Welcome to SALES with ASLAN, a weekly podcast hosted by ASLAN Co-founders Tom Stanfill and Tab Norris, geared at helping sales professionals and sales leaders eliminate the hard sell. At the end of the day, we believe that selling is serving. ASLAN helps sellers make the shift from a ‘typical’ sales approach, to one that makes us more influential because we embrace the truth that the customer’s receptivity is more important than your value prop or message.

The goal of these interviews is to spotlight various experts in the world of sales and sales leadership – sharing informational stories, techniques, and expert interviews on the sales topics you care about.

The following are notes from Ep. 150 – The Culture MRI: Creating a culture that attracts, retains, and produces!

In this episode, Tom and Tab are joined by guest Ben Ortlip, CEO and Founder of The Culture MRI, a tool that helps businesses quantify and measure the health of their culture. How does one measure that and also measure the impact of it?

The Culture MRI has identified 15 drivers of culture and can “report that state of culture and engagement in terms of dollars saved or lost by your company.”

Tune in now to hear Ben share what we need to know about driving vibrant culture within organizations. 

Listen to the conversation here:

Or check out the full transcript below.

Resources:

• Find Ben Ortlip on LinkedIn
• Learn more about The Culture MRI on their website

Transcript:

00:03

Tom Stanfill

Welcome to one more episode of SALES with ASLAN, Tab. We’re still here, we’re still rocking, we’re still pumping out amazing content into the market. At least that’s what we tell ourselves. We’re making a difference, Tab. We’re serving our people who serve their customers. We’re serving leaders who serve their reps who serve their customers. We’re serving reps who serve their customers. We’re serving our wives by being out of the house. 

Tab Norris

That is true. I give you my wife right now. Yeah, honey, I’m busy. We’re staying busy doing another podcast with Tom. Yeah, another pod. No, don’t worry. I’ll be out of your haircast with Tom. 

Tom Stanfill

Tab, should we tell our listeners, our vast international audience, about you beating me in golf last week?

00:52

Tab Norris

I didn’t really want to bring it up because there’s some emotional things connected to that. There’s some scars.

01:00

Tom Stanfill

I know.

01:01

Tab Norris

Very rough. It was a rough week.

01:03

Tom Stanfill

Yeah.

01:04

Tab Norris

Good week and a bad week all.

01:06

Tom Stanfill

At the same time. Tab and I had one of our bucket list trips. We went to Ireland last week. For those of you who don’t know us personally, tab played amazing.

01:19

Tab Norris

The weather was the last two days. The last two days.

01:22

Tom Stanfill

Come on, let me just sell it. They weren’t there. You are amazing. You were incredible. You played one of the most difficult courses, Valley Bunyan. You slayed it. The caddies were all worshiping you. They didn’t comment on my golf. They commented on my outfit. That was all I know what to say, but I like your outfit.

01:48

Tab Norris

That was a highlight. The one caddy was enamored by Tom.

01:54

Tom Stanfill

I don’t know. But anyway, we had a blast. We’re back. It’s great to do an episode and tap. This is a bit of a heady episode. Some of our episodes are kind of right down the middle, unlike my shots. Are you saying we’re going to shank one today?

02:15

Tab Norris

Pushed it to the right.

02:16

Tom Stanfill

Maybe just push up a little bit. Push that a little bit. So my shots weren’t down the middle. A lot of our podcasts are kind of very clear about what we’re talking about and the benefit. We got a guest today, Ben Ortlip, with a company called The Culture MRI. He has done something I have not seen. We’ve been around a lot of companies. I’ve been in business for 30 something years. I’ve never seen anybody be able to come up with an instrument that quantifies and allows you to measure your culture, the health of your culture. He’s narrowed in on these 15 drivers of culture and how do you measure that and the impact of it? He’s got an MRI that will give you feedback. Very affordable. It’s an incredible tool. He’s going to unpack that for us. I think if you’re in sales, you may go, well, what’s this got to do with me? Well, you want to manage your own career. This helps you figure out where you’re going to thrive. Hang with this, because Ben unpacks when he starts talking about the knees, it helps you figure out, okay, because I even learned, like, okay, I need that. That’s why I sometimes are engaged or not engaged, even I’m an owner, I still struggle with engagement because I’m going this isn’t quite meeting my needs. This is not really like the pandemic really hit me hard, and I wasn’t really sure why. And he explains that. For leaders, he clearly maps out what our role is and how we drive culture and the impact of that. So, Ben, we didn’t get too much in the show, but his background, he’s got a really interesting background. He kind of fell in to learn, I guess. The research driving this tool and service that he provides came from working as a writer with some of the greatest thought leaders in business.

04:09

Tom Stanfill

I mean, he’s written books, and I don’t want to share this because the names, because I don’t know what his agreements are with the authors, but he’s written books for people that are world famous, like renowned thought leaders in business and leadership. That kind of led him to a journey of researching and figuring out what drives culture. He’s going to share with us and also tab we didn’t talk about the show. He has eight kids.

04:36

Tab Norris

That’s a podcast in and of itself.

04:38

Tom Stanfill

Yeah, we need to have him back and talk about it.

04:42

Tab Norris

I’m looking forward to it.

04:44

Tom Stanfill

Yeah. So join our show. We’re going to meet with Ben Ortlip, the CEO and founder of The Culture MRI, and he’s going to share with us what we need to know about driving vibrant culture.

~ ~ ~

Tom Stanfill

Ben. Welcome to the show, my friend. It is great to see you.

00:07

Ben Ortlip

This is so fun. Like the old days, hanging out with.

00:11

Tom Stanfill

You guys all day. Obviously we mentioned this in the intro to the show, but you’ve had a very interesting career, and I can’t wait to hear you tie it all together. You started out working for this big ad agency.

00:29

Ben Ortlip

I was hoping you were going to tie it together because you’re still trying.

00:33

Tab Norris

To get those knots to untie.

00:35

Ben Ortlip

Yeah. They say in the end it looks like a finely crafted novel. Well, it still looks like scrabble to me. Yeah. Right.

00:45

Tom Stanfill

Well, I think you put it nicely together when I read on your website, but you started off kind of on the marketing side. Right. You work for an agency, a big, large what was the agency? I forgot.

00:56

Ben Ortlip

Well, I try not to say their name because I say so many bad things. Okay, that’s right.

01:01

Tom Stanfill

That’s true.

01:03

Tab Norris

We’ll just keep them out of it.

01:04

Tom Stanfill

It’s a big ad agency. The number one or two ad agency.

