really saw, you know, you know, where their true colors there and and i think that’s true for a lot of people. So I think you’ll see a lot of moving around. Again, I just wish people could fly their flag. I wish they could just say this is what our company honestly is and who is for even even we have some great Glassdoor reviews, even our best five star reviews. You can see the employees trying to chase away the people they say like look, this company is a great culture and supportive but it’s the hardest job I’ve ever had. Don’t come here, work from home. Don’t come here thinking that this is like a cakewalk. right because people come in and they say I’m stressed or it’s a lot of clients. juggling, and then other people were like, yeah, we were really clear. We’re client service agency trying to be the best, you know, in our industry. It’s not a, you know, 10 to four job. No One No one ever told you that it was 

Steve Chaparro 

Yeah, yeah. One of the things for me, and the question is when we talk about culture, I mean, you’re an entrepreneur, you’ve been in the entrepreneurial space, even with the accelerators and VC groups that you’ve been a part of, and you’re you’re leading a creative agency. What are some lessons that you’ve learned? I mean, we’ve talked about some of those, but about creating and scaling cultures, because I would imagine just like the bell curve, the lifecycle of a company, you go through different stages of growth, which bring different challenges. As you’re kind of navigating through that lifecycle. What are some things that you’ve learned that you can share with both entrepreneurs and creative agency owners?

Robert Glazer 

Yeah, so there’s a framework I think that I call the mighty five that I think is just every Great culture that I’ve seen. So there’s a vision, a clear, we have one written out like a vivid vision, a painted picture, but like, Where are we going? And why do we exist? Right? That’s important. That’s the Northstar. Yeah. Then there’s goals and targets. Here’s what we’re trying to accomplish, you know, per the vision. And here are the metrics and the things that we will hold people accountable to, and then the value sit in the middle because you’re trying to fulfill the vision, you’re trying to your goals and targets fulfill the vision, but you want to do that in service of your values, right? So so I don’t want to get there by going around my values, that the values are really operational, we hire people on them, we fire people on them, we promote on them, like these are the actual behaviors that we want. And then the two modifiers are consistency and clarity.

So what does everyone want, they want a consistent vision, consistent goals, consistent values they want, you know, and they want clarity around those same, same thing. So that’s really how I look at it and make sure that those things are imbalanced. We don’t have a lot of problems with accountability because there’s real accountability around the value. You either like the vision or you go, this is Tom, I don’t want to work here because we show it to you before you work here. And, and we’ll say, Hey, you know, Steve, if you’re hired, you know, you’re being hired for that metric that’s on the public scoreboard. Because that metric gets us to the vision that where we want to be so there’s really a lot of accountability because you have two issues with with with employees potential issues you have, are they the right value fit? And if they’re not, like, Doa, like you don’t, don’t try to talk yourself out of that, but you also have the right value fit, but they’re not the right person for that role. And depending on the size of the company, you know, that might not leave you with a lot of a lot of options. So you’re really trying to solve for both those problems.

So that’s, to me, that’s like a system. It’s like an ecosystem that needs to be maintained. Like, do we have a clear vision? Are we really clear on the values? Do we have goals and targets to everyone the scoreboard and Are we being clear and consistent with all these things? Are they not moving? Are they not changing around like, everyone in our company should be able to tell you our three values of own it, embrace relationships, and excel and improve without any mnemonic without any thing like that, you know, we’ve intentionally kept it narrow and said, This is what we value most. 

Steve Chaparro 

This podcast is brought to you by DesignThinkers Group an innovation support firm. I am joined today by Marc Bolick, who is the managing partner. Welcome, Marc.

Marc Bolick 

Thanks, Steve. It’s great to be part of the Culture Design Show.

Steve Chaparro 

Mark, a lot of people are curious about what makes design thinking useful for culture change. Can you give us your perspective on that?

Marc Bolick 

Yeah, that’s a great question. And Steve is, you know, design thinking is a problem solving methodology that’s based on building empathy for people. And it’s, I think through that building empathy for the people that you’re serving that gives people a purpose to their work. I think there could be no better foundation for building a people centered culture than that.

Steve Chaparro 

Marc, I think I agree with that. That’s the reason why we do work together, folks, if you want to learn more about design thinkers group go to designthinkersgroup.us.

Steve Chaparro 

So I think I know what you’re going to say to the next question because of your value of owning it. But when it comes to vision, yeah, and when it comes to those goals, and when it comes to those values, how, how are the folks that you’re at your company able to own other than just accepting it? You know, like, Okay, this is it’s already laid out. For me. The reason why I say that is because I come from a background in architecture. And the archetype of an architect is one who has the vision, and predetermines the blueprint of what that’s going to look like and better basically everyone else’s is a contractor just built to the plan. Yeah, I think I think that’s helpful to a moment. But you know, to a certain point, but as far as a company or agency starts to grow, I think the the lead person is less able to predetermine all of that and give clarity to every single minutiae. So, back to the original question, how are the folks at any level able to own vision, goals and values at your company?

