Chad Kearns is a Senior Vice President at Fired Up! Culture, bringing nearly 15 years of experience in building teams and leading organizations to his work in helping leaders build culture and engagement in the organizations they lead.
Before joining Fired Up! Culture in 2022, Chad headed a 50+ person marketing agency, guiding the organization through multiple growth periods and acquisitions. During that time, he built seven-figure service lines from the ground up, developed leaders and executives who elevated their teams, and drove the kind of employee engagement that produces remarkable business results.
Today, as Senior Vice President at Fired Up! Culture, Chad partners with executive leadership teams of all sizes to navigate meaningful change management processes, cultivating healthy, high-performing cultures and business outcomes.
Josh Dougherty:
Welcome to A Brave New Podcast. This is a show about branding and marketing in the healthcare space. But more than that, it's an exploration of what it takes to create brands that will be remembered and how marketing can be a catalyst for those brands' success. I'm Josh Dougherty, your host. Let's dive in.
Welcome back to A Brave New Podcast. I'm looking forward to the conversation today. I'm going to talk with Chad Kearns from Fired Up! Culture, and we're going to explore all things culture. How do you build a strong culture? What's the role of alignment in a strong culture? And where's the overlap between culture and brand? So it's going to be a good conversation and I think a good look inwards from our typical branding conversation where we look outwards at the outward expression of brand. How does it resonate with audiences, with stakeholders, with people we're trying to reach—customers, clients, patients, et cetera. And really looking inward and saying, how do we build a culture that can be healthy, vibrant, and that matches and aligns with that brand? And what's the approach to do that? So without further ado, let's bring Chad into the conversation and get started.
Hey, Chad, thanks so much for coming on the show today.
Chad Kearns:
Morning, Josh. Great to be here.
Josh Dougherty:
Well, before we dive in, I know we have a lot to talk about as far as culture, brand, all these things go, but I'd love for you to share a little bit about your story and tell our audience a little bit about your background, where you've been, and where your career's taking you.
Chad Kearns:
Yeah. I'm a marketer at heart. I wish I still got to say I was a marketer, but I don't think I get to claim to be a marketer anymore. I got my start while I was still in college at a marketing agency here in Seattle. And I got a really, really unique opportunity as an intern of that agency to build a completely new service line from the ground up.
I think at the time they were just like, "Yeah, let's give this kid this opportunity. And if it works out, great, and if it doesn't, it's not that big of a deal." But with a background in paid media, I built out a small business program selling and ultimately servicing paid media for small businesses. And we'll keep a longer story short, ended up building that program into a seven-figure business line for the agency, which is really, really cool. I ended up building a small team. I learned how to market services. I learned how to sell those services. I learned how to work and build relationships with clients.
Eventually, the program grew to a point where I couldn't do all the work anymore, and I had to learn how to hire people and train people and onboard people and ultimately manage and build teams. So I worked on that small business program for something like five or six years. And one day the founder and CEO of that agency came to me and he turned around an org chart and I was positioned in the number two seat right next to him and went on to lead the leadership group within that organization. And, ultimately, he exited the agency and I found myself at the head of the agency. I think it was six or seven years into my career. I think nearly the entire leadership team at that time was older and way more experienced than me.
But I went on to lead the agency, and we did a bunch of great things and very, very proud of my time there and the culture we built and the clients we served and the work that we did. A really crucial part of my time and my growth as a leader was working with an organization called Fired Up! Culture. And I felt so much impact personally as a leader in my leadership journey and growth, but also our organization and our agency went through a ton of really, really positive change in working with that organization. And it came time for me. I realized it was time for me to move on from the agency, and I joined Fired Up! And that's what I do now. So it's a really cool little bit of a full circle moment for me and feeling a lot of the coaching and the consulting that Fired Up! brought to me. And now I'm on the other side of the seat, so to speak, helping organizations develop their leaders and ultimately build cultures that they're proud of and drive the outcomes that they want to drive for their organizations.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, I love that. I think I smile a little bit listening to your story of your process because it's a little bit analogous, not the exact same journey, but a journey that I went down. I think when you are building a service line and a team and kind of feeling that all out, you get to discover firsthand as you're disrupting things, the importance of what we're going to talk about today of how do you build a culture that trusts each other but is willing to push hard for change, all those sort of things.
