Turning Blind Spots into Business Strengths

Starting the conversation:

Who actually owns the responsibility for your company culture — and does that person have the power to influence and direct development of culture (or, is it just talk)? Brett Hoogeveen, Co-Founder at BetterCulture, talks about what the invisible 20% of culture is and how to use it to outperform the competition.

To stay relevant and create your own future, your company will benefit from a written, actionable culture plan that everyone commits to. Investing energy to map out and measure it is how culture improves year to year while increasing competitive advantage. It starts with claiming your core values.

In this show, you will hear how to identify who is best suited to own the culture of your organization; two foundational questions to assess how you are doing to create a strong, engaged culture; and the power of internal conversations to stay connected to the plan. Jess Dewell talks with Brett Hoogeveen, Co-Founder at BetterCulture, about claiming your core values to shape your lasting and growth-oriented organizational culture.

Host: Jess Dewell

Guest: Brett Hoogeveen

What You Will Hear:

4:10 The value of culture in business is often underestimated and invisible to most leaders.

• Culture’s impact is often not obvious and needs more convincing for some leaders.
• The guest’s company, Better Culture, tries to make this value more tangible.
• Many leaders agree culture is important, but “have an invisible blind spot” to what they’re missing out on.

5:30 Strategic planning for culture requires depth, not just acknowledgment.

• Many organizations include culture in strategic plans superficially, but lack actionable details.
• Culture should have as much rigor as other business priorities: specific actions, accountabilities, and timelines.
• Most businesses focus strategic planning on financial or operational metrics, neglecting culture’s strategic plan.

7:30 Culture ownership must be clear — ideally an executive with power and knowledge.

• Preferably, the CEO owns culture, but if not, delegated authority is required.
• The owner must have the clout to prioritize culture alongside other business objectives.
• Consolidation in executive teams risks diluting perspectives; someone must still have clear responsibility for culture.

16:00 Culture can be built bottom-up, using the 20 Tenets to guide both employee and leadership behavior.

• The 20 Tenets are behaviors benefiting both individuals and the organization.
• Employees get a clear roadmap to contribute to culture, not just leaders.
• When core values become actionable at every level, culture improves throughout the company.

24:30 Assume positive intent and avoid gossip to strengthen both relationships and company culture.

• Assuming positive intent reduces stress and is foundational to healthy cultures.
• Gossip (“Tenent 11 is no gossip”) creates drama and erodes trust.
• Setting behavioral expectations for these issues is key to maintaining a strong culture.

31:30 Self-reflection on core values and tenets is underutilized — improvement depends on it.

• Most organizations have core values but do not systematically help people reflect or grow in them.
• The Better Culture platform includes self-assessment and coaching to address this gap.
• Growth happens when employees regularly assess and work on specific tenets tied to their daily behavior.

42:00 Shifting company culture starts with enabling individuals to choose what to work on and tracking cumulative progress.

• Empowering each employee to identify and develop their own areas spreads engagement and improvement.
• Progress is not just individual, but collective, creating visible culture shifts.
• Tracking self-chosen development among employees helps leaders spot strengths and gaps across the team.

49:15 It is BOLD to claim your core values to shape organizational success.

Resources

• Brett Hoogeveen on LinkedIn
• As a gift to Bold Business Podcast listeners, Brett has provided a link to download a FREE premium resource: your Culture Kickstarter Pack. This 25-page resource includes a listing of BetterCulture’s full 20 Tenets of Culture and access to ALL of BetterCulture’s tools and resources for 2 of the 20 Tenets. Essentially, it’s everything you need to run two effortless and effective team-building and development workshops with your team. Download that free resource here: https://betterculture.com/BoldBusinessPodcast

Transcript

Jess Dewell 0:00
When we’re talking today, I know you’re going to hear and want to know the answer to who owns the culture in your organization.

Brett Hoogeveen 0:08
Leadership is culture-building. Leadership is influence. Leadership is, what can I do today to make this the kind of company that I want to work for, that our customers want to work with?

How can I influence that today?

Jess Dewell 0:22
I’m so glad you’re here. Thanks for stopping by at the Bold Business Podcast. We are normalizing important conversations.

Yes, there are tips. Yes, there are ways to solve problems. More importantly are going to be, what do you need for yourself to be able to solve those problems and make the most of the education, the training, and the programs that you are already using?

This is a supplement to that. It can sit on top of it, fuel your soul, fuel your mind, and most importantly, regardless of where you’re at on your journey, maybe you’re starting out. Maybe you’re ready to scale. Maybe you’re going through reinvention. The conversations we are having will help you at each of those stages. So hang around, see what’s going on, and I look forward to seeing you engaging with our videos.

Announcer 1:13
You are listening to the Bold Business Podcast, where you will hear firsthand experiences about what it really takes to ensure market relevance and your company’s future.

Jess Dewell 1:25
Today’s guest is Brett Hoogeveen, co-founder of Better Culture. He’s on a mission to make the world a better place to work. Leadership development and technology is something we know can help culture, but we may not be using to actually leverage what’s available to us in terms of growth, expansion, and longevity in our organizations.

So to build stronger leaders and engage every employee, there’s a way to do that without you taking the brunt of the weight and doing the heavy lifting. Better Culture does that for you. And so here’s the deal.

The deal is this. When we’re talking today, I know you’re going to hear and want to know the answer to who owns the culture in your organization. And I’ll give you a hint.

It’s better if it’s not the CEO. And the second thing to listen for is what makes a good engaged culture and how does that actually help your organization remain competitive and have relevance and create its own future. And the third thing, the way we connect to each other and the way we do our work together, being rooted in connectedness means that our culture requires its own plan and to be part of the bigger strategic plan.

And we talk about the nuances of that. It needs its own plan that is wrapped up and articulated and addressed in the overarching business direction. I’m so excited to have you listening in, hear those three things and a whole bunch more with a great conversation that I’m having with Brett.

What’s the biggest thing that’s on your heart about what’s happening in business today and what is the current trend?

Brett Hoogeveen 3:18
So two things are really on my heart. One is just the value of culture. Organizations, I think too many that have an invisible blind spot for seeing what their business could run, feel like, be profitable like if they have a super engaged workforce and it’s invisible.

