Leadership Levers

From Can’t to Can – Leading Culture Change in High-Stakes Environments with Jeff Huff

• William Gladhart • Season 4 • Episode 6

Share episode

What happens when you shift from a culture of “can’t” to a culture of “can”?

Highlights Covered

  • How a new leader used the first 90 days to map change across an entire organization
  • The power of listening, documenting, and acting to build trust and momentum
  • Why transitioning from a mindset of “can’t” to “can” unlocks empowerment, innovation, and accountability
  • Real-world example - a $150 sponsorship request turned into a catalyst for a cultural shift across the organization
  • Leadership takeaway- empowerment creates efficiency - and frees up leadership to lead

Summary

This episode explores how intentional leadership, rooted in listening and empowerment, can transform a team paralyzed by limitation into one fueled by possibility.

Will Gladhart is joined by Jeff Huff, CEO & President of Krucial Rapid Response, a former for-profit, turned nonprofit focused on healthcare and disaster relief staffing. 

With a diverse background that includes time in the Navy, leadership roles at FedEx and Pensify, and entrepreneurial ventures at Restoration Emporium KC, Jeff shares how his varied experience shaped a leadership approach rooted in action, listening, and empowerment.

When Jeff joined Krucial, the organization was stuck in a culture of “can’t.” Employees lacked decision-making power, departments operated without budgets, and innovation was stifled. 

In his first 90 days as the new leader - Jeff implemented a structured approach - what he calls his “9 D’s” - to identify strengths, gaps, and early wins. 

Through observation and intentionally connecting with staff at ever level, he helped the organization transition from a reactive mindset to a forward-looking culture where people felt equipped and trusted to lead.

One turning point came when a team member hesitantly requested a $150 sponsorship for an event. Instead of denying it or micromanaging, Jeff empowered the team to own the decision, ushering in a broader shift toward autonomy, resource ownership, and accountability. 

That moment, he reflects, was symbolic of a much larger transformation.

Jeff’s story is a case study in how intentional leadership - grounded in listening, structure, and trust - can rebuild a culture from the inside out. 

His advice to fellow leaders is simple but powerful - empower your people so you can lead with vision.

Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn


We'd love your feedback on how we can improve - send us a Text!!

Seeking to align your culture, boost performance & impact your bottom line? Let’s chat—no sales, just real talk about your challenges.
Not ready? Join our Culture Think Tank Community for free insights!

William Gladhart:

Welcome to the Leadership Levers Podcast. I'm your host, Will Gladheart, CMO at the Culture Think Tank. At the Culture Think Tank, we empower leaders with metrics that strengthen culture, drive performance and return. We're here today to learn about the actions leaders have taken to address organizational change. Today, our guest is Jeff Huff, president at Krucial Rapid Response. Thanks for taking the time to join us. Absolutely my pleasure. Let's begin by having you share with our audience a bit about yourself, your background and also your organization.

Jeff Huff:

Full disclosure. I'm a recovering hillbilly from Southwest Missouri and that is my claim to fame.

Jeff Huff:

I guess, but it gave me the opportunity to grow up in a small community, learn values that are sometimes taken for granted. I grew up watching my mom work hard every day, go to work, so that hard work attitude comes from my mom, my grandma, my grandpa. That way I grew up in a small town, was able to join the Navy, and so I spent six years. Naval Reserve was in supply. It was not activated during Desert Storm, but was on call during that time. I was able to secure a job with FedEx when I was 19.

Jeff Huff:

I moved to Kansas City and spent 17 years at that organization and watched it grow and flourish and develop. I grew from washing vans, loading trucks, going into operations, doing anything that I could for money as a young married person with a child, and then got to go into sales and that found my passion.

Jeff Huff:

I love sales. I love being able to sell.

