Category: In the News

Tasty Catering CEO Tom Walter learned about leadership from his father – and his children.

Tom Walter’s lessons on leadership started early. One of eleven children in a command-and-control run family, his father was an army sergeant in World War II. In the home, his father raised Tom and his siblings with the same intensity that he had run his army unit. He strictly regulated their behaviors and worked hard to instill a sense of responsibility in them.

The 2016 Best Places to Work list is a joint effort of Advertising Age and Best Companies Group. The latter is dedicated to establishing programs to identify and recognize workplaces that nurture a superior level of employee satisfaction and engagement. Companies from across the United States participated in the two-part survey process to determine Ad Age’s Best Places to Work. Any agency, ad tech, media company or marketing division of a brand that’s been in business for more than one year with more than 15 full-time employees was eligible. Public, private, for-profit and not-for-profit businesses could all participate. The list was determined by feedback from two surveys. The first garnered information about employer offerings, and the second was an employee survey to measure the workplace experience. The combined scores determined the top companies and the final ranking.

It seems as though you can’t turn on the television or pick up a magazine without coming across a politician or pundit extolling the virtues of small business and the role it plays in the U.S. economy.

In fact, Forbes is currently on the lookout for some of these amazing “small giants.”  It’s easy to see why small business is such a popular topic of conversation. As of today there are about 30 million small businesses in the U.S., 6 million of which actually have employees. These businesses account for over 50% of total U.S. GDP and 75% of the net new jobs in the U.S.

I’m a culture evangelist.  Some might say that I “got religion” not so much because I chose it, but because I came to experience over time the impact that it had on my life and my business.  I simply took the lessons from my parents (always be kind; treat people with respect; never burn a bridge) and applied them to business.  I really didn’t know any different.

But at some point early on, I saw the light.  I witnessed how a values-driven approach to business wasn’t just the right thing to do, it created better results.  If we prioritized people over financials and even customers, they would work harder for us.  If we created a vision they connected with, showed them they were valued, cared about them individually and taught them the path to growth, they would fall on a sword for us in tougher times.  If we had their trust, they would delight our customers.

Ira Sharfin had been a successful, big time consultant for 16 years.  He was an expert at change management and even helped with the integration when mega-firms Coopers and Lybrand and Price Waterhouse merged in 1998. In 2005, he had the personal opportunity to buy a majority interest in Continental Office, a workplace solutions company based in Columbus Ohio that was already at $70 million in revenue, and primarily focused on furniture.

Ira was excited to move from advising companies to operating and owning one, and he was confident that he could simply apply all of the structure and processes he mastered while consulting to take Continental Office to the next level.

It seems everywhere we turn nowadays, we’re reading about company culture.  It’s the cool thing to talk about and a good way to recruit talent.  But does it really pay?  Is there a positive connection between culture and financial results?  And if so, why doesn’t everyone focus on it?

That last question is the most interesting to me, since after 30 years in business, I’ve seen increasing evidence of the ROI of culture, but marvel at how few leaders make it a priority.  I guess maybe it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks.

When Paul Spiegelman created the job of chief culture officer at Stericycle three years ago, he was beginning a multiyear experiment. Could the corporate culture he had created and nurtured at his own company scale to fit a publicly traded company with a $12.5 billion market cap?

Mr. Spiegelman ran BerylHealth, a health care call-center company he founded, for 27 years. When he sold it in 2012 to Stericycle, a highly diversified health care services company, the more straightforward job of growing his call-center business within the larger parent did not interest him. But Stericycle’s culture was a blank slate, perfect for Mr. Spiegelman’s culture-building ambitions.

IQ interviewed Mr. Spiegelman—the author of three books about corporate culture—to find out what he has done, how he has done it and the results he has seen at Stericycle.

Nicole said she served two men, one a friend of hers and the other her friend’s boss. The boss, whom she’d never met before, paid their tab and that of a couple seated next to them, for a total $44, and added a $500 tip for Nicole.

“I thought it was a mistake, that it was $5. I said, ‘Whoa.’ I thanked him and said, ‘Are you sure?'” Nicole said. “But he said, ‘I know you work two jobs and you work hard.”

Then came the stunner.

When the first Blackberry came out, they had me at hello. I could quickly respond to emails by typing on this Qwerty keyboard. But what I loved most about the device was the little red light that would start flashing when I had a message.

I’ve always taken pride in being responsive to whoever is trying to reach me, personally or in business. I have high standards for customer service, and that starts with me.   I developed a reputation early on as someone that responded really quickly. This was all thanks to the red light.

Quite often, we hear about great company cultures, but many of those times, we’re highlighting the wrong things.  Yes, it is cool to talk about free employee lunches at Google or paying employees to quit like at Zappos.  Yet culture is really about the environment we create that allow our employees to achieve their personal visions, not just the company version.  And as leaders, when we deliver on the promise that our company exists to enhance the lives of the people that work within it, the real magic unfolds.