Chad Kearns:
Yeah. And the safety that requires for innovation and change and growth and all of that. And I just look back and so, so many mistakes that I made along the way, oftentimes the best growth opportunities. Very much proud. And I think there are a lot of things that we did really, really well as an agency, but also looking back, all the things we could have done differently.
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Chad Kearns:
And those are the best lessons along the way.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. So as you said, you're at Fired Up! Culture now. What is your primary focus there today? I know it's been a number of years since you've made that switch.
Chad Kearns:
Almost four years now, I think we're getting to, something like that. Within Fired Up!, we always talk about our mission is to inspire change in the organizations that we work with. And when we talk about what that change really looks like, there are a couple areas that we typically play in. It's all in this world of people and culture and operations. So we think about leadership development in how are we empowering leaders to ultimately drive the change that they want to see.
And then there are bits and pieces in that as well of culture change. Organizations typically come to us or organizations like ours because they want to see change in their organization. Sometimes they don't really know what that is. It may be things just don't feel right. And oftentimes what we find is that it really comes down to the culture within an organization and the inner workings. And I think about culture as kind of the default setting of an organization. How does it operate? What does it look like? How does it feel to be in the organization? And, ultimately, we come alongside leaders to empower them to drive the change they want to see in their organizations.
Josh Dougherty:
I love that. And this is why I wanted to have you on because I feel like we'll chat about this a little bit, but ultimately we talk a lot about brand and how brand overlaps with marketing, but I think culture overlaps with brand and marketing as well. In the worst of organizations, we have marketing and brand operating in a silo out on their own. But in a great organization, there's alignment across all three things because it allows you to get further faster.
So I want to ask you, before I ask you questions about how do you define brand and how do you think brand presence is cultivated? I'd love to just dive into maybe how you think about the overlap between brand and culture before we talk about defining branding. How do you think those two things overlap or maybe don't overlap but influence each other?
Chad Kearns:
For me, they are very intertwined because internally when we think all about the culture, how does it function? How does it feel? What is it like for people to be inside the organization? We go and then think about branding. How do people interact with the brand? Whether they are internally focused, whether they are a stakeholder, a shareholder, a customer, a potential patient. We are all interacting with that brand in a certain way, and we're all experiencing that brand in a certain way. And that to me is how they're really intertwined with each other.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, absolutely. So that kind of segues a little bit into talking about your definition of branding. If someone was to ask you, what is branding? And I think you have a unique view to do this having worked at and led a marketing agency in the past. How would you define it?
Chad Kearns:
To me, it's all about how an organization communicates its story when someone is not there to talk about the story themself.
Josh Dougherty:
I love that.
Chad Kearns:
So it's the feeling we have when we interact with that brand, and that can boil down to voice, tone, color. We kind of talk about some of the fundamentals of that, but ultimately, branding exudes a feeling and it exudes a feeling for all the stakeholders involved. Again, we go back to the culture conversation, whether we are internally on the inside of that brand or we are experiencing that brand externally as a potential customer or patient or client. We get a feeling every time we interact with a brand, and that's what branding is.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, 1000%. I mean, whenever I talk to someone about brand, I talk about this concept of memory and what do people remember about you? Which are the feelings because you think about sometimes when people are getting really in their heads about it during a workshop or something, we're trying to be really complicated. I talk about trips I've taken with my family. And I think about my son, we took a trip to France when he was six years old and we had a house in the country and we were able to ... He doesn't remember any of the things that we did, except he remembers the feeling of running around in the grass after a slow breakfast, and that to him is France. And there were a bunch of other words and things and stuff we did, but that is the essence of the trip for him. And it's like a happy ... I don't know, I can't get into a six-year-old's mind, but ...
