#87: Bill Nye #2 : Building Multifamily Leaders With Bill Nye -Intentional Vs. Unintentional Culture
Welcome to this week's episode of Marketing Home. Marketing You! Today I am giving you a sneak peek, behind-the-scenes look at one of our members-only exclusive pieces of content. This is part two of our series: Building Leaders with Bill Nye. Intentional vs. Unintentional Culture. “Anytime you bring two people together, a culture will develop or grow. Culture grows in every organization. The question becomes, are you intentional about what you're going to grow? Or, are you unintentional and you leave it up to chance and circumstance?” — Bill Nye
Throughout 2023, we are going to be adding to this foundation of building leadership and culture in your communities and your management companies. I want you to get an inside look at what is included when you become a Sprout member. If you love what you're learning and you want to continue to get this series, make sure to sign up here.
Here’s a glance at this episode…
>> (2:08) Unintentional culture
>> (4:18) Emotional vs Rational
>> (6:28) Marketing
>> (7:22) Personnel
>> (10:46) Innovation
>> (12:35) Growth
>> (13:53) Intentional Culture
>> (16:55) Disciplined vs Chaotic
>> (18:12) Strategy vs Temptation
>> (18:58) Consistent vs Impulsive
>> (21:11) Which Culture Do You Have?
Culture and its impact on your business
Unintentional culture
“Anytime you bring two people together, a culture will develop or grow. Culture grows in every organization. The question becomes, are you intentional about what you’re going to grow? Or, are you unintentional and you leave it up to chance and circumstance?”
Someone once said that culture will trump everything, including personality. I disagree with that. I strongly believe that in an unintentional culture, personality will shape the culture. In an intentional culture, the culture will shape the personality. What I mean by that is, the culture becomes a byproduct of the strongest personality in the organization, oftentimes the founder, the president, or the CEO of the organization.
Emotional vs Rational
As an example, growing up in Ohio on a farm, my dad worked outside of the home. My mom ran the house, ran the farm, and, being one of six kids, there was a lot of chaos. My mother had a very strong personality, and her strongest emotion was anger. She did nothing to hide her anger or disappointment, so over time, we all learned to be fearful of our mother's anger. This wasn’t intentional, but that's what grew in the culture of our home. That is one of the byproducts of an unintentional culture, personality shapes the culture. When you have an unintentional culture, it becomes a culture of emotion rather than rational, it’s driven by emotions.
marketing
An unintentional, emotionally driven culture has a huge impact on marketing. When you put something together and it doesn't perform immediately the way that the dominant personality wants, you scrap it and start all over again. It's always: start and restart, start and restart, over and over with your marketing. It's the old saying, one step forward, two steps backward.
Personnel
In an unintentional culture, when somebody in the organization makes a mistake, how are personnel usually treated? Time to fire them? One of the great leaders of our time, Jack Welch, was the CEO of General Electric for years. When he was named CEO, General Electric was on the verge of bankruptcy. When he retired, they were the second most profitable company in the entire world. He did that because he completely changed the culture. He wrote a book called Straight From the Gut, and in it, he’s very humble about a mistake he'd made. He believed that whether you were an engineer or whether you worked on an assembly line, you should be ranked by your performance.
He implemented the program that became known as the “Rank and Yank Program,” which meant that at the end of the year, they took their entire organization, and if you were in the bottom 10%, you were fired. No questions asked, no review, no coaching, no opportunity to get better. You were gone. And he talks about what a mistake that was because even though they had a great year, and an employee outperformed their expectations, the KPIs, and the metrics of benchmarks, that person was in the bottom 10%, so they were fired. And he admitted, “Looking back now, I realize that ultimately I had people who were driven by fear, not by excitement and passion.”
I too was a part of an organization once where the CEO wanted people to perform out of fear that if they did anything wrong, anything he didn't approve of or made him angry, they were gone. So the personnel was not willing to take risks or try something new because they were all afraid.
Innovation
Innovation should be strategic. In an unintentional culture, you look at innovation like it's a cool toy you want to try. But you have to be smart and strategic about it. Maybe your company doesn't have the bandwidth to handle a new idea or a new innovation. Or, your customers are exhausted because you're constantly changing what you're doing and how your systems and platforms operate. It’s like when you see companies rolling out five different platforms within one quarter but the team is miserable. Or, you suddenly switch your initiative on your team. That's somebody high up in the organization wanting to prove to the competition or customers that they’re smarter, better, and innovative. And in reality, this is a failure. It doesn’t work, it doesn’t make sense, and it doesn’t sync.
Growth
In an unintentional culture, the minute you start to see a little bit of a downtick in your growth, emotion takes over. People need to be fired. We need to scrap this. In reality, though, no organization sees growth like this. Even in the best organizations, there's a little downturn and then it goes up. Sales may be down compared to last month, but sales are up compared to the same month last year. That’s positive growth, but in an unintentional culture, that's not acceptable. There can never be a downturn. But that's not realistic. When you have an unintentional culture, it creates an emotional reaction and emotional response. When you have an intentional culture, you have a strategy to overcome that.