So there are so many just different aspects, whether that’s productivity or other things that I think are somewhat invisible. I run a company called Better Culture. So obviously I’m an evangelist for this, but if I write a book in the near term, it’s going to be on that topic.

Like, I’m really frustrated that leaders don’t see what they’re missing out on when they’re not focusing on it.

Jess Dewell 3:54
Everything wants to fight to get out of my face. So just that alone, I think I can already tell we’re going to go in some fun places. Hopefully, there’s some unexpected and all the way around fun.

When did you realize yourself that there was this concept of business owners are missing out around their culture?

Brett Hoogeveen 4:14
There’s a long story there. He has just said, it’s obvious. Like we don’t have to convince people culture has value.

Everybody knows it. Like anybody who’s in business knows it. And I’ve always had in the back of my mind, I don’t know.

I think they might need some extra convincing. And so more recently I’ve just sat down with a series of people and I’ve started asking where does it add value? Where do you think you’re missing?

And people just have no sense how to put a sharp pencil to employee engagement and culture. And so I think I’m finally convinced he’s wrong.

Jess Dewell 4:46
My follow-up to that is going to be, where was he right to start?

Brett Hoogeveen 4:51
I mean, he’s right. Lots of places it has immense value and people feel it. Like people know it.

Every leader will tell you, yeah, culture is like everything. But when you try to drill down on that point, he’s right. But when it comes to how are you operating your business over the next week or month or quarter or year, and what are you prioritizing?

And for goodness sakes, tell me you have a strategic plan for culture then. If it’s so important, do you? Oh, you don’t?

What’s the problem there?

Jess Dewell 5:16
Let’s go back to that strategic plan of culture and, or a strategic plan where culture is included. Are those different to you?

Brett Hoogeveen 5:30
No, it’s not different. It’s just, what’s the depth? If you can’t tell me with some level of depth, what you’re going to change, who you’re going to level up, where you’re going to emphasize and put it on a timeline and who’s got accountability for it.

And just basic things like that come associated with strategic planning. I just often find people don’t do it. They focus on all sorts of financial metrics or what product are we going to emphasize or what location are we going to open, do strategic stuff for the business, but not for culture.

Jess Dewell 6:02
So maybe you and I are on a similar mission then that there are things that aren’t happening in traditional business models that must change to ensure the relevance and our own business’s future.

Brett Hoogeveen 6:12
In my world, we just focus just on the culture piece, right? I want you to focus on our whole business with that exact philosophy. Just make sure if you want your people to be more committed and engaged, let’s work on that.

Jess Dewell 6:24
Okay. Now I have a different question. So your dad’s view is right.

Your view is right. Is it because times have changed or is it because we didn’t prioritize it the same or is it even something else?

Brett Hoogeveen 6:36
It’s a level of depth. I think at the high 30,000 feet level, people know culture matters. And even if they don’t know exactly how to build it, they will agree with you that it matters.

But once you start to say, okay, what are you going to do about it? Let’s go one level deeper, two levels deeper, three levels deeper. That’s where there’s this dramatic falloff where most executives go, I don’t know, HR, what are we doing?

And that’s it. There’s not much further depth than that.

Jess Dewell 7:02
What role owns culture?

Brett Hoogeveen 7:04
Somebody with knowledge, tools, and power has to own it. And it can’t be a total group thing. It needs to be one person or a very small group of people.

I’d love it if it’s the CEO. If it’s not the CEO, then the CEO needs to delegate some of their power to the person who owns it that can really say, no, this is a priority and speak up against all of the other business priorities and have an equivalent voice.

Jess Dewell 7:32
That’s so cool. And I appreciate that you said that it’s not the CEO because I’m like, as I’m thinking and sitting and listening to you, I recognize consolidation is happening in our executive teams and the way some of those executive roles are coming together makes sense from an efficiency perspective, from a management of the cost and from a seeing and all, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Where it’s really missing and where the danger occurs is we miss the facets of the points of view that people in different seats bring.

So to your point, so who’s going to own that and who’s going to have that voice? And it could be somebody within the company. Could it be somebody outside of the company? Like Better Culture?

Brett Hoogeveen 8:19
It’s possible.

Jess Dewell 8:21
Yeah.

Brett Hoogeveen 8:21
The problem there is power and permanence being front and center in all of the business decisions being made. That’s really hard for an external. So we call that role sort of a culture driver.

And we do that for some of our clients, but even with our best engagements, we just, we know there’s stuff happening we don’t get to see. If you’re in-house and that all-company memo that went out and it’s like, Ooh, that should have been worded differently. That violates what we said was a top priority.

You just, you would catch so many more things with an internal person in that role than it’s really hard to rely on external to carry all.

Jess Dewell 8:55
Do you teach them how to create this culture driver within that organization?

Brett Hoogeveen 9:02
No, on purpose. So two or three years ago, that was going to be our business model is we were going to create a culture driver community. And we were going to educate, we’re going to train culture drivers and we were going to do this big whole thing.

It’s too complicated. It’s something that doesn’t exist. And to educate the marketplace and educate companies and to make them give this person the level of power that needs to happen.

It just, it doesn’t work. So what we need to do instead is find who’s the right person that’s already in your business that has the power and cares about culture. And let’s work with and through that person.

Jess Dewell 9:35
You help companies identify that person.

Brett Hoogeveen 9:36
And it’s usually, it’s one of, it’s a short list, right? So the ideally an executive, they’re going to need to dedicate some time, five or 10%. It’s not a full time job, but there, this isn’t something that you can just put and say, Oh yeah, sure.

I’ll think about it once a quarter. It takes some effort. So.

Jess Dewell 9:53
Any big change takes a minimum of six months to even start to see that. You can see a result faster than that, but for the light bulb to go on and go, Oh, I finally get why this is actually working here. Why this is important to us in our unique expression, our competitive advantage, our solution that’s solving these problems for other people.

And then it’s where the rubber meets the road somewhere between month six and nine that aha happens. And then it’s now you’ve got to practice it and hold it because that’s the hardest part, right? Now you’re past, Ooh, we’re getting the results.