01:09

Ben Ortlip

Well, it wasn’t that, but I think the point is I had the career I always wanted to, a career that if you describe it to anybody, it was great. It had all the things. Yet the way I say it is, how can a job this good be this bad? Yeah. Because there was something about it, and I think that really describes a lot of people’s work, everything on paper that you would ever ask for. What we’re seeing today, goodness, the great resignation, is an example of how people who otherwise on paper, have exactly what they ever wanted. There’s something about it that the minute I get of disruption, the pandemic and maybe the government giving me a little money to hold me over, I’m out of there. I think for everybody, there’s this surface level that describes work and it’s the package, but underneath the surface, there’s this other dimension that maybe doesn’t sit quite right.

02:13

Ben Ortlip

I think we’ve learned, we think that we’re supposed to accept that part of it. Yeah.

02:18

Tom Stanfill

Like it’s supposed to be that negative.

02:22

Ben Ortlip

Yeah, it’s work after all. Suck it up and go. What I’ve learned to see it as is, we have the visible surface package of work. What I call this underneath part is the social contract. What I’ve studied ever since I had my midlife crisis, or I guess it was more like a 20 something crisis, what I’ve studied.

02:48

Tom Stanfill

I hope that wasn’t midlife.

02:49

Tab Norris

Yes, I think you made it.

02:56

Ben Ortlip

The social contract is really the thing that is less studied and has way more relevance, as I’ll explain. But because it’s changed so many times. I ended up going back and looking at the history of the social contract in the workplace, going all the way back to the Industrial Revolution.

03:17

Tom Stanfill

When you say social contract, help me.

03:18

Ben Ortlip

Understand that there’s all of these unspoken nonverbal cues and expectations and needs that we have as workers. Right. Really, the relationship between an employer and an employee is contractual, but it’s also the social contract speaks to all the unwritten things, all the assumptions that we have. For example, I expect to be treated with dignity and respect. Yeah. That’s not written down anywhere.

03:54

Tom Stanfill

They’re unwritten social contracts, is what you’re saying. There’s expectations we come into the workforce with.

03:59

Ben Ortlip

Yeah. Another part of the social contract that I think is expected is I expect the company to kind of have it act together so that I can do the things that I’m equipped to do. I’m expecting that the job is not a dead end job. That’s part of the social contract between me and my daughter, that this is actually potentially leading to something.

04:20

Tom Stanfill

It’s what you said it would be.

04:22

Ben Ortlip

Yeah, probably. Or what I thought it should be, whether you said it or not. Okay. So there’s all of these things. This, to me, is if you think about it, the word culture is the repository for all of these nebulous concepts like that. We end up saying things like, oh, it’s just their culture. Well, that’s just us grabbing the ring because we don’t have the terms to describe that. Like, we’ll say very tangible things about a person or about a place, a company. A lot of people talk about Chick fil A all the time, just because maybe but you can point to a couple of specific things like the speed of their drive through or the quality and consistency of their food. After you get to two or three kind of tangible things like that, the person kind of throws their hands up and says, oh, it’s just their culture.

05:22

Ben Ortlip

It’s a whole lot of stuff.

05:23

Tom Stanfill

They’re always nice to you. It’s just the way people are there.

05:28

Tab Norris

Well, you hear this all the time. Yeah, that’s like a big buzzword right now.

05:33

Ben Ortlip

Right.

05:34

Tom Stanfill

Culture.

05:34

Tab Norris

Everything is culture.

05:35

Ben Ortlip

Culture.

05:38

Tab Norris

Maybe this is where you’re going. But how would you define that?

05:42

Ben Ortlip

That kind of where you are going with this? Well, happy to. I define culture as the collective personality of an organization. Sometimes I call it the soul of the organization. If you think about it, when you take all of those abstract things, the core values, the rituals, the practices, the traditions, the mission, the vision, all that stuff, it all kind of comes together as an embodiment. It gives an essence to an organization the same way it does with a person. We say someone has a personality or someone has a culture. Organizations are the collection of a bunch of different people, but they’re all contributing to the same thing. They’re putting all of those things together, and they get personified as an organizational entity. And so culture is that thing. It’s the way we describe an entity similar to the way we would describe a person.

06:44

Ben Ortlip

We would say, oh, that’s just personality, or it’s just the way she is.

06:50

Tab Norris

That’s good.

06:51

Tom Stanfill

Your path to becoming an expert at what drives positive culture, the impact of driving culture, how to measure it, how did you morph into that? Because I know you’ve got a very extensive marketing background. You’ve worked with a lot of big companies. You mentioned chickfila delta’s ups salesforce. You’ve written books. I mean, you’ve been very successful in multiple different aspects of really, I would say you’re kind of been on the more the marketing side.

07:23

Ben Ortlip

Well, actually, most of that. I left the advertising world early in my career. That was my first phase of my career. My specialty in advertising was writing. Writing became my passport into all kinds of other areas because everybody needed writing. The area that I ended up in was, for whatever reason, I didn’t plan this, but I ended up doing work with a lot of the thought leaders that we all know. I would write different things and direct projects for some of these guys.

07:59

Tom Stanfill

Like Maxwell and Tony Robbins and Tom Stanfield. He said I didn’t qualify.

08:13

Ben Ortlip

Yeah, one of the places that was so pivotal for me was the Drucker Institute, and I worked on a massive project with them that really was my MBA and management. We did this multi part series called the Drucker Management Path, and I just learned so much. But that was my passport. I was working with different thought leaders. Of course, just because of the decades that I was doing that, the big emphasis has been leadership for so long. A lot of these leadership gurus henry Cloud, Ken Blanchard, right? Maxwell, Patrick Lyncione. I’ve been around all these guys, and I ended up learning about leadership. That became once I became a person who kind of knew my way around some of those concepts, I started getting invited into organizations to help them think through things and do strategic planning and stuff like that. So a consultant essentially got it.

09:22

Ben Ortlip

Okay. One day I watched this word culture show up on the radar. It’s always been there, but it’s never been the emphasis.

09:34

Tom Stanfill

Kind of like a mission statement. You’re supposed to have it, you talk about it, but what does it really mean? And does anyone really care about it?

09:41

Ben Ortlip

If you just take the business lexicon, I bet you if you did a word count, you would find that leadership was like one of the most commonly referred to terms either literally or at least in concept, right? Culture has become more and more so. In fact, Maryam Webster made culture the word of the year just about a decade ago or so. Even they acknowledge that the word is starting to show up in the radar of everybody.

10:11

Tom Stanfill

How is Miriam, by the way? I haven’t heard. They’re doing great. They’re doing great.

10:28

Ben Ortlip

One book, though.

10:31

Tom Stanfill

Did you write that book?

10:34

Tab Norris

I ghost wrote Addiction.

