The Culture, Cooperation, and Soul of Organizations with Ralf Specht

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This is a podcast episode titled, The Culture, Cooperation, and Soul of Organizations with Ralf Specht. The summary for this episode is: <p>Today's episode of The Future of Teamwork, hosted by HUDDL3 CEO Dane Groeneveld, features a conversation with Ralf Specht about finding the soul of a company and shaping your desired corporate culture by eliminating unwanted values and behaviors while ensuring your ideal culture remains in place. The two discuss Ralf's path from working in publishing, to becoming a startup founder, and his writing endeavors as an author. Ralf has written two books, 'Building Corporate Soul' and 'Beyond The Startup,' both focused on helping leaders build companies with soul. In this talk, Dane and Ralf cover why "soul" is so important to Ralf and the three levels of The Soul System for creating a company culture with a soul, happy and engaged employees, and a sense of belonging, that ultimately outperforms other companies.</p><p><br></p><p>Key Takeaways</p><ul><li>Introducing Ralf Specht, author, consultant, and founder</li><li>Loyalty between clients and agencies, an agency where both parties have equal rights and transparency</li><li>Leadership and accountability, collaboration and preventing internal competition</li><li>Collaborative organizations, designing the company to prevent competition</li><li>Discussing the bare minimum of conducting surveys and collecting useful feedback</li><li>Evaluation and confrontation, discussing The Soul System and clarity around who you want to be as an organization</li><li>Examining LinkedIn, their values and transformation alongside acquisition by Microsoft</li><li>Landing on Soul, driving a culture that is in sync and discussing motivations for leaving companies</li><li>Manifesting a positive outcome, discussing the quality of leadership and the impact on teams</li><li>Find Ralf online</li></ul>
Introducing Ralf Specht, author, consultant, and founder of
09:39 MIN
Loyalty between clients and agencies, an agency where both parties have equal rights and transparency
02:31 MIN
Leadership and accountability, collaboration and preventing internal competition
02:59 MIN
Collaborative organizations, designing the company to prevent competition
01:40 MIN
Discussing the bare minimum of conducting surveys and collecting useful feedback
03:26 MIN
Evaluation and confrontation, discussing The Soul System and clarity around who you want to be as an organization
05:40 MIN
Discussing LinkedIn, their values and transformation alongside acquisition by Microsoft
03:27 MIN
Landing on Soul, driving a culture that is in sync and discussing motivations for leaving companies
06:08 MIN
Manifesting a positive outcome, discussing the quality of leadership and the impact on teams
06:12 MIN
Find Ralf online
00:52 MIN

Speaker 1: Welcome to the Future of Teamwork podcast, where we explore cutting- edge strategies to keep teams human- centered, drive innovation, and empower you with the tools and insights need to help your team excel and thrive in today's rapidly changing world. Your host is Dane Groeneveld, a seasoned expert with over 20 years of experience in enhancing team dynamics and innovation. Whether you're looking to kickstart a culture transformation this quarter or set the stage for a fresh beginning at the start of the year, our podcast today will provide you with actionable insights and strategies to reevaluate and shape your company culture for a thriving, forward- looking organization. This week we are excited to welcome Ralf Specht, author of the book Building Corporate Soul, who shares his expertise on transforming organizational performance and value through a practical and reality tested approach that aligns value creating employee behaviors with corporate strategy. Tune in to, first, uncover the key to shaping your desired corporate culture by initially identifying and eliminating unwanted values and behaviors while implementing a continuous evaluation process that ensures your ideal culture remains in place. Second, discover Ralf's three- level soul system for creating a company culture with a soul, happy, and engaged employees and a sense of belonging that ultimately outperforms other companies. Third, learn the free and simple way leaders can unlock value from their employees and foster a profound sense of belonging within the organization. So, teamwork makes the dream work and we're here to inspire your next collaborative breakthrough. Gather your team or put on your headphones and let's dive in together.

