Building an Intentional Culture with Mark Miller, Vice President of High-Performance Leadership at Chick-fil-A

This is the community bank podcast well hey everyone and welcome back to another episode of the community bank podcast thanks for joining the conversation today I’m Caleb Stevens with S state banks capital markets and correspondent banking division what a companies like Netflix Salesforce Chick-fil-A and Pepsi all have in common according to my guest today they all practice three simple rules when it comes to building an intentional culture when you boil it all down there’s three things that every great leader does to shape the culture that they want their organization to have my guest today is mark Miller he’s the vice president of high performance leadership at Chick-fil-A he’s the author of over 10 leadership books and he helps Chick-fil-A accelerate leadership development throughout their organization and as a byproduct of his work he helps leaders around the world do the same as well we had mark on the show back in 2021 it was one of our most downloaded shows of the year definitely go back and check that out if you have not heard that one yet and so we are so glad to have mark back on the show to talk about his latest book called culture rules the leaders guide to creating the ultimate competitive advantage so leaders say listen up this show is for you we’re going to unpack the three things that you must do as a leader to create a culture that is by design rather than by default or rather than by osmosis or by accident before we dive in I just want to remind everyone that our free cost of funding analysis report is available to any and all banks who are not sure where their cost of funds are headed this year if you’re like most banks if you’re concerned about liquidity and how fast rates have moved we can run a free report that shows your banks cost of funds and their historical relationship to short-term rates as well as where they’re projected to move over the next ten years so get the clarity you need to make better decisions click the link in the show notes of this episode and we will run your banks free report we’ll get it in your hands within a couple days all you have to do is click the link in the show notes of this episode and now my conversation with mark Miller well mark welcome back to the podcast it’s been a couple years since we spoke I think we were just coming out of COVID the last time we talked and so how are you how are things in the Chick-fil-A world any updates or exciting things going on well there’s always stuff sliding in the chicken world we’re trying to serve as many customers and sell as much chicken as we can and we’re thankful that we were able to continue to thrive during the pandemic and excited to have that behind us for folks who missed our last discussion give us the 32nd flyover of your long career that you’ve had at Chick-fil-A I know you’ve run the gamut in terms of roles and responsibilities and tell us kind of how you got to where you are doing what you’re doing now helping grow leaders yeah well 30 seconds is hard I think the 32nd version is I’ve had trouble holding down a job over the years I started as a team member almost 45 years ago moved to the Home Office 43 years ago working in the mail room and the warehouse and have literally worked all over the business over the last four decades about 25 years ago I began to focus my attention and energy on helping grow leadership capacity and I think that’s probably the the turn in my career that would lead me to this conversation today and how many books are you at now that you’ve written uh I should probably know that shouldn’t I I think I think we’ve published 11 that the new one we’ll talk about today is number 11 and of course we’ve written a derivative resources field guides journals and other things that go with that so yeah a lot of a lot of words for an accidental author well you you’ve gotten to work with Ken Blanchard you you know you collectively you guys have sold I don’t know how many copies probably in in the millions at this point talk talk about why the books have been so important to helping scale leadership development not just to Chick-fil-A but I think you mentioned on our last discussion you know maybe these books can serve the world and serve leaders all across the country talk about you know why books and how did you get into that things it it was a bit of an accident from my perspective perhaps divinely orchestrated but we had done some work on how to accelerate leadership development at Chick-fil-A I shared that with Kim Blanchard some of your audience may not know that name his most famous book is the one minute manager which I think has probably sold 20 million copies around the world and he’s a friend of mine a friend of Chick-fil-A and this was almost 25 years ago I shared him the work we had done on accelerating leadership development and he said that’s got to be a book and I blew him off I said Ken everything looks like a book to you and which is why he sold millions and millions and millions and millions of books and he persisted i went to our executive committee and i said ken blanchard got this crazy idea about us writing a book they discussed it they debated it and and they finally came back and said why don’t you do it they said maybe it would serve the world because that first book the secret is on servant leadership and little did we know that those were prophetic words because that books now in over 25 languages we know that those were prophetic words because that books now in over 25 languages and so we’re very thankful that we did that the way the reason I think we continued to publish was certainly it it is a way to to serve the world but it allows us to share content with our operators our operators of independent business people and our legal team rightly so has concerns and there are certainly boundaries regarding how much we can do in the