10:38

Ben Ortlip

There’s the family next door. Anyway, one day, one of my clients, who is a semi famous thought leader, has written a bunch of books, approached me. I was ghost writing books, too, during this whole time. That in itself is interesting, pulling an all nighter with Tony Robbins across multiple time zones. You really get in deep with these guys sometimes. One of my other clients said, hey, I’m writing a book on culture. Can you help me out with it? I was so excited because I’d heard culture bouncing around as a term, and I thought, I don’t really know what culture is or how it works or anything. I know what management is. There’s, like a rigid framework. There’s very quantifiable skills. Same with leadership. There’s 21 irrefutable things that you need to do to be a leader, and all this so clearly defined, but I was I don’t know what culture is, so this is going to be great because this guy is just an absolute thought leader of thought leaders.

12:05

Ben Ortlip

I started working on the project, and I was like, okay, well, we hadn’t gotten going yet because it was just random ideas and tips and tricks and stuff like that. I thought I kept waiting for the framework to come out. Yeah, right. I spent a year working on this project, and I just kept kindly pushing back and saying, well, okay, but that’s really just those are leadership concepts. We’re not really helping anybody understand culture. By the end of that process, after a year, I just kind of said, hey, let’s pursue. In other words, you haven’t defined this.

12:46

Tab Norris

Yet, merely a comic book, so we’re going to have to bag it and go with something else.

12:52

Ben Ortlip

Yeah, it was more like a daily guidepost. It was cool stories and all this. You can’t say that culture is not related to it, but it wasn’t in terms of had no academic structure to it or anything like that, lacking research.

13:08

Tom Stanfill

Okay.

13:09

Ben Ortlip

I came away from that realizing that nobody understood, really, nobody had any kind of infrastructure to help me understand how to navigate culture, to define it or anything. So I call these things organizational disciplines. Okay? What I mean by that is organizational discipline is something that an organization uses, but it’s a body of skills and knowledge that enable them to function. Management is an organizational discipline. Leadership is an organizational discipline, and they’re essentially the operating system for an organization. If you look back since the Industrial Revolution, an organizational discipline in the beginning, management, when all the agricultural workers walked off of the fields and into factories and loading docks and things like that. Drucker literally wrote about how, hey, I spent about ten years this is what he said, I spent about ten years helping people figure out how that happened. What does it look like when you put a massive group of people under one roof and try to get them to work?

14:28

Ben Ortlip

He basically said, I knew that I was laying the foundations of a new discipline. That’s what he looked at. So that was the beginning of management. He’s considered the father of modern management, and so that management was the operating system or the organizational discipline for 50 years. That’s all there was. Prior to that point, there had never been an organizational discipline outside of management, didn’t exist outside of maybe military circles. At about 50 years later, leadership eclipsed management. That’s indicative of a transition that happened in the psychology of the workforce. Another 50 years goes by and we’re seeing the transition from leadership into culture now. So we’re kind of at the stage. In fact, I feel sometimes like Drucker must have felt when he was trying to define management. Right.

15:31

Tom Stanfill

You really are capturing, I think, what leaders are struggling with. Whether you’re leading a team of ten, you’re leading your own small group, you’re leading a major organization. It’s like there has been this philosophy about how leadership and management work. It’s like they’re the top of the pyramid. We tell you, we set vision, we set direction, and then we get the team all and then people like scratching all the workforce doesn’t care about that anymore. We don’t wake up in the morning going, what’s the company going? Like, a lot of times we delete workshops. We’ll say people don’t care about the company vision, they care about it related to how it helps them get what they want. But it’s changed. That’s what you kind of articulated or captured it in your model, which I think is brilliant. I’m sure you’re going to impact about how what drives where are we now, and what ultimately is driving culture.

16:27

Tom Stanfill

I know you’re going to talk about the impact of having a.

16:30

Ben Ortlip

Vibrant culture or healthy culture. So to understand where we are now. It helps to kind of look at where we’ve come from. Because what you’re describing and the reason that there’s some confusion around how to be a leader is because there used to be a way to be a leader. There was another way to be a leader. Now we’re into an era that’s none of those too even so. During the management era. It’s very simple and clear once you hear it. During the management era, the social contract was based on authority. That’s just the supply and demand of the workplace. It was all about survival and if you want a job, you’re going to do everything I tell you or you’re out of here. There’s four other guys at the fence waiting every day to take your place. Authority was the operating system of that social contract for that whole period.

17:29

Tom Stanfill

We all agree with that. You’re in charge. I follow you. I listen to you. Yes, sir. No, Ma’am.

17:35

Ben Ortlip

It really just follows Maslow’s hierarchy because once management was set up as the organizational discipline to guide all of that, and there’s all these automatons doing essentially what anybody would do before. We hadn’t invented robots yet, right? They use their reptilian brain to execute all the things that a robot would eventually do. Authority was the social contract was based on authority. Just like Mazdo predicted, about 50 years went by and the needs, instead of being survival needs, the workforce was asking for success needs. They were saying, hey, this is where the American dream kind of became a thing, mid 20th century and so forth. The young upwardly level professional, Wall Street, home ownership, higher education, all that kind of stuff. The whole concept of Wally or Ward Cleaver walking down the street of a home he owns with his briefcase and a suit and all that.

18:46

Ben Ortlip

There was a shift from survival to success, advancement, some esteem, recognition, status. These are just psychological realities that happened. The governing social contract switched from authority to influence. When the needs go from survival to success, the social contract shifts from authority to influence. Well, guess what? Management was set up for authority. So we need a different organizational discipline. We need a different operating system for companies to use influence.

19:35

Tom Stanfill

How do we influence people versus just tell them, be clear about plan, organize and control management. Plan, organize and control? Here’s the plan. We organize, we control leadership. How do we influence our order for? How do we communicate the benefits to them? How do we get them to change their opinion or beliefs? But that’s your saying starting to erode. I love what you’re talking about to talk about the next level.

19:58

Ben Ortlip

And it became sort of conversation. It was like it’s a negotiation. So the power shifted right there. I don’t know if it’s really mutual, neutral, shared power or anything like that, but clearly a lot of people are describing that nowadays. The whole script has been flipped so that the power exists with the employee. I don’t know if that’s completely true. What I do know is that after authority and influence, it went to something called autonomy. So, of course, autonomy, that’s why you hear the word thrown around and that’s why we have the great resignation or what some people call the big quit. It’s this idea that everybody wants to kind of call their own shots and do their own thing, but I see it as a representation of the power shifting to the employee more. The whole issue got brought to a head with the pandemic and the shutdown and everybody had to go home.

21:07

Ben Ortlip

Well, when it came time to invite them back to work, there were a lot of people who weren’t going to go back to the way it was.

21:15

Tom Stanfill

We’re not going to do the vaccine potentially. We’re not going to do we’re not going to do what you tell us to do. Something happened where they felt even more power or more choices.

21:25

Ben Ortlip

Obviously that’s the third epoch in the modern workplace. That’s the third era that we’re in.

