Meet Chief Strategy Officer and now author Chelsey Paulson as she takes us through her experience accelerating business cultures for long-term success, articulated in her fabulous new book The Culture Climb: How To Build A Work Culture That Maximizes Your Impact.
Welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast. My name is Michael LeBlanc, and I am your host. This podcast is produced in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
Meet Chief Strategy Officer and now author Chelsey Paulson as she takes us through her experience accelerating business cultures for long-term success, articulated in her fabulous new book The Culture Climb: How To Build A Work Culture That Maximizes Your Impact.
Links mentioned in the interview:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chelsey-paulson/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/keystonegroupintl/
https://www.instagram.com/keystonegroupintl/
About
Chelsey Paulson is a Culture Strategist & Business Growth Guide at Keystone Group International. Prior to joining Keystone, Chelsey lead the People + Culture initiatives at NCBP, a retail point of sale and managed service organization with 15 locations and an active M&A strategy. Chelsey has over 15 years of VAR experience and built her career around being a strategic partner within the executive team, molding and growing the culture and focusing on strategic people initiatives that aligned with the organizations business initiatives such as internal communications, career and leadership development, succession planning, and aligning the right people in the right seats within the optimal organizational structure.
In addition, Chelsey has been involved on multiple boards and has been the Chair for two Board of Directors where she had the opportunity to coach and mentor the Executive Director and President/CEO of the organizations.
Chelsey’s area of expertise is in implementing a Strategic Foundation and Growth Strategy, Culture Revolution, Leadership Academy’s, and Executive Coaching. Chelsey is passionate about creating a lasting impact on businesses, especially when it comes to growth within the business, culture, and leadership team. She does this by using her Superpowers of positive energy and being a constant learner of new information, strategies, and skills to challenge and push clients + leaders to break through the ceiling to the next level.
About Michael
Michael is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc. and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada and the Bank of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience with Levi's, Black & Decker, Hudson's Bay, Today's Shopping Choice and Pandora Jewellery.
Michael has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. He has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions with C-level executives and participated worldwide in thought leadership panels. ReThink Retail has added Michael to their prestigious Top Global Retail Influencers list for 2023 for the third year in a row.
Michael is also the president of Maven Media, producing a network of leading trade podcasts, including Canada's top retail industry podcast, The Voice of Retail. He produces and co-hosts Remarkable Retail with best-selling author Steve Dennis, now ranked one of the top retail podcasts in the world.
Based in San Francisco, Global eCommerce Leaders podcast explores global cross-border issues and opportunities for eCommerce brands and retailers.
Last but not least, Michael is the producer and host of the "Last Request Barbeque" channel on YouTube, where he cooks meals to die for - and collaborates with top brands as a food and product influencer across North America.
Michael LeBlanc 00:04
Welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast. My name is Michael Leblanc, and I am your host. This podcast is produced in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
Michael LeBlanc 00:12
Meet Chief Strategy Officer, and now author, Chelsey Paulson, as she takes us through her experience accelerating business cultures for long term success articulated in her fabulous new book, 'The Culture Climb: How To Build A Work Culture That Maximizes Your Impact'.
Michael LeBlanc 00:28
Let's listen in now. Chelsey welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast, how are you doing this morning?
Chelsey Paulson 00:33
I am doing awesome. How you doing, Michael?
Michael LeBlanc 00:36
Fantastic. Now you and I have come to know each other through the RSPA, Retail Solutions Provider Association, and you've written a book, and you're a fascinating person. So, thank you for joining me on the podcast. It's great to have you on board.
Chelsey Paulson 00:50
Well, thank you so much for having me.
Michael LeBlanc 00:53
Where am I finding you this morning?
Chelsey Paulson 00:54
I am in the beautiful city of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Michael LeBlanc 00:59
Nice, now are you born and raised in Minneapolis? How did you end up there?
