Consistency Drives Performance: Jon Dario on Standards, Execution & Leadership

What causes performance to break down across an organization — even when you have good people in place?

In this episode of Leadership Levers, Jon Dario, founder of Retail Management Formula and CEO of Edison Properties, shares how inconsistent execution across 250+ locations exposed a critical leadership gap: without clear standards, every team creates its own version of success.

Drawing from decades of experience in retail and multi-location operations, John explains why culture starts with people — but performance depends on clarity.

John walks through:

• Why people are the foundation, but process determines consistency
• How inconsistent execution creates volatility in results and engagement
• The power of defining a clear “pyramid of standards” across the organization
• Why leadership teams must align on priorities before expecting execution
• How daily routines reinforce culture and operational discipline
• The mindset shift from blaming people to guiding them toward success. 

For leaders managing growth, scale, or multi-location teams, this conversation is a reminder: performance doesn’t fail because people don’t care — it fails when leaders don’t define what success looks like.

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 PL3 Community for free insights & connections. 

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Background

William Gladhart 0:00

Welcome to the Leadership Levers Podcast. I'm your host, Will Gladhart, 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 John Dario, founder of the Retail Management Formula LLC. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us.

Jon Dario 0:31

Well, thank you. Well, and pleased to be here.

William Gladhart 0:33

Absolutely. Let's begin by having you share with our audience a bit about yourself, your background, and your organization and other organizations you worked for.

Jon Dario 0:42

Sure, of course. My background is basically retail management. I grew up in Macy's and GAP and several other, you know, large retail organizations, including financial services retailers like Bank of America. I'm currently the founder of, as you said, the Retail Management Formula. It's a business that helps organizations focus on management skills and improve frontline execution. And I teach structure and systems for organizations to improve daily execution and deliver what I call radically reliable results. That happens to be a side gig for me. I'm also at the same time CEO of a company called Edison Properties. It's a real estate company based in Newark, New Jersey. And we have properties throughout the New York and New Jersey area, and we run various retail businesses from the company and also some commercial office businesses.

Why Healthy Culture Drives Performance

William Gladhart 1:30

Yeah, that's that's really interesting. So you get to wear a couple different hats of not only leading, but also working with managers to continuously improve their leadership skills. We'll be discussing three questions today as a warm-up to our conversation. Could you share why you believe a healthy culture is critical?

Jon Dario 1:49

Yeah, I think a healthy culture is critical because people's attitudes matter. People's attitudes uh really drive how they perform their work. If uh if employees are team members have less than ideal attitudes, they're likely to be less than ideally engaged and uh and therefore they they don't put in their full effort or or they uh in the worst cases sometimes can work to obstruct organizational objectives and so on. Whereas when people's attitudes are strong and good and healthy, they're likely to work past all obstacles to achieve the the company's goals. And the culture itself is largely dependent on for the team members' attitudes. A healthy culture, whether it's whether it's rooted in a safe culture and and a culture that allows people to ask questions and make mistakes or whatever, that creates an environment that's collaborative and and leads to good attitudes, which contributes to team engagement.

People First Then Process Then Profit

William Gladhart 2:46

Absolutely. Well, and I think having that clarity of role and understanding around why you're at the organization and how you contribute is all a part of that. Let's begin with our first question. Uh, it's been our experience that leaders tend to struggle in three key areas people, process, and profit. In your dual role as either CEO or working with leaders and managers, could you identify which of three areas has been a challenge or has been a challenge as you've helped others grow?

Jon Dario 3:14

Yeah, I mean to It's a big question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. To some extent, all three, all three end up being challenges, right? I do think that there is a hierarchy. I I do think that people is kind of the the gate opener to the to the other challenges. I think that, you know, if you first of all, if you don't have the right people on on the team, or as we already discussed, if those people aren't sufficiently motivated and and inclined to to participate productively in in the team's goals, then whatever you do in in terms of process or procedures is going to fail. And that's going to inevitably lead to problems with profit. So I do think it starts with people. And I think the Gallup organization has their company that that knows a thing or two about research and data, and and they they have found that the manager is 70% of the influence on team engagement. And I think that has everything to do with the people part of this. Once you have the people thing figured out, then process is really important. And there's some uh I think there's some back and forth between those two. I mean, I think people thrive in a in an environment when they understand the processes and they can feel confident about delivering the processes, those two things are closely inter, you know, intertwine. And of course, they both together lead to profits.

William Gladhart 4:36

Absolutely. Well, I think that's a really good point. As you've been in a leader of a company for many years, was there a specific challenge around either culture or growth or process that you identified that you could share? And how did that impact the organization, either positively or negatively?

The Cost Of Inconsistent Execution

Jon Dario 4:55

Maybe the best example I can give is uh not from my current my current company or my current role, but from a past company I led that we had 250 uh plus locations throughout North America.