21:34

Tom Stanfill

Did you get that tab? Did you write epoch? Epoch.

21:38

Ben Ortlip

Star wars.

21:39

Tab Norris

Weren’t they the epochs?

21:40

Ben Ortlip

Did they kill a little epoch running around fuzzy things? Epochs, yes. Thank you.

21:50

Tom Stanfill

Let’s marry him. Say about epochs.

21:53

Ben Ortlip

Not as much as rogue, but in the age of autonomy, we need a new organizational discipline. Again, you don’t get rid of management just because you have leadership and you don’t get rid of leadership and management just because you have a new organizational discipline. I’ve come to be convinced that culture is another organizational discipline. It’s like rushing nesting dolls. You just kind of keep adding them to each other. Right? The problem is that nobody’s defined what it is. That was the work that I set out to do. Most culture work in the past has been about this kind of eclectic mix of random ideas and tips and tricks. Most of the books, I love their thinking. The one thing I think they’re lacking though is this all encompassing, comprehensive, finite set of skills and disciplines. If you’re going to become an Olympic athlete, there’s a very clearly defined finite set of things you have to do in any sport to get ready for that.

23:15

Ben Ortlip

People just haven’t had that. I set up my whole objective ever since I was asked to write that book that never happened, was to create a complete system or approach that makes culture a predictable operation. The same way that supply chain or marketing or finance, those are very established, operational.

23:43

Tom Stanfill

Make it move it from intangible to tangible. It’s measurable. People can drive it to define for is what drives culture because I love.

23:53

Ben Ortlip

How you talk about it.

23:53

Tom Stanfill

I love your three C’s.

23:55

Ben Ortlip

Yeah. Actually the three C’s is something else. The three C’s describe the needs of the modern workplace.

24:04

Tom Stanfill

Okay, so that’s not the driver. I guess your ability to meet those needs is what drives culture.

24:12

Ben Ortlip

Okay, explain what’s let me back up to the big picture. If you wanted a formula for culture in general, just let’s not get down in the weeds too much here. Culture is equal to core values divided by employee value proposition. Let me explain culture equals core values divided by employee value proposition. Essentially, I’m describing two things that are necessary to create an engaging, vibrant, strong, successful culture and fulfill those instincts that you have to create a great workplace where everybody is doing what they do and love what they’re doing and contributing to profitability and all that. We’re all clear on what culture should do for us, right? Yeah, but how do you get there? Most people fall into one of two camps. They either define their core values these are the behaviors that we want to see, or they say, here’s our mission, or our vision.

25:18

Ben Ortlip

They get all clear on this is what our culture, the definition of our culture should be. The other thing that people do instinctively and by the way, that’s a really important instinct to have. The other thing they do is they think about how to implement that and they’ll pick up on communication. Or they will talk about recognition programs, just tips. I call them silver bullets because these.

25:51

Tom Stanfill

Are the core values.

25:53

Ben Ortlip

No, these are actually the ways to generate traction with your core values. Again, these are good instincts. These are right. Nobody had ever said, okay, here’s the exact formula that’s predictable and everything else. I say that core values divided by employee value proposition is the definition of culture, the formula for creating culture, right? What I mean is that it’s two steps. You have to clearly define who you want to be. What are the on target behaviors, what are the off target behaviors, what are the kind of people we want, what are the values we promote and all that. You have to create an organization that can contain all those that will embody those. I think of it a lot of times. It’s like if you mixed up this literal formula, liquid, bottle, these are all our core values, but then you pour them out into the organization and there’s not the structural integrity in the organization to hold it.

27:01

Ben Ortlip

There’s all these cracks and everything. The employee value proposition is what determines whether the organization will embody those or not. Let me explain that there’s an element of psychology involved in how I respond to something that you have. If you’re doing a good job of taking care of me, it’s the same as your other centered concept in selling and leading. In that situation, if I’m setting myself up as an important resource for the buyer, then they’re more likely to go to recognize me as someone to embrace and engage with and everything else. Employees are the same way with their employer. They’re essentially customers of the employer. Right? To the degree that you meet my needs and I’m your employee, to the degree that you meet my needs, I will be more engaged with you and I will adopt your values. This is why, by the way children adopt the values of their parents because their whole life they’ve been the key to having their needs met.

28:21

Ben Ortlip

It’s not something that they set out to do intentionally. It’s just the way that reptilian psychology works. That when our needs are met. You see this all throughout the animal kingdom when there’s imprinting on the mother because she’s the one who provides and that’s a bond that just never goes away. Well, employers and employees develop a similar thing. It starts with a salary, it starts with recognition and things like that. This is the area that frankly has been way too fuzzy. Rather than just say, here’s five great ways to build culture in your organization, we’ve taken a little more of a scientific approach. I’ve done a lot of ethnography work in different companies to try to figure out what drives the culture and basically have come back with 15 things. By the way they correspond to, there’s seven things that the management discipline delivers. There’s five that leadership delivers in terms of the value proposition to the employee.

29:31

Ben Ortlip

Now there’s three that are added because of being in the age of autonomy. That’s where the craft causing community, the three C’s come up. Essentially these 15 things describe the needs of a worker today. Most of them they’re not even aware of. They’re not going around saying, if I had to make a list, these would be the top 15 things. These are subconscious psychological needs that great employers leverage. Anyway, we put them all into this canvassing tool, this assessment tool, and this system called the culture MRI.

30:18

Tom Stanfill

Let me back up because I want to make sure we’re tracking with you because I’m loving what you’re talking about. So let’s say core value, right? Organization has a core value. Let’s say the core value is something along lines of exceeding customers expectations or the ultimate customer experience. So go the extra mile. Something like how we can cheap that’s what we care about, or delivery always deliver on time. Something that’s the value of the company.

30:47

Ben Ortlip

Right.

30:47

Tom Stanfill

So we’re stating that as important.

30:49

Ben Ortlip

Yes.

30:50

Tom Stanfill

You’re saying, well, the employee has needs.

30:54

Ben Ortlip

Yes. Right.

30:55

Tom Stanfill

The employee has needs and you’re saying they have 15. Is that what you’re saying? The employee has 15 needs. Your ability to meet those 15 needs and obviously communicating with the core values are will ultimately drive your culture.

31:11

Tab Norris

Because they’re not going to do the core value if those 15 rates aren’t met.

31:18

Ben Ortlip

Right.

31:18

Tab Norris

They’re not going to embrace it. Is that how it works?

31:21

Ben Ortlip

That’s right. So think about this. If inadvertently you omit or neglect one of my psychological needs, my core psychological needs, I have no choice. Subconsciously I’ll have to kind of check out from you for a minute and go get my needs met somewhere, right? Let me just make this tangible for you. Let me walk through some of those needs for you. Number one is safety and security that I have to know that I’m not in jeopardy. By the way, one part of the safety and security is emotional safety and security.