Chelsey Paulson 01:02
Born and raised in northern Minnesota and then made my way down to Minneapolis for college, went to the University of Minnesota. And fell in love with the area, and the active city, and the, the arts, and the music scene, the food scene, everything that is the city of Minneapolis, and so I stayed here after I graduated.
Michael LeBlanc 01:26
I hear great, I hear great things about the city. Now, when I think of Minneapolis in a retail context I think of Target, and I think of Best Buy's, am I missing anyone? Is there any, anyone else and, that I should be thinking of in a city like, like yours? Course, your company but from a retail perspective, anybody I'm missing?
Chelsey Paulson 01:43
No, from realty, retail perspective, those are the big ones. We have a lot of large corporations here. General Mills is here, and 3M was started here, we have of course yeah, like you said, Target and Best Buy. So yeah, a lot of big corporations are in this area. But for retail's for, perspective, you got them.
Michael LeBlanc 02:04
Fantastic. Well, listen, we've kind of jumped right in. But let's take a step back. Tell us, tell the listeners a bit about yourself. Who are you, and your personal professional journey, and what you do for a living?
Chelsey Paulson 02:14
Yeah, wonderful. So, I started my, my professional journey in the world of human resources. And, my dad, when I started in, in HR, he was very concerned. He said, 'Why would, why would you ever want to go into human resources?' And his or origination was in sales, and kind of worked his way up through the organization. And he always felt like I would be a great sales representative. And I said, 'You know what I just, I love being, you know, with people. And I love helping, just growing and developing people, and just really trying to make improvements in areas and I just felt like HR was going to be a great fit for that'.
Chelsey Paulson 02:52
And so, I was in HR for about 15 years, worked my way up through a variety of positions and was very fortunate to be in an organization on North Country Business Products, who's has been an active member of the RSPA for decades. In an organization that really valued HR, allowed HR to have a seat at the table. So, we've always been in the board meetings, we've been in the strategy sessions, and we were able to really contribute at the highest level from the very beginning of my HR career.
Chelsey Paulson 02:52
And I think that really set me on the trajectory for the rest of my career up until this point, because it gave me insights that a lot of times HR leaders aren't able to have.
Chelsey Paulson 03:32
So, through that, we went through some CEO transitions. My dad was the CEO for, for a very long time. We are an employee-owned organization. And so, we had a very unique culture while we were at North Country as well. And as he was retiring, I was in charge of finding his replacement. And we did not have anyone in internally that was ready to kind of take over the helm. And so, we had to go to the outside. Brought them in from the outside, put him through all of the different things we could put him through. Like, it was like 28 hours of interviewing, a psychological testing, leadership assessment, the whole nine yards. And we thought we made the right hire. Turns out we did not make the right hire. And so, we ended up having to let him go.
Chelsey Paulson 04:17
And in the meantime, while he was there, it was just under three years, completely, just drove the culture into the ground, drove our business into the ground from a financial standpoint, and we had to really reinvent our organization, reinvent, reinvent our culture, revitalize our culture, rebuild trust, and collaboration from the ground up. And so, it took about three years to really make this transition.
Chelsey Paulson 04:42
And I tell you all of that, because that's what brought me to where I'm at today, and we'll talk about the book later on. But that's one of the reasons why I wanted to write the book about culture because it is so important to an organization and that was really my eye opening experience, and real world experience to see what it feels like to be in a culture that is, has low trust, low collaboration, low communication, silos throughout the organization, and it just didn't feel good.
Chelsey Paulson 05:10
And once we're able to get it back up to where it was supposed to be, the company succeeded. And we were able to see the results from a financial perspective, from a profitability perspective, and of course, from a human perspective in the organization as well. So, that's really what kind of got me on my road to where I'm at.
Chelsey Paulson 05:29
And now from my Keystone Group, we do three different things. We do business strategy, culture revitalization, and cultural revolution, and then leadership growth and development. And again, these are all things I learned and really started to love when I was at North Country. And so now, I get to do that every day, which is really, really fun for me.
