Latest / The Jon and Marc Podcast / The #1 Reason Law Firms Fail: Culture Misalignment (and How to Fix It)

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The #1 Reason Law Firms Fail: Culture Misalignment (and How to Fix It) · The Jon and Marc Podcast

0:00
If you're going to get culture right, it's a lot of work.
0:02
It takes the constant day in, day out thinking about what am I
0:05
trying to build, what's the vision?
0:07
And then how do I not only bring the right people into the
0:10
organization, how do I continue to pour into them so that
0:13
everything that we're doing points to the mission, the
0:16
vision, the core values. You're going to get less
0:18
turnover, higher quality and productivity out of your
0:21
employees, and they're going to love what they do.
0:35
Welcome to the John and Mark podcast.
0:37
Today we have an excellent guest.
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You guys know of her as the former founder and chair of
0:42
Caseworks. She is currently the EVP of
0:45
culture at the Asian Group. This is someone who I personally
0:49
and happily call a friend. Welcome to the podcast everyone.
0:52
Susan Barfield. Thank you so much John and Mark
0:55
for having me. Of course, talking about culture
0:58
is I'm going to kind of nerd out and talk a lot about it because
1:01
I get excited about it. So anyway, thank you so much for
1:03
having me. First question for you, So like
1:05
Cultures award, it's thrown around pretty freely in the
1:09
business world, in the leadership world.
1:11
As the EVP of culture, how do you actually measure your
1:14
cultures being effective for the things you're doing are being
1:17
effective? Yeah, that's a great question.
1:18
We track and measure everything. Of course, the the saying is
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that which gets measured improves.
1:24
So we track all of the cultural initiatives that we roll out
1:28
from, you know, the news letters and we can get more into depth
1:31
talking about some of those specific initiatives.
1:34
But kind of at a high level, employee engagement surveys, we
1:37
do those on a quarterly basis. We're looking at employee Net
1:41
Promoter scores. We also send out polls like
1:43
after some of the initiatives in the events that we do and we're
1:47
looking for feedback to see if it's moving the needle.
1:50
Of course, you know, we want to pour into our people and pour
1:52
into the culture which is driving employee engagement and
1:56
we can look at that by both the results from the employee
1:59
engagement survey, but also looking at our attrition rates.
2:02
When you guys are surveying these employees, what is like a
2:05
expected score to know things are going well?
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Because if I got like 100, like a 10 out of 10 from an MPs
2:11
score, I'd be suspect that everyone just defaulted to 10.
2:14
What is like an expected score of like you're like, hey, this
2:17
is things are going well and are as they should be.
2:20
So I would say from the employee Net Promoter score, everything
2:23
that I've read and the research that we've done indicates that a
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score greater than 50 indicates that your organization, you've
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got loyal employees and that's kind of our goal.
2:34
So we want not only a score of 50, but we also want high
2:38
participation rate. So if you got low participation
2:40
rates, that's probably also a good indicator that you don't
2:43
have engaged employees. So that's just one of the
2:46
questions kind of gives us a pulse on the sentiment of our
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employees. But the if we look at the
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overall employee engagement survey questions that we roll
2:55
out on a quarterly basis, it comes from the Gallup 12.
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So we're looking at question, you know, those questions and
3:03
we're looking again at the engagement and the participation
3:07
from the questions and the score.
3:09
So it's hard to let me let me speak a little bit on we're
3:12
looking at not just the actual score, but the feedback that the
3:17
employees are there's, you know, every question, employees are
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able to give free text and kind of give a, a why behind their
3:25
score. And so I would say that we've
3:28
learned a lot. We start looking for trends in
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those responses and it to be honest, some of the feedback
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we've received from our employees helps to dictate and
3:37
drive some of the new initiatives and maybe benefits
3:39
things we're looking to roll out.
3:41
So I think it's a combination of participation rate and also the
3:45
results. Susan, you talked about, you
3:49
talked about how you measured culture and potentially the
3:51
effectiveness of that culture within the team.
3:53
But how have you seen a positive culture benefit the actual
3:57
output of a company? How does it actually roll down
4:00
to clients and what their expectations are in terms of
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being that or exceeded? It is of my opinion and that's
4:07
kind of why my role at aging group is, is to be solely
4:10
focused on driving the the vision for the culture and
4:14
making sure that it's rolled out.
4:15
It is my opinion that if you have a strong culture with
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engaged employees, low attrition rate, then that is going to
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impact both product activity and the quality of the outcome of
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the work that we're doing within the organization.
4:28
What is the number one culture killer?
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Oh, I would say misalignment refer us.
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If you think about kind of, you know we've known you guys for
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years And so with Caseworks being acquired and then Angie
4:42
and Group and we merging 3 companies into one organization,
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you got three different cultures coming together.
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Whether it's stated, whether you have stated core values, there
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is a culture at every organization.
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So I, I believe that the number one kind of killer is
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misalignment of the culture as you're trying to blend those
5:02
organizations together. And I would say if you're not in
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the position where you're bringing organizations together,
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I think one of the killers would be not hiring based on right
5:13
person, right seat. Most organizations simply look
5:16
for employees to be competent to do the role, but they're missing
5:21
something very important, which is the right cultural fit.
5:23
So the right person is a cultural fit and having them in
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the right seat means that they have the GWC, they, they get it
5:31
one, it had the capacity to do it.
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And so it's, it's, I have found over the last 10 years, if you
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have hired the right person and they fit culturally, it's easier
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to move them maybe to a different role, but you can if
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you hire just simply for the right seat.
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But it's a misalignment and culture.
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Inevitably you're going to be managing that person out of the
5:51
organization. I will say the biggest lesson
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I've learned as a people leader, especially from the recruiting
5:57
high, has been this lesson from specifically recruiting and
6:01
hiring. I do remember almost we have
6:03
extremely low attrition rate on our team of people who leave and
6:07
then people who've we've let go. Still, I believe we've done a
6:10
really good job with hiring, but we used to go out and see what's
6:13
the best person we can find with the best, shiniest resume that
6:17
we could afford for this position and then go and find
6:20
them and then put them in the in the role.
6:22
But now it's like, I want 100% culture fit, someone who's
6:25
hungry, who I believe has the ability to learn the skills we
6:29
need for this position and can grow into that like the perfect
6:32
JD and like all those people that we've given those
6:34
opportunities, almost all of them have exceeded expectations,
6:38
drive a ton of value to the business, stay a long time or
6:41
very happy. And it was every person we get
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like recruited in with like the perfect resume.
6:46
We like terminated or cycled out of the business very quickly
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because it was not a fit. Exactly.
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I mean, I would say that as leaders, we should always be
6:54
thinking about succession planning.