32:06

Tom Stanfill

It’s like Tab doesn’t like me to tell him that he’s an idiot.

32:08

Tab Norris

Yes, because it makes me feel emotionally.

32:11

Tom Stanfill

Unsafe when I yell at him.

32:16

Ben Ortlip

If a boss is condescending or passive aggressive or anything like that, I take a note. Need to be safe emotionally. So think of the dissonance that creates. If I’m subjected to a workplace where that need isn’t met, that’s going to result in disengagement. Eventually, I’m going to have to figure out something to do. By the way, there’s modalities that an organization can use in order to fix that so that we can address that and make sure that’s a skill that everybody has to understand. Skills, self awareness, how do I come across to people, and so forth. So compensation is another one. The business modeling doesn’t always let you control that one. The way you can’t just give out raises to everybody to solve all problems. You also have to keep tabs on that one and monitor it and understand the role that it’s playing in the big equation once these things all fit together.

33:20

Ben Ortlip

Another big one is operational efficiency. Don’t make me go to the store to fax memo as part of my daily operations. I mean, get the machinery here or if there’s something broken in the operating system.

33:37

Tom Stanfill

The company that act together. It’s a need for companies.

33:42

Ben Ortlip

Yeah, because what people want is they want to be able to contribute their skills to an organization. Well, the organization has to be able to accommodate their brilliance. There’s some give and take, there training and support is another one. There are things I need in order to do a good job, workload. There has to be some kind of ability to have an outside life. Those are all some of the management level things. Those are basic functions that management enabled organizations to deliver to the workplace a long time ago. When you add leadership skills, you get into things like, I’ve got to be able to as an employee, I have to have a general understanding of the vision of where we’re going and why we’re doing what we’re doing. I need to know kind of where you’re taking us, if you’re the leader. I tell people all the time that there’s three things that everybody wants to know about their CEO.

34:44

Ben Ortlip

They want to know what do you do all day? What do you care about and where are you taking us? Essentially those are, I wonder who’s driving the boat and what they’re thinking about if I’m going to stay on this boat. The second sort of leadership needs I’ll.

35:00

Tom Stanfill

Answer that question for you later.

35:02

Tab Norris

Yeah, it’s a big.

35:03

Ben Ortlip

Secret.

35:03

Tab Norris

We’ve been waiting for the big reveal.

35:06

Ben Ortlip

Yeah, the second one for leadership.

35:10

Tom Stanfill

I had lunch. I had leftovers for lunch.

35:12

Ben Ortlip

By the way, you’re taking us to the fridge later. By the way, there’s some guide, again, modalities around how to do that. There’s some really important concepts and how to create a vision and communicate that to the organization.

35:30

Tom Stanfill

These are the big level needs, is what you’re doing well?

35:33

Ben Ortlip

These are leadership level things. These are the needs that were met by the leadership. At the end of the day, if you’re a good leader, you’re meeting these five things. I need to know that not only am I doing a job, but doing this job is somehow advancing me and preparing me. Maybe it’s a career pathway that you’ve established or some kind of way for me to move up. But advancement is the concept. There another one in leadership, is innovation. I don’t want to work at some place that’s just antiquated and dying. I want to know that there’s an effort to keep us at the forefront of things. A big one is empathy. That leadership is all about. Remember, we’re shifting into influence here. That means there has to be some element of you care about me personally, not just the contributions that I make to the organization.

36:34

Ben Ortlip

Finally, authenticity that people want to know that the organization, that there’s an alignment and a consistency between what the organization claims and who the people really are. If all those needs are met, then you’ve met the need for survival and success, met in general, the need for success. Now what happens to the psychology of the workplace? This just goes right back to Maslow is now another 50 years goes by, and we start to think, man, what I really want is not so much success, although I don’t want to get rid of that or survival and success, but I want significance. This is where this defines the millennial worker they want more than anything else.

37:23

Tom Stanfill

Well, it’s millennial. And what are the other Z?

37:26

Ben Ortlip

Yeah, z y not and by the way, it’s not an age demographic that we’re describing.

37:39

Tom Stanfill

All of us value system, all of.

37:42

Ben Ortlip

Us today, at any age, have a tendency to be looking at what’s the significance? Why am I here? Why am I doing this? Does it matter? Does it make a difference? And everything else?

37:53

Tom Stanfill

It feels like what’s happened then is that people, like you said, it’s not just an age thing. Like we’re like that’s the way millennials are. Actually, like you said, I think it’s just people have actually finally given themselves the freedom to explore what really matters. We’ve got enough.

38:11

Ben Ortlip

That’s where that freedom comes from. That freedom comes from the fact that I don’t have to hunt wild boar in order to have food to eat, right? I live in a society where I don’t have to worry about where my next meal is coming from. By the way, I don’t have to think about or scrape and hunt for opportunities to advance. The whole American dream has been developed around the concept that there’s equal opportunity for everyone. So those are birthrights now. Survival and success are birthrights. So what does that leave us? Desiring. It leaves us with the freedom to desire and ask the ultimate question, which is why am I here?

38:57

Tom Stanfill

Why am I here? Which is the number one selling book of all times, is related to purpose.

39:01

Ben Ortlip

Yeah.

39:02

Tom Stanfill

Why am I Here?

39:03

Ben Ortlip

Yeah. Is that really the number one book?

39:07

Tom Stanfill

I think the top Bible. I think the top three selling books. I read this somewhere. You have to check me.

39:17

Ben Ortlip

The Purpose Driven Life. Purpose driven life, in that order.

39:21

Tom Stanfill

Probably the Bible. I’m sure it’s the Bible. Purpose Driven Life. It’s the big book. The Alcoholics Anonymous big book? They’re all about kind of the same thing, honestly.

39:32

Ben Ortlip

Yeah.

39:33

Tom Stanfill

Well, talk about something greater than.

39:38

Ben Ortlip

People want significance in their work. This is where craft causes community come in because what we have discovered from looking is the way that people experience significance in their work. There’s three different channels, three different ways. It’s Love languages that when it comes to experiencing significance in my work, it’s not purely by from the word autonomy means that I don’t have to work and I can go do whatever I want or work any way I want. That’s not really if you drill it down, that’s not what it means. What it means is that some people are motivated by working a craft. Think about Love language similar to that. There are people who are natural born tinkerers who are natural born in sales. This is a big deal because it’s a craft to learn how to work the numbers, how to pitch the business, adjust. Yeah.