Michael LeBlanc 05:52
You know, I want to follow a couple threads. So many questions. Great. You know, I was reflecting on your, as you, I was listening to your description of what happened at the business, and I think a lot about succession these days, not just because I'm a big fan of the TV show, but because I had the opportunity to speak to some global leaders in succession. And then I watched what happened at Disney, right? Where, you know, you had, and it's happened before, right? It's happened to GE where this, this big process to find the successor and groom someone to position them to take over. And then it doesn't always work.
Michael LeBlanc 06:25
Did you, what lessons did you learn about succession? You mentioned there wasn't anybody that you'd built in the company that was ready to take over. Is, if you had to do it all over again, would you put more emphasis on that? Or is it, you think it's a mix of luck and planning? Or can you really fold that into strategic HR plan? And I feel like it deserves more time than it gets in many businesses, what do you, what do you think?
Chelsey Paulson 06:49
Yeah, and we did, we started 10 years before my dad was ready to retire. It was a 10-year succession plan. And we had, there was three of our top executives that were going to be exiting about the same time. And we did a really good job having a succession plan for the other two positions, VP of Finance, and then a VP of sales. And we just didn't have anyone who was ready to take, to take the reins as the CEO. Very unique position, obviously, different set of skill sets, and mindsets and all of that. So, we put everything that we could into the, into leveling up people and seeing who was going to kind of rise to the top.
Chelsey Paulson 07:31
I don't know, from our perspective, I mean, maybe we could have brought in other people at a higher level and, and try to, you know, give them some opportunities to rise to the top as well. But it takes a lot of time to grow and develop people.
Chelsey Paulson 07:45
And then what I didn't mention is, so we had that CEO in from the outside for three years. And then once we let him go, we did feel there are people internally who were ready to, to take over. And so we had three people internally, who applied for the CEO role at that point, and one who got it and still remains as a CEO today. And so, we did have some success. And he wasn't, you know, obviously never been a CEO before. He had grown up in the organization, had been there for at that point 15, 16 years, and had gained the trust, and gained the respect.
Chelsey Paulson 08:18
And so, the, you asked what I learned, and the biggest thing we learned is that culture matters. And if people do not trust the leader, and if they do not respect the leader, you're just, you're not going to have success. And so that was the biggest learning is that you know, what, as long as this person is a culture fit, and the organization trust them, and they have the desire to learn and grow, right, and they know that they don't know everything, and that they have a lot to learn, then they're going to have a lot more chance of succeeding than someone who doesn't have that respect and trust within the organization.
Michael LeBlanc 08:51
Well, it certainly comes up in the book and the founder, you know, the foundation of your model is, is, you know, conscious leadership, right, knowing, knowing what you're strong at and being, being aware. So, what, we'll get to that and talking about the book.
Michael LeBlanc 09:03
I want to learn a little bit more about the Keystone Group International. So, you've told me a little bit about it, what scale and scope and, and what, what are your typical clients? And talk about how you're involved with the RSPA, we're both involved with great organization, but touch on a few of those things for me.
Chelsey Paulson 09:20
Yeah, absolutely. So, Keystone Group was started about 10 years ago. Jamie Taets is our founder and CEO and she had worked at Cargill, which is one of, I think it is the largest privately held organization. And she experienced large corporate, obviously in that role. And she wanted to take her learnings and bring it to smaller organizations to help them grow and succeed in the ways that they want to. So that's why she started it.
Chelsey Paulson 09:47
And so now today, we are really continuing to live out that that vision of hers and she's a true visionary. She has done a great job setting that vision for our organization and so we work with small to mid-sized businesses, which for us, that means, you know, anywhere from 50 million to 5 billion, so it's a huge range, but that's where our clients tend to be in. And it's really focused on what does the business need. And what are the humans need?