Ooh, we got this thing. How do you make it last? How does it integrate?

Brett Hoogeveen 10:30
So this is an interesting part of the conversation, right? You said, what’s on my mind. I explained there’s this invisible, I think in the neighborhood of 20% of business upside, that’s being uncaptured.

Why that’s so interesting and on my mind lately is, and the reason I didn’t have an answer for your question, the work we do historically is with companies that are in the top 20% of company culture and engagement anyway, because they value it. They invest in it. They see the value.

They want to be better. We don’t have any clients like zero that are in the bottom quartile of company culture that are saying we’re drowning. We need help.

And I think the reason for that is they don’t see it. They don’t, they don’t say they have issues. They got turnover.

They’ve got drama. They’ve got tension. They’ve got costs, they’ve got lawsuits, but they don’t see that all of those fires are actually related to the culture that you’ve built over time.

And we can’t solve that in a quarter, but we can help you make a lot of progress over three years if we can back up and work on these things. But those companies, they’re not interested in, they don’t call. They’re not interested in talking to us because they just don’t see the value.

So we have very few organizations that like we’re antagonistic with leadership. We’re like, you’re going to do this. And they say, we don’t know why.

And we say, you need, they get it.

Jess Dewell 11:47
Those of you who are watching and listening, this is really important because if you’re listening and going, oh, I get culture’s important and you don’t prioritize anything about it, you might as well just tune out or send it somebody who does. For those of you who really want to spend some time and go, how do I take this to the next level? Do I have the right person?

Do I have the right structures to get support and capitalize on some opportunity right now? Please keep listening. And that is a challenge for those of you who want to walk away.

Just do it. This is not the episode for you, but guess what? Somebody else is going to come to you and say, I don’t understand what’s going on, or this is all, this is important to me.

And I really want to understand the edges of my culture. And I want you to send this program to them. So how do we go where I want to go deeper into this?

Because I want to, I’m like, I’ve, I bet Brett, you have, you have examples of what makes up a good culture, right? You have 20 tenants. So how did you come up with 20 and not seven or 50 or the other number?

Brett Hoogeveen 12:49
The simplest way to think about what makes up a great culture is can you answer two really simple questions? One is what does it mean to be a leader in your organization? Do leaders have a clear mindset of what they’re actually supposed to do to create an engaged, positive workforce?

And so that’s question one. Your question that you just asked goes to part two, which is do employees have a clear roadmap for how they can show up every day and lead from whatever role they’re in to build a better culture from the bottom up from the team level. And that is correlated.

It’s similar to any company that has core values or a culture code or any of these types of things that are supposed to represent who we are, how we show up, how we work, all those things. But again, most organizations are not getting the value that they should be from what they’re doing with their core values or those types of things. And so we’ve supercharged that with our 20 tenants of culture and trying to help organizations figure out what it looked like to build a healthy culture from the bottom up, not relying on leaders to do all the work.

Jess Dewell 13:52
There’s something to be said about all of the pressures, the quick pace of change, all of the seemingly competing priorities on the surface that extra time is necessary to address. And when I hear you say the executives, the management teams don’t have to carry this by themselves, that feels like a breath of fresh air. It also feels impossible, even if I’m one, because I think I’m one of those people who has a company who cares about this and wants to understand the shape of it.

So what shows up in my world? I don’t think my culture is bad when there’s drama. I don’t think my culture is bad when somebody, when there’s change over, I don’t think there’s the culture is bad when a project has to be shut down for whatever reason.

I think it’s bad when we can’t talk about it. I think it’s bad when people don’t feel like they can speak up We got some problems here. Let’s address those problems.

So I’m guessing that’s part of one of the answers to those two questions. Is there an awareness of how can we show up here? So take it away.

Brett Hoogeveen 14:59
Can I share the background of how we came up with this 2010 idea? And then I’ll give you some specific behaviors that’ll line up with what you’re talking about. So in the work that we have done over the last decade with organizations that want to be better places to work, that want to improve their employee engagement, their quality scores, whatever it is that they’re after.

And they know culture is at the heart of that. Most of what we have done as an organization over those years is say, great, let us work with your leaders. We’ll do leadership training. We’ll teach them what they can do to build healthier teams, et cetera. And that is valid. It absolutely is important. But there’s a huge gap in any education. When you teach somebody something, people get busy. They don’t put it into action as much as they could.

So we asked ourselves, what would it look like to try to give an organization or a manager or a leader a tool that would help them not have to take all that load on themselves, but instead give something to every employee, to their teams, to the frontline people that says, hey, look, this is something that if you’ll lean into it, not only is it good for the company and the team, it’s also good for you.

And so we said, what would it look like to help build culture from the bottom up and to try to entice employees to say, you know what, these are things that would just be good for me if I worked on. And oh, as a consequence, if I work on them, if I improve them, they will help us build healthier teams and healthier cultures. So I know that’s a big bite, but that’s what we were after with our vision.

I think we pulled it off.

Jess Dewell 16:23
It is a big bite. Here’s the thing though. I felt the ripple.

And then here’s this outside piece. We’re actually talking a little bit about winfinity. And one of the things I love about winfinity, Brett, I don’t know if I’ve ever shared this with you before.

That’s the win. Okay. It is not a Jessica original.

I did adopt it. Full disclosure. I am passing it on because I do the concept.

It’s the win-win. What’s in it for me, what’s in it for you, and what’s in it for the good of the people that get the benefit or get the output of it, whatever that is. Positive, negative, neutral.

So in this winfinity that I’m hearing you talk about and these ripples, it has to start with who? Who’s the plunk to make the ripples?

Brett Hoogeveen 16:59
It can be anyone. And as we were envisioning what we thought we would build, what we thought we were starting with is a universal set of core values. Look at all of our best clients, all the best organizations.

What are the things that they say we want our team members to show up and do these things, be like this. And we got pretty close to 20. We’re in the neighborhood of 20.

And as we were researching, we kept finding data that people learned to be more coachable. Okay. Want coaching and feedback.

Not only of course, is that an indicator of an employee you’d like to have, a good team member, they want feedback. They appreciate coaching. Gosh, wouldn’t we like that?