management and leadership space with an independent contractor and we certainly want to honor that and so we came upon the strategy probably almost 20 years ago that if we publish these resources and they’re available to the entire planet then of course if operators want those resources they can they can seek them out and so I think those reasons combined there’s this serve the world and this very pragmatic it allows us to have a point of view that our operators can take advantage of if they so choose well your latest book is called culture rules the leaders ultimate guide to creating a competitive advantage and I’m I’m curious is this your first book directly taking the idea of culture head on because all of your books are in the world of leadership but culture specifically is this the first yes it is yeah so why why now you we mentioned before we started recording that this is a hot word more and more today in the business we’ll talk about culture why it matters why now to address such an important topic well a couple of things come to mind one I think culture has always been important and most leaders understand that even at an intuitive level but COVID put a lot of pressure on organizations and pressure reveals strengths and opportunities and I have talked to scores maybe hundreds of leaders over the last three years that want to talk about culture because in many of those cases they have been concerned about what has been revealed now there are many other cases where there are quite thankful that you know their organization continued to thrive during COVID which I think is is a testimony to a lot of time energy and effort pre COVID and so I I think that’s one reason that it’s it’s become much more top of mind for a lot of leaders is is they’ve always known it was important but our organizations have been under so much pressure in the last few years and so I’m thankful that this book is coming out now I think the time is right yeah and you go out of your way early on in the book to define culture and I think that’s really important because many leaders and we talk about this ad nauseam on this show is many leaders hear that word and they think free food in the break room PTO bean bean bags work from home the fuzzy stuff we’re gonna be kind to each other we’re gonna have right core values on the wall maybe right when I read this book and you list some of the companies that have defined their culture there’s in some cases not a lot that’s warm and fuzzy about what they’ve decided they want their culture to be how do you define it and think about it in in terms of organizational health and why it matters yeah we site culture is the cumulative effect of what people see here experience and belief those messages make an imprint on the heart and the mind of the the workforce and of course that impacts the way they approach their work and who controls what people see here experience and believe overtime leaders leaders do that yeah yeah now I have to ask is this your first book that’s not a narrative or a story because you sort of do the Patrick lencioni thing where it’s a it’s a story it’s a narrative Patrick lencioni wrote the advantage a number of years ago and I think that maybe was his first book that wasn’t in that format is that the same for you right now this is actually my second I did a book that you may have missed called smart leadership and it was actually my first traditional leadership book yeah the parable style has served us well but my publisher said it was time for me to do a a real book and so I actually think the other books were real books but I decided to give it a shot and so this is my my second attempt to write more of a traditional book with the cases and the illustrations and the the data to actually support our point of view yeah well I I I’ve talked to a number of folks and some people love the narrative format and some people are like just just give me the information you know I just need to sort of cut through the fluff here and give me the facts and so it’s kind of interesting to see what formats resonate with people I think there’s clearly an audience for both and and who knows there’s been talk of going back and doing a parable for smart leadership or do a parable around culture rules I would not take that off the table I know other authors John Conner when he did leading change he came back and did our iceberg is melting which was the parable that took that truth and translated it so I’m not taking that off the table I love I love writing the parables but I’m trying to learn a new skill set yeah well you’re right early on in the book I wrote this down I think this was on page 62 you say one of the mysteries I imagine I will never fully solve is why so many leaders do not tell their organization where they’re trying to go what they’re trying to accomplish or what they are trying to or what they are trying to become and I think that quote is maybe a good launching off point into this overall discussion you layout there’s three rules that you say to building a culture could you kind of walk us through those three rules at a high level because I think this quote I read sort of touches on the first one and maybe that can kind of lead into the the next two OK so let me back up half a step and I think it’s the beginning of your answer but it it it further confounds me as I think about that statement why don’t more leaders do this we did a global study we ended up talking to leaders and frontline employees over 6000 folks in 10 countries in preparation for this book and 72% of the leaders said culture is the most powerful tool to drive performance nothing surpassed it OK so get your head around that almost three and four global leaders are going yeah this is this is how you drive performance and yet when we asked them to rank order their priorities creating and maintaining culture came in at #12 which is nonsensical to me at so many levels right I mean there’s