Chris Dyer: How to Analyze and Hire For Your Company Culture

Culture has a profound impact on company performance, often there is a disconnect between what management thinks the culture is and how your people perceive the culture. Most business leaders don't understand it so they are disconnected from their people. What is your culture?

Today's Quote:

“There’s no magic formula for great company culture. The key is just to treat your staff how you would like to be treated.”

– Richard Branson, Founder, Virgin Group

Show Guest:

Chris Dyer is a recognized performance expert. Constantly intrigued by what makes some businesses and individuals more successful than others, Chris has dedicated years of research to uncovering what drives productivity and profits. As a sought-after speaker and consultant, Chris works with leading organizations to help them transform their cultures to boost performance and gain an even greater edge in the marketplace. A certified SCRUM Master, Chris is highly adept at helping teams work through obstacles and find solutions quickly and effectively. He leverages this experience in all aspects of his work.

Chris is the author of The Power of Company Culture, which was released in 2018 (Amazon.com). He is also the Founder and CEO of PeopleG2, a background check company that has appeared on the Inc. 5000 list of the Fastest Growing Companies.

A passionate talent management enthusiast, Chris is the host of TalentTalk, a popular business podcast that features interviews with top executives about their strategies for hiring and promoting talent.

Chris strongly believes in community involvement, and he is active with a number of organizations. He regularly serves as a judge at entrepreneurial showcases and contests, such as Miller Lite Tap the Future. Additionally, he runs two book clubs for Senior Level and HR Professionals in Southern California. Chris also serves on the board of Working Wardrobes, a non-profit organization that empowers people who are overcoming difficult challenges, such as abuse or homelessness, to confidently enter the workforce and achieve self-sufficiency.

In his free time, Chris enjoys traveling with his wife and kids, and playing live music with his band. He resides in Orange County, California.

Episode highlights:

• Explaining what culture is
• How to analyze your culture
• How to attract the “right” people to your organization

What is culture?

• Corporate culture refers to the beliefs and behaviors that determine how a company's employees and management interact and handle outside business transactions. Often, corporate culture is implied, not expressly defined, and develops organically over time from the cumulative traits of the people the company hires.
• 7 pillars of culture:
• ****Transparency- the most important element of a GREAT culture
• *Positivity
• Listening,
• **Recognition 
• Uniqueness
• Mistakes
• *Measurements terrible decisions are made because of lack of data
• The Weinstein Company vs. General Motors
• Every company has a culture, good or bad

Ways to analyze your company culture:

• Great team (according to Google)
  • Determine what makes a success, what equals a failure and how do you deal with conflict
• Employee Survey -one question a week! Will impact the results
  • How is the CEO messing up your job?
• Open your eyes!
• There is nothing wrong with having a bad culture (just hire accordingly)

Changing your culture:

• Exposing to the 7 pillars
• *Transparency- more you give the better off things are going to be. Holding information breeds bad ideas.
• *Recognition
• *Positivity
• Weekly improvement with a weekly survey

Embracing your culture:

• If you have a harsh culture, hire harsh people
• Plenty of successful companies with harsh cultures (Weinstein, Wall Street, *Kraft, sears, Xerox, Forever21 -Huffington Post
• Own it
• Amazon - Nice but intense, side of intense
• Not all cultures need to be serendipitous - They need to be honest
• Hire for fit into your culture