Dane Groeneveld: Welcome to the Future of Teamwork podcast. My name's Dane Groeneveld, CEO of the HUDDL3 Group, and today I'm joined from Frankfurt in Germany by Ralf Specht. Ralf is an author and a founder and a consultant, and he's got two books that we'll be talking about today, Building Corporate Soul and Beyond the Startup. So there's a nice relationship between the two books that we'll dive into as well. Welcome to the show, Ralf.

Ralf Specht: Well, Dane, thank you very much for having me.

Dane Groeneveld: Oh, you're welcome. I'm excited to talk about everything that we've touched on just before this show: teams, leaders, corporations. There's so much to the work that you are doing, but maybe for the benefit of our listeners, you could provide them a little bit of a backstory on how you came to be working in this field.

Ralf Specht: Yes. So the way I would like to put it is, my intention had never been to write books.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Ralf Specht: Okay. So that's the starting point. Although I started at the time when I started my professional career at the world's biggest publishing group, so that's a contradiction if you would like. But decades later, after a very successful career in marketing, I've been working in McCann Erickson for more than two decades and climbed the ranks and ran offices, ran global accounts, other multinational accounts, and one day I got a call from a colleague who I had been working with at McCann when we were servicing the General Motors business, who said whether I was up to start up a company with him. I said, " Well, why not? Tell me what you want to do." And then he told me a story and when he finished, I said to him, " Steve, I think you're making this up. It's too good to be true. I don't believe you a single word." He said, " No, no, no, it's all true. It's all true." I said, " Well, send me a business plan. I'll look into that and then we'll have a call on the weekend and we'll see where this gets us." So he sent me the business plan, I looked at it, thought the numbers were pretty sound and the strategy was good. So I called him on the next Saturday and said, " Steve, I'm in. Let's do this." And this was the start of my startup career, which happened in 2011.

Dane Groeneveld: Wow.

Ralf Specht: So as we mentioned before, everything has its time. So my startup time was a bit later than you would think, although I just read an analysis of startup founders who actually very often the most successful ones are actually at the second part of their career because obviously they benefit from the experience they've gained in the first part of their career.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Ralf Specht: So Steve's idea for this startup was a joint venture agency, and the joint venture partner was Jaguar and Land Rover. The idea was to build a global marketing agency for both brands starting with Jaguar. We did that. Started with four agencies in four countries, office in LA, office in London, in Frankfurt, and in Shanghai. 80 people in total for the Jaguar brand. And as we grew, and it wasn't designed to grow that dramatic, Steve had resigned a CEO a few years before that and I turned into the CEO role, when I left in 2019, we were 1,200 people in 19 offices.

Dane Groeneveld: That's huge.

Ralf Specht: You can imagine in eight years some remarkable things happened. The moment I left, which was a bit of a surprise to everyone, people reached out to me and shared their thoughts. While that is something that happens probably to every executive or every leader who's got a somewhat good relationship with their teams, those reactions were different than what you would expect because they want the obvious kind of, "Let me know where you're going and perhaps we can continue our collaboration," and all these nice little things. It was about, " With you leaving, we recognize what you in particular but also the whole leadership team had done, and since you were the last leader or the last founding team member leaving, we're concerned about the future of the company." So people send really very touching notes. After reading through them during that week, when they all came, I was like, " Okay, what am I going to do now?" And I thought, well, actually perhaps there's something in this which can help other leaders. And that's the idea that basically kicked off Building Corporate Soul as a book.

Dane Groeneveld: Yep.