just this huge disconnect so we did a lot of work trying to figure out why is this gap if somebody says I know this is most important and then they just don’t work on it and one of the challenges we were trying to address in this book is it is it is a bit soft to some people it is hard to define which is why we tried to because it’s an unseen force it’s what it really is but we said it’s the effect of what people see here experience and belief because then you can get your head around oh OK I do control some of those things I certainly influence all of those things and we said what if we could not only define it but we could simplify the irreducible minimum what is it the leader must do there’s some things they can opt into opt out of there’s some things they can delegate but are there any things the leader must do and and we were trying to say let’s make this as simple as possible without it being simplistic and I’ll give you a quick story we were debating because it’s complicated I mean it’s just a complicated topic but one thing that gave us confidence to take the path that we’ll unpack here in just a second is something we learned from the Navy seals and they have a mantra and it’s shoot move and communicate now that’s not all you need to know to be a seal but that’s what you need to prioritize so that you can live to fight another day and we said what is the shoot move and communicate for leaders as they think about culture and we came up with three rules now the first is to aspire to share your hopes and dreams for your culture which leads to the question you referenced from page 62 it will confuse me for the rest of my life why don’t more leaders share their hopes and dreams for their culture so I have a few theories one is they don’t have clarity and and and they’re they’re fearful of the incomplete or tenuous nature of that vision they don’t know themselves whether they just they don’t they don’t know if I if I share the fact that I don’t even know maybe I look weak or incompetent or yeah right I would say by not telling anybody anything you still look weak and incompetent because you’re a leader that’s not taking people anywhere and I still believe the essence of leadership is taking people and organizations to a preferred future and if you don’t tell people where they’re going it’s like you’re you’re you’re already showing your hand that you’re in trouble but I think some of them don’t share because they don’t know some don’t share because they don’t know how and I think this is misplaced pressure because I think you want the organization to help you figure out how you don’t have to know the how as long as you’re crystal clear on the where I think that’s what’s most appropriate I tell a quick story and I don’t know if this is in the book or not but one of my many jobs at Chick-fil-A I moved into into a new leadership responsibility and in my very first meeting at the whole team sitting there room full of people and the first question if it wasn’t the first it was one of the very first questions from the floor was what’s the vision now this is my first day my first meeting and I don’t know if that would surprise some of your listeners but if you’re the leader people expect you to have a vision if you’ve been there 10 minutes or ten months or ten years and I began to talk about more reach more influence and more impact in the future and the woman that asked the question stopped me and she says not talking about that so what are you about and I said I don’t know any of that I know that we’re gonna work together to figure out how do we have more reach and more impact and more influence and then we’ll answer those questions together about the the programming and so but but some leaders don’t share that aspiration and those hopes and dreams because they don’t know how and again there’s a long list I’m going to give you just one more I actually believe that in many cases it’s because the leader is not actually leading now they may be occupying the position they they may have adopted more of a manager mindset but they’re not leading if they’re not trying to move people towards a preferred future because I think that that’s the essence of what we’re supposed to do well when you talk about aspiration and maybe we can just sit here on rule number one for just a minute or two and three one of the things that I thought was very helpful and just sort of like takes the pressure off a little bit as you say don’t get too hung up on semantics in terms of definitions do you need a purpose statement and a mission statement or a vision statement and a set of core values companies define a vision statement that 100 different ways the important part is not that you have every single little dot the the portant part is you have something and you define what it is and why it matters and you have it and you communicate it talk about why that’s important because I think a lot of leaders struggle with this they think OK our our vision is where we’re going and our missions how we’re going to get there and our core value and it just becomes this sort of muddled mess and then you look at another company that’s defined in a totally different way and you think well are we doing it wrong talk about how you sort of counsel leaders and how to define those things yeah what you actually summarized it pretty well there are a lot of really smart people in the world who fundamentally disagree on what the word mission means or what the the word vision means and it’s like OK that’s I know some of those people and and their thought leaders in the world and and I’m OK that they have their own definitions here’s what I would tell mission vision purpose values ethos they all have one thing in common they are mechanisms to help a leader share their hopes and dreams so I tell a leader pick any one of those terms you want define it any way you want choose some combination of them or choose none of them but you you need to be