It turns out there’s unbelievable data that shows people who are just coachable in life have better relationships. They’re more financially stable and successful. They have better careers.

They are more happy and more successful. If you’re just a coachable person, you are likely to be more happy and more successful. And so before we finalized our list, we said, Whoa, let’s make sure we’re confident that we can say to every single employee and team member, if you lean into this type of stuff, it’s good for you.

It’s just good for you. And so every single one of these 20 things that we’ve come up with, we feel very confident that we can go to employees and say, your employer is making an investment in you. Oh yeah.

And it’s good for the team and the company. So it creates that win-finity. I love the term.

Jess Dewell 18:16
You’re listening to the Bold Business Podcast. I’m your host, Jess Dewell. This is your program for strategizing long-term success while diving deep into what the right work is for your business right now.

Announcer 18:31
You’re listening to the Bold business Podcast hosted by Jess Dewell, a nationally recognized strategic growth consultant. She works with business owners and executives to integrate just two elements that guide business through the ups and downs of growth. Number one, know what work is necessary.

Number two, do all the work possible. Schedule a complimentary consultation to find out more at reddirection.com.

Jess Dewell 19:01
Brett Hoogeveen, co-founder at Better Culture has been sharing insights on boosting your competitive edge by knowing and living your core values. Now back to the interview. Hey, all you watchers and listeners.

This is something that’s really important. Maybe you’re listening because you want to understand what goes into a good culture. Maybe you are not at the top.

Maybe you are somewhere in the middle. And guess what? This is something then that you can take and embody because what happens from being more coachable?

Opportunities for growth in your organization. Hopefully, you don’t run out of those. Opportunities to say things that need to be said and start understanding where the edges of this are and other people will take notice around you and building that team.

So I’m going to say part of this infinity is every single, so I hear you saying, everybody’s going to be the stone that starts the ripple. And what would I say next? So anybody can do that centerpiece and then what?

Brett Hoogeveen 19:58
And it’s good for everybody if you do it. Right? So if you will lean in and be that ripple, it’s good for you, it’s good for the people you are closest with, and it’s good for your company.

Leadership is culture-building. Leadership is influence. Leadership is what can I do today to make this the kind of company that I want to work for that our customers want to work with?

How can I influence that today? And every person can do it today.

Jess Dewell 20:25
Will you explore this with me? I’m coming to work for you at Better Culture and I have my own personal values and Better Culture has organizational values. What are the organizational values of Better Value?

Brett Hoogeveen 20:35
Better Culture. I’m already mixing them up. We don’t have traditional core values, but we use these 20 tenets.

So what I would tell you is, look, you want to be a superstar here? Let me talk to you about these 20 tenets. Let me talk to you about the value of being coachable.

That’s number one. If I jump all the way toward the end, you said earlier, Jess, how do we make sure that people are comfortable talking about issues that aren’t working well? That’s tenet number 19 and we call it unspeakables.

And in a great culture, you have to have the confidence and the tact to be able to bring up uncomfortable conversations that are important.

Jess Dewell 21:11
You have to be tactful. I am far from tactful, but I will bring them up to the, I’ll be like, give me a little grace here. I got to name this thing.

Brett Hoogeveen 21:19
It is. And candidly, this isn’t to pick on you, Jess.

Jess Dewell 21:22
Okay. I’m pretty tactful, but not always.

Brett Hoogeveen 21:24
Yeah. When we’re expectation setting for people, let’s imagine. So what’s so cool about these 20 tenets is they apply in the work setting, but they apply in personal life.

So let’s say, I’m just going to have some fun. Let’s say that your neighbor consistently lets their dog out and it poops in your yard all the time. Okay.

And you’ve been seeing this for months and you haven’t said anything about it, but it really bothers you that they don’t come pick it up. This has become what I would call an unspeakable. Something that it exists.

There’s a tension. You know about it. Your neighbor may not know about it.

And the question is, what is the appropriate way to bring that up? Where you preserve your relationship or improve your relationship, right? And you can just come out and say it and be hot and yell at them and say, this is ridiculous.

You could quote-unquote, bumble your way through this. And I would advise you, you will end up not in the ideal spot. And the same thing happens on a team or on a culture.

If my feelings have been hurt, if somebody took credit for something that I did, how do I go about starting that conversation in a way that is likely to resolve it and leave relationships as clean as possible? That is my obligation. If I want to be a leader on this team.

Now, if I don’t want to be a leader, I can just complain and vent and gossip and blow up at somebody. You’re failing as a quote-unquote leader. And you’re not improving yourself in that regard.

Does that make sense?

Jess Dewell 22:58
It makes complete sense.

Brett Hoogeveen 22:59
How do you do it?

Jess Dewell 23:00
So I got the bumbly way because see here would be my bumbly way. It would have been somewhere in the middle of what you were talking about on the edges of catching them outside or knocking on the door when it’s happening and saying, how’s it going? What’s going on?

What do you, what do you like about the neighborhood? Here’s what I really like. Is there anything you don’t like about the neighborhood that we should talk to everybody about?

And then I would probably sneak in your dog poops in my yard. And I really don’t like that. I’m totally going off the cuff here and I am trying to be slightly cheeky.

Brett Hoogeveen 23:30
I would go find an opportunity where they’re not busy or rushed, right? The timing matters a little bit, but they’re out in the driveway, they’re watering the plants, et cetera. And I’d say, Hey, look, I think you guys are fantastic neighbors.

And I really want to make sure, you know, that I don’t think this is a big deal, but I have been noticing. And my wife has been noticing for the last while that maybe the dog’s name is leaving us some presence in the yard. I just wanted to know if you’re aware of that.

[Yeah.] Something like that, where you’re making sure you’re validating them. You’re saying the relationship matters that you treat them. And you’re not assuming negative intent. And that’s what happens and where conflict spins up so often is it’s like, A, can we talk about this? Because I think you’re a jerk because or something like that. You’re assuming that, oh yeah, they’re just doing it on purpose and they don’t care. That will lead to very quickly heated conversations, et cetera. So, assume positive intent.

Guess what? That’s another one of the 20 tenets. Learn to assume positive intent from your teammate, from people that you work with.