Ralf Specht: Because I think what the tone, the general message of these emails, WhatsApps, and text messages has been was that the culture that we had created was so unique, was a high performance culture, which put the human, the individual at the center. And that was something that for people who had been around the agency world or client world, they hadn't seen in that extreme. For people who joined us as their first job, the others always said, well, when they quit and they move somewhere else, they have a hard time because they'll get into the real world as they called it. We as the founding team felt that we were trying to build the real world, the new real world because we've been around all quite a few decades. We were five founders at the time, and when we got the green light to do this startup, we asked ourselves the question, so what culture would we like to have? And that's a difficult question to answer. So we failed, we didn't answer the question and because we were all just not able to respond to it. So we changed the question and said, " Well, which cultures or which behaviors do we not want to see?" That did the trick because it was much easier for everybody to list the things that they didn't want to see. Thereby, we basically created a list of all the behaviors that we would like to avoid. And once you've got that list, you start to... Obviously that's a benefit when you're a startup.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Ralf Specht: Because there's no legacy, you can design the organization in a way that helps to avoid those issues. And I think we did that successfully. Otherwise, I wouldn't have received all of those wonderful notes because it wasn't about me. It was about what we had done as a group and how we have become infectious to many other leaders at many levels that came into the organization. So when we had our massive growth, which was in year three, we already had grown to 250 people, but then within six months, actually within four months, we had to grow to 750 people. So hire 500 people in four months, good luck, because there's only one thing that's for sure: you will hire a lot of the wrong people.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Ralf Specht: Obviously we did too. So the question I think that we challenged ourselves with, and Steve and I had a big debate about it, we said, " Well, we've got this opportunity to grow for growth, but are we actually risking the culture of the place?" And I said, " Well, yes we do, but we have an opportunity because we've got many people that have been with us as point persons in certain geographies. They've been doing the job for a year, two years, three years." No matter how great you can do your employer branding stuff, if you're doing something pretty much regularly for a year or two or three, there comes a point when you want to do something else. So we thought this is the opportunity for them to grow, and that helped basically create our first line leadership. And then obviously from that, we had people that died in war with a culture that we had intended. I think that did the trick for keeping the culture at that level, and finding those bad apples, if you like, that were the mistakes in hiring. So we could continue the growth period after probably a year of digestion, I would say.

Dane Groeneveld: That's a quick learning cycle. I mean, a lot of businesses need three, five, seven years of digestion to really start landing their formula. You did it really quick.

Ralf Specht: Yeah, well, I wouldn't say we were exactly a hundred percent back on track then, but I think we did a big staff survey at the end of the first year. You've been around so you know how to interpret staff survey results, and everybody's usually happy if there's a 60% something. With a 70, you think, well, it's got a champagne. And we had 90- plus percent agreements on" I feel like I'm matter. I'm doing the best work of my life," that type of stuff. So if you get that, you sense you're on the right path. Nobody's perfect. And I think we've done a lot of mistakes, but I think the team, I think, was so strong to actually build something that created that impact.

Dane Groeneveld: That's fantastic. That's a great intro, Ralf, and I got a couple of questions I'd like to dive into before we move on to what came of that feedback in the book. It's fascinating that you said that Steve approaches you with the story and you said that can't be real. What was it about his initial story that made you think, " Wow, this seems too good to be true"?

Ralf Specht: Well, if you look into the agency world, it's a highly competitive world. At the time, I haven't seen any difference so far when I follow the news, there's a lot of... Well, there isn't, or there wasn't, that much of loyalty between clients and agencies anymore. It was a lot of procurement driven stuff. And in the marketing industry, especially in the US, there was this K, was it K4 report, I think it was called, about how media agencies were working with the monies that the clients had shared with them in order to buy media space. And that wasn't actually a great proof point of transparency and all of that. So when Steve came along and said, " Well, here's this idea. We create a joint venture agency where both parties have equal rights." It's based on full transparency because in a JV, you basically share everything.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Ralf Specht: So I said it sounds too good to be true because it was a complete difference to all client- agency relationships I've ever had. They were great agency relationships or client relationships, so don't get me wrong, there was really strong top- notch clients, but it always stopped at a certain point. And this one was different because as our first chairman said in our first board meeting, shared board meeting with the client folks and us, he said, " This is no longer about you and me, it's about us."

Dane Groeneveld: I like it.

Ralf Specht: Or you and them. It's about us. And I think that that's what we had built and started to build out well. I think the results were very corresponding. I think Super Bowl commercials and strong brand recognition and all the metrics were pretty much on our side so it can work. I think this idea about what culture would we like to have, this discussion on day minus 100 actually helped to build it in a way that actually allowed us to do that.