Robert Glazer 

Yeah, so so I think it’s a matter of really breaking it down, right? I don’t, they might not own it at a high level, but just an example on a goal, like our public goal system that we use that has everything. There might be a three year goal that’s tied to a one year goal, which has a quarterly piece there may be 10 different people working on elements of that quarterly goal, but the system actually even shows them that they’re all working towards that quarterly goal. For the someone on their team, so they actually just understand about how what they’re doing every day supports the higher level initiative. And then in the context of what they do, they are asked to own it, they are asked to excel and improve so so part of our thing on Excel improve is like we have a best practice and a process for everything. If you don’t know how to do it or you haven’t done it, please follow our process.

However, if you can make it better, awesome, challenge us tell us whatever don’t go do it yourself and not upgrade the operating system right your your your your expectation is that you’ll upgrade the operating system so everyone benefits from that that’s also the embracing relationship part. So it really is endemic and in all of the ways that we you know, expect people to act when they miss something we don’t expect their pages of excuses and whatever and we have, you know, you’re not fired for you know, not doing something I Ray Dalio of Bridgewater you know, I love this analogy said no one got fired for making mistake. But they have a mistake log. And if you don’t put the mistake in a mistake log, you get fired for that, right? Yes. Yeah, fear what he’s rewarded.

Steve Chaparro 

Yeah, I think a lot of my my teeth were cut in terms of leadership when I was working at a national home builder, and had a wonderful boss, his name was Jim Perry. And there was a culture that kind of was a residual culture that came over from the original regional company that was eventually bought out by a national company. But there were some things that came in that culture that I really learned about one was only answer the question asked, like, Don’t try to provide more information than what you were asked for. If it’s a very specific behaviors, yeah. And then the other one was, you know, to be accountable, like he just make sure that if, like you said, own if you made a mistake, just own it and just move on. And some other things that were really helpful. One of the things that my my, I also learned is that if I want it to change if I want my team to change And the people that I was responsible for, I needed to undergo some changes first. And I, you know, probably the best lessons that I’ve learned were due to some mistakes or just maybe some, even some failures that I’ve made. You know, if if that is true for you, what were some of the lessons that you’ve learned the hard way in your leadership journey?

Robert Glazer 

I’ll tell you a repeated failure that I’ve made. And we were talking about a leadership call this morning about other team members that have made it but it is it is knowing something, and coming up with all sorts of reasons why it shouldn’t be acted on now. And finding that that bites you in the almost every time, twice on Sunday. So I think that’s been constant in terms of, you know, because I have deep beliefs and I’m resolute. And then I try to talk myself out of something because it’s a little uncomfortable, and I have never seen it get less comfortable, the more comfortable the more it festers In fact, less comfortable. Yeah. And one of the things I really coached our our leaders on when the crisis started that I was being coached on is like, Look, easy decisions were all before February 15. Now, April 1, we have hard decisions and harder decisions 

Steve Chaparro 

Yeah.

Robert Glazer 

And a few are hard ones you make, the more they’re all hard. The more sorry, the more harder decisions that you have. So, you know, I think we can always talk ourselves out of that conversation that we don’t want to have or otherwise, but when you ignore the early warning signals, it is it is almost never works out. In fact, my head of culture, but the point which I’ve been thinking about a lot in the last couple weeks, I’m about to write on it, which is I don’t trust. I don’t think people should trust intuition or gut around hiring. I think they should have a methodology a system because I actually think we bring a lot of bias into hiring and like who’s going to be good because we’re kind of looking for people like us. I think when we sense that something is bad or not going to work out like our spidey sense. Yeah, it is right most of the time. And and I say this, I’d rather not hire someone on gut than hire someone on their own. Mm hmm. Yeah. I’ve been much more wrong about who is going to work out at our company than being right about who is not going to work out.

Steve Chaparro 

Yeah. And that’s that’s a very honest thing to in and vulnerable thing to admit. But I think I think that sometimes that spidey sense has been has been honed not because we’ve been right you know, most of the time but but sometimes it’s it’s it’s developed because we’ve been wrong in the past and we can start to learn from it and we can’t we can’t put our finger on it.

Robert Glazer 

Yeah, you end up liking people like you and there’s unconscious bias and all aspects because they’re like you right? They think the same way. They look the same way. They have some of the stuff, but but I feel like this sense is a totally different thing. It’s just like something is off here in my brain. You know, it’s an album that was blank, like, my brain is processed all the inputs and given me the solution, but I’m not sure what it is. And there was an article I wrote for HBr. And I really would encourage a lot of managers to think about this. And that is, I think we manage by exception way too often, if you do something a lot. And you talk to me about the time where it worked out, you tend to often not tell me about the time when it didn’t work out 90% of the time. So, you know, as one softball coach said, not hiring the right person is a lot better than hiring the wrong person.