This is the number one thing you can do to improve your quality of life, your mental health, your relationships, your own stress level is if you will just learn to assume that person that cuts you off in traffic just has somewhere to be, you will be so much less stressed. You’ll be so much happier. You’ll have such healthier relationships.

It is believable. And the same thing is true in work cultures.

Jess Dewell 24:51
It’s the number one core value that I like to see teams embrace is we try to assume positive intent from It depends on my mood, but I do try and stay neutral to positive in terms of what other people are thinking or going through, or really not even aware that’s happening because of whatever else is on their mind. But I know that I’m just as guilty of that. And so I would like to have grace around the times my brain is so focused in one area that I miss something that could hurt or make somebody feel uncomfortable.

Brett Hoogeveen 25:23
I would never assume this is you, but do you have any just like gossipy friends?

Jess Dewell 25:27
Oh, you know what? Yeah. I’m the lock box for the gossip.

And it’s not even, it’s everybody.

Brett Hoogeveen 25:33
This is just not me. I don’t enjoy spending my time doing it. Like I I’m just not somebody that does it, but I’m around it a fair amount.

And I just find myself thinking like, how did you don’t know if they meant to you’re using all this time and energy and frustration and yours sounds like you’re stressed and your relationship is harmed. And all this is coming from, you’re just assuming that they know their dog’s pooping in your yard and that they don’t care. And that’s a different assumption at this point.

Jess Dewell 25:58
I love that naming the assumption I think is important. And I like the concept of gossip because it’s sometimes, and what I have found is that some people do like to gossip and they like to share information that they think is juicy or whatever that might add to some drama or information. And by the way, okay, we all watch TV and whatever we’re doing on YouTube and social media.

It is not, it is very common is what I will say. So we’re modeling what we have been hearing and seeing. That’s not necessarily right.

And so I really appreciate you talking about this too, because we’ve got a, we’ve got a couple of things going on. If somebody is gossiping to us, what do we do? And like I said, it’s a lock box because like you, I’m like, Oh, it sounds like you’re really trying to puzzle something out.

What’s the actual question or issue that you have here? Can you name that? Right?

Naturally, we’ll help them a little. And then it turns into something that if they chose, they have an option or if they don’t see it, or they are set in their ways, I can cleanly say, cool, and change the subject. If I can help, I will covertly and still try, because I think that’s an important part of connection and not alienating people.

And also then why is this person telling me this of all things? They are, there’s a reason they feel comfortable with me. So what is, what, how can I actually show up for them in that way?

And it goes back to what you were saying at the beginning. Think about it before you do it. Understand what the timing might be.

What else might be going on?

Brett Hoogeveen 27:23
Yeah, it is. And this is a hard one. This is a hard one for a lot of people.

Jess Dewell 27:27
It is hard.

Brett Hoogeveen 27:27
Gossip, tenant number 11 is no gossip. This is a big one. And so I don’t want to go on too long here.

So please stop me if I’m boring you. But when it comes to any core values, forget my 20 tenants. If anyone listening, if you have core values, the question is, are they behavioral?

Do they describe a behavior? Are they something that you’re serious about? And is it something that you’re addressing proactively with your people?

The way we work here is X. When this happens, we do Y. There are certain things.

So for instance, if we say, look, here’s our 20 tenants. I know it’s a lot, but if you do these things, you’ll be successful. And by the way, let’s go through them a little bit and talk about why it’s good for you and good for us.

So we set the expectation ahead of time that we don’t gossip around here. If we, and you say it proactively, that’s, if you want to be a superstar here, you learn that’s really good for nobody, right? If you’re going to say something behind somebody’s back, we’d love it to be something positive.

Jess Dewell 28:23
So you snuck in another tenant. We went from 19 to 11. I got you.

And since I don’t know your tenants, look at me. There’s room to learn. I love it.

Brett Hoogeveen 28:31
It’s great.

Jess Dewell 28:32
I love that because gossip is only intended for drama of some kind, perpetuating your own internal. If that’s your goal, whatever you’re processing, because you, whatever, or external, because you’re trying to influence something that you may or may not, which is also a type of control. Okay.

So do you have tenants about those before I go?

Brett Hoogeveen 28:51
I don’t have any tenants that says don’t be trying to exert control in a relationship, et cetera. No, I don’t have one that says don’t be a bully. I don’t have anything like that.

Jess Dewell 29:01
So this is something that I learned a long time ago. And there’s a big story behind it. The outcome of all this work that I did was I wanted to live my personal values intentionally and my personal values needed to be mine so that how I show up in my relationship and my household, how I show up as a partner, spouse, parent, how I show up in my communities where I volunteer and at my work, I have an identity.

And to your question, grace, curiosity, and honesty are the there’s only three and they’re mine. And it’s actually very interesting because they all are part behavior. They are all part perception and they are all part action.

And that’s something I wanted to call out. Cause I’m like, so first of all, right, when I’m thinking about this, if I know who I am and I have something, I live by a mantra values, traditional or otherwise, however they are set in sentences, right? I boil them down so I can remember the three.

And when I meet somebody, my job is to show up and meet them, how they’re going to receive it. Do I show up with grace in action? Do I show up with grace in perception?

And in this bigger picture, do I show up with grace in behavior? And what does that mean and look like in this moment? Because even though somebody is, cause somebody could have the same values that I do and it could demonstrate different.

And so that’s how I personally have said, there’s got to be more than this so that I can meet people. Assume positive intent just because it doesn’t look like mine doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

Brett Hoogeveen 30:30
That’s true. However, I think a really good definition for culture is the attitudes and behaviors that any group of people comes to expect from one another.

Jess Dewell 30:41
Fair. And that’s the way you do work together.

Brett Hoogeveen 30:43
Your question is how do you actually operationalize this? How do you close the between how one person might interpret something versus how someone else might interpret something? Is that your question?

Jess Dewell 30:53
I’ve chosen to come work for better culture. I’ve chosen to be open and willing to incorporate all of these tenants in the way we’re doing our work together. I choose every day to come here, but for me to be able to know how coachable am I, is the way that I show up and process actually gossiping here?

What those types of things I have to know myself first.