able to articulate your hopes and dreams and let me give you a little test it’s actually not in the book and this happens every time I write a book because we keep learning so this is something that if we do a second edition I’ll go back and add here’s the test when you have the aspiration right it doesn’t matter which of those labels you give it is it clear is it simple and is it repeatable so when you talk about it are you saying it the same way so that when other people talk about it they’re saying it the same way is it clear is it simple and is it repeatable and you may call it mission you may call it vision you may call it purpose you may have core values and you may not yeah yeah I think it’s really helpful as you were doing the research and talking to different leaders in companies I mean you mentioned a number of great companies in the book were there any that you found particularly fascinating I mean I think one for me was Netflix when they said I don’t know if this was one of their core values or their ethos or they had a list of statements that they sort of live by and abided by but one was um adequate performance gets a generous severance and I was like ooh they’re coming out of the game saying we’re going to strive for excellence any that you that stuck out to you well let’s go let’s go back to Netflix for a moment they didn’t have that I could find a stated mission or purpose but they did have an ethos that they were trying to create ethos just representing the spirit or essence of the culture and they wanted a culture of freedom and responsibility and there’s a fascinating book out there on that topic called no rules rules I think is the name of that Reed Hastings wrote that with with the co-author and once they knew that they wanted a culture of freedom and responsibility they did a lot of things and they they outlined a lot of practices and behaviors and norms so there’s a lot underneath that freedom and responsibility but it all links back to that desired ethos yeah I would say I’m I’m encouraged anytime an organization has a clear simple repeatable statement of aspiration that we can rally around this we can apply the other rules that we’re going to talk about to make this a reality because again it’s a hope and dream at this point yeah yeah I mean you think about indra nui at PepsiCo performance with purpose you think about Alan Mulally when he went into Ford after being at Boeing they were on track to lose $18 billion when he showed up and he turned it around and he said one Ford that’s what we’re going to create one forward it’s like is that is that it and he wanted something really simple and really clear that they could then unpack together one of his executives to work together he wanted his brands to work together he wanted his manufacturing and engineers and people to work together and he said that’s where we’re going to turn this place around and one other interesting side note for those that don’t know that story there’s a great book on that that called American icon but when he went in Ford was just in a mess and you know the other during his tenure the other car companies had to go to Washington for bailouts and he went with them to support and encourage them and said we don’t need any money we’re fine but he went to help them but one thing people don’t often realize he kept the executive team he didn’t turn it over you think you’d go into a situation that’s a train wreck like that and you’re the new senior leader in house you’re going to clean house he said Nope now he did have one of his prominent senior leaders leave because they didn’t like the one for an idea and he said we’re going to miss you because that’s that’s not up for debate yeah well that’s probably a good segue into rule #2 which you say is amplification you know you say it’s not enough just to share your hopes and dreams you gotta amplify it as an organization gets really big say a Ford or a Chick-fil-A I mean how in the world do you amplify your vision across all these different departments I mean I’m even thinking about one forward well well we’ve got Ford manufacturing and forward that mean there’s it’s just an octopus of an organization to get your arms around how do you disseminate the vision when somebody different departments play so many unique specific roles to you know achieve that vision yeah well I think you’re on to something it’s it’s really complicated and it’s really hard which is why we said we’ve got to simplify it and and again many many many things that that you can do we talk about these in terms of rules but then there are moves that you can make which is another click down for the actual activities and so there are few rules but there are many activities the example I give is in NFL football or even collegiate football you know the forward pass is allowed by rule that’s one rule but how many pass routes are there they’re infinite pass routes and so when we think about a topic like amplify that’s the rule you have to constantly reinforce the aspiration that’s the rule again lots and lots of ways to do that so a couple three that we talk about in the book to kind of give your folks that are listening a little bit to hang their hat on the number one way to amplify the aspiration which really means to to turn up the volume above all the noise so that people actually believe this is legit this they’re serious about this this is this is not going to go away it’s like this is really going to happen the number one way is for the leader to model the desired behaviors Umm it there’s just there’s just nothing like it and that’s not just the leader but leaders cascading those behaviors one of my favorite examples that I did write about in the book is Alexander the Great and I don’t know how many historians are on the line but I would say every leader should be a student of Alexander now again a lot of his battle tactics certainly don’t sync with our modern sensibilities however