40:50

Ben Ortlip

For a lot of people it’s a craft of selling. Craft is one of the three ways somebody’s motivated in this era of autonomy. The second one is a cause. Some people there’s a type of person who their primary motivation is to do work that matters or to do something that matters in the world that makes a difference, that has almost a transcendent meaning behind it. The third motivational type is community. That is that the more than anything else, what I want to do is be part of a team. I just want to be doing something that Tom and Tab are doing too because I get a sense of identity from this whole tribe that I belong to. Craft to be good at something, masters cause to believe in something and community to belong to something. Those are the three expressions that we see and everybody kind of has all three of them in some capacity.

42:03

Ben Ortlip

What was so interesting is how most people will have a dominant one. This is where it’s so important if you think about how to manage your own career or how to create an organization that engages its people, you have to know this about your people. You have to know this about yourself. For example, I’m very heavily craft. That’s why I do the work I do, because I love tinkering, mastering a subject, figuring out how things work. And so if I ever gravitate more.

42:38

Tom Stanfill

To craft than cause in community, yes, I do.

42:41

Ben Ortlip

Second for me is community. I could do almost any craft as long as I’m hanging out with you guys, that we’re doing something, because it’s just so much fun to me.

42:52

Tom Stanfill

Why don’t you turn my phone calls?

42:55

Tab Norris

Because he’s busy with his craft, so get over it.

42:59

Tom Stanfill

Yeah, sorry. You know what? We’ll take that offline.

43:03

Ben Ortlip

I was playing with my wood burning kids.

43:06

Tab Norris

I was a good wood burner, by the way. I could burn like champions. And leather work.

43:12

Ben Ortlip

I did a lot of leather work.

43:13

Tom Stanfill

Ben, you’re a craft guy.

43:15

Tab Norris

I’m a craft guy who’s lost.

43:18

Ben Ortlip

We craft guys need to be able to see ahead of time if I’m considering a job, and it doesn’t have anything to do with being a craft that I’m going to be able to master. Right. Or here’s a big one, the age of millennials and the age of the big quit or the great resignation. What about the community folks whose companies just announced I was talking to a guy yesterday, and his company is announcing next week that they are going to go to a flex work schedule, and I was imploring him unsuccessfully in that case.

44:01

Tom Stanfill

Think through the community piece.

44:04

Ben Ortlip

Have you looked at this? Because there’s a lot of people who are dying on a vine because they can’t be around all the people. It’s a reflection of the fact that some people just really more than anything, are motivated because they’re part of a tribe. They need to have that proximity, and that’s a big part of getting a need met. And guess what? If I don’t meet that need as their employer, they’ll eventually become checked out, and they eventually will probably their productivity will fall off. Their ability to contribute to profitability for my company is going to fall off, and eventually it could result in turnover for me. And that’s also very costly.

44:55

Tom Stanfill

This is probably a good time to transition into the impact of this because, by the way, love what you’re sharing. I am learning a lot, but it still captures what I’ve been sensing going on and what you see and with the pandemic and how people feel and what’s been happening. I love the idea that you want to manage your career. Like if you’re in sales and you want to manage or whatever you’re doing and you want to manage your career looking, these are my needs, and I personally don’t know, I’m thinking through what you’re talking about related to craft, cause and community, because the Pandemic really hit me hard because I did have some level of community. Even though were virtually before the Pandemic, I at least traveled and saw customers, and I would travel with our team. When there was no connection, that was very difficult for me.

45:44

Tom Stanfill

Going back to a virtual environment, I can tell my emotional bank account was low.

45:50

Ben Ortlip

Okay.

45:50

Tom Stanfill

So I need to look at that.

45:52

Ben Ortlip

Right?

45:52

Tom Stanfill

I need to test that and how do I get that need met? Because a lot of our conversations about being a virtual company were around practicality. It’s always around, well, you get better people, and people have this and like that. Yeah, but what about the emotional side of it? I think that’s what you’re bringing up. If we know that is what I’m hearing you say, then I can pick the place where I’m going to work and I’m going to thrive. As a leader, I’m thinking, like, you just brought up empathy. I need to be reminded that when one of our key people is sick right now, my go to thought as a leader is not empathy. Right. My go to thought is, what are we going to do next week because you’re sick, and were supposed to meet, and we got this thing going. I need to be reminded that’s going to ultimately drive culture.

46:39

Tom Stanfill

So this is just so important. Plus, like, operational efficiency. We bumped into that with a new employee, like, two months ago, where because of some changes in personnel, there was an operational efficiency, and the person didn’t like that. You could tell, like, that had a negative impact or could have a negative impact, but you can see how that would negatively impact culture. Let’s talk about what does that really mean? Do we have levels of culture? Do you have labels for toxic versus thriving? How do we think about measuring culture? What is the impact of a positive culture versus a negative culture?

47:21

Ben Ortlip

Well, I like to know.

47:21

Tom Stanfill

That’s a long question.

47:23

Ben Ortlip

Yeah, well, it’s good. I like to start with the financial impact of it and not just, hey, aphorisms about you’re going to be more profitable. I want to know exactly how much money is at stake. Another part of the algorithm for me was all right, let me figure out let’s start with what are you spending on your staff, on your people? Okay. By the way, the reason so think about this.

47:55

Tom Stanfill

So we compare our people less. It’s less impactful.

48:02

Ben Ortlip

Okay.

48:03

Tom Stanfill

That’s a great takeaway. Thanks, Ben.

48:05

Ben Ortlip

Well, let me start with look at.

48:07

Tom Stanfill

What you’re spending on, obviously, your investment in your most important capital.

48:12

Ben Ortlip

Right.

48:13

Tom Stanfill

Your people.

48:13

Ben Ortlip

Well, I love the macroeconomics of this. So let me just point this out. If you think about it, were really good at productization early. After the Industrial Revolution, there was just incredible technological breakthroughs and how to create products and bring in the market. Proctor and Gamble just mastered the whole how do you create a product? By now, we’ve squeezed all of the potential, the diminishing returns from, let’s figure out an even better way to make a product or bring product or service to reality. There’s diminished returns on all of that whole field or that science of how to do that. The other thing is the prompts. You think about the three components of a business. There’s product, there’s process, and there’s people. The process has even been just exploited for all of its potential. We’ve got all of these incredible models. We’ve got things like ISO 9002.

49:21

Ben Ortlip

There’s all of these just deeply defined.

49:24

Tom Stanfill

Well, these are easy fixes. I can control fixing the process. I can control fixing the product.

49:30

Ben Ortlip

Yeah, it’s like the cockpit of an airplane. You flip that switch, product processes. But guess what? Because we’re so illiterate when it comes to culture, the remaining unexploited the third piece, natural resource, is our people because we haven’t done as good a job yet as figuring out how to ring out additional potential. We’re looking at, in our GDP conversations, where is the Untapped oil reserve? It is in the performance of people. The productivity and performance of people is the largest untapped reserve in the global economy right now. Engagement in North America, let’s say in the west, engagement scores are around in the 30s.