Chad Kearns:
But it's the experience that he felt being there. It's the experience.
Josh Dougherty:
Exactly.
Chad Kearns:
We can even talk about the branding of France, but it's the experience he felt being there.
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Chad Kearns:
And ultimately, that's the takeaway and that's the memory-
Josh Dougherty:
That's the same thing. That's why branding is hard. I think that's why culture is hard too, because you can have all these inputs that you're trying to influence it, but at the end of the day, you're relying on the ways that you're trying to influence brand, having that outcome that you hope for.
Chad Kearns:
It's not super tangible, right?
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Chad Kearns:
Organizational culture and/or branding, neither of them are super tangible. Critically important in any kind of organization, but they're not tangible. They're not things that you can necessarily touch and feel and hold.
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Chad Kearns:
There's just so much feeling wrapped up in it that I think it's hard for a lot of people to wrap their heads around it.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. Why do you think that's ... I mean, you talked about critically important. What makes you think of brand as being critically important today? Has it become more important in your mind over time? Is it similar to how it's always been? What are your thoughts there?
Chad Kearns:
Yeah, it's a great question. I think, unfortunately, trust is at a premium right now. And I think as we move forward, I'm not going to try to project what the next 5 or 10 years look like from a working landscape. But I think as we go forward, the bar for introducing new products, the bar of entry for creating new brands and new solutions, I think it's lower than it's ever been. And I do think it's a good thing that it's lower than it's ever been, but I think what that also is going to bring to the market are a lot of untrustworthy, unreliable options for consumers. Again, consumer—whether you're a stakeholder, a client, a patient, a customer—whatever that end result may be, there are going to be so many options out there.
And I think the ultimate connector in all of this and, ultimately, where consumers decide to go is somewhere that they can trust. And I think what's going to be critically important moving forward is building and maintaining and holding the trust of the consumer. I think it's going to be really, really hard to do moving forward.
Josh Dougherty:
I think it's especially hard in that as we're figuring out what the impacts that generative AI has on our culture or not on our ... well, probably culture is a good word. Broadly as a people, I think that has lowered the barrier of entry so much as you were talking about, but it's also ... at least until this point, probably six months, this will be an outdated opinion. But to this point, it is a tool to bring together a bunch of things, thoughts and ideas that have already happened, and repackage them. And so those who can come up with an experience that's truly differentiated will stand out from those that are taking a repackaged brand and presenting it to people.
Chad Kearns:
And being really, really clear about who you are, who you are for, and who you're not for, I think becomes even more important also, right?
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, absolutely.
Chad Kearns:
In that. And ultimately, I think reliability is going to be the currency of success in the future. There are going to be so many options out there and so many new options out there. Regardless of the market that we sit in, there are going to be a lot of options out there that become unreliable. And so for folks who can build brand and build trust and instill reliability in the consumer, I think that's the key, very, very big moving forward, again, regardless of what market you sit in.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. And I think that relates very much so I'd like to shift the conversation to talking about culture, which is where you're focused day to day, but I think it's the same, right?
Chad Kearns:
Yeah.
Josh Dougherty:
Trust is at a premium. People trust their own CEOs and leadership at an organization more than they trust others out it general, but I would love to-
Chad Kearns:
We hope so, right?
Josh Dougherty:
Hope so. Some studies may claim that, right?
Chad Kearns:
Sure.
Josh Dougherty:
But I would love to hear you first, before we talk about markers of a great culture, how to build a great culture. We talked about how brand is something you can control, but it's all about a feeling. How is culture similar and how is it different?
Chad Kearns:
I think that organizational leaders have way more control over their culture. I'm going to actually use the word influence it’s maybe a more positive word to use in this instance. Organizational leaders have way more influence on their culture than I think most of them believe. And I do think to some extent organizational culture is organic. It does happen openly and freely, but it's not something that's ... Again, I hate using the word control. But it's not something that's uncontrollable.