Dane Groeneveld: Actually, that's a great lead into my next question, was on the culture. I'm fascinated by the fact that you started with what we're not going to be. I actually saw a post on LinkedIn this morning, which made me smile when you mentioned it, and it was a list of 10 things not to do as a leader. It seems far easier not to do something than to do something because you can hold yourself accountable every day. It's not abstract, it's very concrete. So it's fascinating you started that way.

Ralf Specht: Well, I think it's very tangible and it addresses the experience that people have, or the fears or the worries that everybody has. So I think the key point is, it's easy to say, this is what I don't want to see.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Ralf Specht: The tough bit is, how do you then design an organization that has a high probability for these things not to happen? Right?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Ralf Specht: For instance, I've come from a multinational global marketing agency background and all the others came too from other places, but similar structure, similar business model. One element of that business model has always been, and still is, I think, that offices compete with other offices of the same company. When you're in that machine, you often think like, "` What a waste of time and energy and resource," because there is no added value to the overall company. It's just Office A steals business from Office B. But the total equation is, if it's good, it's still the same, if it's bad, it's less Both. Office A gets less than Office B got, and Office B doesn't have anything anymore.

Dane Groeneveld: It's a prisoner's dilemma in many respects.

Ralf Specht: Exactly. We said, so if we don't want to have that, but get into a culture of collaboration, we take the limited resources that we have and build leadership positions only in a complimentary way so that we don't have any duplication between the four offices. And as a side effect, those people in these four offices have to start collaborating because if you don't have the resource and you don't have the money to buy the resource as a freelance, you better work with your colleague even though he might be 5, 000 miles away. And that's the way it all started. So we created a single P& L logic, so there was no incentive to any office leader to, well, steal business from his or her colleague. So it is small things, but they have a big impact. But if you start with what do we not want to see, and in this case we don't want to see this interoffice competition for money, then you take that kind of the goal, the objective, and then you start building the organization in a way that you take that away. So the moment it's gone, it can't happen.

Dane Groeneveld: I think what I'm hearing there, and I'll play it back, Ralf, is fascinating because you say, " We're not going to be offices that compete, which means that we're going to be collaborative," but then immediately you do two structural things. So I heard you say, one, " We designed the organization to hire resources across the offices, which would force that interdependence." And two, " We went to a single P& L." So that's really building hard landscape to reinforce that desired culture.

Ralf Specht: I mean, you might still find the one odd person who tries to compete. There's no incentive. And if everybody else inside the organization has understood that that's not the way we want to play, then if you've got the right people, they will at one point raise their hand and say, " That's not the way we want to do things here. So why are we doing this?" And then there's awareness and then there's an opportunity to discuss and then there's an opportunity to correct. So I think it's a self- correcting approach, which I think is ideal for any leader because I think whatever leader that I know hates most is to interfere with things that aren't on strategy. So if you create it in a way that everybody gets the strategy, it's much easier-

Dane Groeneveld: Much easier.

Ralf Specht: ... for you asa leader because everybody knows how to do things here. So you don't have to raise your hand and raise your voice and have all these discussions that you don't want to have, but you can focus on the stuff that creates value and creates strong work. And the rest is history.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. I really liked the way you framed that awareness of how it's meant to be and then an opportunity to discuss if it's not and then an opportunity to correct, because it sounds like what you created there was almost a feedback system just by its very nature. It was already there because everyone knew how it was meant to feel, how they were meant to work together.