Chelsey Paulson 10:16
There's a lot of strategists out there that come in and help businesses that their strategy, which is great, every company needs a strategy for their business. But what we found was missing, and that's how we started as well, we started with helping businesses set and then execute on their business strategy. And what we found over the years is that we also need to have a human strategy. And if we're not focusing on what the humans need in our business, we're never going to hit those strategic goals. Or if we do hit those strategic goals, we're not going to stay there very long, or at some point, we're going to hit a plateau and not be able to kind of breakthrough that ceiling that people inevit, inevitably hit.
Chelsey Paulson 10:54
And so, our focus over the last, really five years has been more, we still do the business strategy, because you have to have that, but our focus has really been on what is culture? How do you define it? How do you grow it? How do you assess it to know where you're at today? And then really create a roadmap, or a culture compass, of where you want your culture to be.
Chelsey Paulson 11:16
And then through that work, we found well, often our leaders are not capable of taking our business where we need it to get to, or maybe they're capable on the business side, but not the human side. So really leveling up the leaders in our organizations has been a huge focus for us, as leaders really are the, the ceiling to your organization.
Chelsey Paulson 11:36
And John Maxwell has a book of, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership'. And one of his laws is called, 'the law of the lid', meaning that your leaders are the lid of your company. And so, if you rate your leaders a five out of 10, then your company is never going to be able to level up above a four. But if we can continue leveling up our leaders, we can continue to leveling up our teams and our organization. And so, that's our kind of holistic approach of business needs and human needs.
Michael LeBlanc 12:00
And I guess it builds on, what is it? Peter Drucker's quote, right, 'The culture eats strategy for breakfast' In other words, you can have all the strategy you want, but if you don't have the right culture in place, you're kind of, kind of doomed, basically.
Michael LeBlanc 12:15
Let's talk, before we jump, before we jump into the book, let's talk a little bit about our lives today. And, you know, I do, it's not a history lesson kind of podcast, and the COVID era, is what it is, but it probably had a pretty big impact on the way we work, right. And it may be your revocable. It, I rarely, rarely say never be the same again, because I'm usually proved wrong. But, but many people are doing all kinds of different things that I think have a material impact on how you think about building culture, you know, working from home, flexible hours, maybe remote work, you may be working in different countries. None of which, in some ways, none of which is particularly new. I mean, people have been doing, running remote teams for a long time. But it does seem now part of the work culture, at least in North America. So, you know, we're even talking about things like four-day weeks, right, longer days, one day off, and that seems very successful. How do you, reflecting on everything that's happened, and how do you reflect on this? Is it, is it now easier or harder to build culture? Do you need to be more thoughtful? Talk about that for a few minutes.
Chelsey Paulson 13:23
Well, I think there's a couple of components to this. And one is that yes, there's a visible changes like remote working, right, you can work from anywhere, four-day work week, things like that. And it definitely, you know, separation is difficult, it makes building culture a lot more challenging, not impossible, but it makes it a lot more challenging.
Chelsey Paulson 13:43
But what I, what I feel is been, it has been discussed that maybe not to the to the to the depth that it needs to be is the less visible changes, like the emotional and mental states of a lot of people. And I mean, some of them are still, you know, COVID, COVID aftereffects and things that had happened throughout COVID. But also, I think just the, the pace of change that we're in today, the amount that every human being is juggling on any given day is substantial.
Chelsey Paulson 14:12
And then I also think this new world of everything is remote. And we can have Zoom meeting, after Zoom meeting, after Zoom meeting, we're having one week's worth of meetings in one day, right? Because you had to allow time for travel before and so you'd have maybe two or three meetings a day and now we're having, you know, 6, 7, 8 meetings in one day. Which just allows you know, that much more work that has to be done. that much more follow up, that that many more emails that need to be read. And so, I think it's just this state of, of chaos and just feeling overwhelmed all the time. And I think that is one of the biggest things that's impacting culture today. And the need to understand that and how do we manage that?