he he was doing the stuff that great leaders are trying to figure out today 2400 years ago he he he had figured out a lot about leadership and one is in this whole idea of modeling he talked about courage and he talked about valor and he talked about bravery not unlike a modern leader who might talk about the corvair and I’m not suggesting there’s no value there people need to understand in their head what you’re talking about and what what you believe is important but then Alexander had this habit of leading the battles from the front he went into battle so they didn’t they didn’t just hear him talk about courage and bravery and valor they actually saw it yeah and there’s something powerful about seeing your leader live the things that she or he is telling you are important in the culture so really really powerful story there yeah well it reminds me of the story I hear often about your chairman Dan Cathy you’ll see him be the first to you know help clean up a table or pick up some trash in the parking lot you know he’s he’s not above at all embodying the core values even down to the nitty gritty things because he knows he’s trying he’s as the leader he’s going to help set the tone for the culture that he wants the organization to have well and what he knows it’s it’s the premise behind the power of role modeling is that people always watch the leader people when you want them to or not and so if Dan if Dan doesn’t pick up trash what are the chances other people are gonna pick up trash right alright so let me give you one more quick one and it’s really simple yet underutilized and it’s storytelling well it it when done by the leader it’s even more powerful storytelling is always powerful stories move people stories connect with people and they have for thousands of years but when the leader tells the story it carries disproportionate weight and when those stories are reinforcing the hopes and dreams when the stories are reinforcing the aspiration they will move people toward the aspiration the leaders leaders need to be students of storytelling as well and practitioners for sure Donald Miller is probably a great place to start there when it comes to you know your your company and the story that you’re telling your employees and from a marketing standpoint probably too um let’s move on to rule #3 and you say adapt so you’ve you’ve defined your culture you’ve shared your aspirations you’ve done all you can to amplify it and scale it throughout the organization so everybody’s embodying it but as the years go by you need to enhance things you need to tweak things you need to adapt things how is a leader do you determine what do we want to stay the course on and where do we need to change and I mean I even remember when I was an intern at Chick-fil-A you had to wear a tie there was no facial hair allowed mark you’re rocking a beard as we speak so it seems like times have changed but yet we’d be kidding ourselves if we said Chick-fil-A wasn’t on the same mission and operating with the same core values so talk about how do you sift through that sure well first let me offer a cautionary note I actually believe this is where a lot of leaders get in trouble because if you have a clear aspiration and you amplify it sufficiently your culture will move toward the aspiration and so a lot of leaders get excited and say we did it we did it we did it and then they want to shrink wrap it they want to they want to you know they want to protect it and if you shrink wrap a culture you’ll suffocate it I talked to a leader not too long ago who wanted me to help him install a new culture and that was actually the word he used and I said well well I don’t want to read too much into what you just said but you you know you’ll have to work on this forever he said what do you mean and I said well the culture you admire about Chick-fil-A is a work in progress that has been a work in progress for decades and it will always be a work in progress because we’re always trying to figure out how to enhance the culture that’s what it really means to adapt is how can you enhance the culture and so a lot of leaders they they miss the never ending nature of of culture craft and so I would I would offer that first then to your specific question you gotta listen you gotta listen you gotta listen proactively you gotta listen at all levels you got to listen to the customer you got to listen to the field you got to listen to your staff if you’re a decentralized organization and you got to you got to listen with some some judgment some intuition I’ve often described listening to a leader I said don’t be confused that music is comprised of only the notes there’s spaces between the notes and when you’re listening you’ve got to listen to what people are saying but you’ve gotta listen to what they’re not saying as well and I think all great adaptation in a cultural context specifically is always preceded by great listening yeah you also talk about the importance of of measuring and I think again leaders hear that and they say how do you get your arms around measuring a culture that again it sounds like an octopus well I think it starts with the aspiration like what is your aspiration and that’s what you need to be measuring one of the great examples that we found when we were doing the research is when Satya nadella took over at Microsoft he said that he wanted the culture the aspiration to shift and he wanted Microsoft people to move from being no at all to learn it alls and he said the chief indicator of that was going to be growth mindset so they use Carol dweck’s work on growth mindset and said we’re going to measure that and that’s going to be our indicator are we making progress towards our aspiration now if if in one of your banks out there if they’re not interested in growth mindset don’t measure growth mindset right what do you want your culture to be go back to the aspiration and figure out how to measure that how to assess