Jeff Huff:

Everybody was doing it at the time and so I wanted to follow that trend. But I was at Pensify for about 14 years and went from carrying a bag from dental office to dental office and then worked my way up into working with large organizations. I was trained by every division. There's five, six divisions. Maybe now Got Krucial to understand the dental world inside and out and grew as a person in my professional career. Also was able to get my

Jeff Huff:

MBA while I was there, so he'll believe, with an MBA. I know that sounds pretty terrifying.

Jeff Huff:

Dangerous right yeah yeah, absolutely dangerous and then own my own business. My wife and I own Restoration Emporium as well and I had Casey Furnishing and so was not just put a lot of the corporate skills EMTs that I had learned into entrepreneurial type of deal and did that for about five years and then currently where I'm at is Crucial Rapid Response. It's a year and staffing organization focused primarily on responding to disasters, hurricanes, fires, tornadoes, those kinds of things. We really support organizations that have called full wrap services, so they have the tents and the equipment, but their cadre of people are not big enough a lot of times for the size of those deployments, and so that's where we come into play. We also do what I call core staffing, and so we are where we come into play.

Jeff Huff:

We also do what I call core staffing, and so we are working with hospitals, health care organizations in order to be able to fill that need. That is especially significant right now, whether it's nurses, emts, behavioral tech, really heavy in the mental health aspect right now, and that's what I'm currently doing. I've been doing that for a little over a and that's what I'm currently doing. I've been doing that for a little over a year now and I'm absolutely utilizing everything I've learned from every stop along the way and just having a lot of fun doing it.

William Gladhart:

As a leader, am I able, that's great to hear. Well, you've definitely had a wide breadth of experience and in many roles. I look forward to your responses today. So we'll be discussing three questions as a warm up to start our conversation. Would you share why you believe a healthy culture is critical?

Jeff Huff:

able to create the empowerment, the ability for people to do their job and not just to show up.

Jeff Huff:

We're working through performance evaluation season right now and talking to people, their why, why are they here, and it creates an understanding of if your corporate culture and what you're doing, the why is impactful and your why is not just about the organization but about them growing. That's key, and so really have worked very hard to make sure that is in place so that we can, whenever we're on a deployment and we have working around the clock a lot of times that there's not that hesitancy of okay, do I want to be involved, but it's like I have to be involved, I want to do what it takes in order to be able to accomplish the task at hand.

William Gladhart:

Yeah, I think that's really a valid piece Kcrucial information for other leaders. Is, you know, not only the why but also helping people understand their role and clarity, especially because you're in a high pressure, high stress situations, even more critical to have that alignment. It's been our experience that leaders tend to struggle in three key areas people, process or profit. In your role as a leader or this organization or others that you've worked in, which of those areas kind of presented a cultural challenge? And then also, how did you kind of go about solving it?

Jeff Huff:

Yeah, absolutely. So I didn't mention. But Crucial is a nonprofit organization and so it went from a for-profit 9 to a nonprofit prior to when I was here, and so you can imagine that the profit side of it that it's still important, but it's not like the only thing we focus on, and the people are here, the people that are still here want to be here, and so I really looked at kind of the process side of it is what things were in place or what needed to be adjusted, what needed to be updated or changed or eliminated in order for us to be successful.

Jeff Huff:

And so, really, in the first 90 days I have my own, I have issues, but I have nine Ds that I go through and each 30 days those D words. Alliteration is my love language, being able to go through that and identify who was there. Why were they there? What did they do? How did they interact with each other? How did that interaction could it get better? What were the challenges inside?

Jeff Huff:

of that, and then how did that play into all of the things that we needed to get done?

Jeff Huff:

Were we casting a vision, Were we fulfilling just our basic promise to our recruits and then to our facilities that we had contracts with?

Jeff Huff:

And so that first 90 days as a leader inside this organization were so important for me to be able to understand all of those things and took copious notes and what you would see as I went through it was there was consistencies, there were outliers here, there are things that somebody was important to them but maybe not to the group, but there was.