Chelsey Paulson 14:54
So that's where I think the flexibility, and the hybrid working environments are a really great thing to allow people to work where they work best. And sometimes that's in the office, and sometimes that's remotely, and sometimes that's from their cabin up on the lake, right? It can be a lot of different things, which is great. But from a culture perspective, if we're not together in the same building, in the same office ever, or infrequently, we need to be a lot more intentional about our culture. We need to be a lot more intentional about the conversations that we're having, and really reimagining what our culture looks like, what it feels like, how do we celebrate? How do we recognize people? How do we promote people? Like all of these concepts of culture, just need to be reimagined, and really revolutionizing in the way that we think about culture and how we are going to impact it. Every employee, every leader, every leadership team needs to be thinking about what does this mean for my organization? And how are we going to continue to grow and develop this in this new world, and we can't just keep doing it the same way we've been doing it because that's not going to bring us into the future.
Michael LeBlanc 16:03
You know, I've talked to retail leaders who say, listen, it's one of these things that takes time to adjust, right? So, I'll give you an example. So, leases don't suddenly go away, office space doesn't suddenly go away, but it will. In other words, we're starting to get to a point where retail leaders, leaders of all businesses are making decisions about how much physical space they need. Which on the one hand has some economic benefits, because I used to, you know, I used to need to spend X amount now I need to spend, Y.
Michael LeBlanc 16:31
Do you recommend or when you look around to seeing whose building culture best and let's call it a new environment, is it, is it taking those funds, not throwing them to the bottom line, necessarily, but investing them in culture? In other words, you know, where we have less office space, but we're gonna go to more conferences together, and we're gonna book a day once we're at the conference to be together. Is that an example of a, let's call it a best practice? Or do you see that evolving as a best practice? Talk about that for a bit.
Chelsey Paulson 17:00
Absolutely. I think having these get togethers, whether it be tacking it onto a conference, which is a really great idea, I have a client that is doing that next month, and they have a conference, they're going to for three days, and then they each have a day to kind of do their own thing. And then they have a day where they're doing team building stuff, and they're going out to different events.
Michael LeBlanc 17:21
Well, I like that, like a catch-up day after the conference, right? So, you're not four days back to back you. You work and then ah, that's it. Yeah.
Chelsey Paulson 17:29
I know. So, I thought that was great. And then other organizations are very intentional about their all company get together. So, depending on how large the company is, maybe it's just an all team or all department get together. But being really intentional about those events, and when and how you're bringing people together. And what are you doing when you're together? Right, it's not just about, okay, let's figure out XY and Z and solve these issues. It's no, we need to have some time just to be in to hang out and to, you know, break bread together. I think that's one of the most important things we can do is to have that casual, just being with one another is a really important part of building culture.
Chelsey Paulson 18:04
But then also being able to have those, those hard conversations, right, because hard conversations are better done in person. And so, we really thoughtful about any interaction and communication we are having. And really just like you're saying, spending those dollars that we were maybe using elsewhere, and putting them into how can we better, and more frequently, and more intentionally interact with one another? And what does that look like for this team, for this department, or for our whole organization?
Michael LeBlanc 18:30
Let's start about another element of development that certainly blossomed by force, so to speak, by necessity in the beginning of COVID. And that was agility. And, you know, I'm sure when you're talking to leaders today, you've, you've described the pace of change, and just the pace of work and how it's changing. But, you know, if you and I were having this conversation 20 years ago, it would, you know, the winners would be the long-term planning, that General Electric, GE kind of thing, written 10 years strategic plans. And boy, that leads to great success. Now, it feels like, you know, the this culture from Silicon Valley of the minimal viable product, and let's be more agile, that agility trumps long term strategic planning. What, how do you think of that and, in the strategic planning elements of your thinking, and, and of the business?
