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Leadership Levers
This podcast spotlights leaders' actions so they may enhance their organization’s performance and culture.
We feature CEOs and industry-recognized Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) who share their experiences and insights on three key challenges: people, performance, and profit.
If you are a leader who wants to learn from your peers about improving performance and financial returns, please join us.
Leadership Levers
From Banker to Builder - Diane Carney on Transforming Challenges into Culture-Driven Leadership
Curious how a +25-year banking veteran turned personal homeowner frustrations into a thriving business — and why she believes a strong company culture is the key to success?
Discover the remarkable journey of Diane Carney, Founder & CEO of FI Home Services Inc - who transitioned from a 25-year banking career to the role of successful entrepreneur & leader!
You'll hear how her struggles with home maintenance inspired her to build a company dedicated to helping others maintain their homes efficiently - so they could enjoy their home.
Diane shares invaluable insights on creating a healthy organizational culture, explaining how happy employees lead to greater productivity and enhanced client engagement & satisfaction.
Through an engaging anecdote about hiring a salesperson, Diane highlights the necessity of aligning job roles with the company's mission, ensuring that processes serve the organization's vision rather than becoming task-oriented routines.
As we converse, Diane offers crucial advice for aspiring C-suite leaders and CEOs, emphasizing the power of seeking collaboration and support.
By involving others and fostering a sense of ownership, leaders can drive their business toward success and profitability. Diane passionately argues that overcoming the fear of not having all the answers and embracing teamwork can lead to more effective leadership.
Tune in to uncover Diane's roadmap for building a thriving company culture and effective leadership strategies that promise growth and success.
Connect with Diane on LI
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Our guest today is Diane Carney, founder and CEO of FI Home Services Inc. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.
Diane Carney:Well, thank you so much for having me.
William Gladhart:Absolutely. Let's start by having you share with our audience a bit about yourself, your background and, of course, your organization.
Diane Carney:Sure, my background actually began in banking and for 25 years I worked for both large and small banks so we're thinking national banks as well as local banks.
Diane Carney:And about 12 years into it is when I ended up in learning and developing AKA training. As a trainer of the previous bank I was at, I spent a lot of time in the SBA lending world, which actually truly fostered my spirit of entrepreneurship, and from a young age I always knew I wanted to own a business or do something with business, but I never came up with the idea of how or what that I would make successful until one day I was buying a home I was actually building a home through a builder and realized I have absolutely no idea how to maintain that home. And so one thing led to another, which led to another, and I moved away from the banking world and the L&D world and moved into becoming an entrepreneur, becoming a leader, if you will, an entrepreneur of my company, FI Home Services, and what we do is we help folks just like myself who either don't know how to maintain a home, who don't have the time to maintain a home, or simply can't maintain a home because of some sort of a physical limitation.
William Gladhart:Yeah, I love that. I think when we were talking before, you joked that you're like you said I was building a home, but I think I had a screwdriver and that's about the extent of my maintenance or home knowledge. And all of a sudden you realized I need help or I need to build it for myself. We'll be discussing three questions today as a warmup to our conversation. Would you share why you believe a healthy culture is critical?
Diane Carney:So well, I will tell you that I have worked for organizations that truly just valued their people, and I have worked for organizations that valued profit over people. And when I took a look at the organizational behavior and just how much more productive people are when they're happy, I can tell you that a healthy culture really inspires people to work smarter, not harder, and when we're working smarter, we are maximizing what we can do and how we can affect things in a positive manner. We're typically limiting unhealthy competition and instead we're pulling together to really make the overall organization more successful and competitive. And I think that that just goes to understanding people. When people are happy, then that positivity just simply makes it so that other people aka clients or customers want to be part of that type of an organization, however they can. So it's incredibly, you know, it's incredibly critical.
William Gladhart:Yeah, it's. I love that you share that, because we certainly have seen in the ability to measure well-being across an organization the ability to look at anxiety but also to look at the connectivity of people, which directly translates to understanding the role happiness in the organization, those types of things. It's that piece of the human factor element that is so incredibly valuable. So this leads great into our next question. It's been our experience that leaders tend to struggle with three key areas people, process or profit. In your role as CEO, could you identify which one of those three areas represented a cultural challenge within your organization or with others that you worked for?
Diane Carney:Sure, I think oftentimes it goes to process.
Diane Carney:People may challenge me on that and that's just fine, but the reason I say process is because, when you think about the reason an organization is in existence, it's usually to accomplish something, whether it's a service, whether it's to produce something, whether it's to pair people together, whatever it is, there's a process that needs to happen and that process is written for a reason.