and evaluate that yeah and it’s easier it’s measurement is much easier than you think if you’ve got a clear aspiration I I was talking there was a leader recently talking about excellence was at the heart of their aspirations like right when you measure that errors defects all the different you know customer ratings I mean if excellence is at the heart of the ethos you’re trying to create then you’re measurement do you need to adapt which is why you’re measuring it’s another form of listening is how you doing on excellence right right so so if you’ve got a clear aspiration measurements not near as hard as people want to make it out to be and you have a great Seth godin quote at the beginning where he basically says you know make sure you’re not falling into the trap of just measuring what’s easy to measure figure out what’s important and even if it I’m paraphrasing his quote obviously but even if it takes some time to figure out how to measure it and don’t just go for the low hanging fruit it’s easy to measure revenue easy to measure NOI easy to measure those kinds of things but if there’s something that’s important don’t be afraid to spend time on it and let me quickly say all those things you just mentioned are important I’m not saying you don’t measure those they’re very important I’m just saying don’t don’t fail to measure what is arguably most important and which sounds crazy to finance people I know but it’s the culture if you believe 72% of leaders around the world who are telling you and by the way there’s lots of data some of it’s in the book that if you’ve got a strong healthy vibrant high performance culture you perform better and on all metrics and so there’s there’s a lot of research out there to support that but culture is the enabler culture is not the goal but it’s the enabler of all those other metrics that certainly we should be looking at as business leaders well I’d love to end on on this topic because I I was reading the book one of the things I found encouraging was the number of publicly traded companies that you mentioned in your book because I think a lot of our listeners could look at a Chick-fil-A and even if they’re not a publicly traded bank they probably have several hundred shareholders that they’re responsible to it’s it’s typically not one family that runs the whole deal like a Chick-fil-A and many of them could look at Chick-fil-A and say well mark that’s easy for you guys because the owners and the leaders are one and the same and so they don’t have investors to answer to in terms of needing a return or a target stock price and that you mentioned a lot of examples of companies that I have enormous pressure in terms of Wall Street analysts following them and returns that they’re trying to hit and guidance through offering to the street and the leaders and the owners are not the same not the same people like at Chick-fil-A talk about how you’ve seen those folks work through this because I think that’s really important for our listeners well yeah I want to be really careful I I do not intend to trivialize that question I got the question but here it’s not about public or private it’s not about nonprofit or for profit or NGO or military I taught this content to the war college just recently leaders from around the world 250 like high-ranking leaders from in the world’s military and it’s about leadership and I haven’t I’m not even sure I could figure this out but I would venture a guess 95% of the folks in our research were publicly traded companies around the world so this is not about public or private this is about but let me say this the publicly traded companies who have leaders who understand culture they’re going to outperform those that don’t so I don’t even know if it is easier I mean maybe it’s easier if you’re privately held but I almost think of it as irrelevant because leaders animate culture that’s that was the big finding of the whole book leaders are going to make it happen or not he said well what does that mean leaders are going to aspire amplify and adapt or not and so I’m glad you were encouraged by the public examples because I think they were almost all public examples again there are a few schools and a few universities a couple hospitals maybe at church but it was it was true it was universally true that this is what leaders need to do and so that that encourages me we don’t have to say oh we’re going to do a workshop for the for profit or for the not-for-profit or for the schools I didn’t change a word of content when I’m talking to military leaders that I would do for a business group or a church group or a university in fact I taught this at a university and yeah it’s like no this is this is universally true gets back to the irreducible minimum irreducible minimum it should move and communicate aspire amplify and adapt well if folks want to buy the book I know it’s out for pre-order now where can they get it and I know you’re trying to offer more resources and content in this pre-order you know time for folks so how can they figure out where the book is and and go it’s on Amazon today as pre-order in fact from one of the categories that hit #1 yesterday so we were kind of excited about that probably an obscure category but we’ll take we’ll take that you know we’re just getting started on the launch it comes out March 7th but on my site lead everyday.com we’ve actually got some pre-order incentives and if if you buy even a dozen copies I’ll do a webinar with your team and if you buy 500 I’ll come to a a live keynote for your organization so we think the timing is right for this content and we’re trying to pull out all the stops to to serve as many leaders in the world as we can fantastic well we’re going to provide a link in the show notes so folks can go out and get it I hope they’ll engage with you further and mark just appreciate your time always enjoy talking leadership and culture and thanks for being with us today take care