6:56
How do we pour into our people and are we hiring individuals
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that are not only competent for the role that we're hiring them
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for, but if they are a great cultural fit, then they're going
7:07
to be looking for new opportunities.
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And plus at our organization, like we want to instill the
7:11
ownership mentality, not just, you know, this is not just
7:14
another JOB, this is an opportunity opportunity.
7:17
And so within that, you know, you've got to have career
7:20
progression and leadership and development and such.
7:23
So anyway, I couldn't agree with you more.
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How do you screen for culture fit during the recruiting and,
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you know, interviewing and hiring process?
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Culture starts even just with the interviewing process and
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there's certain, you know, we have outlined questions that the
7:38
team that, you know, the hiring managers are, are asking
7:42
specific questions. I know when we were at
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Caseworks, we had a team solely dedicated to asking all the
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cultural questions, to making sure that this person was going
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to be a good cultural fit. And so we didn't share, we
7:54
didn't give them hints, you know, before they got to meet
7:57
with him, like, oh, this person's, you know, competent
7:59
and they're going to, they would do the role really well.
8:02
We just allowed them to have their, you know, hour and they
8:06
would kind of come on three or four of our employees that had
8:09
been with us for a long time that really exuded our core
8:11
values kind of interview that person solely looking for the
8:16
cultural fit. Did you do that at the end of
8:19
the interview process, after they've already checked all the
8:21
skill boxes? Or do you do that at the front
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end or in the middle? It was definitely done up front.
8:27
Upfront, so you're screening for culture before you're screening
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for skill fit. Yes.
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And now it could have been from a timing perspective, if that
8:34
team, you know, inevitably we had the team that was the hiring
8:38
manager that was going to be leading this employee.
8:41
They could have, you know, interviewed them initially, but
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it happened in tandem so that we didn't get too far into the
8:47
process finding out that it wasn't a good cultural fit.
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I did the first round interviews for the 1st 50 hires of our team
8:54
for all the candidates, which was a nightmare from a
8:57
scheduling and and perspective of first run interviews.
8:59
But I was razor focused on making sure we had culture fits
9:03
for these hires that like when you your team is growing from
9:06
zero people to John and I are teams over 60 people at this
9:10
point. If you have a bad culture fit
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when you have three people, it is horrible at 10 people.
9:15
At 50, every bad culture fit it is.
9:17
But the smaller you are, the more exponential the impact is
9:20
if you get a bad hire and a bad culture fit.
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So I was razor focused on making sure that every single person we
9:24
interviewed, I would like, I like this person, I want to work
9:27
with this person. I think they will fit in in the
9:29
team and the company culture as a whole.
9:31
And I think a lot of people don't invest enough time to
9:34
doing that as leaders in the company and they give that piece
9:37
to the recruiter or someone else to offload the work to and they
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just come in for the final interview.
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I know doing it up front seems like a lot of work, but I think
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it's a really worth the investment for people to do.
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I don't do the first rounds anymore.
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I have great people leaders who I trust to vet all that out.
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But I do think depending on your size, it is extremely important
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to get be involved in that process.
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I'm smiling and kind of laughing.
10:00
I remember the days that I did all the interviews too.
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And, you know, you get to a certain employee, we count where
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you no longer can do that. But you know, turnover is
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costly. It's costly to the organization,
10:14
Miss. You know, when you bring people
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in that aren't good cultural fits, they're toxic.
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And when you're trying to build an organization, especially a
10:21
small business like Caseworks was in the beginning, it takes
10:23
too much time, energy and money to have all the turnover.
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So it's worth the investment upfront for sure.
10:29
Also for those listening, some little inside stories for us
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when we were growing our team, we got to the point about 10
10:36
people culture or something I really cared about and focus on.
10:40
I actually gave Susan a call. I have my notes pulled up here
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August 10th, 2022 and I was like, hey Susan, you have a
10:45
great culture. Like, can I pick your brain on
10:48
best practices of how you built it, things you do, initiatives
10:51
you have and some lessons you've learned?
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And most of those things we know we took them, we modify them, we
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make them, made them our own. But I remember like hitting the
10:59
ground running and implementing a ton of those things, which is
11:02
like a huge impact on our business and our teams on how we
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operate. And I am forever grateful.
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So I just want to say thank you for that.
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For sure, and I, I bet you probably, and I can talk a lot
11:12
about culture, but I think one thing people don't appreciate is
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the amount of work it takes to to get it right.
11:17
I mean, if you're going to get culture right, it's a lot of
11:19
work it takes, you know, the constant day in day out thinking
11:23
about what did it like, what am I trying to build?
11:25
What's the vision? And then how do I not only bring
11:29
the right people into the organization, how do I continue
11:32
to pour into them so that everything that we're doing
11:35
points to the mission, the vision, the core values, Like I
11:39
said, all goes back to you're going to get less turnover,
11:42
higher quality and productivity out of your employees and
11:44
they're going to love what they do so.
11:47
One of the things that we implemented after I spoke with
11:49
you a couple years ago is this tool called 15 five.
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John, can you kind of talk about like how we use it and like the
11:55
value brings us as leaders who are aren't like as a remote team
11:59
who was like not talking to every employee every.
12:02
Yeah, absolutely. From and by the way, Mark, you
12:05
never told me that Susan was the one who gave you the idea to use
12:08
15 five all along. I thought that was your idea,
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but. Kudos.
12:11
You know, it was another, it was another tool.
12:13
It was another tool that she suggested, but we ended up going
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with 15 five. Got it.
12:17
Yeah, I I love that application. It is our internal people
12:25
communication and celebration tool and it serves a number of
12:29
different purposes. So we track one on ones instead
12:32
of them just being a one-on-one with an employee where it's on a
12:35
video call or done in person. We actually create a template
12:39
and every week or every two weeks, depending on the cadence,
12:42
the same template gets sent in advance for what we call a check
12:46
in. And it's just sort of a pulse
12:47
checking on a scale of one to five, you know, how are things
12:50
going for you? And then there's certain
12:52
questions that each department has, they fill out those check
12:54
insurance and then when the one on ones happen, the check in
12:57
within the application serves as the basis for the one-on-one.
13:01
So yes, there's opportunity for free flowing conversation, but
13:04
it is very much a structured agenda driven conversation and
13:08
all of those check insurance and one on ones are then in the
13:11
system. So we go back and want to see
13:13
like, hey, how is so and so progressed or what were the
13:16
challenges that they had last quarter or last year?
13:18
It's all there. My favorite part is the
13:21
aggregation of that information, specifically that one to five.
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Mark and I track this like a hawk.
13:27
So we see the overall vibe of the organization and we can tell
13:30
when there's a little dip and it dropped from a a 4.8 to a 4.5.
13:36
And then we have to dig in and see, is that department
13:38
specific? Is it you always have to do with
13:40
people working on a certain client or what's going on?
