I’ve enjoyed many years in business leadership and I’ve always been a believer in using data to help get people properly aligned. I’ve used DISC, Strength Finders, SPQ Gold, Personametrics and others. Early on in my sales career with a small company we were expected to sell and to service our accounts. We collectively realized that the skills that led to success in sales hunting (ours was 100% via phone) were difficult to find. Those skills didn’t lend themselves to nurturing the client relationship once sold. We had a salesperson that was consistently underperforming relative to others and we decided to task her with loving on existing clients.
This worked so well we bifurcated sales and account management roles going forward. There are people born on this earth to hunt and there are people born on this earth to service. I’m often asked what makes Culture Index different from other personality inventories. Because I was a client before I became an advisor I can easily answer this question. Culture Index taught me how to understand 1) how to design an organization to realize the desired growth goals, 2) how to retain the talent I wanted to retain, 3) how to motivate team members based on who they are and 4) how to know before I interviewed a candidate that they’re wired to be who I need for them to be.
Through the two day Culture Index training I learned things I couldn’t believe I was being exposed to at the age of 48. It was great to see that there is a way to use data to help build teams, avoid or resolve conflict and to win.
Because I was so busy I did not immediately apply the knowledge. I began to notice negative behavior on the part of my best employee. This annoyed me initially until I slowed down and reflected on the situation. Jesse (my employee) was a great guy, was loyal, and put pressure on himself to do great work. He was a nice guy. I reflected on my Culture Index training to help me understand what could be leading to Jesse’s negative behavior. I quickly realized that I was the problem. Jesse’s brain is wired to plan his work and to work his plan. He excels in an environment in which he can be uninterrupted to methodically and sequentially do his work.
Because I valued him so much I regularly asked for his opinion, to research certain areas which led me to interrupt him throughout each day, compromising his ability to do his best work. When I realized my mistake I sincerely apologized and worked to honor Jesse for who he is.
Some people have critical thinking skills as it relates to data. They’re good at solving problems they’ve never experienced. Some people are not, as they need to experience it to enable them to problem solve. This group will also rely on the experiences of others. Both problem solving methods can be effective but there are roles in organizations that are more ideal for one than the other. My ability to help clients understand this and to set up team members for optimal success drives joy in what I do.
We teach the platinum rule at Culture Index. Instead of treating others the way I want to be treated we should treat others the way they want to be treated. When we align team members in roles that are ideal for their talent/super powers and we treat them the way they want to be treated we help to significantly increase retention.
Organizations tend to promote people they trust, that have done a great job in a role and they want to see that person grow with the company. According to Topgrading.com when we promote good employees who are A players they are A players in the new role only 25% of the time. 75% of the time we’ve taken a good employee and have put them into a position in which they are not wired to succeed. The Culture Index program helps us understand who should be considered and promoted. In the book First Break All Of The Rules one of the principles that stood out most to me is that there are many ways to retain A player employees and most of those ways do not include promoting people.
People answer interview questions based on who they are. The Culture Index program compares the candidate to all people on earth. How many people would state that they cannot multi-task in an interview? Most everyone says they can mult-itask and they are not being deceitful. When compared to themselves they’re good multi-taskers. When compared to all humans roughly 50% of all people are multi taskers and among that group Culture Index plots them on a bell curve for this and other traits to measure trait intensity.
The Culture Index program was designed for high growth organizations or for organizations that want to be. Our program isn’t designed around personality profile narratives but is designed about how to use data/analytics to help drive the desired organizational outcomes. Are you driven to scale your business/your organization? If so we would like to show you how we do what we do. We offer a free demo/diagnostic account to provide insight that will help you understand who is in the right seat, who is not, and why.
Scaling the organization is about having the right amount of gas/innovation/result orientation, the right amount of relational equity and the right amount of perfection/those driven to keep the trains running on time.
Stanton Williams
Culture Index
swilliams@cultureindex.com
817-480-7557
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