Jeff Huff:

I identified five to six things that were like okay, if we solve these, have early wins as much as possible, and then be able to implement processes or programs or whether it's communication or whatever it is, and implement those and to be able to see success, to see that I'm not just here to make change but I'm here to create opportunities for us to be successful. So I think that for me as a leader and that first 90 days were so key, but then being able to take pieces of that and that even today, some of those things are part of that vision for the next one, three, five years, and be able to cast that. And then it goes back to those first 90 days and they're like oh wait, Jeff was listening to me. He wasn't just, we weren't just meeting, but he's actually listening and it made an impact on me so that we could be a better organization.

William Gladhart:

Yeah, I really appreciate you sharing that CAN'T I think that's a valuable point for other leaders, because one 90 days being very critical but also taking a micro look at every aspect of the organization and really understanding that but then digesting it, turning around and communicating it back to staff that not only did you take the time to listen, but they were heard and then those actions and next steps were taken. What was probably the one thing in that journey that helped impact your culture and performance positively across the organization?

Jeff Huff:

The culture was almost a culture of camp. You know you can't do this and you can't accomplish this and you can't do that. And so I wanted to create a culture of can, and so that was the biggest change in a lot of this was I had people like the business development team and they can't go to conferences and you can't support this and you can't do that. It was very interesting. One of the first things we were talking about. They came to me almost apologetically asking there's this account that has asked us to be involved in their golf tournament. I'm like, okay, I'm thinking big sponsorship or something like that. They asked for $150 so that they could go to it. I'm apologizing and I'm like, no, I go. What's the sponsorship levels? Let me know what that is. We'll provide a gift for the giveaways. We'll do this, this and this. And it was almost like no, wait a second.

Jeff Huff:

That first introduction to can you can do this, you can make decisions, you can do these kinds of things. And there was no previous leadership was working to put in budget because there was no budgets in place, so there was no performance reviews, there were no things like that. And so, in order to help people understand that they can do things. Each department implemented and presented their budgets to me so that we could project ahead, so that we could say in the first quarter we're doing this, second quarter doing that, so that they don't have to come to me and ask for $150 for a golf tournament. They have the ability to make decisions on things like that. So changing that mindset from a can't culture to a can culture was the key.

William Gladhart:

Wow, that's a great story, but also a great testament to leadership and yourself to be able to not only empower people to look at where the gaps were of why they couldn't and why that attitude of can't had been pervasive, versus them being empowered by having a budget or whatever those resources was, to make the decisions and make the next step. As we wrap up today, is there anything else you'd like to add or share with fellow leaders?

Jeff Huff:

Yeah, kind of on that can culture, if I can. What that does? It empowers people and then that empowerment allows them to provide ideas and solutions and then that creates efficiency and that allows me to be the

William Gladhart:

visionary, Jeff to be able to provide the vision, which means we go back to the top. It empowers them so it just feeds itself and so you can go from little wins Levers to buy-in and it goes to Levers and we and the why is explained. So www. theculturethinktank. com I would just encourage to really dig in and understand what's the history where you at currently and then know that even the biggest challenges can be overcome with intentional efforts and being able to invest in others. And the most important thing is you know

Jeff Huff:

, you see people in meetings, the leaders, and they're on their phone and they're approving and doing this. That's for me, I see that as being somebody that maybe hasn't empowered, they haven't given them, their employees, the ability to that can attitude. Free up you by empowering them is what I would say.

William Gladhart:

Yeah, well, that definitely speaks to, as you mentioned, empowerment, but also innovation, performance, all those things across the board that, as you said, can transform the entire organization, not only attitudinally but also financially. So, jeff, I've enjoyed having you on our leadership lovers podcast today. Thank you so much for your insights. I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you for joining us on the Leadership Lovers podcast. Find all our Leadership Lovers episodes on the Culture Think Tank website at wwwtheculturethinktankcom, or listen on your favorite streaming platform. We'd love to hear from you about the challenges you have faced as a leader. Tune in weekly as we invite leaders to share their experiences in strengthening culture and performance, one action at a time.

People on this episode

Head Shot

William Gladhart

Host