From Surviving to Thriving - Mastering Culture & Growth with Shawn Kinkade

Is your organization merely surviving OR growing and thriving? 

Join us on this episode where you'll discover opportunities to master workplace culture and identify your 'immutable values' with our guest, Shawn Kincaid, President/ Founder of Aspire Business Development.

With two+ decades of experience driving business growth, Shawn takes us through his journey from the high-paced corridors of Accenture and Sprint PCS to leaving corporate to build his own successful company.

He highlights the pivotal role culture plays in employee engagement and overall company financial performance. Sean shares insights from his personal experiences, explaining why engaged employees are more productive and contribute significantly to performance & organizational growth.

An avid reader, Shawn shares his thoughts on excerpts from Mike Michalowicz's  The Pumpkin Plan - which introduces the concept of 'immutable laws' as a leader's core values. These are principles so essential that violating them means letting go of the person - be it an employee, client, customer or vendor.

To identify these laws, Shawn suggests leaders observe and jot down emotions - note what triggers anger or happiness and track those reactions over a few months to see patterns and crystallize their own 'immutable laws.'
 
Tune in to gain several strategies for fostering a positive workplace culture that not only retains talent but also drives financial performance - critical elements for building a strong & healthy company culture.

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Transcript

William Gladhart: 0:00

Welcome to the Leadership Levers Podcast. I'm your host, Will Gladheart, CMO at the Culture Think Tank. Our Culture Think Tank community is committed to advancing workplace culture and well-being. We're a virtual hub for authors, investors, leaders, managers and employees worldwide to connect, engage in candid discussions, share ideas and explore resources for cultivating a healthy work environment. We're here today to learn about the actions leaders have taken to address cultural change. Our guest today is Sean Kinkade, president and Founder of Aspire Business Development. Thanks for taking the time to join us.

Shawn Kinkade: 0:38

Thanks for having me on.

William Gladhart: 0:39

Absolutely. I thought we would start by having you share with our audience a bit about yourself, your background and your organization.

Shawn Kinkade: 0:47

I can do that. So I started Aspire Business Development. It's now been almost 18 years ago, which seems kind of unbelievable to me that it's that long ago. But prior to that I was primarily in the corporate world. So I started my career with what's Now Accenture. It was Anderson Consulting when I started there and if you're not familiar, it's a global consulting company and I did that for about seven years where I was on the road for about seven years.

William Gladhart: 1:19

Exactly.

Shawn Kinkade: 1:19

Which was kind of the reason why it was time to figure out something different.

Shawn Kinkade: 1:23

You realize when you get married, buy a house and start thinking about a family that constantly being on the road doesn't work very well, at least not for me.

Shawn Kinkade: 1:32

So from there I ended up being one of the first 300 employees at Sprint PCS on the wireless side. I did some consulting in between those two, but that was the next big corporate gig and, coincidentally or not, I was there about seven years as well, and so I got to see rise and fall seems kind of unfair, but certainly the rise of Sprint PCS and probably the fall from a culture perspective, because for those that were around the wireless side of Sprint it was really an entrepreneurial start, it was truly a startup. It was actually the first three years of it or so was very entrepreneurial. And then basically the rest of Sprint looked over and said, hey, that wireless thing seems to be taken off, we should get more involved. Right, and they established this one sprint thing and the culture kind of started to go downhill very, very quickly, and so I hung on probably longer than I should have, but all of that then led me back to ultimately starting my own thing and getting out on my own.

William Gladhart: 2:41

We're going to talk about three questions today and as a warm-up to start our conversation, would you share why you believe a healthy culture is critical?

Shawn Kinkade: 2:48

Yeah, so I was thinking about this and for me it boils down to engagement, and there has been a ton of studies that show that companies that have engaged employees which I would define, or a partial definition of a good culture they tend to be much more profitable. Frankly, they have much better financial performance. So I think that alone is probably worth it. But they also tend to retain their people, which I imagine contributes to the financial performance. But the kicker for me, if you've ever been around a company that's kind of like that, they're just more fun to be around. I mean it is a. It's kind of like a light in the dark, right. I mean it's that concept of you're creating something as a business owner that people want to be part of, as opposed to something that people hate to. You know, go to.

Shawn Kinkade: 3:40

So that, that to me that's, that's kind of why it always resonates, is that it's that idea of creating something that people seek out.

William Gladhart: 3:48

I really appreciate you bringing that point up. It was just at a conference this morning and someone shared that once a month on their team meetings they actually ask the team and all the staff are you having fun, Are you enjoying your job, Do you want to be here or do you enjoy being here? And I was like, wow, what a simple question, but what a great way to talk about engagement and connecting.

Shawn Kinkade: 4:11

And it seems silly, right, but yeah, I think it's really important.

William Gladhart: 4:14

Yeah, so what do you see as the biggest challenge leaders face when addressing cultural change within an organization? Or you kind of touched on a little bit with the Sprint example what challenges have you possibly specifically faced in your own organization?

Shawn Kinkade: 4:30

So I think you touched on it a little bit when you said you sat in on a meeting and they do this monthly thing where they ask about are you having fun? That idea that somebody could do that. But what I've personally seen is those kind of things that come out but they don't really mean them, and so it's the lack of buy-in at the leadership or ownership level and they're just throwing out something because they heard about it or they read about it, but they don't really mean it and they lack that authenticity. That's the. That's the challenge that I see is that that you've got these companies that technically it's a fine company, they sell a product that people want. You know they're doing fine things, but they don't actually believe in anything and they don't propagate whatever that belief is through. That's not. They don't use that to operate their company that's.