Ralf Specht: Yes. As you were just talking about the LinkedIn thing that you saw this morning, I saw LinkedIn post, large company where one of the C- suite guys was talking about the staff survey that they're running currently and that this obviously gets feedback and dah, dah, dah, and some might hurt and some might be great, like real life. And he was, I don't know, it was like 25 lines of what he thought the staff survey did or does. And I couldn't resist, I commented on it. I said, " The fact that you're asking your employees in an anonymous way once a year what they think, if you start celebrating this, this is actually the bare minimum of a regular staff survey. What about getting into one- to- one feedback three times a year, four times a year?" Because that's what we did. We did evaluations initially every quarter and after a while, every four months, which required each team leader to have a chat with their peers or their team. And we did it across all levels. So the CEO had to undergo the same thing as everybody else did, and he had to deal with... I mean, everybody got his personal feedback, but it wasn't about, this is like, we're only doing this for, I don't know, people under 30 or whatever type of strange logic people would apply. But the fact that the organization started to learn from itself what they were doing right, what they were doing wrong, what things to start, what things to stop, which things to continue, I think, makes such a difference in reflection about your own organization. I mean, what we did for instance, which I would highly recommend to anyone, is these surveys or these evaluations had, I don't remember, eight, nine, 10 questions, but each question was around the values of the organization. So by design, every individual in the organization had to reflect upon those values at least three or four times a year with this manager. Let's say you're managing a team of 10 people, so you have to do this 10 times every three or four months. So if you are, let's say after six months, not able to understand the values of the company, you didn't get it at all. So by design, you confronted with them all along and you had no other choice than when you were evaluating your people to also reflect upon yourself whether you were staying true to that. Every now and then there was a 360 review. So that helped to create an organizational health that I think did us so well.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. I like your choice of words there with confronted too, because as leaders, I think it is confronting when you can't just talk about a task, you have to talk about how someone's showing up by way of the values and behaviors of the organization. And it's confronting until it becomes second nature, but it's a good confrontation.

Ralf Specht: And I think we lived a culture where obviously when Steve was CEO, I was among those people who did the evaluation with him, and some other colleagues did as well. And when I became CEO, same thing. But nobody was afraid because people knew they could have that one word with him or me or whoever else inside the organization and say, " Listen, that wasn't really on the money. That wasn't on the money, so please." And we all got it because I mean, nobody's perfect. No leader is perfect. So yeah, I think that's one of the key things. Obviously, as I was just talking about the fact that the values were woven into that evaluation so you couldn't escape, when I was reflecting upon the feedback that I received after stepping down, I thought, well, one key element is exactly that. So the clarity about who you want to be as an organization, where you want to go and how to take that into the behaviors of the company. And that's kind of what led to what I call in the book the soul system, which has three layers or three levels, starts with purpose. But I don't call purpose purpose, I call purpose shared purpose because I mean there's purpose statements until the cows come home, I think. So, many of them are actually not worth the paper they're written on because they sound great, they read well, typography is great and superb and what have you, but they don't find their way into the behaviors of the company. So that's why I called them shared purpose, shared with all employees, all stakeholders, and by the executive team. So the guys who run the company do need to be not just in the know, they need to really agree to this and buy into this, and then they need to share it with everybody else, and not just the people inside the organization, outside the company as well. The second level, the second layer, I call the shared understanding, which looks at the three usual suspects of vision, mission, values, and I've added a fourth one, which I call spirit, which in my definition is the intended culture. So pretty much what I just explained about the exercise we did, what do we not want to have? And then creating that in a positive way, what do we want to have? Because very often people think value statements are enough, and I'll show you one, or I'll talk about one in a second where I think that's enough. But usually, value statements are very superficial. So if the value is customer centricity or innovation, that's one.

Dane Groeneveld: How do you do that?

Ralf Specht: How do you do that?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Ralf Specht: I mean, there's nothing wrong with customer centricity or innovation, but what does it mean to the individual inside the firm? How can I be customer- centric, for instance? And I'll show you an example in a second.

Dane Groeneveld: Right.

Ralf Specht: At the third level, in the third ring, I call the shared behaviors, and that goes all the way understanding the drivers in the entire ecosystem. But then looking into the details of leadership principles, of how do you promote people? How do you hire people? How do you fire people? How do you engage with partners outside the firm? How do you engage with your customers, which are what I call followers? Because if you're doing that well, you create a following with your customers and they're no longer just transactional. So you've got these three elements, shared purpose, shared understanding, shared behavior, and if there's integrity amongst those three, you are on a good path to not just be a company with a culture, but to be a company with soul. And those companies with soul outperformed their peers, analysis on data based on predominantly employee satisfaction and engagement data. When you looked at the companies that were on the top of that list, the top 20 companies between 2016 and 2020, I wrote the book in'21, when those top 20 companies outperformed NASDAQ even by 20% more or less. So there is enough proof that and evidence that this works. So taking people seriously, that's I think speaks to what you're trying to achieve with your podcast. And the work that you're doing actually has an impact. It's not just about having a nicer life and it's all cool and fuzzy. It isn't. It's not about that. It's about finding a place where people feel valued and where a sense of belonging is created. And if you have that, then I think you have a real opportunity. As I said, I'll give you one example-

Dane Groeneveld: Yes, please.