William Gladhart 5:09

Wow.

Jon Dario 5:09

And when I joined, I ended up being there for 10 years, but when I first joined it, there were indications throughout that people were kind of operating on their own without much consistency in terms of the processes that they were following or even the language that they were using. And it showed up in the inconsistency of the execution. People didn't understand what was most important. Everybody was kind of left to make their own decisions about what was most important to them.

William Gladhart 5:37

And that's that's that's a lot of decisions at a lot of locations.

Jon Dario 5:41

It is indeed. It is indeed. And as you rightly point out, it it led to kind of a roller coaster in terms of results and a roller coaster in terms of people's level of engagement and and their commitment to the business. And it took a bit of time to kind of get everybody uh rowing in the same direction, but that was definitely the key.

Pyramid Of Standards And Daily Routines

William Gladhart 6:04

Yeah. So obviously you've identified that that not only the communication, but the people and the process was a big part of that challenge at a multi-location organization. Is was there one thing or was there a couple things that you did that actually helped solidify or kind of seamlessly move that process forward or impact that level of culture positively?

Jon Dario 6:26

Yeah, I think the thing that was most important in uh moving the needle on consistent execution across the across the team was in defining standards. I I used something that I call pyramid of standards. And and it I didn't develop it myself with this organization. I didn't develop I developed the concept of the pyramid, but I didn't develop the actual pyramid. I I pulled together all the leaders from from around North America and we sat down and and kind of brainstormed what was most important to the organization. What were the the team goals and and what were the standards that had to be met in order to deliver on those goals? And once we brainstormed that list, which took a couple of hours, we then started to group them into buckets. So we we got that list down to six or eight buckets that everything fit under. And then we prioritized them and we said, let's make sure that everybody in our organization, all across all 250 locations, understands exactly what these standards are and understands exactly what the hierarchy of their importance is. Because in so many organizations, there's a lot of standards, there's a lot of different things that people are asked to do and a lot of different goals that can be conflicting and and overlapping. And when you leave it to people to make their own decisions about which is most important, you're you're going to get a varying degree of performance and and and execution. So by going through that exercise, it wasn't me mandating it. It was it was the whole team building it together. All of the leaders were involved in building it. And then it was clearly something that could be communicated clearly. And you know, everybody across the entire continent then understood exactly what the what the hierarchy of objectives was. Now, there was another really important step that followed after that. That was job one. Job two was was establishing very specific routines that everybody was to follow in order to deliver on each of those objectives. And that took a little while longer. But those two things together really, really uh turned the dial for us.

William Gladhart 8:29

Well, it it sounds like it was an amazing experience, not only to sit in the room with a fellow group of team and leaders from all over the country, but to get that feedback and then be able to pair that information down into priorities, buckets, and you know what really made sense for the organization. I mean, that's that's a wonderful amount of, and I'm sure in in some of that work it kind of shifted the communication and the culture a little bit as well.

Jon Dario 8:54

No doubt about it. Not only shifted the culture, it actually created a culture, created a culture that didn't necessarily exist prior. Um, that actually became the culture. And and I think your point is right because it ended up being a bit of a working document, right? I mean, it's the years that followed, um, we had something to go back to. And as the business changed or as the as the environment changed, we were able to go back and revisit that you know, that list of standards and the routines and the priorities, and and we did we did make adaptations as we needed to in order to keep things moving forward.

Leading With Trust Instead Of Blame

William Gladhart 9:26

Yeah, that's a that's a really great story. I think that's uh really impactful for other leaders to hear. So as we wrap up today, is there anything else you'd like to share uh with fellow leaders?

Jon Dario 9:36

It took me a little while in my career to get to this point. Once I finally accepted that the huge majority of people want to be successful, and it's our job as leaders to just help them be successful. Earlier in my career, when I was in the in the mindset of thinking that people were out to sabotage me and they were uh they were somehow not wanting to work hard or whatever, and I ended up blaming them and it created a lot of pain for me as a leader. Once I accepted that most people want to be thought of as good and and they truly do want to do good, they might not understand exactly what good looks like. They might not, you know, they might have varying degrees of motivation um to get to good. But if you believe as a leader that people want to be good, then it really helps you uh see your job as guiding them to success rather than punishing them for not achieving success.

William Gladhart 10:27

Yeah. Again, all goes back to communication, clarity, understanding your role in the organization. I love that you've highlighted that throughout the process. So, John, I've really enjoyed having you as a guest on our Leadership Lovers podcast today. Thank you again for your insights.

Jon Dario 10:42

Of course. No, I've appreciated the time. Thank you so much, Will.

William Gladhart 10:47

Thank you for joining us on the Leadership Levers Podcast. Find all our Leadership Levers episodes on the Culture Think Tank website at www.theculture think tank.com 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.