13:43
But that has allowed us to take the qualitative, turn it
13:46
quantitative and make it actionable A variety of other
13:49
ways we use it, you know, celebrating successes and things
13:52
like that. We integrated into a bunch of
13:54
other tools that we have. But yeah, I mean, it's it has
13:57
been a game changer for us in terms of making the culture more
14:01
visible and the communication about things other than work
14:03
product a meaningful and deliberate part of our
14:07
organization. One of the things that I learned
14:11
from this tool that I found super insightful that I didn't
14:15
expect is so the check insurance happened.
14:17
Whatever cadence you decide to have a check in with your
14:19
manager is whatever. But the opportunity for people
14:22
to talk about what they did well, to celebrate themselves,
14:25
but also things that didn't go well that they're not happy
14:27
about. People, depending on your
14:29
generation, your personality, are more comfortable writing
14:33
their complaints in a safe space and giving it to their manager
14:36
beforehand than actually verbalizing when they're upset
14:38
about things. So we know a lot of times when
14:41
people like our team will have a meeting with their boss, don't
14:44
say anything's wrong, but when they're checking comes in,
14:46
they'll write us exactly what's wrong, what happened to the
14:49
scenario. And then their manager gets that
14:51
is able to read it beforehand and come prepared to have a very
14:55
useful conversation to solve those issues moving forward.
14:57
And it helps us alleviate a ton of issues.
14:59
Or whenever these come up as well, like that manager will
15:02
send it to the other manager, maybe another department cause
15:05
an issue or they'll send it directly to John and I to
15:07
review. So we'll start coming up with a
15:09
plan to come up with like a solution to this employees
15:11
problem to make them happy or to resolve this.
15:14
So we have have next steps or action plan in place when they
15:17
go into that one-on-one so the employees like issues don't
15:20
fester and, you know, grow out of control.
15:21
It's something I didn't expect to be one of the most valuable
15:24
pieces of it. I thought, you know, for me when
15:27
I'm upset, you know me, Susan, I just say when I'm upset and when
15:29
I'm like not happy about. But a lot of people aren't like
15:33
that and prefer to write their thoughts down, really think it
15:35
through and and send it off to someone feel more safe doing
15:37
that. And that's been a huge, huge
15:40
game changer for us for resolving issues for sure.
15:44
Yep. And I think that a couple of
15:46
things that you just mentioned that I wanted to touch on.
15:48
There's a lot of organizations that don't do consistent one on
15:51
ones and even the organizations that are doing consistent one on
15:54
ones. I would say that as business
15:56
owners, we just kind of have an expectation that, you know, our
16:00
leaders are conducting effective one on ones.
16:03
I was reading a book and doing a lot of research on what does
16:06
that even mean? What does an effective
16:07
one-on-one mean and how do you have that?
16:09
Well, what it needs to be consistent.
16:10
So everyone in the organization needs.
16:12
I like that you guys said you have a template.
16:14
So everyone is kind of following a similar approach to what that
16:18
how to make the best use of that time and that employees are
16:21
expected to come prepared for that one-on-one.
16:24
They've had the opportunity to share feedback with their direct
16:27
manager that the manager is able to see that.
16:29
The number one thing that I, that I read and researched says
16:32
that you're having an effective 101 is that the employees are
16:35
receiving feedback. It doesn't have to be positive
16:37
feedback, but just that they're receiving feedback like within
16:39
the last couple of weeks, they feel more connected to the
16:42
organization. So I think that's great.
16:45
And a rewarded recognition platform.
16:47
I mean, that is something we've had in place for since the
16:50
beginning. Again, going back to if you're
16:52
an owner, I mean, we just don't have time.
16:53
Like, you know, there's so many great things that our team
16:55
members are doing, but as your organization grows, it's hard to
16:58
give the shout outs and give the recognition and the behavior
17:02
that gets recognized is going to be repeated, right?
17:04
So we want to make sure we're recognizing the the things that
17:06
our our employees are doing, especially when they go beyond,
17:10
they're exuding our core value values.
17:11
And so it's so important, I believe, to have a reward and
17:15
recognition platform. Agreed.
17:17
I I would say that's like 55 has a that functionality built in.
17:21
It's tied into our slack too. So whenever someone they're
17:23
called giving out high fives. So whenever someone does
17:26
something good to give them a high 5.
17:27
And it is an ingrained part of our culture.
17:29
If someone helps you out and you're grateful, you give a high
17:32
5. And like we do it a little less
17:34
than we used to. We we are very aggressive with
17:36
it. When we started our management
17:38
team is expectations of that they should be leading their
17:41
team from the front and giving recognition to all their team
17:43
members when they're doing great work.
17:45
And it's a kind of self fulfilling prophecy of like
17:47
people give recognition to each other, people are willing to
17:49
help out. And then we've we've used that
17:52
as our benefit system, which we can get into of how we do that
17:55
for culture. Yeah, Mark, you should talk
17:59
about the the concept that you came up with and how we use the
18:02
high fives as a reward system. Yeah.
18:05
So Susan, you once again gave me this idea.
18:07
And we're like, how do we do something that's like not too
18:10
gameable, where it's like we want people to give recognition,
18:13
but we don't want to be like, hey, Susan, nice hair and just
18:17
like firing all these down to like the game, the system.
18:19
So every month we, we have an all hands once again, town hall
18:24
meeting. I got that from Susan to make
18:26
sure we're all like rowing the oars in the same direction.
18:29
But we do, we call it the wheel names.
18:32
But for every high 5 that you give and receive, you get 1
18:35
token towards the drawing. And then we do a lot live
18:39
drawings depending for 250 bucks and how many tokens you have is
18:43
how many times your name, your name is in it.
18:44
And then at the end of the all hands meeting, we pull up the
18:47
wheel and we spin it live. And then that's like the bonus
18:51
program for instead of Ness. So people that helped out a lot
18:54
as well as gave shout outs a lot have a good bit of tokens or
18:58
increase their chances of winning.
19:00
But. It's yeah, I love that.
19:02
Yeah, for sure we have within our reward and recognition
19:05
platform, when you give a shout out, you're going to tag one of
19:09
the core values. And so after, you know, merging
19:13
the companies together, we've created new core values.
19:15
But the core values that we, you know, had within Caseworks,
19:19
within that reward recognition platform, we would tag, you
19:22
know, you're giving a shout out. Great job for whatever love or
19:25
bad assitude, whichever one that that was applicable for that
19:28
shout out. And then so at our town hall
19:31
meetings, on a quarterly basis, we would run a report to see who
19:35
was tagged with the most. We have 5 core values, go for
19:38
love, who was tagged the most over the past quarter for that
19:41
or five star leadership. And then that person would get
19:45
a, you know, we call them a culture champion.