Ralf Specht: ... ofa company that does it well, and we've talked about the company twice already because you mentioned you were on their page this morning and I was on their page yesterday. So it's LinkedIn. The shared purpose of LinkedIn is to facilitate professional networking. Four words, very clear, no question. The vision is to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. Few more words, but also very, very clear, create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. The mission is to connect the world's professionals to make them more productive and successful. There you go. This is what we're here for. Right?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Ralf Specht: Now, the values piece, I think I like a lot because as I mentioned, let's say, let's take customer centricity. LinkedIn's a very customer- centric company, but they don't put customer centricity as a term into their values. They say the two first values are members first and relationships matter, which basically is a translation of what customer centricity means for everyone. So you get it. Then there's three values on attitude: being open, being honest, and being constructive. And there's another three which is about behavior. And the way you're driven I think is probably the best way to put it. Three values are demand excellence, take intelligent risks, and act like an owner. So this goes to the entrepreneurs inside the firm, this goes to your self determent. We bring you into the company because we think you're capable to take smart decisions, which obviously, as we all know, often involve risk, but we expect you to be smart enough to take intelligent risks and not the dumb risks. So I think this set of values members first, relationships matter, demand excellence, take intelligent risks, act like an owner, and to be open, constructive and honest, I think it's just when you just read it or hear it, you have a very good understanding of what life at LinkedIn feels like or is supposed to feel like. And when you talk to people who work at LinkedIn, they give you pretty much that.

Dane Groeneveld: That's neat.

Ralf Specht: They also created a spirit statement. They say, " We aspire to create a trusted, caring, inclusive, fun, and transformational world of work, not just for ourselves but through our platform for every member of the global workforce." So again, goes full circle. I think what I like about it, on top of the fact that I think it's well- crafted and well- thought through, is the fact that this has stayed in place ever since, pretty much the early days. So this is from 2005, so it survived the Microsoft acquisition, it survived the CEO change. People didn't bother to tweak it a bit here and there because we always tweak it, but it takes smart leaders to accept that what their predecessors have done is the right thing. You don't have to change it just because you want to leave your mark on this because I think leaving the mark is probably much, much easier in this case to continue doing it because it's so smart.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. No, I really like that example, Ralf. And it brings me back to a question. As you look at the three circles, shared purpose, shared understanding, shared behaviors, they're really nicely laid out in that LinkedIn place, but where do you come up with the choice of word soul? How did you land on soul?

Ralf Specht: Well, I think people ask me, as you do, why did I pick soul? I think I picked soul because there's a saying in German which is, he or she is the soul of the company, which pretty much means he or she embodies the best of this company. The idea to bring or drive a culture to a place that is where really all these things are in sync, right? I mean, it's a bit like going back to 20 minutes ago when we talked about the fact that we designed the organization based on the behaviors we didn't want to see. It's exactly that. It's when all these things are in sync, your staff survey results might get not just to the great 60 or the very good 70, but you might get into the 80s and the 90s because people see that and people feel that. There's been this great analysis from McKinsey last autumn where they analyze the motivations why people are leaving companies. And they did it across the world. So it's different in Europe than in the US and Asia. It's pretty much the same everywhere. I think what I liked so much about that research was they asked two target groups. They asked the employees, why are you leaving? And they asked the employers, why do you think they're leaving? The employers said, " Well, he or she wants more money, gets a promotion," or there's a health issue or something like that. The employees said, " I don't feel valued by my manager. I don't feel valued by my organization, and I don't feel any sense of belonging." So three purely emotional drivers why people are leaving organizations. So I think soul speaks to that.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, got it.