50:35

Tom Stanfill

In terms of just basically, that means.

50:38

Ben Ortlip

People that are just that means 70% are not engaged. 65% to 70% of the people are not engaged. That means if I’m paying somebody $100,000 a year, I could be getting as little as $50,000 worth of return on that investment globally.

50:56

Tom Stanfill

Even worse, I got to make them work.

50:59

Ben Ortlip

Yeah. And globally, it’s even lower. It’s less than half of that globally.

51:03

Tom Stanfill

So 15% globally.

51:05

Ben Ortlip

If we could recoup that, imagine if we could recoup some of that lost energy, then it represents because think about the massive amount of money that’s spent on human resources. It represents the largest area of opportunity right now. When I said that we had reached the top of Mazdlo’s hierarchy of needs, that this is the first time in the history of mankind that the workforce has reached the needs of significance. That’s never happened before. There’s always been one or two folks who are out like some overfed prints back in the 1800s or something. We’ve got an entire workforce now that’s looking to experience significance. That’s never happened in all of civilization. The Roman era. The Roman Empire didn’t happen.

52:10

Tom Stanfill

You could see it in the television shows. Like, you look at the shows, the popular shows. It’s just that they all have this undercurrent theme, not all, but there’s a lot of them have a theme of doing something more than just living, like having purpose and how you treat. Even the jaded comedians are having these shows like Rich Gervey, how do you say, Richard? His show After Life. I never thought that would move in a positive direction, and it did. It’s an interesting show because I’m sitting.

52:51

Tab Norris

Here going, if I’m a leader, I’m a manager. The big takeaway for me here is I’m going, I’ve got to get connected to these three C’s that have never been on my radar. Right. I need to be learning my people, craft community, like figuring out what they care about. Just like we talked about the power of personality styles. It’s time, like we talk about serve more. You got to care so that you learn, so that you do obviously something.

53:21

Ben Ortlip

Yeah.

53:22

Tom Stanfill

You got to know what this is and what I’m hearing you say, Ben, by doing that, there’s a very measurable financial impact to doing that.

53:31

Ben Ortlip

Right. The reason that became important to me was because I would sit in boardrooms and C suites with guys and talk in all these abstract terms about it’s all theory at this point, right?

53:44

Tom Stanfill

Right. What does this mean?

53:46

Ben Ortlip

It’s probably going to do, but you’re probably going to be more profitable and all this stuff. At the end of the day, if I can’t convince the CFO, then it really shouldn’t be a strategic choice for them. This is where I started collecting some of the financial impact of this. First of all, I want to know what’s the head count here? What are we spending on labor? What’s our top line revenue and so forth. I discovered some research that had done in academic circles and it gave me a clear algorithm to be able to compute the relationship between engagement in all these different categories and human performance and output. Essentially, the tool that we created, first of all, it measures all of those invisible needs that don’t show up in conversations around the water cooler. Certainly with everyone trying to play along and be nice and be positive, they’re never going to come out and say, by the way, this is not quite what I like it to be.

55:01

Ben Ortlip

They’re going to present their best self and go along with whatever you give them. In addition to creating accurate measurements of these 15 needs and revealing which ones need attention, and then giving the modality or the prescription of how to address them, we assign a dollar value to each one based on the known financials of the company, the head count and everything else. I can tell you that if your total investment in labor is $100 million or $5 million, whatever it is, I can tell you based on our engagement scores that come back, I can tell you first of all, what return on in that labor investment you’re getting based on the engagement score. It’s a pretty simple formula based on the academic research. When I say academic research, it was done on actual companies.

56:03

Tom Stanfill

And it’s intuitive. I mean, it’s like if you’re talking about, what people are doing, you can tell. I think people can recognize if they’re not engaged, they’re probably working at 50%, and that people go, I know that’s.

56:16

Ben Ortlip

True, but if I’m the CFO, I need to know exactly. I need really good data, solid numbers, to be able to make decisions about investing in something, to mitigate an issue that comes up so that then I can say, well, according to the data, there’s $17 million worth of lost energy because of this one issue. I could go look at the issue and I could say, well, mitigation of that issue only cost $72,000. Now for the investment of $72,000, I can reap a reward of $17 million increased profitability. That’s essentially what the culture MRI does, is it quantifies all of these issues that are normally just as abstract concepts and turns them into a conversation that you can have with a strategic team or with the CFO, and you can see which things are priorities, because up until now, we just had to guess. I think if we do casual Friday, it’s going to help.

57:28

Ben Ortlip

Well, will it? What if everybody just goes to the golf course on Friday and they don’t? Or I think if we replace all of the conference tables in the building with ping pong tables, it’ll be more fun. Well, proper research ahead of time will tell you what those missing, those invisible felt needs are and how they’re not being met. We can prescribe a very tangible mitigation plan. Over the years of doing this, it’s like radiology. When I see certain things on the dashboard of the MRI results, there’s a very known patterns that we see. There’s probably a dozen or so very common patterns. Any of us who do this analysis work can go, oh, they need to do these three things. It’s going to cost them about this much and they’re going to recover this many millions. The first time I did this for a company they experienced, and this was several years ago, this is before our system was automated and were doing this manually.

58:50

Ben Ortlip

A 5000 to one return on investment, this is a $750,000,000 company. We essentially came back with the causality of where their losses were. That had them doubling in size within about three years. And it was with the same people.

59:10

Tom Stanfill

82% of the growth, you didn’t even change the team.

59:14

Ben Ortlip

82% of the growth came from existing employees. It was because we uncovered the invisible missing needs that they had. So culture should not be a cost. Remember, we’re recouping losses. This is all about ROI for the company anyway. That’s how we got into a financial conversation because you don’t really get very far talking about culture. If it’s an abstract terms.

59:42

Tom Stanfill

Can you sum it all up? Let’s say I’m a front line leader and I got ten people on my team and I’m just like, I just got to make sure my people are more engaged to a CEO. She’s running a 500 million dollar company and she feels like there might be a problem with the culture. There kind of some quick go to numbers that you say?

01:00:11

Ben Ortlip

The go to number is that 46% of any person’s productivity is comprised of how engaged they are in their work. Basically half of my productivity is determined not by the operational infrastructure of an organization or it’s not determined by how talented I am or how clearly I was selected. Half of my productivity is determined by whether or not I’m engaged in what I’ve been hired to do. That plays out if you just think about it anecdotally, this whole idea of an athlete having to be in the right headspace and getting the mindset get your mind right.

01:00:59

Tom Stanfill

You definitely see that in sales. I’ve seen that show up so many times where you got a presentation or a meeting and it’s really important and it’s sloppy work with the proposal. They don’t check the work or they’re not really prepared or they kind of whatever and you go, that’s all engagement.