Earlier I talked about culture being, it's the norms of an organization and what gets prioritized and what gets praised. And usually the line that I use that gets the attention of leaders is, What are you tolerating in your organization that drives you crazy? And they list a whole bunch of things and those actions, those behaviors, they go tolerated and unchecked and it starts to erode the culture. So I think organizational leaders have an immense amount of influence over their culture if they want to be really, really intentional about it. It's not something that it just openly ebbs and flows regardless of who's leading the organization or the vision that they want to see for their organization.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, I think that's smart. I think about even in my small organization, how I've had to think about stepping back and saying, sure, I do not have control if I approach it from head-on perspective. But if I step back and think about the architecture that I want to create around the experience I want my employees to have, the way that we approach our work, the way we think, it takes time. But with time, you can shape and build a team that's going to be on board and excited about those things.
Chad Kearns:
Yeah. You use the word architecture, which I agree with, but I also think about the word, and I use the word a lot in my coaching work. What are the expectations that you're setting for your team, right?
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Chad Kearns:
And as we set the right expectations, as we instill the right accountability mechanisms, as we praise and celebrate the right behaviors and the right actions in organizations, that's ultimately how we shape and influence the culture, right?
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Chad Kearns:
It's not through policy after policy after policy That's a portion of it. But culture can be really, really complex if you want to make it complex, and it also can be really, really simple. And I think for the organizations and for those leaders who can simplify that concept of what they want their culture to be, what do you expect in your organization? What do you praise? And what do you not tolerate? And I think for leaders who can get really clear about those things and follow through in alignment with their beliefs there, they're ultimately going to build the cultures within their team or within their organization that they want to see. But again, a lot of leaders struggle with feeling empowered or even believing that they can really make the influence that they want to make.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. You make it sound so easy. I'm going to go back and [inaudible 00:18:55]-
Chad Kearns:
That's why ...
Josh Dougherty:
A sea of questions-
Chad Kearns:
Josh, this is why I'm on the coaching side now and not actually leading. Like I said, however many minutes ago, made a lot of mistakes myself as a leader. But yeah, it's far easier said than done, but I don't think the concepts of it are challenging. It's the practice and it's the implementation and the discipline required to build the right behaviors, to model the right behaviors, and to expect the right behaviors from the people in your team or your organization.
Josh Dougherty:
100%. Yeah. Well, I think we've talked a lot about it, so if you're answering those core questions, a healthy culture can look many different ways. There are different cultures across different organizations, et cetera. So I'd love for you to maybe share a little bit about, even if we can have variants and differences in healthy cultures, what are some of the markers of health that are common or shared across organizations?
Chad Kearns:
So I think there are some fundamental attributes, I'll call them, of healthy cultures. These are going to be things that I believe everyone looks for in any type of organization they're working with or even just being a part of. We can boil down some really foundational attributes like trust and respect, psychological safety. I don't think you're going to find a lot of cultures, healthy cultures, that do not value that and have those things in place.
But, ultimately, after some of those really foundational needs, I'll call them of just humans. The most important thing that I find in healthy organizational cultures is that there's alignment between what leadership wants their culture to be and the team members who they bring on board to be a part of that team. So I can deem a totally healthy culture as one that everyone is very supportive of each other, work-life balance is extremely important to the organization, maybe compensation for those folks lag a little bit because they're prioritizing work-life balance and a little bit of a lower stress environment. As long as leadership is on board with that, the business can serve its purpose in that, and the team members on the team are in alignment and looking for that type of a value proposition in their organization, I think that's a healthy culture.
I've also seen really, really healthy cultures where people are working 50 plus hours a week. They're massively driven and inspired by the purpose of the organization. Maybe the value proposition of working within that culture is really great career trajectory and compensation. Again, in that environment, as long as leadership is on board with building a culture like that, as long as the organization can serve its purpose and its mission of the organization, and if the team of people are understanding of what they're signing up for and aligned and looking for that type of environment, I think that's a really healthy culture.
So what does it really look like? All the time, I have leaders coming to me and saying, "How do I build a healthy culture?" A little bit of what your question was, right?