Ralf Specht: Because when people feel it, they have that connection. There's this other wonderful study from Gallup, which is about their global engagement index, which obviously when you're like myself, based in Europe, you look at those data and you think like, " Jesus Christ, what did we do wrong?" Because when you look at it from global perspective, the global average on emotional connection is 23%. So, pretty much a quarter of the workforce, which in the US is 31. So you are at the top end.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Ralf Specht: Asia and Latin America is even better, but you are all right, doing all right, I'd say. Europe is at the bottom, Europe's at 13, so nearly half of the global 20, 23%. So when you talk to the Gallup guys about that research and ask them, so obviously that's an average, and it's not difficult to imagine that if it's an average, that the worst companies are really at zero. But where are the best companies? And the best companies are at 60% emotional connection, loyalty with their people. So I'd go as far as to say that those 60% companies are companies with soul because they have found a way to connect with their workforce so that there's a buy- in into the purpose, there's a buy-in into the vision, and there's a buy- in into the behaviors of the firm. So it's the emotional elements because we feel whether we are valued. We can't measure whether we're valued. There's ways to measure things, but it's a feeling, it's an emotion, it's a sentiment. And if companies understand that that is the case, then I think they're much better off. It doesn't really matter whether you're talking an S& P 500 company or a 12 people company down the road. It doesn't matter whether this company has been founded two years ago or 200 years ago. It doesn't really matter. It's all about the leadership. And if you've got issues with your people and your workforce, then look into the mirror. Because when you look into the Gallup study, they've looked into what are the gaps between the best and the worst. And the worst, 81% less performing on absenteeism. So people just simply stay at home and they're perhaps sick.

Dane Groeneveld: They vote with their feet.

Ralf Specht: Pretend to be sick or whatever. Turnover is like 43% worse than the average. Shrinkage, so theft in other words, 18%, or 28%, sorry. Safety incidents, minus 64%. So there's lots of KPIs that you can look into how your company is performing against industry average. But obviously it's not just about the downsides, it's also about the upsides. And the upsides are, the best are usually 23% higher, have higher profitability, 40% higher productivity, and the 10% higher customer loyalty. So all the things as a company leader you want. So this is not about making it soft and easy and cozy for everyone. This is about creating a space where people can deliver their best work. At the end of the day, that's what it is.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I like that. And I like that you call on leadership. I want to dig into that a little bit. I actually read... I didn't read a book, I lie. I did a Blinkist this morning, which is like a quick audiobook summary on a book called 8 Secrets to Powerful Manifesting by Mandy Morris. So when you actually walk through it, it talks a lot about, as an individual, if you're trying to manifest a positive outcome, a new goal, a new way of living, a new way of having a relationship with someone that you need to just be constantly waking up, checking in, setting intentionality, envisaging yourself where you're at. And I've heard a lot of that coming from you today. It sounds to me like, that's really with this whole process of building corporate soul, is going beyond culture, it's heavily dependent on leadership. You talked about it in your one- to- ones. And I know before the show we were talking about the agency of teams and you called me out really appropriately and said, " Well, you can have a great team, but if that great team's working for a company that doesn't have the right leadership to support them, how much change can they really affect?" So maybe you can kind of dive into that a little bit for me.