Brett Hoogeveen 31:16
Creating a process where people do self-reflect on the core values. Can I pick on core values for a minute? Would that be maybe fun?

Jess Dewell 31:23
I can’t wait to hear what picking on core values is because I love core values and I love all aspects. Yes, bring on the spiky parts.

Brett Hoogeveen 31:30
But here’s the question. When we asked ourselves, okay, we’re going to help companies build culture from the bottom up and we’re going to do it with these 20 behaviors and these things. What I started realizing is how many organizations actually have a formal process where they ask their employees to self-evaluate how they do on their core values?

Jess Dewell 31:46
Nobody that I have ever met.

Brett Hoogeveen 31:48
That’s what you’re asking, right? You’re saying, how do I know if I’m doing it? Well, yeah, that’s a great question, but nobody’s doing it, right?

So as part of what we… I’m with 20 tenants, okay? It’s a philosophy, it’s a set of tools, and ultimately it’s an enterprise-level software system.

So we built some of this stuff into the system intentionally to help companies do it and automate it, right? But one of the things we built in is a self-assessment on these 20 things, right? And so in starting to pick on core values at a very basic level, most companies will say, here’s what they are, here’s what we hope you’ll do, but they never say, how do you think you do on these?

Is there one that you think you’re great at? Is there one that you think you really need to work on? Wouldn’t that be a good place to start if our goal was improvement?

If our goal was to change behavior and to get people to live our values, wouldn’t we, A, self-reflect, B, actually pick at least one that we want to work on as employees that’ll make us better? Okay, I’m going to stop there.

Jess Dewell 32:47
I’m your host, Jess Dool and we’re getting down to business on the Bold Business Podcast. This is where we’re tackling the challenges that matter most to you with actionable and achievable advice to get real results that lead to your success.

Announcer 33:03
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Jess Dewell 33:19
We’re talking with Brett Hoogeveen on the topic of company culture and why having an actionable plan matters. Let’s continue the discussion. I’m appreciating your perspective because here I am going, I’m pretending to be a listener and I’m pretending to show up and know that I have no real power or sway of being able to say, I want to be part of the team that works on culture.

So I’ve got to show up as me. So that’s how my perspective in this conversation has been to this moment. And what I really appreciate is you’ve come back and said, there’s more to the story and you only can get so far and you’re only going to develop yourself as much as yourself.

But until you lay something else on top of it to see what that actually seems and looks like in a new way, I’m not taking advantage of all of the opportunity to really understand. Do I still fit to work here? Do I want to still work here?

More importantly, how much is my company actually doing what they say they’re going to do in the way that we work together?

Brett Hoogeveen 34:20
And you’re asking those questions from the individual employees.

Jess Dewell 34:22
Yeah, I know. That’s why I was like that. So I was continuing that of we can all lead.

And so how do we show up these in this way? But I think those two tie very much together.

Brett Hoogeveen 34:32
They do. The question, in my opinion, if you think culture is valuable, if you’d like it to be better tomorrow and the day after and the month after, if you’d like your org, I’m speaking from the organization’s perspective now, from leadership perspective, if you know that matters and you want to keep getting better, do you have a plan for doing it? Another question is, what is the culture you want?

Hopefully, in most organizations, your core values, your culture code, your whatever you have is pretty close to describing the culture you’d like to have, right? It should be attitudes. It should be behaviors.

What would a great employee, how would they show up? What would they do? What energy do they hope?

And but that’s where it stops. And what I like to ask is, what’s your plan for helping employees get better at those things? Most companies don’t have a plan for that.

They don’t ask for self-evaluation. They don’t coach people specifically on values. They don’t have activities and team-building things that they can do that builds on those things.

And that’s what we built with this 2010’s vision is we said, okay, let’s create self-assessment. Let’s create growth tools. Let’s give leaders and organizations stuff they can do to actually try to push for progress instead of just, are our core values cool?

Jess Dewell 35:42
So sinking in, let it sink in. And one phrase that comes to mind is, it’s got teeth. You can have this stuff that’s like slippery and whatever, but there’s something that you can grab onto and use, right?

And I think that’s a huge, I think that’s a huge. So let’s go this way. Tell me about your last self-reflection on your 2010’s being part of better culture.

Brett Hoogeveen 36:06
This is a relatively new product. We’re in our third campaign and we’re ahead of all of our clients, right? We started using this ourselves first, before we started using it with clients.

And each year I have got a chance to self-evaluate myself and then to rank, to rate, pick two. That’s how the software works. You pick two things that you want to work on, right?

And this year, one of them that I have picked is tenant number 15. It’s called Friends. It’s just taking the time to build real relationships with the people that you work with.

Gallup has that sort of infamous question of, do you have a best friend at work that they up and down is so positively correlated to cultural health and everything else. And I agree, right? I’m friendly.

I’m sociable. I check in, I talk, I laugh. But ultimately, sometimes I don’t remember, like Monday morning, I’m not like, oh, how was the wedding?

Or how was the, there’s just, I don’t, I need to go a level deeper on the actual friendships that I’m creating with the people that I work with. And so that’s one of the things that I’m actively working on.

Jess Dewell 37:06
How does that relate to what you’re working on in your, the rest of your life outside of Better Culture? Or is it totally different?

Brett Hoogeveen 37:13
It absolutely overlaps. I’m someone who, I have a small group of friends that I keep in touch with pretty well. Most of them are better at it than I am.

I don’t usually start the group text. I don’t usually plan the golf outing. I’m lucky enough to have a good group of friends that does that work for me.

If I didn’t have it, I’d probably be struggling on the, just personally, knowing what to do other than hanging out with my wife and the kids. It is absolutely an area that, again, back to just, these things are good for people in general. Relationships, having people that care for you and that you care for is one of the leading, one of the very top indicators of people toward the end of their life.

If they say, are you happy with the life that you live? Are you satisfied with you’re in your eighties and you’ve slowed way down, et cetera. Are you happy with your life?

That is one of the number one correlated things is how many real deep relationships does that person have in their life? If they don’t have very many, they’re usually not very happy. If they have a lot, they usually feel like they lived a good life, leading a life without building real friendships.