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Chad Kearns:
What are the common attributes? And ultimately it's about building alignment between, as a leader what you're looking for, what kind of a culture do you want to build? How is that culture going to deliver on the purpose of the mission of the organization? And can you go find, if your organization is 10 people, can you go find 10 people? If your organization's 100, can you go find a hundred? If your organization's 10,000, can you go find 10,000 people in alignment with the culture and the value proposition that you're trying to build? That's what it all comes down to.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. And the way you're describing this, it feels like a lot of this is based on the vision and the direction of the organization from the top. In your opinion, is that where organizational culture typically originates from or is there a balance between key markers to coming bottom up and then some coming top down? How does that work?
Chad Kearns:
Yeah, the easy answer is both. And I do believe the answer is both to a degree, but to be a little bit more insightful and give you a little bit more of commitment behind my answer, organizational culture starts at the top, especially when we come into organizations and focus on culture change. We have the culture that we have today. It's not where a leader or a leadership team or a board wants it to be and we need to get from A to B. It starts at the top. And if the leader of an organization or the leader of a team does not have the vision of where they want it to go, if they are not able to model and exemplify the behaviors and the tendencies and the culture that they want to build, it's got no shot.
It absolutely starts at the top and it starts with leaders and feeling empowered like they can actually make the change that they want to see, but they have to model it. They have to be the ones who are exemplifying the culture that they want for the rest of their team. And I'm a really big believer that for better or worse, the people on your team will start to kind of emulate the leader that they work with— their priorities, what they're good at, what they focus on, what they're not good at. It starts to become the norm of the organization. It starts to become the culture of the organization for better and for worse. So for me, it starts at the top and it trickles down.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, makes a lot of sense. I think that's been my experience too, because having worked for great leaders and leaders that were not as great, and then being a great leader at times and a not so great leader myself, you can see how that influences across the board.
What are some warning signs for someone? Maybe they're a leader, listening, and they know something doesn't feel quite right, and I would say maybe that gut feeling is the intuition and the warning sign. But are there other more tangible or quantitative warning signs that someone can look at to say like, "Hey, we really need to invest in our culture, and maybe that means investing in my approach as a leader as well"?
Chad Kearns:
Yes. And gut feeling is a really important one, right?
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Chad Kearns:
Oftentimes, a lot of conversations I have with leaders come up and they struggle to articulate the pain point, but a common reframe is it just doesn't feel good to be at work. It just doesn't feel good, that gut feeling of it. And I don't think we should be in a spot where we're only trusting our gut. Again, I can talk about some of those kind of more quantitative or tangible pieces, but that's a really big deal, especially when I talk or work with founders of organizations and the organization or the team that they've built, it just makes them feel bad to show up every day. And it's such a bummer. That is such a bummer for me. So I think gut feeling is a big thing.
I think the other, a little bit more traditional, if we get to some of the quantitative pieces of it, things that we pay attention to as well and start to really monitor employee retention. And when I talk about retention, I want to talk about the right kind of retention because retention in itself should not be the only marker. But are we losing the people who we don't want to lose in an organization? Not all attrition in an organization is a bad thing, but are we losing the wrong people, the people who we want to keep? So that's a big one where we start to find misalignment in the culture.
Employee buy-in and motivation as well. How intrinsically or extrinsically motivated are your team members to show up and really give their full effort? We can tell. Leaders have a really good sense of who's in or who's out. At least they should, in my opinion. And I think as we start to find team members within our teams or organizations who are not bought in, not willing to give their full effort, not doing what's required to deliver for the customer or the client or the patient or whomever it may be, that's when we start seeing those cultural cracks come through that they're not really in for the right reasons. And that starts to erode and impinge on culture in a really big way.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. So someone can say that and they're listening and they're like, "Oh yeah, I can look back over the last six months and see these key people who walked away." And all of a sudden they're feeling pretty alone at the top of their organization because they feel like no one's understanding where they're trying to push. What is your method for getting started? Maybe it starts with leadership getting really clear on the vision. But if you think about the Fired Up! Culture approach to improving culture or your approach to coaching someone through a culture change, what is the—I know there's not a step-by-step process and I know it's consulting and it's back and forth, et cetera—but what are some of the strategies that you use to start moving things back into a healthier direction?