Ralf Specht: Yes, absolutely. I think teams are such a powerful resource for organizations. Obviously, when you have a company with soul, teams can focus on doing best what they're supposed to be doing best. But if you have a company with cultural issues, a lot of time is taken away from these teams because they're fighting those things. I mean, again, Gallup, I like the work they're doing a lot because I think it's not just the fact that it's well researched and globally relevant, but it's very practical. Actually, you can take the advice and apply it 10 minutes later, it's no problem. So on their pyramid of personal growth inside organizations, they talk about the base level. The base level, they have the 12 questions that are critical for leaders to figure out whether their company and they're doing right with their culture. What their research has also shown, that when people have, let's say 10- minute meaningful conversation with their team manager at work, productivity and everything else raises by 10%. And the basic question, when I read it, I was shocked a little bit, but when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. It's like, " Well, can you do the work that you were asked to do? Have you got all the tools? Have you got all the resources?" Because very often you find people say, " No, I would need this," or a piece of software here or a tool there, or whatever it is. Just giving people the opportunity to speak up what they need and then obviously giving them what they need is your first step to do things right. So I highly recommend the Gallup pyramid of 12 questions because I think they're a great self- reflection for everyone to see how they are doing and ask those questions. Make a test and see what people respond to and see what changes after you've been continuously asking those questions. It goes along with that evaluation structure because it's pretty much the same thing. If you start talking to people about their contribution, about their growth, what's required to help them, that's exactly what helps building that loyalty in that sense of we're connected and the commitment. We briefly touched on it before the show, because as I mentioned, as a leader, you're constantly dealing with constraints. There's always something missing. There's no time, there's no budget, there's no people, whatever. There's always something that's not there. There's never enough of anything as a leader.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Ralf Specht: So there's one resource every leader has at its hands, which comes for free, doesn't cost anything except being nice every now and then, which is commitment. Commitment is very easy to achieve, is involve your people, tell them where you want to go, ask for their thoughts and ideas. Create a plan that everybody says, " Yeah, that's what we're going to do." And then you have the commitment. Tell them how the plans coming to life and give updates on success along the way. And if there's success, celebrate. If there's failure, celebrate too, but explain why you would do it differently the next time. It's just involving people. I mean, you've hired them, you've got them. Hopefully you've hired them for the right reasons, and then give them the opportunity to shine and give them the opportunity to actually perform. I think as simple as it sounds, it's the key to unlock a lot of productivity, a lot of loyalty, and a lot of belonging and feeling that sense of value.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I think that's a wonderful note to end on, Ralf. It's very powerful. It's a great call to action for all teams now and in the future. And it sure seems exciting if you can be part of an organization that has that soul and has that real sense of belonging, sense of value. All of the statistics you shared today show a lot of upside.

Ralf Specht: Absolutely.

Dane Groeneveld: Well, Ralf, I've really enjoyed this conversation. For me as a leader, it's actually given me a lot of clarity on some of the things that I'm working through with my team. So thank you for that. For other listeners who would like to find the books or find a way to reach out and connect with you, I know you do some consulting, how do they best find you?

Ralf Specht: Well, there's a website which is called buildingcorporatesoul. com, that gives you access to pretty much everything, explains the books, explains the methodology. You can also reach out to me via their website or via LinkedIn, of course, and I'm very happy to engage with everyone.

Dane Groeneveld: Wonderful, wonderful. Well, I'm sure you'll get a few calls. I'm sure you're a busy man, but it's great that you shared your story for others, and I appreciate the work you're doing.

Ralf Specht: Thank you very much, Dane. It's been my pleasure.

Dane Groeneveld: Thanks, Ralf.

Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us. Remember that by embracing vulnerability, trusting our intuition, and approaching challenges with compassion, we not only strengthen our teams, but also pave the way for a future where collaboration thrives. If you're hungry for more insights, strategies, and research on collaboration, head over to thefutureofteamwork. com. There, you can join our mailing list to stay updated with the latest episodes and get access to exclusive content tailored to make your team thrive. Together, we can build the future of teamwork. Until next time.

DESCRIPTION

Today's episode of The Future of Teamwork, hosted by HUDDL3 CEO Dane Groeneveld, features a conversation with Ralf Specht about finding the soul of a company and shaping your desired corporate culture by eliminating unwanted values and behaviors while ensuring your ideal culture remains in place. The two discuss Ralf's path from working in publishing, to becoming a startup founder, and his writing endeavors as an author. Ralf has written two books, 'Building Corporate Soul' and 'Beyond The Startup,' both focused on helping leaders build companies with soul. In this talk, Dane and Ralf cover why "soul" is so important to Ralf and the three levels of The Soul System for creating a company culture with a soul, happy and engaged employees, and a sense of belonging, that ultimately outperforms other companies.

Today's Host

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Dane Groeneveld

|HUDDL3 Group CEO

Today's Guests

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Ralf Specht

|Author, Consultant, Founding Partner of Spark44