19:47
So they would get back in the day.
19:49
We had trophies made and, and I'm like driving to the post
19:54
office and mailing the trophies and casework swag and, and
19:58
sending it out to them and they loved it.
19:59
It's so fun to, you know, hop on to a call, a video call today
20:03
and see someone's trophy sitting like on their desk.
20:06
So we don't do that. We still do culture champion
20:09
awards, but it's not, you know, the trophies anymore, but it's
20:12
other things. But all, all fun things for
20:14
sure. People love to be recognized and
20:16
we don't do it enough. And you know, I, I know that
20:20
just kind of being culture and employee engagement being on the
20:23
forefront of my mind since the early days.
20:26
I mean. You know, we, we're, we have
20:28
been able to track the, the productivity and such based on,
20:32
you know, recognition. So I think what you're doing is
20:35
great. So your your core values is, is
20:38
something I want to I want to talk about next or the old core
20:41
values, you have the new ones. How do you go about defining
20:44
those? And you have any recommendations
20:46
for people? Because you know, some people
20:48
probably say they do. But I remember when we had our
20:51
conversation, I was like, oh, we got to create core values.
20:53
And John and I just stood there and looked at each other and
20:55
were like, oh, man, this seems daunting to come up with, you
20:58
know, core values of the organization.
21:00
So what recommendations you have like going about that process?
21:04
Yeah, great question. I'm thinking back to when we
21:09
came up with our core values. What it starts with your mission
21:12
statement, like what is the purpose of the organization?
21:15
And so I had read some books by Truitt Cathy early on and the,
21:21
you know, the founder of Chick-fil-A and he just talked
21:25
about you got to have a mission and you got to have core values.
21:29
And, you know, he kind of set plant of the seed for me at
21:32
least reading these books, the importance of the core values
21:36
and hiring firing by your core values.
21:38
And so that kind of started with, OK, what, what's the
21:41
mission statement? So for case works, it was
21:43
helping loggers help people. And so we, we define, OK,
21:47
here's, here's the mission statement.
21:49
Now what are the behaviors? We expect our employees to exude
21:54
that and on a daily basis, whether it's in their actions or
21:58
in their decision making process that is going to help propel us
22:02
to helping lawyers help people. And so that's how we came up
22:05
with our core values and their collaboration.
22:08
And when I talk about our core values and I talk like things
22:10
like collaboration, it's not just an internal collaboration,
22:14
but it's collaborating with our law firms and our attorneys and
22:19
how do we effectively become ingrained into their team and
22:22
it's also collaborating with the plaintiffs.
22:24
And so we had collaboration, we had bad assitude of.
22:28
Course. Can you please explain what that
22:30
is to the audience? Yeah, that's not to be mistaken
22:33
for bad attitude that those folks would not make it any.
22:36
It was badassitude. Just basically you had to be a
22:38
badass. I mean you had to be not only
22:40
competent, but you know, show up to work kind of with this
22:43
internal drive to do well, just an ultimate badass 5 star
22:47
leadership. That is, we expect everyone to
22:50
act like leaders and we define what that meant to Caseworks and
22:55
making decisions, how we talk with one another.
23:00
And you know, how do we how do we execute on, you know, what
23:03
we're supposed to be doing on a daily basis?
23:06
Love And that often times I would share with people that
23:09
doesn't mean like, Oh, I just I love case works and and I and I
23:12
love you and we just love everything.
23:14
I mean, sometimes that's tough love and you got to have a lot
23:16
of tough love conversations with employees for sure.
23:19
But as long as we're doing it with respect, then, you know, we
23:21
feel like that we're exuding the core values and then own it.
23:25
And this was, this is something that was really important to me.
23:27
Often times working with different partners and different
23:31
groups, you know, they always want to punt the ball back over
23:33
to let's say for Caseworks or whoever it is.
23:36
And we would always explain that we own the problem and so we
23:41
need to see it through. So.
23:42
So those were our core values. It's interesting.
23:45
Those core values could just basically be the description of
23:48
Susan Barfield, like you, you are leading and exuding them
23:52
from the front. What what do you do if someone
23:54
doesn't fit that mold or doesn't fit part of that mold?
23:58
I mean, we know what happens if they don't fit any of the mold.
24:00
But out of those, let's say they fit three, what do you do with
24:05
someone? Do you coach them up to exude
24:08
all of them or is it like an all or nothing thing?
24:11
Yeah, goes by to the one on ones.
24:12
So during the one on ones, we are talking with employees about
24:19
how do they measure against the core values.
24:21
And so if they've had some instances where maybe they
24:25
didn't exude love or they passed the buck and they, you know,
24:28
should have taken care of a task themselves versus, you know, get
24:31
someone else involved. And then their leader needs to
24:34
be talking to them about that and, you know, just giving them
24:38
examples and what the expectations are and then a
24:41
timeline by which, you know, we would expect to see
24:44
improvements. I mean, I, the one-on-one should
24:46
be leading up, you know, whether you're doing them on a weekly,
24:49
bi weekly, monthly basis. We would share with our leaders
24:52
that at the time of, I don't like to call it like annual
24:55
performance because everyone gets nervous about that.
24:57
But at the point in the year where we're having conversations
25:01
around merit increases or whatever the case may be, it
25:04
should never be a surprise. You've had all these
25:07
conversations leading up to that point, and there should just be
25:10
no surprise about someone's performance.
25:13
It's one of the things I want to call it too, is, is something I
25:16
line with as well is when I'm listening to speak is you don't
25:19
call anyone a manager. They're leaders.
25:22
Like I've learned this from you and from other leaders as well.
25:24
Like we don't have any managers of your company.
25:25
We have people leaders. So like just because someone
25:28
should get promoted or get a praise, like if they are not
25:31
going to be the best people leader for that organization,
25:33
they should not be in that role. And like, that's the biggest
25:35
difference I've seen of like companies with good culture
25:38
versus bad culture is like bad cultures usually have a lot of
25:41
managers or they're in the role managing people just to make
25:43
sure the work gets done. Whereas like good cultures have
25:46
people leaders that are leading their team from the front and
25:48
everyone's aligned with that leader going in the same
25:51
direction. Yeah, you.
25:53
Have a lot of cultural ambassadors for sure.
25:55
I have also seen I want your opinion on something related to
25:58
this. I have seen companies come up
26:00
with, you know, core values before and then they talk about
26:04
them and then I meet the leaders at that company that do not have
26:07
the same core values. The alignment is missing.
26:10
How do you people say they have core values, but like, how do
26:13
you actually make sure they happen?
26:14
Once again, John's comment is pretty spot on.