Chelsey Paulson 19:21
Yeah, you're right. We, and we have a lot of clients who used to do 10-year strategic plans, and specifically our technology clients have said, 'There's no way, there's no way' this was even 5, 10 years ago. They're like, 'There's no way we could plan out 10 years, how would we ever do that?' And so now we see almost all of our clients, some of them will do a five-year strategic plan, high level, kind of more of a vision of where we're going versus a strategic plan. But really, a lot of our clients are focused on what's our three year, what's our three year plan?
Chelsey Paulson 19:51
And then actually, I know you've had the author of the CEO Excellence book on, and they talk about the concept of stagility. And that's something that we really just embody and taken with us. Which they define that as being, what part is our core and what's gonna remain stable over time? But then what are the components that can be agile? And so, knowing that we're going to set a three-year plan, but there's components of that, that are inevitably going to need to be modified as time goes on.
Chelsey Paulson 20:17
And, you know, the way that we work with clients is yes, we need a three-year plan, what's our annual plan? And then let's break that into quarterly objectives. And so, what are we going to get done in the next 90 days? What are the most important things we're gonna get done in the next 90 days? Most of those things ladder up to our annual goals. But a lot of times they don't, because we need to be agile, we need to focus on other things that present themselves because of the pace of change. And so, if leaders aren't open, you know, some leaders say, 'Oh, this is our, this is our budget, so we have to stick with it', or 'these are our goals. It's, we have to stick with them'. If it doesn't make sense, if it isn't, if it isn't the most important thing, if it's not what's going to move us forward any longer. We need to be open and be agile to changing that.
Michael LeBlanc 21:00
And there has to be some humility in that, I feel.
Michael LeBlanc 21:03
I mean, there's a lot there's a lot tied up and putting a plan together and then admitting, not even admitting, but kind of revisiting the plan and say, 'Hey, you know, we thought this three months ago, you know, we're,'
Chelsey Paulson 21:03
Yes,
Chelsey Paulson 21:12
Yeah,
Michael LeBlanc 21:12
'Doesn't look like it's happening that way'. So there has to be a fair dose of humility. And I think that, that worries people that is seen as a shortcoming in their perhaps career advancement. Do you, do you get, how do you get across that?
Chelsey Paulson 21:25
I do. And, you know, we talked about the concept of failing fast, and it's okay. And it has to be a part of culture. And it is, it is a part of culture, whether it's one way or the other, and the whole kind of concept of growth mindset, it needs to be one of those key competencies that our top leaders absolutely must have. But really, every leader in order to be a leader, an organization, a growth mindset should be one of the requirements. Meaning, you don't view failure as a negative, you view it as a learning opportunity. And that's, that's just a competency that leaders have to have today.
Michael LeBlanc 22:03
All right, well, let's, let's talk about your book, 'The Culture Climb', congratulations, writing books, a big accomplishment with your coauthor, Jamie. What, you know, when you, when you sat down to write the book, the two of you, or however you collaborated to write the book, you know, there's lots of books on leadership, and there's probably a few books on culture, but where did you see a gap on the shelf, so to speak? Where did you, as you thought about that, you strike me as very thoughtful person, so you were probably thinking about, 'Okay, we're gonna, we're not just gonna write this book and hope it fits on the shelf somewhere, we have an idea' talk about that a bit.
Chelsey Paulson 22:36
Yeah, we felt there was a large gap. And you know, we don't have the ability to do as much research and an understanding of the market as our publishers do. But we felt that there was a gap for a book that had a model, a culture model, tools to help you improve culture, and also how to guide. We tried to find one because we didn't, we didn't set out to create our own model, we wanted to find one that we could just say, let's use this with our clients, and we couldn't find one. So that's why we started writing the book, because, because we couldn't find anything that really seemed useful, easy to understand, simple to understand how to move forward, not easy, and how to build culture, but a simple structure to do so. And then our publisher confirm this. And, and they said, 'This is the only book we could find that has both a model, tools and a how to guide'.