William Gladhart: 5:22

that's a really interesting perspective, especially identifying that beliefs, values, but also that core of the culture element in the organization that people again want to be part of. They want to know that that is coming from the leadership and we consistently find, and have found in our research for the last 10 years, that it is truly the action and behavior of the leader that drives everything in the organization. Kind of hints the question because we get a lot of different, varied answers around that particular question. So what do you think leaders can do to address the challenges they are facing right now?

Shawn Kinkade: 6:00

Well, so tying into the challenge that I just brought up is the idea that, okay, so you are the leader or the owner of a business. What do you believe in? So actually figure out what that is. And on the surface that seems like well, that's a pretty easy exercise. I'll just jot down my core values or I'll jot down my mission and purpose. The reality is, I get it.

Shawn Kinkade: 6:24

It's a hard thing to do, partly because I'm not sure that a lot of people necessarily truly understand what they believe. It's a subconscious set of beliefs, but I think that it can be worked on right. You can have an intention to say we need to really flesh out and it doesn't have to be 50 pages of here's what we believe. Pick three, pick three things that you really think are critical to how you want to operate, and start with those. You look at historically famous core values, companies like Zappos that have 10. And if you've read any of the stuff about how they came about, that, that was like a year and a half two year process that they took to develop. Those Doesn't have to be quite that in depth, but it is probably an ongoing thing that I think a lot of owners and leaders face. You know, just don't, they don't bring to the surface.

William Gladhart: 7:22

So and this will just be a little tangential off this question but because you work with a lot of different types of companies and leaders, what have they done to address those challenges, or what have you seen to be successful?

Shawn Kinkade: 7:35

So this sounds really silly, but what I've seen that works and I've seen it with my clients and I've seen it with others is they have open discussions. They will actually sit down with their employees and say here's what I'm thinking. What do you think? Let's talk about this? Hey, we had this client that just left us. Let's try to brainstorm why. Or it could be hey, we want to start doing better. What do the people on the front line think that we need to be doing? That we're not doing.

Shawn Kinkade: 8:08

But it's having an open and honest discussion, and I assume you're familiar with the Culture Code by Dan Coyle oh, yes, you know. So he talks about a couple different things. That really resonates with me. The first one is the idea of creating a safe environment, and so a safe environment means that, hey, you can tell me what you think and that I'm not doing well, and it's OK. You know you're not. We're here to have that discussion and I know people make fun of you, know safe spaces and all. But there is an element of if you're going to have trust and you're going to have a healthy culture and an environment, you've got to have people that feel like they can be themselves. And the other thing he talks about is vulnerability, and I love his examples of the very rare CEO who says I was wrong. How often and you've been in corporate environments or been around them? I personally don't know if I've seen it more than you know two or three times in my entire career.

William Gladhart: 9:07

The we'll do better is not the same thing. As you know, we made a mistake.

Shawn Kinkade: 9:13

Right, and I get, there are legal reasons why you don't necessarily want to say we made a mistake, but internally at least, hey, I made a mistake or I did something incorrectly or wrong or whatever, or I'm sorry. Even something small like that is all of those things.

William Gladhart: 9:30

I think that's really good advice. So you touched on a couple pieces about values, beliefs, some very simplistic things people can do and leaders can do in an organization to kind of build trust, to build culture. As we always say, it's a marathon, not a sprint. Is there anything else you'd like to share or add for other leaders?

Shawn Kinkade: 9:50

Yeah, I'll throw one more out there. So I don't know if you're familiar with Mike Michalowicz. He's an author that wrote Profit First and he wrote the Pumpkin Plan. He's written like six or seven books, but one of the things that he talks about, or was in one of his earlier books, was his version of core values is something that he calls immutable laws, and what I like about his take on that is that he basically simplified the concept down to what is something that you believe so strongly that if somebody violates it, they're out, whether that's an employee or a client or a vendor.

Shawn Kinkade: 10:28

So his suggestion for creating those is that subconsciously we all have those things, but we don't bring them to the surface. So his suggestion for figuring that out is keep an eye on your emotions and, as a leader, when you get really upset, you know you're angry, you're mad, you're whatever it is. What rule was broken? What is it that prompted that? And write it down. And on the flip side, if something great happens and you get excited and happy, okay, what was it that caused that emotion? And you write that down and over time, if you do this for a couple of months, you're going to start to see a pattern and you're going to be able to kind of boil down to okay, when people act like this, I get really upset and you can kind of crystallize what that immutable law would be for you.

William Gladhart: 11:16

Yeah, that's definitely speaks to that empathy, that vulnerability would be for you. Yeah, that's definitely speaks to that empathy, that vulnerability, being able to identify what it is that drives you bananas in the organization. Right, exactly, and you know. Thank you for touching on the author piece. I know you're an avid reader and continue to read books, collect knowledge from authors and implement those with other leaders. So, sean, I've enjoyed having you on our Leadership Lovers podcast today. Thanks so much for your insights.

Shawn Kinkade: 11:42

Thanks for having me.

William Gladhart: 11:43

Thank you for joining us on the Leadership Levers Podcast. You may find all our Leadership Lovers episodes in our Culture Think Tank community at www. culturethinktank. ai. Join the community at no charge and tune in weekly as we invite leaders to share their experience in strengthening culture, one action at a time.