26:16
When you're defining your core values, you're just kind of like
26:18
defined yourself and you're like, hey, this is what the
26:20
company's going to be like. So there's a great strategy, but
26:22
how do you make sure that the core values of the company are
26:25
actually the core values of the company?
26:27
Because just because, for example, you you came up with
26:29
them doesn't mean that everyone in the company might be
26:31
following along with that or or sees it as the same as you
26:34
there. There could be a misalignment of
26:36
vision. For sure, once you define the
26:39
core values it, it needs to be ingrained in everything that you
26:43
do within the organization. Meaning, OK, we've got a core
26:46
values, we hashtag and attach that to the shout outs that
26:51
we're giving all the initiatives.
26:52
Let's say you know, as I mentioned, one of ours was
26:54
collaboration. So we have monthly collaboration
26:57
classes, the town hall meetings, we quarterly basis, we always
27:01
highlight one of the core values.
27:03
You guys know this, we came up. So we've got our logo, which is
27:06
great like for the company, but we also came up with like what I
27:09
call a patch value, like an emblem that signifies and it's
27:13
an imagery representing the core values.
27:16
And I came up with this because when we back, way back in the
27:19
day and when we came up with the core values for Caseworks, one
27:22
day I just happened to, I don't know why I even thought to do
27:24
this. I asked one of our medical
27:25
reviewers, I said, Hey, name the five core values.
27:28
And she kind of stumbled through them and she was like our
27:31
longest and your employee and I'm like, you don't know our
27:34
core values. And she know she got to one or
27:36
two and she's like, shoot, I don't know them.
27:38
And I said, OK, well, we, we got to do better than this.
27:40
Although you exude the core values, you got to be able to
27:43
like name them and rattle them off because you got to live
27:46
them. They got to be part of who you
27:47
are and the decisions that you're making.
27:49
So we created this patch value and it helps to kind of in your
27:52
mind kind of think about it. And so of course people got
27:55
stickers and, you know, we go to great lengths that we, and like
27:59
I said, we kind of talk about a core values often and throughout
28:03
the initiatives. And, and it's also in our
28:05
internal messaging. And when I say internal
28:08
messaging it, we do a monthly newsletter and we're
28:11
highlighting people and it's, you know, we're celebrating one
28:14
another and we talk about, we highlight a core value there
28:17
too. So it's, it's kind of ingrained
28:19
in everything that we do. We what we didn't want to be is
28:21
a company that said we had core values and they're kind of like
28:24
a plaque on the wall. But like you said, leadership
28:27
doesn't lead by example. So yeah, I mean, I think it's, I
28:32
guess as an employee, that would probably be, if I was going to
28:35
look for a role somewhere, that would be one of the first things
28:38
I'm asking about is tell me about your culture.
28:40
Tell me about your core values. I mean, the core values really
28:43
help to understand and define what the culture is.
28:46
And if you, if your leaders can explain what the culture and
28:49
core values are, then you know that's that's a great thing.
28:52
That reminds me of when I'm doing all the screening for new
28:55
hires, the first thing I would do is explain our core values of
28:59
what we care about most about the company and like to make
29:02
sure they're aligned. And for example, I'd be like,
29:04
hey, part of the core company culture here is we all work very
29:07
hard. And I've had people like, after
29:09
a good first interview be like, hey, I don't think this is a fit
29:11
for me. I'm not really looking for that
29:13
at this point in my career. Sure.
29:16
Yep. Thanks for telling us upfront.
29:19
Much appreciated. Yeah.
29:22
So these are all great things and like I think people would
29:25
want to implement them. I think it's becoming harder and
29:28
harder to do in today's disjointed office environment
29:31
with everyone remote. So like what tips do you guys
29:34
have to roll this out to employees as a more and more
29:38
remote workforce and more diverse workforce with huge
29:43
different age groups coming into the workplace at any time due to
29:45
people being remote all over the country and just personalities
29:48
wise? Let me make sure I understand
29:50
the question. So you're asking like how do we
29:52
roll out initiatives or activities and events and a
29:55
fully remote company? Yes, that's a great way to ask
29:59
my question. Hey Susan, how do you roll this
30:01
out at a fully remote company? Yeah, You know, Case works has
30:06
always been a a fully remote company and now that we're part
30:10
of the larger organization, Angie and Group, there's a
30:13
hybrid, I mean that there's a, you know, Philadelphia based
30:16
office where people go into into the office.
30:19
And so that's the part that you're missing, right.
30:21
When it when you're a remote company, you don't get get to
30:25
kind of chitchat, walk by someone's cubicle or get to find
30:28
out how their weekend went, what's going on with their kids.
30:31
And so I would say early on, someone can connected me to a
30:35
gentleman by the name of Max Spiegel and he founded a company
30:39
called Student Loan Hero and had just recently as a young guy had
30:44
recently been acquired and someone thought, Susan, you
30:47
know, you're all about culture and you're a remote company, you
30:49
should visit with him. And one of the things he said
30:52
was you've got to be very intentional and you can't really
30:55
over invest in your people and culture.
30:58
And you've got to have someone that's really dedicated on a
31:01
daily basis to be talking to your employees, knowing what
31:04
they want, how do you support them?
31:05
And so I took that and started coming up with looking at the
31:09
feedback we were receiving an employee engagement surveys.
31:12
We held like 8 different focus groups.
31:14
So we invited, I don't remember the number of employees we had
31:17
at the time, but it was, let's say 80 people.
31:20
So we had eight different sessions for one hour where 10
31:25
employees. We didn't want any more than 10
31:26
in one group came on and we had asked them some questions
31:29
before. It's like, you know how, you
31:31
know, if you were to look at our culture today and the way we're
31:34
supporting you, is there anything we could be doing
31:36
better? Have you heard of other
31:38
initiatives of other companies that you think are cool that
31:40
would, you know, be really supportive?
31:42
And so we spent an hour with each group of employees and got
31:46
really great candid feedback. There's nothing better.
31:49
And to show your people that their voice really matters, they
31:52
tell you and they share feedback and then you go implement it.
31:55
And so people got really excited because they would see we not
31:58
only did the employee engagement surveys, we looked at the
32:01
feedback, We then would show that at the town hall meeting,
32:04
like here's here are the results.
32:05
We were transparent. People loved transparency.
32:08
And then based on your feedback, here are some things are going
32:11
to be changing and here's some new initiatives.
32:13
And so that got people excited like this is a forum and a
32:15
platform. I can anonymously give the
32:17
feedback, executive team is listening and they're making the
32:20
changes. And so we came up with your the
32:23
initiatives that we feel is going to be best to support our
32:27
team. And then we just started rolling
32:29
those out. And it's not like I've shared,
32:31
you know, I've had people come to me and say, hey, what have
32:33
you? How have you been able to
32:35
accomplish such great employee engagement at Caseworks?