Chad Kearns:
It's a good question. I appreciate that you recognize that there's not a step one, step two, step three, because there certainly isn't. But I do think there are some core cornerstones to rest on when we start thinking about how do we get the culture to a place that we're proud of, to a place that we want to be a part of, and to a place where it's going to deliver in the right ways for our organization. You said it, but I'll reiterate it. Leaders have to get really, really clear about the culture. And Josh, we haven't really talked too much about outcomes today, but leaders need to be really clear about the outcomes that they need to deliver and the culture that comes in alignment with those outcomes. So we should not start working towards change if we don't know where we're trying to go. So we have to know where we're trying to go first.
In a lot of our work, we do have surveys, we do assessments. It's really important for leaders to also understand where their culture is today, how their team members are feeling. Those come out in typical employee engagement surveys. Things like that can help leaders get an understanding of where the culture sits today. But I'm going to boil it down and hopefully not oversimplify too much here. But where we really get to the root of dynamic and highly impactful culture change is helping leaders identify the right people who should be on the bus. And maybe you've heard it before, but it's about how do we get the right people on the bus? And once those right people are on the bus, a lot of the culture problems and a lot of the outcome problems usually solve themselves.
But when we come into organizations and the performance of the organization, the outcomes of the organization, the feeling or the culture within the organization isn't right, it is usually because there are people not in alignment or not on board with where the organization is heading. And then that starts to become a conversation of, one, in a proactive, positive way, how do we architect what the right type of person is for this organization? How do we identify the current people in the organization or on the team? Who are the right people? Who are the right people on the bus? And then for the folks who are not, so to speak, the right people on the bus, how do we give them an opportunity to develop? How do we give them an opportunity to change? Or how do we give them an opportunity to not be on the bus anymore?
And ultimately, if I really boil it down and I think about all the work that I've seen within Fired Up! over the last three and a half, getting to four years, and even my work at Portend on the agency side beforehand, getting the right people on the bus is the most important thing that leaders can do to build and cultivate the culture and ultimately drive the outcomes that they want to drive on their team.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. It's such an important element because I think even back to my own experience, and I've known Chris who founded Fired Up! for a long time. And I remember when I was thinking about founding my company, it was funny because we were talking through stuff and he was coaching at the organization I was at before, but he knew, I think, a little bit, he's had this ability to say, as he's coaching leaders, is this a place where you're going to fit and grow and thrive and push the organization forward long term? Or if not, it's not a bad thing, but figure out what you want to do.
Chad Kearns:
Yeah. And I feel cold-hearted a little bit when we talk about there are going to be folks who are not the right ones to be on the bus or not the right ones to be in the organization. It does not mean that they are bad people. It doesn't mean that they cannot contribute in a really meaningful way elsewhere. They're just not the right fit.
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Chad Kearns:
And that's okay. It's interesting, you and I have talked about it offline in other instances before about that idea of even how we position our organizations for customers. And I don't think there's a lot of thought internally around how we're positioning our value proposition for the right fit within our organization.
And I'm going to get the line wrong and the phrase wrong, but just like we should, as companies and brands going to market with things, we should repel 90% of the market to really attract the right 10%. I don't think that conversation happens very often at the organizational level when we think about the internal team. And how do we get really, really clear about the type of people we want in the organization, the attributes they bring and who they are and how they show up, and go out and find those folks and be relentless in attracting and building the team around those attributes. Because like I said before, you get the right people in the room, you get the people with the right values and the right qualities and attributes. And a lot of the, quote unquote, "cultural problems" that exist, they will go away really, really quickly when you have the right people working on the right problems.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. I was thinking about that. One of the questions I was going to ask, which I don't know if it is relevant, but I think you've kind of answered it as you have disruptive things like AI, job insecurity, we've talked about lack of trust a lot, but in these disruptive moments, the question was like, how do you build a culture that withstands? And it's a culture that is built with people who want to be there, who are on board with the mission of the organization and have a high degree of trust because there's alignment in it with their leadership. So they know that those people, the leadership is operating with their best interests at heart.