Intentional Culture
Unlike in an unintentional culture where personality shapes the culture, in an intentional culture, culture shapes the personality. It's no longer about me, my personal feelings, my identity, or what I need to prove to others. But rather, it’s being strategic, consistent, and disciplined. We all have emotions. We all get angry, feel sad, insecure, and disappointed. But how do you overcome that? When you're intentional about what you do, as much as you want to react emotionally, you have to condition and discipline yourself to hold back on the reigns, and hit the brakes. It’s not about you and how you feel. Here's a classic example, whether or not you're going to allow people to work remotely. Many are never going to allow it, it’s unacceptable. Why? What do they really want? They want control. But in a healthy culture, intentional culture, the culture trumps my personality. Now, instead of it being based on what my pet peeves are, it's about what's best for the three “C’s”: the company, the coworker, and the customer.
Disciplined vs Chaotic
In every organization, one of two things exists at all times: Discipline and Chaos. But, they never coexist at the same time. Where there's discipline, there's no chaos. And where there's chaos, there's no discipline. In an intentional culture, you're disciplined to follow your strategy, to follow your business plan, your marketing plan, your hiring practices, and your promotion and compensation practices. I've seen organizations where somebody gives notice and immediately gets a big raise. Well, that's chaotic. In an intentional culture, somebody gives notice and you understand that's just part of the business. If there's something we can fix to make you stay, great. If not, we will congratulate you and celebrate you on your way out because we're disciplined.
strategy vs temptation
When you have an intentional culture, and you see something that would be great to have, instead of giving in to temptation, you are strategic about it. It's something you may consider down the road, but for right now, maybe you've got two initiatives going. You need to be strategic about how many things you put on your team or ask your customers to embrace as new innovations. So being strategic enables you to withstand or hold off the temptation.
consistent vs impulsive
Impulsive leadership is one of the most toxic cultures you'll ever be a part of because every day the priorities change. Why? Because the minute I have a new idea, the minute I have a feeling, emotion, or a thought, all of a sudden everything in the organization changes. In an intentional culture, you fight the urge to be impulsive and build consistency within the organization. Mark Hurley, CEO, and owner of Highland Commercial said that when he built his business with his dad, his dad made rules for the business that they live and die by. When this kind of shiny thing comes tempting, he goes back to their rules of operation because the rules don't fail them. Sometimes they miss an opportunity, but it'll balance out. By doing that they’re not being tossed about by the wind for every little thing. There's safety in following the rules. Who doesn't want to work for a company that's disciplined, strategic, and consistent as opposed to chaotic, following every temptation and impulse? You can't have a rule or policy for everything, but an intentional culture always fills the void. If you have a healthy culture, you'll make good choices because the culture fills the void where you don't have a specific policy or a specific strategy.
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How do you know if your culture is intentional or unintentional?
Consider three things:
What do your customers say about you? If they say it's confusing, makes no sense, or, “I don't understand,” you have an unintentional culture. They're living in your world of chaos, impulsiveness, and temptation. On the other hand, if they say you deliver the goods time after time, then you've got an intentional culture that is building discipline and consistency.
Why do you lose good people? You have to remember you'll always lose good people who are really looking for a premium on consistency, discipline, or structure. But, if you're constantly losing them, it's because they don't want to live in your world of chaos, temptation, and impulsiveness. They want structure and consistency. They don't get it, so they go elsewhere looking for it.
What kind of people work for you? People working for you and following you across multiple organizations is not a real test of whether or not you have a healthy culture and you're a strong leader. The real test is what kind of people work for you or, follow you. Are they disciplined, structured, consistent, and mature? Or are they gossipers, liars, greedy, or, self-centered? When you really determine what kind of people work for you, that's a good barometer to see whether or not you have a healthy intentional culture or an unintentional culture where all kinds of bad things are growing and thriving.
Over the next few months, we're going to be building on this. In our next session, we're going to talk about culture and leadership. We’ll also identify three baskets of people, where your leaders fall into these, and the impact that will have on your ability to build a healthy, intentional culture. Tune back in to find out more!
GET TO KNOW BILL NYE, THE APARTMENT GUY:
It all began as a maintenance supervisor in Durham, NC. Eventually, I became a multifamily executive. I believe one of my strengths as a consultant is identifying opportunities for my client's operations and bringing practical solutions. As a speaker and presenter, I have been blessed to be on the biggest stages in the multifamily industry across 47 states. I have been asked to do everything from keynote presentations to breakout sessions and even teaching NAA designation courses. Whether you're an owner/operator, developer, property management company, or an association I am here to help. If I don't think I'm right for your organization, I will be the first person to say so.
Connect with Bill on LinkedIn.
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I hope you are enjoying this series of Building Leaders with Bill Nye. This ongoing session is exclusively for Sprout members and if you want to join our Sprout community, click here. You can also sign up for our free trial membership here.
Over the next year, 2023, we are going to be building on these foundations and Bill is going to be sharing more of his insights. This essentially is a leadership university. So, if you are looking to take your multi-family housing career to the next level, if you want to up the culture of your company or your community, and if you want to continue to advance and learn from the best, then I would love to have you join us inside of the membership platform. Not only will you get to hear from Bill, but you also hear from Anne Sadovski each month on Fair Housing. We have a psychologist, Dr. Lindsay Bira, that is going to be sharing on the personal front how to continue to build resiliency and deal with the challenges that come with having a stressful job. Plus, all of the resources that you get as a Sprout member! I hope you guys have loved it, and I can't wait to see you all on the next episode of Marketing Home. Marketing You!