Chelsey Paulson 23:11
And so, it's really was around our passion for culture, the, the success, we've seen in organizations that have really strong leaders who build a really strong culture, and what it does for the organization. We wanted to try to impact as many organizations as possible. And we knew that we couldn't do that, you know, face to face with that many people. And so, we wanted to be able to spread this idea and give a handbook to people to say, 'Here, here's how you can get started to create and build a culture that is intentional and impactful in your organization'.
Michael LeBlanc 24:04
Well, it's a really great book. I wanted to hone in on this, a particular element, the six truths that bust common myths. So, take us, take us through those as a kind of a highlight of the book because I found those particularly useful.
Chelsey Paulson 24:19
Absolutely. So, that, yeah, so there are six areas that we really focus on. The first one was that culture is not any one thing. Meaning a lot of times people find culture to be, oh, it's just the fun things. It's the, it's the kegerator in the break room, and the ping pong table, or going to a baseball game, or having a barbecue, or things like that. Those are important, but that is not culture. And so, it is a lot more than just the fun stuff.
Chelsey Paulson 24:45
And it's not just engagement, right. engagement surveys versus culture surveys are very different things. Culture surveys include engagement, but it's, it goes way beyond how do I feel, what do I think and talks a lot more about the we in the organization.
Chelsey Paulson 25:00
The second myth is the culture is complicated. People often say, you know, it's, it's, you know, is it one thing? Is it two things? No, it's very complicated. Our impact model has 20 building blocks in it. And it's not intended to make it overly complicated. It's intended to help simplify and understand where do we start? Because that was a number one thing we'd hear from clients, 'Where do we start?' And so if you can see, okay, here's the 20 different building blocks that make up culture, where do we need to focus first?
Chelsey Paulson 25:29
And then the third is that culture is not aspirational. Culture is how people are thinking, acting and interacting in the now. We need to have a vision, we need to have what we call a culture compass, of how we want to evolve and grow but we can't confuse that for the culture is what it is today.
Chelsey Paulson 25:48
And then the fourth is that culture is everyone's responsibility. A lot of times people will say, 'Oh, well, culture is HR's job, or culture is the CEOs job, culture is a leader’s job'. Yes, they all have a part of it a very important part. But really, culture falls on everyone's shoulders, and everyone has the ability to impact culture, positively or negatively.
Chelsey Paulson 26:10
Then the fifth thing is that culture is measurable. A lot of times people say, ‘Oh, it's so squishy, and nebulous, and how do you ever measure culture?’ Well, really, our business success or lack thereof, is a clear, in clear relation to our culture. And so, we look at, okay, first, you need to understand, where's our culture at today, and then measure that year over year. So, some sort of a culture assessment, which we, you know, we provide culture assessments. And so, we'll do that year over year.
Chelsey Paulson 26:37
We have a client who we've done this with for three years, and we end up with a heat map each of the building blocks, so you red, yellow, or green, and this client had eight or nine red blocks the very first year. And then we just did it again at the beginning of this year, and they had zero red building blocks, and they had a lot more greens, and then a handful of yellows. And so just being able to see that visually was so impactful for the team and the whole organization. But you can also measure,
Michael LeBlanc 27:03
Was that, was that correlating to business success, either inversely or positively?
Chelsey Paulson 27:09
Absolutely. So, they, their profitability, and their revenues tripled over those three years, their employee numbers doubled. So yes, they saw tremendous success as an organization. I mean, you can look at productivity, attendance, profitability, hitting your metrics and goals, turnover, retention, right? These are all things that can help measure culture. But there's not just one thing you can use to measure which often goes like, well, what's that one metric? Well, there isn't just one metric, because culture is a lot more complicated than that.
