Cultural Catalysts: A 'Best Place to Work' Story with Jeff Ney

Curious how a healthy company culture can be your secret weapon...outshining your competition?

Hear it straight from Jeff Ney, the CEO of New Dynamic LLC, a software consulting firm recognized as one of the best places to work by the Kansas City Business Journal.

Jeff reveals the critical importance of a robust company culture and how it directly influences product quality, customer service, and overall competitiveness.

Get a first-hand account of the challenges leaders face when instigating cultural change and how to address these obstacles head-on. Discover the power of teamwork, celebration of achievements, and how these can bolster your organization's culture.

From the insights on the impact of culture on recruitment and retention, to the key role of leaders in cultural transformation, this conversation is insightful for any leader keen on elevating their company culture and carving a niche in their industry...let Jeff's journey inspire your own.

Seeking additional insights on strengthening your company culture, improving performance & impacting the bottom line?
Book a time to chat with us - No sales, no strings...just a candid conversation about your challenges. Not ready to chat, join the culture & performance conversation for free online at our Culture Think Tank Community.

Transcript

William Gladhart: 0:00

Welcome to the Leadership Levers podcast. I'm your host, Will Gladhart, c of Connect2Metrics. At Connect2Metrics, we help organizations strengthen their culture, one action at a time. We're here today to learn about the actions leaders have taken to address cultural change. Our guest today is Jeff Ney, ceo of New Dynamics LLC. Thank you for taking the time to join us. I thought we would start by having you share with our audience a bit about yourself and your organization, or your background.

Jeff Ney: 0:35

Sure Thanks. Well, first off, Will, thanks for having me on your podcast today. It's a real pleasure to be here with you . My name is Jeff Ney. I head up New Dynamics. I also founded the company three years ago. New Dynamics is a software consulting firm. We are a Microsoft partner that specializes in a software platform called Dynamics 365. What we do is we help our clients implement solutions related to sales, marketing and customer service.

William Gladhart: 1:05

Thanks for sharing that, Jeff. You also received a recognition recently as one of the best places to work. Share a little more about that as well.

Jeff Ney: 1:15

Oh thanks. No, we're really excited about that. The team here. It's a cool honor, especially given that we're in our third year since founding the company. For those of you that aren't familiar with the best places to work, the Kansas City Business Journal sponsors it involves an anonymous survey that goes out to your employees. As a leader in your company, you agree to put yourself at the mercy of how these surveys will come in. You need to hope that your employees are engaged enough that they respond to these surveys and then respond favorably. You're scored on it and, based on your scores, you get recognized in different categories. We were fortunate enough this year to be recognized as one of the best places to work. There will be a celebration and a reception at Arrowhead Stadium coming up next month that we're excited to be participating in.

William Gladhart: 2:12

That's a really fantastic honor and a recognition, especially for a new growing W. Congratulations, 'll be discussing three questions today as a warm-up o start our conversation. you share why you believe a healthy culture is critical?

Jeff Ney: 2:28

A healthy culture is critical because, when you think about it, it's one of those things that is hard to mask. If you have a company culture that's not strong, if you have issues with your company culture, it's going to start to bleed through. Your prospects and your clients can see that and that may come out in the form of poor quality in your product or your service or poor customer service. When you think about it and it's a philosophy that a lot of leaders are following today but wasn't really thought of that many years ago is that a healthy organization, a healthy company culture, really becomes a competitive advantage.

William Gladhart: 3:08

Absolutely. That, I think, is a really great point to highlight, especially in that recruiting retention, finding the right talent, because the talent game right now is a big challenge out there. What do you see as the biggest challenge leadership faces for cultural change within any organization or even your own?

Jeff Ney: 3:29

Well, whether you're a fairly young company like us that's in the process of building a strong company culture, or maybe you're an established company that's trying to work through some cultural changes, I think a really big challenge that I see is identifying the obstacles, identifying what's going to get in your way or what's going to slow you down, and addressing those as quickly as possible. In a lot of cases, the obstacle may be an influential employee or two on your team that are not completely bought into what you're trying to accomplish. Or maybe there's some deep-rooted beliefs that may exist amongst your team that stem from some past experiences that they've had. I think identifying those, coming up with a plan to address those early on, just helps your cause and helps you in that journey to building that strong culture.

William Gladhart: 4:23

I love that you've shared that, having that clarity around not only your vision and mission, but also being transparent about what those hurdles are in the organization itself, but also be willing to tackle and address those, because they're not going away. There's certainly going to be something that continues to impact the organization as it continues to grow. So what do you think that leaders can do to address this type of challenge that they might be facing?

Jeff Ney: 4:51

I think it's stay the course. Beat that drum. Once you're down the path of going through a cultural change that you believe in and you know is right for your organization, stick with it and never waver. Things like celebrating your wins and when something happens that supports the culture that you're trying to build and you're trying to promote, don't let that go unnoticed. When you see behaviors, when you see actions, when you see just events occur within your organization, it's right, in line with that culture that you're promoting. Like I said, beat that drum, make it known and drive it home.

William Gladhart: 5:31

Yeah, I think that's an excellent point with reinforcing those behaviors. But also I think sometimes we do forget to celebrate, as leaders, the accomplishments not only of one person but the entire organization as a whole, and it's not necessarily client success or monetary success, it's actually the success of the human capital or the success of the people's organization.

Jeff Ney: 5:54

Absolutely. One example I can think of, kind of specific to my organization and my industry, is I'm promoting teamwork. It can be a real separator in our industry as well. We're out (selling). Companies are hiring us based on our expertise in a particular software product. I'm hiring people to my team based on their individual expertise, and some cultures that I see in our industry and some things that members of my team may have become accustomed to in a previous life is kind of that hero mentality.

Jeff Ney: 6:28

"I'm really smart, I'm an expert in this.

Jeff Ney: 6:31

I can't let the client see that I'm having a challenge in this project" or that I've been hit with a request or requirement that I haven't seen before. Well, I don't want my team members to go at it alone. I want them to collaborate, lean on each other and work with each other, and that's kind of a foreign concept to some people in this industry. And so when I see that happening, when I see that teamwork happening because at the end of the day, what's most important is the success of our client, right? So when I see a project that's successful and I see that one of the elements that contributed to that success were the fact that I had people on my team that worked together. Someone tapped into someone else on the team's expertise to overcome some obstacle in the project. I want to make that known to the rest of the team. I want to celebrate it and we want to make sure that the rest of the team sees the success and they can start to feed off of that and start to mimic the same behaviors on their projects.

William Gladhart: 7:28

So is there anything else you'd like to share, or either around these type of challenges, or maybe something that you have learned as a leader of a growing organization?

Jeff Ney: 7:39

I think just driving home that point we made earlier about a healthy culture becomes a competitive advantage. As a leader, you think about all the other things that can give you an edge up on your competition, and most of it's quantitative, hard, miserable things, and those are important. But my gosh, if you can build a healthy culture, it bleeds through, like I said before, and the market picks up on it, your clients pick up on it, your prospects pick up on it and good things happen. So I think just driving that point home is what's important.

William Gladhart: 8:15

Thank you again, Jeff, for joining us. I've enjoyed having you on today. Congratulations on your recognition as one of the best places to work and thank you for your insights Thank you for joining the Leadership Levers Podcast. You may find all our Leadership Levers episodes on our website at connect(henumber2)metrics. com. Tune in weekly as we invite leaders to share their experiences in strengthening culture, one action at a time.