32:37
And when I tell them all the things we do, they're like, Oh
32:39
my gosh, like, OK, just help me get started with the newsletter.
32:42
Like that's, you know, that's a task in another so or just help
32:46
me get a town hall agenda and what do you do?
32:48
And so I think it's like just start out slowly, come up with a
32:51
few initiatives, start rolling them out and then start testing
32:54
and getting feedback, having your leaders reach out to their
32:57
team and, and get a pulse of like, Hey, did you like that?
32:59
Did you not? If we're going to do another
33:01
town hall meeting, what, what else would you like to talk
33:03
about? And I think that that is where
33:05
you see a lot of excitement and momentum.
33:06
Yeah, I would say for people that are overwhelmed about
33:09
getting started, there's two easy ways to do it.
33:11
Call someone that you know at a company that has great culture
33:14
and ask what they do like a people.
33:16
That's what I did with Susan. I was like, why am I try to, you
33:19
know, recreate the wheel here? And then two, just ask your
33:23
employees. You have some great people to
33:24
work for you. Ask them for recommendations,
33:26
feedback, and a lot of the some of the best ideas we get are
33:29
just from our team. We do a survey every year.
33:31
It has two questions on it. What are we doing?
33:34
That's great that we should keep doing.
33:35
Those answers are usually pretty fluffy, like I get 0 value out
33:38
of that. But the second question is it
33:41
gets wild. I say what is something dumb
33:43
that we're doing today that we should stop doing?
33:46
And then the people are like ready to go.
33:48
They've like been warmed up. I give like their positive
33:50
feedback and they feel comfortable in a safe space just
33:53
like ripping us apart on dumb stuff we're doing.
33:55
And we get some good stuff every year.
33:57
Like why are we doing this? This makes no sense.
34:00
Like, and then we take all those ideas and then we go to that
34:03
person who had that feedback. Sometimes it's a trend get their
34:06
input on like how we should fix it.
34:08
And usually their, their input is how we solve the problem and
34:12
it goes pretty quickly. And they're pretty fulfilled
34:13
with that. But kind of telling, asking our
34:15
employees what we're doing wrong is usually a great way for them
34:18
to tell us what we should be doing.
34:20
For sure, I mean, I would say those are the two best ways
34:23
employees are are not going to hold back.
34:25
I'm telling you what you're not doing well.
34:27
And if you think about it from AI want to have an opportunity
34:30
to talk to you about what I've been able to to do an engine
34:33
group and I created like a Culture Club and we've got like
34:36
15% of the organization that's part of the Culture Club.
34:38
But before I dive into that, yes, call people that have great
34:43
culture in an organization and listen to them and implement
34:46
their ideas. Like of course, I'm always
34:48
willing to share. I got a lot of great ideas from
34:50
Zappos. I don't know if you guys have,
34:52
you know, I am like a huge believer in Tony Hsieh and what
34:57
he was able to accomplish at Zappos.
35:00
And I wouldn't say I stole some of their ideas, but I did talk
35:03
to their head of culture that was there for many, many, many
35:06
years. And she said here are the things
35:08
that really propelled us quickly and move the needle with
35:12
employee engagement. And hey, we're doing them and
35:15
they are working. And so that's great.
35:16
And yeah, I think the employees are going to give you a lot of
35:20
feedback. And as a business owner, if I'm
35:21
setting aside X amount of dollars into a pot of money that
35:26
I'm going to go deploy and hope that it's going to move the
35:29
needle on employee engagement, then I want to make sure I hit
35:31
the hit, you know, hit the bullseye with that.
35:33
And there's no better person than your people to tell you,
35:37
you know, is that going to move the needle or not?
35:40
Also recommendation, I would say John and I, I wouldn't say for
35:43
defining core values, but if you know us, this is very much on
35:46
brand for us. We sat down and we just did all
35:50
the things we hate about all the culture, our past jobs and
35:53
companies and made a list. And then we're all right, let's
35:55
just do the opposite of that. And then that was like our core
35:58
aligning values of the to what we work towards.
36:01
Try to make it very simple. We try to come up like fluffy
36:04
stuff is not our, our, our Forte, but we're like, let's
36:06
just write out all the things we hate about past jobs.
36:09
And the list got pretty long pretty quick.
36:10
I'm like, all right, here's the things we really care about.
36:12
Let's just figure out to do the opposite.
36:15
You direct be transparent, but don't be an an asshole at the
36:19
top of the list. Yeah, exactly.
36:21
Then you're doing better than most organizations. 100% agree
36:24
with you on the transparency part.
36:26
Mark and I practice radical transparency, sometimes to a
36:30
fault. We feel like it's really
36:31
important for people to know about what's going on and why
36:35
we're doing the things that we're doing.
36:37
Even if you don't have 100% of the information yet, as long as
36:40
it's something that's not privileged, Being able to share
36:42
with the team that like this is something that we're like 90% of
36:45
the way there towards implementing or this is
36:48
something that we believe is coming down the pipe.
36:50
And this is how long just so they're not smacked in the face
36:53
and blindsided by some large initiative or a, a big client or
36:58
a big shift in strategy. We have those conversations a
37:01
lot and they're not the most comfortable conversations to
37:03
have because as a leader, you're sort of trained by default to
37:06
have all the answers. And by us communicating things
37:10
where we just by default don't have those answers, it opens up
37:13
the conversation. And maybe the employees help us
37:16
get all the way to that point where we have kind of the full
37:19
solution in place. But at least at the very least,
37:22
it's something that they know is coming and it doesn't just come
37:24
and hit them at a left field. And that's so important to make
37:27
sure that your staff doesn't feel like they're not a part of
37:29
the formula because they are that's.
37:31
Right. Yeah, they've got to have buy
37:33
in. They've got to trust you.
37:34
And I would say that's probably, if I think back over the last 10
37:38
years, that would probably be one of my biggest.
37:42
I wouldn't say mistakes, but I wish I would have done that
37:45
early on. So you said, you know, kind of
37:47
as a business owner, you're trained, I think as a parent
37:49
too, you're kind of trained to shield, you know, shield your
37:52
kids from like stress and problems.
37:56
And so that bleeds over. If you care about your
37:58
employees, you don't want them to have to shoulder or be
38:01
concerned. I mean, as a business owner,
38:03
there's a lot of sleepless nights.
38:04
I mean, there's a there, there, there are problems and there are
38:07
issues with running a business, growing a business.
38:11
Heck, just think back to COVID. I mean, it, it was rough.
38:13
And it was shortly after that I was reading a book and we were
38:18
doing some leadership and development courses and they
38:21
talked about just how powerful transparency can be.
38:24
Like you said, John, you don't have to tell them.