Jess Dewell 38:11
What’s an area that you’re like, this is the tenant I don’t really ever want to work on and it’ll always be at the bottom of my list?

Brett Hoogeveen 38:19
I try to work on all of them.

Jess Dewell 38:21
You’ll have to raise the money. Somebody’s got to be in spot 20.

Brett Hoogeveen 38:24
I’m going to answer, not going to say, oh, I work on all of them.

Jess Dewell 38:27
Did, and we can.

Brett Hoogeveen 38:29
Tenant number five is something that we call welcoming. And again, I’m very friendly. I’m, I think I make a good impression on people, but I’m just not the person that is likely to create a thoughtful gift basket to have on a new employee’s desk when they show up.

I am not the person who is when new neighbors move in, going to do something, bake cookies and bring them over. And I’ve just realized that I want to be, and I know that’s valuable to a team and to a culture and to relationships to have people who are welcoming, who are thoughtful in those ways. It’s hard for me for some reason.

It’s not my strength. And that’s one that I, as much as I appreciate it in other people, I’m not personally very likely to work on it because it’s just been hard.

Jess Dewell 39:16
I wish I knew the 20 tenants because then I would answer the same question and not just put you on the spot alone. I apologize for not being as versed at this because I think that’s a perfect place for you to reflect back and go, what about you? I recognize that.

And I really appreciate that because we do have to have priorities and sometimes our priorities compete and yet on the surface, and sometimes they’re only competing on the surface. And this is where I see personally, and you tell me how I’m wrong, like working with organizations, seeing this bigger picture, when we have competing priorities, they’re one of two places I look. The first place I look is what’s eroding the way we work together here.

And you used that phrase earlier. It’s a phrase I also use. Where is that dissonance?

Because usually it’s dissonance of something and it’s not actually a competing priority. It’s a miscommunication or a misunderstanding or lack of clarity around the action, the behavior, the perception we need to get things done. The second thing is usually who’s getting in the way.

There’s usually a person sometimes who’s getting in the way and accidentally or on purpose, consciously or unconsciously, it doesn’t matter. And finding that place, finding where that influence is coming and everything’s like shaping around also is something to be able to name. Both of which, after this conversation, I’m like, oh, look at that.

I’m trying to identify culture in these different ways. And who knew? I wish I had known about this tool earlier.

How cool that we have something that we could go one step further. Because ultimately what I hear you saying is capturing the value of all this. If I’m picking one, two or three of these tenants seem to be influenced by the one that you’re focusing on.

Brett Hoogeveen 40:53
Yeah. There is some overlap.

Jess Dewell 40:55
Yeah. So it’s a cascading effect. And that’s how I feel about competing priorities.

I’m like, yes, you have 10 things to do, but based off of your interest and your actual impact to your business, if you could pick one, how many other things would be impacted by the one you pick in your priorities? It feels like that is a similar concept to what you are doing with.

Brett Hoogeveen 41:13
Yes. And let’s imagine, right? I’m a systems thinker and what I’m trying to do for my clients is help them create a better workplace culture.

If I can get nerdy on you for a second, I’m a math guy. I’m a civil engineer way back when. So a culture is actually, it’s a distribution of how individual employees feel about their company, how they show up for one another, et cetera.

So if you have a company of a hundred employees, think of them as dots that exist under a normal curve. Okay. So like you got a few superstars, you got some real pains in the butt. You got a bunch of people in the middle that aren’t doing much for your culture, but they’re not hurting as much. And if you want to have a better culture, the way you do that is you move some of the dots. Okay.

In the right direction. So I, as an individual employee, if I have one or two things I want to work on, great. Somebody else probably is, right?

And so when you have a hundred employees and they all have the option to say, look, these things would be good for you. Which one do you want to work on? And then hopefully make some progress on that thing.

There’s spillover for the whole culture, right? We’re going to shift that curve and everybody’s doing their part, right? And we’re making progress as a company and as a team by spreading the load and by letting people lean in where they want, but we need to elevate what are the right things to be working on and thinking about.

All you got to do is empower people to make some progress.

Jess Dewell 42:40
Do you have a way for companies to be able to see naturally where people fall into strength, the highest strength for them, for each of their employees? And of course, employees would know that, but do you have a way to see that? So a company can say, Hey, we’re working on this initiative.

It needs this kind of a person. Look, we have this group of people that are naturally there. What’s their capacity?

Are they, would they be somebody that is in the right place at the right time in their journey to be part of this project and then be able to have those kinds of targeted conversations?

Brett Hoogeveen 43:12
On the enterprise version of our product, you can see cumulatively how have your employees rated themselves? Over the course of the year, you actually get a peer rating because as employees take coaching lessons inside the platform, they’re asked then to rate, how did your colleagues do on this? And so you start to get a pulse survey too, which is cool.

But what’s the most important piece there is just that the, from a corporation, you can see what everybody picked to work on. Like the employee gets to pick, but you get to see the cumulative. Oh, here’s across all 20.

A lot of people picked this one. Oh, not very many people picked this one. And you can get a sense for who did what.

We try to protect anonymity inside the platform because we really want to be able to say to employees, this is it. This is for you. Right?

And so there’s a certain amount of visibility that we provide. We intentionally don’t unlock the entire thing. We invite Mary to bring that up with her team, with her supervisor, to talk about what are we working on?

Who’s great at this? Who knows they’re not good at this? Just open up this conversation at the team level and you’ll see so much progress.

Jess Dewell 44:21
When we don’t have a lot of time and we’re stretched for time, and there’s a lot of pressure on priorities. One of the things I recognize is this, regardless of what metrics we put over, we were talking about metrics at the beginning, being able to have metrics. They are there.

We have to be willing to see them. And it also sounds like there’s a little bit of an instinct that develops around the culture. We have this concept of culture.

We have this concept of what our culture is. Now we can see what other people are assessing themselves. Is there a way for a company to actually go, so here’s the way we do our work together?

And overlay it on the tenets of while all are important, what are the ones that stand out that we don’t want to get wrong?

Brett Hoogeveen 45:03
When companies use this across their whole organization, that’s exactly what we do within our best practices manual and guide. What we do is we say, look, the system’s going to run in the background. Every employee is going to do a self-assessment.