Diane Carney:And if we don't talk about the why behind it, oftentimes people will either engage in shortcuts or they'll get so concerned about the task list that is supposed to happen that they forget the reason why. And the reason why is truly the spirit of what that process is. When we don't take a true understanding of what it is there that we're trying to accomplish from the standpoint of the mission of the organization and what the vision is, what are we trying to accomplish in the long run? We tend to separate process from organization and process because of process ends up leading to, I think, less profit overall and, I think, less happy people. For example, I just had a conversation today with somebody who we're looking at bringing on for a sales role and he says I don't really want to work for nine to four job and I said well, why would I hire you as a salesperson for nine to four when often sales conversations are happening anytime you're around people?
William Gladhart:Right.
Diane Carney:When we had conversation about that number one, he was very excited the fact that we weren't going to really engage in busy work for him to fill up nine to five or nine to four or whatever it was. But the next thing was is he truly felt that I understood what the role meant? And when you look at process and you look at an understanding of what any process is trying to accomplish, it has to go back to the organization and the reason that you're there and you have to translate that to people that you are bringing onto the organization, from the very entry level to the very top. Everybody should have that same understanding so that we're all driving in the right direction. Processes help us to keep within boundaries, but the process isn't the reason. It's the organization in our mission. That's the reason they exist.
William Gladhart:Yeah, I think that speaking to that alignment of values, but also of clarity from the leader about the roles, because often not only C-suite individuals but also managers get really stuck in the task-oriented process piece and start checking boxes. And even as leaders we sometimes and entrepreneurs, we can fall into that same trap of checking the boxes, making sure we're accomplishing all the different things and we forget to step back and realize we have to educate our people, but also look at that people and profit tie to be able to maximize our journey in the organization, but also, you know, as a leader, but also how we are turning a profit and impacting the customers that we serve, because, at the end of the day, without them we have nothing. You know, we have no profits, we have no people, we have no process. So, you know, in speaking to that challenge, doing that process challenge, what did that look like in your organization and how did it either negatively or positively impact?
Diane Carney:A couple of things that I have 100% been part of is organizations that either have undefined processes or have processes that aren't shared from point to point to point, have processes that aren't shared from point to point to point, and so when I built FI Home Services with my partners, the one thing that we said was we need to really map out how do we do things, not to make it so rigid, but to truly understand what happens first, second, third, fourth, and so we really did that in the manner of developing workflows, and it truly was from a design thinking perspective, which was really from the customer's lens. So, if a customer is interested in our services, what happens? And then, from there, how do we get them onboarded? And from onboarded, how do we get them scheduled for the quarterly maintenance? How do we understand if there's something else going on, et cetera, et cetera.
Diane Carney:And, interestingly enough, because we were taking a look at processes, we also understood that we had to develop a widget, if you will, and I'm just calling it that, because it's going to be a super, super, super cool announcement towards the beginning of next year, 2025. And we had to develop this widget because it didn't exist, and so, instead of being in the box with, well, this has always been done this way, we realized this has never been done and so we needed to be the frontier of it, which meant we really had to keep revisiting our processes to say is this working? We had to have beta people come in to say, okay, give us feedback. And it really was from the experience of not having this type of thing and having a lot of chaos, to now having processes developed that are brand spanking new because it's a new industry and realizing that without the customer's feedback, it doesn't make sense to keep them that way. So we've really been thoughtful about how to truly architect these processes in FI Home Services.
William Gladhart:Yeah, I think it's really critical for other leaders to what exactly what you said is to acknowledge, especially in a either startup, entrepreneurial, business growth phase, that you are speaking to who you are buying or who's buying your product or services, because they're going to give you that insight and feedback to modify your process. We at the Culture Think Tank we think it's hugely critical is that customer journey whether you're a SaaS company, whether they're using your widget, whether they're in the consulting realm that there has to be a flow for those individuals so they have the best experience possible, but then they can give you that best feedback so you can make changes to make the next experience even better. So I think it's amazing that you're really thinking that way. So, is there anything else you'd like to share or add with fellow leaders from your journey as an entrepreneur and also as a CEO?
Diane Carney:One thing that I 100% learned very early on is that I'm not an expert in all things, but there are people out there that are incredibly smart and talented, and you have to figure out who your team is in order to get the best of the best.
Diane Carney:For any person that is embarking on a journey to be a C-suite leader or to be a CEO, my biggest piece of advice and again, learning lesson, is don't feel like you have to go it alone, because there are lots of different folks out there to give you advice, but then there's also people who are looking to support you, and that is something that I think. Sometimes we don't ask for help because we're either afraid or intimidated or we feel we need to have all the answers as the person quote unquote in charge. But I think the more you let people in and you involve them, the more ownership of the company they get and actually, the more profitable and successful your overall organization becomes, and so that's my biggest takeaway and piece of advice is let people in, let people help you, support you. Your organization will thank you for it.
William Gladhart:Oh, I think that's some very safe advice. So, diane, I've enjoyed having you on our Leadership Levers podcast. Thank you again for your insights.
Diane Carney:Well, thank you so much, it's been a pleasure.