Chelsey Paulson 27:38
And then the last truth is that culture requires patience and evolution. And so like I said, there's 20 building blocks, you can't fix everything at once. You have to prioritize and where do we have the most opportunity for growth and development. Start there, then just keep working your way up. As I mentioned, it took three years in my previous job to, my previous organization, to bring that culture and revitalize that culture back to what it used to be. And that you've never done. We talked about the pace of change today, it's the same within our culture. And if we're not continuously evolving and growing our culture, we're not going to, we're not going to be able to keep up with the pace of change. And so, we need to as a business, and other humans, make sure that we're continually evolving and growing,
Michael LeBlanc 28:24
I had this conversation on the weekend with someone about the difference between objective and subjective reality, and I was thinking about our discussion today around trust, because trust is one of the big parts of your, the foundation that you build. I mean, you even stepping outside of the workplace, it feels like it's harder these days. I don't know if it's, if you feel the same, to figure out what, what is objective reality. And objective reality sometimes can be a big platform for building trust with each other. How do you, you know, with, with a, an environment surrounding us where sometimes we don't know what, which side is up some days, how do you how do you think about that, when you bring a trust to the workplace?
Chelsey Paulson 29:03
Yeah, you know, when we do a lot of discussions, and leadership growth, and building around trust, and what we always tell the leaders is that everyone's perception is their reality. And so to your point of, you know, what's objective is, it's very difficult because everyone has their own perception of everything. And their, their, what they see is their reality.
Chelsey Paulson 29:26
And so, what we talked about with trust is that it's really about relationships. And it is built very slowly. And it's by having really honest, open conversations. It's about showing up for one another. It's about following through on what you said you were going to do. It's about being consistent about showing that you care, right. So again, it's not just one thing that leaders and employees need to do to build and gain that trust. It's a lot of things and it has to be consistent. And again, we go back to one of the original questions about you know, the, the remote work environment, this makes it even more difficult. And we have to be even more intentional about having authentic one-on-one conversations with our employees and asking, how are you really doing? Right, not just the obligatory passing in the hallway, how are your conversations? No. How are you really doing?
Michael LeBlanc 30:19
Interesting, interesting. Well, it's such a great conversation. And it's a great book available, I suppose, I'm not I suppose, available where everyone would enjoy buying their books today. What about you? How do we get a hold of you? If you, are you a LinkedIn person? What's the best way to learn more about both yourself, Keystone Group, and maybe even get in touch?
Chelsey Paulson 30:38
Absolutely. Yes, I am very active on LinkedIn. So just Chelsey Paulson on LinkedIn, we can put that link in the, in the show notes. And then Keystone Group International, also very active on LinkedIn, and Instagram. thecultureclimb.com is a great spot to go to learn more about the book. We also have free tools that you can download and a free assessment you can download from our website. So, I definitely encourage people to go to thecultureclimb.com And then keystonegroupinternational.com is our website. And so, there's a lot more information about us and the services that we offer there.
Michael LeBlanc 31:10
Well fantastic. We'll put all that in the show notes. But Chelsey listen, thanks so much for joining me here on The Voice of Retail podcast. It's a real treat to dive into the book and how you think about both strategy and culture. Great discussion. I wish you and Keystone Group much continued success. And I look forward to seeing you again real soon.
Chelsey Paulson 31:35
Fantastic. Thanks so much for having me.
Michael LeBlanc 31:38
Thanks for tuning into this episode of The Voice of Retail. If you haven't already, be sure to follow on your favorite podcast platform so new episodes will land automatically each week. And be sure to check out my other retail industry media properties Remarkable Retail podcast with Steve Dennis, and the Global eCommerce Leaders podcast. Last but not least, if you're into barbecue, check out my YouTube barbecue show Last Request Barbecue, with new episodes each and every week.
Michael LeBlanc 32:02
I'm your host Michael LeBlanc, Consumer Growth Consultant, President of M.E. Leblanc & Company Inc., Maven Media, and keynote speaker. If you're looking for more content or want to chat, follow me on LinkedIn or visit my website at meleblanc.co.
Michael LeBlanc 32:16
Safe travels everyone.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
culture, organization, people, leaders, work, feel, business, retail, ceo, podcast, book, great, talk, clients, minneapolis, HR, intentional, conversations, thinking, trust