Chad Kearns:
Yeah. What I would expand on in that is you talked about folks who are in alignment with the purpose of the organization. And a big yes to that, I think oftentimes we find for folks who are really engaged in their work, for folks who really, really care about the work they do day in and day out, oftentimes they do have a really tight connection with the purpose or the mission of that organization. But I'll build on that because it's not just about purpose. I talked a little bit earlier about just for team members or for folks trying to find the right fit for them, maybe the right fit for them is an organization where they have an incredible amount of autonomy and work-life balance.
And I guess what I'm circling around and what I can name through this is getting folks who are ... The value proposition ... Let me step back for a second. I often talk with the people that I coach, the leaders that I coach, what is your employee value proposition? What are you really offering to your team members that is unique, that is going to attract the right people to your organization? To your point, Josh, it could be a high degree of connection and purpose to the organization. Maybe you just pay so well that you're looking to find people who really, really just want to get paid really, really well. Your organization can do that, and that's what they're looking for. And they're going to be bought in and motivated and tied in because their value proposition, what they are looking for is being met from your organization.
So I don't think it's just purpose. Frankly, I've seen a lot of organizations that really struggle to find what is their true purpose, but they built healthy cultures because they're clear about what their value proposition is. So I think it's about getting really, really clear about what is the value proposition. I end up doing a lot of work in industry circling around nonprofit. It's not truly a traditional nonprofit model, but somewhat similar. And purpose is a big one for them.
So they find people who are, forgive the pun, fired up about the purpose, and that gets people to buy in and to stay and to show up in the right ways. But when we have people on our team who are not excited by the purpose, they're not excited by the people that they work with, they're not excited by the career trajectory that might or might not be available, they're not excited, let's just stop there. They're not excited, period. They're not going to show up in the right ways to drive the outcomes and the culture, the feeling inside the organization that most organizational leaders want to see and feel inside their teams.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. Yeah.
Chad Kearns:
I hope I didn't get on the soapbox too much.
Josh Dougherty:
No, that's okay.
Chad Kearns:
That's kind of one of those things where, to me, that's what it's all about. It's, as a leader, can we get really, really clear about what we're offering and then go find the people who are excited about that? When we have folks who are not excited about what we have to offer, I felt it myself as a leader, it is so hard and so taxing to feel like we're dragging them over the finish line every single day or every single week.
Josh Dougherty:
No doubt. Yeah, I've been there as well.
Chad Kearns:
It's a tough place to be.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Chad Kearns:
It's a really tough place to be. And unfortunately, a lot of leaders are in that space.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Chad Kearns:
Like you said you've, I've been there too. It's tough.
Josh Dougherty:
We all have, I think. If we've led an organization, there's always ...
Chad Kearns:
And I feel bad talking about it in these ways because I think oftentimes it's like, I also recognize it is so much easier said than done. It is so much easier said than done. But when I find the clients that we have who have really driven the change they want to see, when that gut feeling of dread of, "Oh my gosh, I don't know if I want to show up again tomorrow," that goes away when they start to get really, really clear about who they want around and get relentless. And relentless doesn't have to be without empathy. We can be empathetic and relentless. We can be kind and relentless. But the leaders who I see really take ownership and really strongly influence their culture are the ones who are relentless in seeing that vision come to life.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, love it. I think it's a good place for us to kind of transition the conversation as we close out. I'd love to hear, one final question is really about looking at trends. As you think about it—you talked to a lot of organizations about their culture, et cetera. Are there any trends that people are focused on in this culture-building area that you think they should be thinking about further in the next 12 months? Or I mean, for me, what you're talking about is going back to the basics of it's all about people, alignment, leadership, vision.