Steve Chaparro  

Yeah.

Robert Glazer 

You know, eight out of 10 times. So particularly when we when there’s a repeated decision over and over again, I actually think you need to take the emotion out of it and play the baseball numbers. So if like, for instance, we do not make counter offers, and we don’t deal with people who want to stay from the counter offers Everything I’ve read that has a 90% failure rate, there are a lot of people out there that are going to point out to me, the person they hire with a counteroffer the person that did they think I’m gonna also say the data says it’s a 90% failure rate. So if you’re playing Moneyball, right, if you’re playing, why would you point out that, you know, the one hit to someone, no one, no one, no one goes to a guy hitting 100 and baseball because but he got that hit, right? You got to look out nine out of 10 times I, to me, this is the type of leadership stuff where where you really need to, you need to lean in on it a little bit and say to people, if that’s a low probability outcome demonstrated, just make a universal policy that you’re not going to go with a low outcome probability.

Steve Chaparro 

When you talk about counteroffers is that when employer and employee what is possibly going to get hired away?

Robert Glazer 

Yeah. So you know, anyone comes to us and says, you know, oh, I’ve got a job offer. I you know, we have a system where we pay people more We paid what they worth, we do a lot of animation, you know, we match that answers always know, like, hey, if you got that offer and go there, and similarly when employee, you know, start saying, Oh, my employee counter and then we like we just don’t we just we just don’t do that we’ve never, we’ve never countered that anyone was like, if you want a higher salary, like we have a lot of ways to talk about that if you want a new job, then then we avoid talking about that. But if you think that going to get a job offer is the best way to get a salary. It’s not because but we don’t we just don’t believe in that. Yeah. And then the outcomes are demonstrably poor, like, like, the data says that the trust broken in that process that you have a 10% chance of that person being employed 18 months later.

Steve Chaparro 

I mean, let’s be honest, if we’ve ever, you know, asked for a counteroffer in our career, it’s probably because one or more parties have not put their best foot forward. You know, prior to that, but if you’re saying you know, this is a we’ve done the research, we believe this is the Were we are rewarding you for your effort as well as where we’re at in the market. We’re always putting our best foot forward that that’s a great understanding to have. Yeah. So you mentioned one thing you said, as you’re coaching your leaders, and as you are being coached yourself. Tell me a little bit more about that. Because that seems to me that there’s a code a culture of coaching, just from that one sentence… is that accurate?

Robert Glazer 

We believe in the sort of mentor coaching sandwich. So almost our entire leadership team is in sort of peer learning groups, works with different coaches. The peer groups can be as effective as that, I think, you know, they get great input and feedback from from peers. And yeah, and then and then we have lots of people coaching people on the team, mentoring groups, we have forums that we’ve created. So I always think it’s really helpful to be in kind of a mentoring sandwich. And that’s true for the both the top and the people at the bottom.

Steve Chaparro 

Yeah and I also noticed on LinkedIn that you are part of the Marshal Goldsmith 100 coaches yet to share with me what that journey has been like.

Robert Glazer 

Yeah, I just did an incredible group of human beings. You know, this notion of people understand the notion of a mastermind group it was sort of Napoleon Hill in his think thinking Grow Rich book I don’t know why I can’t speak today. From from a long time ago now but mastermind group is a group of individuals who are really there. It’s actually the basis for like a and support groups and all in the forums in in organizations like eo and YPO and other things but they’re there to help support each other push each other and help each other grow and feedback. It is not is not a networking it is not a sort of get things from other people and it’s just an amazing group of people that are trying to help elevate each other coaches writers. Just Brilliant thinkers, and it’s really Marshall sort of legacy project.

Steve Chaparro 

Yeah. Yeah, that’s great. I mean, I think more companies need to have more of that posture of, of not only just bringing in coaches for employees, but for leaders to demonstrate that that’s something that they have a need for even outside of the company just as leaders themselves. Yeah. You know, we talked initially that, you know, some of the topics we wanted to talk about today, were both culture. And then the second thing was capacity building. Yeah. What are your thoughts about capacity building within an organization?

Robert Glazer 

Yeah, capacity building was something I sort of reverse walked into, when I was trying to figure out how was that we were growing our company and our culture. It came out of sort of looking at this holistic development that we were doing working with people on things that weren’t necessarily business related, but were principles that we felt would just make them better overall. Part of it came out of initiative on Friday for which was an email. I started any of my team that within a couple years was reaching 100,000 people in all these countries and causing people to do things and make change. And I wanted to understand why.