38:26
You might not know everything, but if you just give them a
38:29
little bit of behind the scenes of what's happening and the why
38:33
behind some of the decisions, I mean, they're going to be body
38:35
and they're going to be on board.
38:37
They're those leaders are going to take that information.
38:39
And if your leaders absorb the information and they understand,
38:43
then they can go disseminate and they are great ambassadors for
38:47
the decisions that you're making as an organization, even if
38:49
they're like decisions that let's say, you know, like during
38:53
COVID, I mean, we had to downsize, we had to do some
38:55
furloughs. And I mean, we're, we're letting
38:57
go or furloughing people that are like, feel like family to
39:01
us. But those are just hard
39:02
decisions. But if you kind of open up and,
39:05
and like you said, as long as it's not confidential and there
39:08
is a point of which being too open, your, your team is going
39:11
to trust you and they're going to stand right by you through
39:13
all those decisions. So that was, I wish I would have
39:15
done that earlier on. Yeah, how how do you go about
39:19
communicating when employees have to leave an organization
39:23
because of culture fit, someone who looks like a great
39:26
performer, but yet you have to part ways with them because they
39:30
don't fit. How do you communicate that to
39:32
the rest of the team? In the past, the team would be
39:34
communicating that to me prior to me having to communicate that
39:37
out like the like, hey, this person while they are meeting
39:40
objectives and they're executing with excellence, you know, here
39:46
ongoing examples. And of course, you know, it's
39:48
not like one decision and one thing you're managing someone
39:51
out of the organization. I mean, there's lots of
39:53
conversations and lots of discussions around, again,
39:57
giving examples to employees of like, here's an example of not
40:00
exiting the core value and here's kind of the expectation
40:03
and then a time period by which we're expecting to see some turn
40:05
around. And so it's really, again, going
40:08
back to what I said earlier about one on ones, it just
40:10
really shouldn't be a surprise to the employee either.
40:12
You have enough chances and enough discussions, you
40:15
understand that it's probably not going to turn around.
40:18
And by that time, you know the organization, I mean, other
40:21
people have already seen it and you owe it to your team, right?
40:25
That person's toxic. And it becomes a distraction and
40:29
they are a detractor and you got objectives that you're trying to
40:33
meet in timelines. And, you know, we just don't
40:35
have time. Too many talented people out
40:37
there. Yep, we on the side of
40:40
transparency, we have decided that whenever someone is
40:44
terminated, we with being respectful to the person that's
40:48
leaving, but give like a clear explanation of This is why we
40:51
made the decision. This is why they're leaving and
40:54
they're they're gone. We either say it on all hands of
40:56
people go or directly to the company.
40:58
So people are crystal clear on what happened on that situation.
41:02
We try not to, you know, talk negatively about anyone who's
41:04
leaving, but we explained very clearly why it was no longer a
41:07
fit of the company and why they we've asked them to move on.
41:09
I think people appreciate that. Yeah.
41:11
And I, and I would say too, like you guys know, like I, I care
41:14
deeply for our employees and about them and just everything
41:18
that's, you know, their kids and all the things.
41:20
And so when someone leaves it, it's, it's rare that it's
41:26
contentious. It's usually, you know, you come
41:29
to a mutual agreement. And I've even said, like, what,
41:32
what is it that you want to do? Or are there any other roles?
41:35
I mean, written letters of recommendation, like help them
41:40
get to a new role? Because at the end of the day, I
41:42
mean, you just that's the way we should be treating them.
41:44
Our employees, they they devoted the time.
41:46
It was a unfortunate hire and we probably didn't do our
41:50
diligence. And you know, had we done maybe
41:52
a little bit better upfront interviewing process, maybe we
41:56
would have spotted this. But never the case.
41:57
You know, you know, help them. Help them get to their next
42:00
landing spot. That has been my explanation on
42:03
many of the people who have been terminated is I made a bad hire.
42:08
That one's on me. Yep, that's right.
42:11
Exactly. So you mentioned the things
42:13
you're doing at AG and group. Can you talk about this?
42:16
Yeah, happy to as I, you know, thought about how I could add
42:20
the most value as we were, you know, combining these
42:24
organizations. I said there's probably no one
42:27
that's going to love our people more than me.
42:30
And I love culture and employee engagement and would love to be
42:35
able to set the vision and, and help to align the organizations
42:39
as we were coming together because it's, it's, I was
42:41
reading some stats actually last last week putting a presentation
42:43
together. So today the US sits at about a
42:46
national attrition rate of 17% and thinking about kind of the
42:51
culture initiatives and like, OK, we're measuring it.
42:53
What should we have expected? So that's kind of the national
42:57
attrition rate. But then when you add merger and
43:00
acquisition, most in a lot of companies can anticipate upwards
43:05
of 30% attrition rate during the first year of a merger and
43:08
acquisition. That's a lot.
43:11
And so my goal was to come in and set a strategy that's
43:15
supporting the vision, the business objectives and and roll
43:18
out different initiatives. And so I've been doing that and
43:21
then, but we had employees for different organizations for
43:24
remote. So how do we get these employees
43:26
to collaborate and fill as part of a, a large organization and
43:31
such. And so I decided that there's a
43:33
lot of this is a large body of work starting kind of back over
43:37
and, and trying to roll out initiatives.
43:39
And I thought no better way to get buy in from our employees
43:43
than to open up like what I called the Angie and group
43:46
Culture Club. And so I was excited and
43:49
surprised to get, you know, nearly 15% people raising their
43:53
hands, saying that they wanted to be part of the club.
43:55
And I was like, that's a lot of people, so how are we going to
43:58
do this? And so I kind of divided the
44:02
group into mini culture clubs. And those mini culture clubs are
44:05
focused on one initiative. And I'll tell you, we've got a
44:08
lot of smart, talented, creative people, far, far better ideas
44:14
than what I was coming up with. So this is exciting because of
44:17
course I've still overseeing each club, but they are getting
44:20
to feel like they're owning that piece of the culture.
44:24
And so if you think about 15% of an organization, they go out and
44:27
they possibly impact another one or two employees, you got a lot
44:30
of movement pretty quickly. And like I said, some some
44:33
really great ideas that are that are coming our way.
44:36
And so and we're just saying a lot of excitement and they feel
44:40
like each one of the mini clubs has a lead and a Co lead.
44:43
Every great idea can't be implemented, of course, but
44:46
we're I'm also teaching them the concept that we're coming up
44:50
with ideas and we're going to invest resources to executing
44:54
all these ideas. We've got to track everything
44:56
that we do and we've got to have a return on investment.