Chad Kearns:
Yeah. I don't think enough leaders are clear about the culture that they want to build, and that is the number one place that I would start if you're feeling any type of pain point around culture performance within your team. And leaders have so much more ability to influence their culture than they believe. To some degree, like we talked about earlier, culture is something that I do think a lot of culture develops organically, but it can absolutely be shaped when there is intention and focus put to it. And so that's where I would start, we start talking about trends.
The other thing that I come back to again, to reiterate, there's not a right culture for every organization. And oftentimes, or I should say we do need to be thoughtful about hiring pipelines and our talent pools and how selective we want to be. I think that is a limiting factor to how specific we want to get with the people and the culture that we want to build. We need to be mindful of where can we go find talent and where can we develop talent already in the organization? But just getting really, really clear about what you want to build, what is that feeling you want within the organization. And it is always so much easier said than done, but being relentless and driving to that change and finding those moments to feel empowered to drive the change, it's really, really important.
Josh Dougherty:
Awesome.
Chad Kearns:
Can I share? Can I dictate a little bit here for a second?
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Chad Kearns:
Because I want to share a trend that I see coming up that I don't believe very much in.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. Okay. I love this. Yes, let's do it.
Chad Kearns:
There has been a lot of conversation in the circles that I follow and read and just am a part of around flatter organizations with fewer leaders in the organization. And to some degree, I believe in that. But for these organizations who think that they're going to go so, so, so flat in anywhere near the near future, I think that is way off. And I think for organizations that are really high performing, we have individual contributors who are highly innovative, highly driven by whatever that value proposition is for them, highly accountable for the outcomes that they drive. I do think flatter organizations can work. I think the percentage of organizations who can operate in that model with highly, highly, highly accountable individual contributors and highly talented individual contributors, I think those are very, very far and few between in organizations.
And so, I do think it is going to be really interesting over these next, I'll just call it 5- to 10-year period. I feel like there's been a target on the middle manager, at least in a lot of the places that I follow-
Josh Dougherty:
I feel that in many conversations I have with-
Chad Kearns:
Yeah. A lot of conversation circles, there's a target on the middle manager. And I don't think that role is going away. And I actually think there are a lot of reasons why that role going away can be detrimental in the long term—especially when we start to think about how leaders really develop and how we get to a point where we can be an effective executive leader—if we don't have those first experiences learning and growing through leading a small team within an organization.
So that's going to be something that I'm paying attention to culture wise. It's something I see a lot about in conversation and I'm not as bullish on it as some other people are. I think that structure and the hierarchy is going to be around for a lot longer than others think.
Josh Dougherty:
I love it. I love being a little contrarian to kind of the gist. If someone wants to get in touch with you to talk about their strong feelings about flat organizations or about anything else—maybe they've heard something and they're interested in chatting with you about how they could work on their culture—what's a good way for them to connect with you and get in touch?
Chad Kearns:
Yeah, LinkedIn is great, always. Also firedupculture.com. My one shameless plug that I will make while I have the mic, I do write a newsletter for Fired Up! Culture every single week, that newsletter's come out for nearly four years now. It's all about how to motivate, engage, build buy-in within your teams. Every other week, super tangible tips on how to bring your team together in a closer way. So I'll make my plug there, firedupculture.com/newsletter to subscribe to that for free.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. And if you come to our website and check out the show, we'll also stick it in the show notes so people can go straight there without remembering the URL.
Chad Kearns:
Great. Awesome.
Josh Dougherty:
Chad, thanks so much for the time today and for the wisdom. Really appreciate the conversation.
Chad Kearns:
Thanks so much for having me. Thanks, Josh.
Josh Dougherty:
Thanks for listening to this episode of A Brave New Podcast. Go to abravenew.com for more resources and advice on all things brand. If you enjoyed this episode, show us some love by subscribing, rating, and reviewing A Brave New Podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts. A Brave New Podcast is created by A Brave New, a branding agency in Seattle, Washington, that crafts bold and memorable healthcare brands. Our producer is Rob Gregerson.