Steve Chaparro 

Yeah.

Robert Glazer 

So I started writing a book around that. And I looked at the things that I had done in my life to improve and all the people I talked to or achieving at a high level and I just the same patterns kept coming up, which was that this four elements of capacity building which were spiritual, intellectual, physical, and emotional, spiritual, not being religious, but like, Who are you and what do you value? intellectual is sort of your How do you learn your operating system, your discipline, your planning, physical as your health and your well being and emotional is your sort of relationship to people and external things that you don’t control and Friday for really, like oscillated between those topics. are training program of employees was really focused on campus. Building like, I think we said, Look, I don’t want to make Steve a better, you know, cog on our assembly line. How do I make Steve just a better performer? We get the work benefits yes the home benefit, right? And so that was the journey we went down.

Robert Glazer 

And I that that framework I think well there’s some new and some old stuff in it I think it underpins all elements of self improvement that I’ve seen and and when you see an area really out of whack I can tell you exactly probably where someone is in their journey or where they might be struggling when you think of COVID-19 I mean physical you know for all of us right like I’m I didn’t sleep great last night a little tired as Tonya was missing missing words. Think about someone who’s who’s who’s stressed not sleeping well. Well, now their patients for their relationships really deteriorates. They’ve sort of lost the big picture deteriorates, their willingness to sort of learn and follow through deteriorates. So it really starts to sort of bring the whole the whole system down.

Steve Chaparro 

Yeah, I think So you mentioned, you know, some of the things that you were doing, you started with Friday forward, and that just grew and not only to address certain things internally, but that became this list. Now it’s in September, it’s going to be a book that you’re releasing. But you’ve also been writing for all of these, you know, magazines, you’ve written multiple books. And also you have a podcast as well called elevate. What has been the drive for you, and I’m imagining part of it is capacity building outside of your firm and outside of your circle is been able to help people…

Robert Glazer 

It comes back to the beginning, right, so it comes back to my personal core values and, and sort of my core purpose which I have been able to illuminate through sort of going through the process of spiritual capacity, which is to share ideas and help that help people in organizations grow. So I’m actually not an academic theorist. Yeah, I need to do something, get my hands dirty. Try to change how people leave in two week. Notice, try To change this, and then once I’ve done it, I see success with it, I kind of have this natural tendency to want to crowdsource it and say, like, Look, as long as you’re not my direct competitor, and you are like, you know, this, because I do think that leadership organizations are really the way to change. I think it’s been a huge impact on my life. So how do we make better leaders and better organizations? If I can share those ideas and expand the impact of them? Then, you know, I feel really good. I feel like I’m making an important contribution. 

Steve Chaparro 

Yeah, I love that. One of the things I mean, I strategic marketing, I love or partnership marketing. Just as a last question before we, we sign off for the day.

Robert Glazer 

What the hell do I do for my day job?

Steve Chaparro 

to learn about that? I mean, it’s, I mean, obviously, I can read the website and learn about that, but give me give me just an overall view of what strategic partner marketing is.

Robert Glazer 

Yeah, so just a high level and probably take out the word strategic partner affiliate mark. It gets easier. Yep, we’ve had to remove words over the years, but a lot of marketing and digital marketing is sort of paying for input. So you pay for an impression you paid for a click, you know, you pay for someone who extensively saw something. The partner marketing world is really like paying for outcomes. And when you think about it’s kind of like digitizing business development. There’s software and systems out there where people that sell things online, can make their catalog available to their partners, they can feature certain products, services, or otherwise, we can track through to whether the consumer bought or signed up for those things, and then pay them based on that there was a sale or an action or subscription. So So rather than having this win lose thing it is it is really the typical element of sort of a partner situation, but with more Google like software that makes it all real time tracked, manage the payments, so we help build these large partnership programs and I like it like, you can only do well by working well together the publisher, the partner has to take some risk. You know, they don’t get paid on the click, they don’t get paid on the impression and and everyone tries to align to the same outcome. So I just have always really loved the model.

Steve Chaparro

Yeah. Well, I appreciate you coming on. Robert. This has been a fascinating conversation. I look forward to Friday forward coming out in September. Yeah. As well as reading while you’re reading other things as well and I so I appreciate it. If people want to learn more about you and your work, where can they find you?

Robert Glazer 

Best places to go to RobertGlazer.com. There, you can find podcasts sign up for Friday for the books. Also, if you go to RobertGlazer.com/Connect. I put a bunch of resources around culture and remote work and other stuff that people are interested.

Steve Chaparro 

Alright, Robert, thank you very much. Thanks for being on the Culture Design Show.

Robert Glazer 

Thanks, Steve.

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