44:59
And so I've started tracking like every event that we do,
45:02
even sending out newsletters. And so we are seeing just a
45:05
great movement in a positive direction with employee
45:09
engagement. But also our attrition rate is
45:11
like low single digit. Like it's pretty impressive that
45:15
we went through a merger and acquisition and our attrition
45:17
rate got better. It was already way lower than
45:19
the national attrition rate, but now we're like single, low
45:22
single digit. And so I think it's a testament
45:24
to not only the things that we're doing, the excitement
45:27
around the Culture Club and we've got that that large body
45:30
of, of the organization excited about employee engagement and
45:35
they're helping to drive the participation because they're
45:36
like they're putting in all this time and work and they're like,
45:38
this is a lot of work. I didn't think like putting on
45:40
the collaboration class was this hard.
45:42
So they're getting people to show up.
45:43
And then of course, when people show up and they participate,
45:46
they see the value of what we're trying to do.
45:48
So we're still doing a lot of the things that we've done in
45:50
the past, but of course with a different player.
45:53
Of course we're still doing the quarterly town hall meetings and
45:56
we're doing virtual events like in November, we're having a
45:59
South African Fari tour, a lady in South Africa is going to do a
46:03
tour and it's really cool. And of course, holiday party
46:06
we're doing think about like. A holiday party remote.
46:09
It's going to be remote and you think about America's Got
46:11
Talent, this is Angie and Got Talent.
46:13
And so we're going to do talent and awards and then we'll have
46:17
other virtual, you know, after, after the talent show, people
46:20
can get into virtual rooms. I think the monthly
46:23
collaboration classes, when you have these organizations come
46:26
together, you've got mass torts, you got class action, you have
46:29
bankruptcy. So mass torts have been doing
46:31
that for 10 years. Like what exactly does what does
46:33
it mean for claims administration?
46:35
And so we're we're having people from different organizations
46:38
give a presentation on like what does their business unit do and
46:41
the services that we're providing.
46:44
And so I think that's great leadership and development
46:46
courses and of course, merging for board of recognition
46:48
platform. So we got a lot of things
46:50
happening that just take a lot of people.
46:53
So I'm. About to steal that, John.
46:54
I'm going to have our team give a presentation of what they do
46:58
in the day-to-day to another team they work with.
47:00
There you go. I think like here we are three
47:03
years later, right? We've got another list of ideas
47:05
that Susan has now tested and implemented over the last three
47:07
years that we can talk about. I personally am going to argue
47:11
with something. I am not a big believer in
47:15
virtual events for employees because I believe it's extremely
47:18
difficult for people to have natural conversation and large
47:22
groups virtually, which is my big rub with it.
47:25
But it's better than nothing. So that's my biggest qualm with
47:27
that is I've been forced to go to those but in the past, so I
47:30
have like a, a knee jerk reaction that I don't like them
47:33
where I'm like stuck listening to like two people control the
47:35
conversation because remotely you can't like have not like a
47:39
bar where you can have like 6 people yelling at each other,
47:41
but all different conversations once you're in a car.
47:44
Those ones, I struggle with that.
47:46
We believe as a remote team, we believe that it's important for
47:51
everyone to get together at least once a year to meet.
47:53
It's like a huge investment and it's like a ton of money.
47:56
But like just having everyone meet people that they work with
48:00
in person helps resolve a ton of personal issues moving forward
48:03
that anyone might have. And like, have them actually
48:06
talk about what they do and figure stuff out and build
48:09
relationships that last a long time just from being able to
48:11
meet someone in person, which doesn't happen as much anymore.
48:15
We have a ton of staff who, when they started, had never met
48:18
anyone they'd ever worked with their entire career.
48:21
For sure. Yeah, No, I 100%.
48:25
I mean, there's nothing like getting eyeball to eyeball or
48:27
breaking bread with someone that, you know, maybe you
48:30
weren't. It's easy to kind of have
48:32
personality conflicts over, you know, teens or whatever.
48:39
That's right, for sure. I mean, what you can do at a
48:41
smaller company like, you know, when we were fifty 60-70 people
48:45
is different than what we can do at 3 / 300 people.
48:48
It's just, it's just tough. And you know, employees spread
48:52
across all 50 states. So that's a little, that's the
48:54
only challenging but but we're going to make it work.
48:57
We, Mark and I travel a ton, right?
49:00
We're all over the country all the time, whether it's for
49:02
conferences or to meet with some of our clients.
49:04
We make a deliberate effort that when we go into markets where we
49:06
have employees who are within an hour or two driving distance,
49:10
will just come a day early and like do a dinner and like anyone
49:13
who's in the area, you know, 5/10/15 people, maybe it's one
49:16
person, but we try as much as possible to have that FaceTime
49:20
when we're already in a place and someone else already lives
49:22
there. For sure the other virtual event
49:24
we're doing that I'm excited about.
49:25
I don't know how I came up with this idea, but.
49:27
I like the Safari thing actually.
49:29
Yeah, it's so cool. And I'll send you the
49:31
information so you can look it up.
49:32
The lady's amazing and yeah, I know the event will be a lot of
49:36
fun and it's something different.
49:37
You know, we've done over the last 10 years, we've we've done
49:40
all the all the virtual events. And so this was something fun.
49:43
Something else I I think is important as leaders and for
49:47
your organization to see is that we're doing some type of
49:50
philanthropic work. And so we're going to do an
49:52
auction in May, like with the live, like it's going to be a
49:56
virtual auction, but with a live auctioneer, you know, that's
49:58
like 5 dollars, 550. I don't.
50:00
I can't. Do nothing.
50:02
You're doing good. Yeah.
50:04
And people, but, you know, we're going to raise money and lots of
50:07
cool items and people are going to donate.
50:10
And I've already been talking to people.
50:11
And so all the money that we're going to raise, the employees
50:13
are going to kind of determine, you know, free organizations
50:16
that they would like for us to donate to.
50:18
And we'll we'll split it and donate to those organizations.
50:20
So I think it'll be, it'll be fun coming together.
50:22
It'll be a fun event. And yeah, been able to give
50:25
money back to organizations that are, you know, mean something to
50:28
our employees. I like that.
50:30
Yeah, it's awesome. The the value that you can add
50:35
to law firm specifically, which are the majority of of the
50:38
people who are watching this, though I do think that your
50:41
concepts are very far reaching and you've adopted some things
50:44
from other industries. Incredible value.
50:46
I hope that those of you watching today were able to take
50:50
at least one thing away, but I I'm pretty sure you probably got
50:52
pages of notes and potential items that you can implement at
50:55
your law firm or within your organization.
50:57
Susan could not be more thankful for you taking the time out of
51:01
your day to join us. Always love speaking with you.
51:05
I hope the family is doing really well and we look forward
51:09
to seeing you again soon in person.
51:11
Yeah, that would be fantastic. I'm excited.
51:14
I'm grateful that you guys thought of being to come on and
51:17
talk about something I'm obviously very passionate about.
51:20
So thank you both. Thank you, Susan.