We’re going to email them nudges throughout the year on all 20 of these things. Hey, watch this video every two weeks. We take the load off of leadership to have these conversations.

And we ask managers to grab that stuff every two weeks and have a quick conversation with their team, give discussion guides. But here’s the deal. If there are some of those 20 things that really match with your specific core values or with things that are so important in priorities, those are the things where then we ask senior leadership to lean in at that time, right?

So this runs on a year-long campaign where you’re going to get exposure to all 20. But if at the start, if a company says, look, this one, there’s three of them that we really know are important for us, then plan ahead and say, okay, when March hits and the company is focused on this tenet, we’re going to have the CEO send an all company note on what he’s working on this, or she, we’re going to do an all staff meeting. We’re going to make sure every team does a little team-building activity based on this.

You don’t have to do the same level of intensity for all 20 of these. We believe in all 20, but our clients don’t have to. But you would be making a mistake actually not to really lean in and prioritize a few of them and really get people’s attention and say, we are going to move the needle on this thing.

And that actually is really important for companies to do.

Jess Dewell 46:27
Okay. I have a little tangent here that I want to go down. You co-founded Better Culture, which means you are putting strategic thought and work and effort into the day-to-day and the week-to-week and the year-to-year.

What does that strategic work time look like for you? And what is the cadence that you follow?

Brett Hoogeveen 46:45
My own?

Jess Dewell 46:46
Yeah. You Brett.

Brett Hoogeveen 46:48
Oh man. That is definitely a tangent.

Jess Dewell 46:50
Oh, sorry. And not sorry, because this is where I get really excited.

Brett Hoogeveen 46:54
I am not your role model for personal organization and productivity and optimization. I will tell you, there are seasons to my work. I do some keynote speaking and I still do a lot of the live training for many of our clients.

And so there are times when my calendar is very heavily saturated with speaking and training and client-facing work. And there are other seasons where it is pretty wide open. And I have a chance to write blog articles, to create resources, to build new speeches, to create trainings, and to focus on what are the levers that are going to help grow our own business.

And I could not give you a normal week for me. It really varies. And I’m fortunate to have a nice team, a really excellent team that increasingly is doing stuff that I’m not aware of what they’re doing, which is awesome.

Jess Dewell 47:41
And that’s part of growth too. I don’t know what’s happening, but all the things are getting done. And hopefully somebody is going to tell me when there’s drag or there’s going to be other indications showing up in some way of the metrics that we’re following and the conversations that are being had so that we can address those.

I’m curious. I like to ask everybody that because we all have our own way to do it and out of sight, out of mind. So it sounds like there are seasons where it is of mind.

And then during that season, there’s probably some cadence, but I’m guessing I’m probably going to be like, I won’t ask you what that season looks like. Cause I’m always, I’m really interested online. I have a set time.

Like I have something I do every Monday because if I don’t, I won’t. But what I have found is by doing this every Monday, I’m making better snap decisions in the moment. And everybody is clearer about the message when we’re talking about only 22% of people understand where their company is actually going and what they’re trying to do in the world.

This was something that helped me change that statistic in my organization. And so that was something that came up. So that was like, if we get a tip, great.

If we don’t, great. And by the way, there is no wrong answer. So somebody is listening to you who’s cool.

I’m like that. And you’re doing something very amazing and being intentional with the time that’s right in front of you. And there’s something to be said for that.

Brett Hoogeveen 48:59
I will tell you, I aspire. I’m a big fan of calendar blocking. Bertie, you don’t block your calendar for it?

Jess Dewell 49:05
No, it’s blocked. But I, me and calendars, we have a complicated relationship.

Brett Hoogeveen 49:11
Fair enough. Fair enough.

Jess Dewell 49:13
I’m going to buck against it every step of the way.

Brett Hoogeveen 49:16
I’m aspiring to get to that level of consistency.

Jess Dewell 49:18
All right, Brett, what makes it bold? What makes it bold to claim culture, a foundational element of organizational success and longevity?

Brett Hoogeveen 49:28
I think the thing that makes that bold is that for years, everybody nods their head at, oh yeah, culture matters. Oh, of course, culture, right? Yeah.

Oh, that’s everything, right? Oh yeah. Oh, you focus on, oh yeah.

Every CEO’s letter says our people are our most valuable resource and culture. But if you drill down, what I find out is very few organizations actually spend any time strategically mapping out, how are you going to make your culture any better? If you say it’s important, show me that you’re putting the same amount of intellectual rigor into that as you are your sales plan or as you are your expansion, your financing of your new round of investment or your et cetera.

Show me the strategic emphasis that you’re putting on, figuring out, how is my culture going to be 5% better next year than it is today? And what I find is everybody will say, I know it matters. But if I say, what’s your plan?

What are you doing about it? Very few companies can go deeper than HR is doing something about it. I guess I don’t really know.

We try to hire the right people and keep them around. Or we put the right people in the right seats. And that all makes sense, but that’s not a plan, right?

And so when you have a diluted focus and a diluted plan, you’re going to get very diluted results.

Jess Dewell 50:50
Every single time I have a conversation, I take away something that I want to share with 25 people. I know when you’re listening to this podcast, you’re also listening for that and will have something that you want to share. In the comments, I would like for you to engage with us.

What is that thing that you want to tell 25 people from this program? Here’s why it’s important. It’s important because yeah, there are going to be how-tos.

Yes, there are going to be steps. Yes, you’re going to be like, oh, I wish I wrote that down. I wish I wasn’t doing this. And I could actually take action on that right now. But guess what? You’re not.

So engage right now because that one thing you want to share with others will be the thing that you can figure out how to incorporate in your business, in your workflow, in your style tomorrow.

Announcer 51:40
Jess hosts the Bold Business Podcast to provide insights for building a resilient, profitable business by deeply understanding your growth strategy, ensuring market relevance, and your company’s future. It is bold to deeply understand your growth strategy with your host, Jess Dewell. Get more information about how to drive solutions and reset your growth mindset at reddirection.com.

Thank you for joining us and special thanks to our post-production team at The Scott Treatment.