01:01:15

Ben Ortlip

Right? If you don’t, it’s probably even higher in sales because so much of it depends on physical and mental presence. Yeah, it’s clearly visible just in the anecdotal if you just think about it’s like half of somebody’s ability to perform in belief.

01:01:35

Tom Stanfill

You think about loss of productivity by 46% basically if somebody’s disengaged.

01:01:41

Ben Ortlip

Right. If your formula is, okay, I’ve got 54%, that’s airtight, I can count on that because the company is just hitting on all cylinders and everything else. Now I’m going to put a person in there who’s best talent and everything else. I could end up with just 54% return on investment if they hit zero on engagement. Okay, well, let’s say the average is 35%. Let’s say that the 46% is 35%. 100% of 54%. That means if I’m paying them $100,000 a year, I’m getting around maybe $60,000 worth in return. Got it? Yeah, got it. I’m trying to go to companies now and say, hey, we can go from 70% return on that investment. Let’s bump it up by five points, let’s bump your engagement score up five points. Because you play that across the whole organization. We’re talking millions and millions of dollars and all you had to do was X, Y and Z.

01:02:49

Ben Ortlip

This is why I say in the realm of natural resources to be exploited in our modern GDP, human resources are the biggest, richest, untapped resource.

01:03:11

Tom Stanfill

I know. Looking at the time. I think we’ve got to probably wrap up with kind of put all this above on this by just making clear what you offer. Because I think what you’re doing is as soon as you share the culture MRI instrument and I don’t even think you want to call that instrument, but assessment that tells an organization the dashboard. Thank you. That’s the word I was looking for, a dashboard that explains where we are as a culture. Because our focus, what we’ve been saying this really 20 plus years, is that organizations that are other centered or fostering other centered culture, they sell more, people are more engaged, people are more fulfilled, and everything just works. I think about some of the companies that have wholeheartedly embraced this other culture. I’m not just a commercial for asthma.

01:04:02

Ben Ortlip

I got all this from you, Tom. Yeah, I was listening.

01:04:06

Tom Stanfill

No, it’s crazy to see how the cultures are different. It’s funny, the companies that don’t follow our Other-Centered philosophy doesn’t resonate. It’s a chop shop. It’s like just sell more. It’s almost like we don’t really care about our people or culture or customer. It’s like we want to make this product efficiently, follow our process, follow our product, do the stuff, and make it out of the market. We’re going to crack the whip and try to drive the process. So I just love what you’re doing. So you provide this culture MRI. It’s a dashboard that helps organizations see what’s happening inside their culture and what to do about it. Clear path. If I’ve got a team of ten, it’s something I can leverage. And.

01:05:06

Ben Ortlip

Absolutely one of my favorite things to do is to work with smaller organizations because realizing that this all just.

01:05:13

Tom Stanfill

Easier to move the needle, isn’t it?

01:05:14

Ben Ortlip

Yeah. This all started for me with personally experiencing this is a great job, but it’s not a great job. How can a great job be so bad at the same time? So I’m personally connected to small organizations. People have to go to work every day. I’ve had this luxury for over 30 years of doing what I love doing. I also remember what it was like to have to go somewhere.

01:05:48

Tom Stanfill

You got to go to work.

01:05:49

Ben Ortlip

Wow. It’s not that there are bad people out there who just need to learn how to get a work ethic. Most of it comes from the fact that organizations aren’t all that sophisticated in how they can create a workplace. That people think they don’t know what to do.

01:06:10

Tom Stanfill

They don’t know what to do. It’s not intuitive.

01:06:12

Ben Ortlip

And so we want to teach them.

01:06:14

Tom Stanfill

A lot of the things you talk about are like, okay, we can build systems for that, right?

01:06:19

Ben Ortlip

Yeah, that’s right.

01:06:20

Tom Stanfill

Like you said, the people in prop, we can build systems to that. We can control systems, we can measure it. Now we EP intro, this fuzzy stuff, empathy and authenticity. When you look at Renee Brown, I mean, she’s just blown up authenticity. That’s when it was on your list.

01:06:32

Ben Ortlip

Yeah. Vulnerability.

01:06:33

Tom Stanfill

Vulnerability.

01:06:38

Ben Ortlip

The surveys that we wrote for this and by the way, a lot of this pertains to assessments and everything. We do some field work, ethnography work to round it out, but it’s all deep quantification of those psychological needs. So that’s not guesswork. It’s very tangible, but yes. This is set up to be fit for purpose, affordable for whatever the organization is. One of my values is that if this doesn’t produce return on investment for people I don’t even want to be and I don’t want to try to sell it. So it’s priced according to headcount. And for small companies, it’s super affordable. For large companies, basically, the whole value proposition or the premise is that if you’re paying $10 million to a labor force, it boils down to a very small percentage to make sure that $10 million isn’t wasted. You pay a lot more for car insurance.

01:07:59

Ben Ortlip

This is like labor insurance. It’s a great word. Picture. Yeah, that’s just great.

01:08:07

Tom Stanfill

So then how do people find you?

01:08:09

Ben Ortlip

Go to theculturemri.com. theculturemri.com.

01:08:15

Tom Stanfill

I love that name. We need to steal that. We’re going to call it the Sales MRI.

01:08:18

Tab Norris

Yeah.

01:08:19

Tom Stanfill

If we could, maybe we’ll get in the back end, steal all this technology. Pretty much, yeah. That’s our culture. That’s part of our culture.

01:08:28

Ben Ortlip

I encourage you. I’ve just been following you for 30 years now anyway, so that would be fine for me.

01:08:35

Tab Norris

This was awesome. Thank you for your insights. I love it.

01:08:39

Ben Ortlip

It’s really yeah…

01:08:42

Tom Stanfill

I didn’t say a lot because I was taking copious notes and I think you’re onto something. As soon as you share this with me, I immediately thought there’s something here because it really takes a lot of the I guess maybe this reality or what we’re seeing out in the workforce. Because we work with large organizations, we obviously work for all sizes.

01:09:08

Ben Ortlip

Right.

01:09:09

Tom Stanfill

I think it is a little easier for smaller organizations to see what’s happening. They see their culture. Right. They’re very connected to their culture because they see what’s happening. Big organizations are. The senior leadership is so many levels removed for what’s happening on the street because a lot of that’s why our work is we come in and we spend time in the field and then bring it to the C suite level and say, this is what we’re seeing. You can see their reaction, and you figured out a way to automate that, capture it, tell them what the return is, how to fix. And I think it’s just brilliant. I hope people will check it out. Well, man, good to see you. Thanks for being on the show. I know you’re going to be successful. To our listeners, thanks for joining us for another episode of SALES with ASLAN.