Latest / Profitable Christian Business / Curative Culture: How Christian Leaders Build Workplaces People Want to Stay In | Douglas Shaw

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Curative Culture: How Christian Leaders Build Workplaces People Want to Stay In | Douglas Shaw · Profitable Christian Business

• 0:01
  You could put your Christian values on your website.
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  You could talk about putting people first, but what would your employees say it actually feels like to work for you?
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  That's where today's conversation begins.
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  Welcome to the Profitable Christian Business Podcast.
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  I'm your host, Doug Greathouse.
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  Today I'm joined by Douglas Shaw, author of author of Curative Culture.
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  We're talking about building a workplace where people feel value, do their best work, and actually want to stay.
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  And for Christian business owners, this goes deeper than a management strategy.
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  If we believe people are created in the image of God, how should ch that change the way we lead them?
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  Douglas, welcome to the show.
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  Thanks for having me, Doug.
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  Well w I I I'm really excited to have you as a as a guest, Doug.
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  And I think this may be I'll have to go back.
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  I've done like two hundred and something episodes.
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  This may be the first time I've had a Doug on the show, other than myself.
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  So it it it's pretty awesome to have to have another namesake.
• 0:53
  Thank you.
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  My my my my name came from General Douglas MacArthur because my dad served under him in World War Two.
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  So
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  Wow.
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  Um I was almost a third.
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  I was all like my and actually my just for full clarity and and uh for everybody on my real name is Donald, Donald Douglas Greathouse.
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  I was almost a third.
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  I was almost not a Doug.
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  I was almost Donald Wayne Greathouse, the third, because my dad and his dad were both Donald Wayne Greathouse.
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  So uh little interesting fact about me.
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  If you you can call me Donald, I might not respond though.
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  We were we were right before we got on, we were talking about you asked where I was based at and um I asked where you were based at and I am just um tell the audience where where
• 1:40
  you're based at.
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  I l I live in Washington State.
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  and it it's where we always have to say we cannot say Washington because everyone thinks D C.
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  So we uh always have to punctuate it with state.
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  And I live on an island north of the the city of Seattle, about about two hours north.
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  Uh it's called Whidby Island.
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  What do you like best about living in the state of Washington?
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  Well, it's it's where I was born.
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  I mean this is for me being able to live here um is a real gift, uh I f I feel.
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  Uh because I absolutely love nature.
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  Uh when I grew up here I I as a kid I didn't have as nearly as much appreciation as I do now in my life.
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  Um I did move away when I was around eighteen years old, went off and and I got my education and and uh
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  Uh my career took me to Chicago and and to Dallas and back to Chicago.
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  And I really always wanted to come back here.
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  And I'm thankful that my wife and I have been able to come back and and just really settle in and enjoy this beautiful place.
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  Um it it has incredible mountains all around.
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  It's got um seas to sail.
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  Um it's just a lovely place.
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  I was just mentioning to you also previously before we hopped on that I'd been to Oregon.
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  I hadn't hadn't been to Washington State, but um we went to this my first time going to the Oregon coast and just to see the rock formations uh that coming out of the coast and
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  um it was it was just truly a a special special place to be.
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  And I've been to places like Crater Lake in Oregon, which was um amazing.
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  And you and I were discussing how being out in nature really helps you appreciate
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  of God and it was a little bit of inspiration or not inspiration but helped you write the book, um, curative culture.
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  Yeah.
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  Um the the full name of the book is Curative Culture Stepping Away from a Toxic Workplace.
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  And it and it it I was out in nature with my wife.
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  We were um touring this little place called Reed Harbor up in the San Juan Islands in our little ten foot inflatable dinghy.
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  And we were going along the shore, taking a look at all the beautiful
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  Palisades of trees.
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  There were just incredible trees standing there.
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  And I felt like the voice came to me from heaven saying, you know, you cannot create one needle on one branch on one tree.
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  And at first I thought, it was I I asked myself, does that was that hurtful?
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  No, it was instructional.
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  It helped me to have a sense of perspective about the creator versus the created, which I am.
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  Mm.
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  and so for me, I started looking at what are the attributes of God and what are the attributes of man as we take a look at our lives, our work lives, and in our culture.
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  And that's where it kind of began for me, was out on that little harbor and I realized I really need to address this topic people have been asking me to write about, which is
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  really about uh corporate culture.
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  Nice.
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  Um real real quick question.
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  Given your background and and having written this book, in is it can you walk into a business and immediately tell whether the employees like working there or not?
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  I generally can get a pretty qu quick read on things because you can tell if someone's enthusiastic about their job or if it's just putting in time, uh their body language.
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  Is there banter in the office?
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  Or is it quiet, stone cold quiet?
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  Sometimes that tells you a lot.
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  But it's it's pretty quick that you can tell that people are comfortable in their skin.
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  And I think most people come into a workplace and we all have a three three questions.
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  that we ask, whether we're we realize it or not.
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  And one of them is, am I safe?
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  can I trust you in your intentions?
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  And can I respect you?
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  And when you walk into a place you can tell whether people feel safe or not.
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  I think that's a big thing.
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  Yeah, I uh just to go back to a story from my past, I was in management for a long time and climbing up the corporate ladder, if you will, and I was known as the nice boss.
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  Um but funny thing is my my boss um got on um the the recording for every like he leaves a recording for everybody at the end of the day and he's like, you know.
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  Doug's the nice boss, but he's fired more people than anyone than anyone on this management team.
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  Because I'm all I was all about taking the poison out, right?
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  There will be certain people that just poisoned the well um and and made the made the culture toxic, right?
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  So I'm all about let's quickly remove that toxicity toxicity as much as possible.
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  Can you just give kind of your perspective on that sort of thing?
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  I I can say that I think part of what we all have to deal with is is when people are not their best selves.
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  Um we all we all have those days in our lives, but how do we react to um corrective action when when uh for example when I'm in a situation where I have uh an employee who is not
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  their best self and they're causing trouble within the organization.
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  Um, if if they will respond to the corrective action where we talk it through, we think about it, we talk about what's next, and can they indeed accept the terms for continuing
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  in their role?
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  Um, then we've we've really succeeded, I think.
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  Because I think one of the things we as employers in a curative culture really want to do is ask the question, do I really want this person to succeed?
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  And I've been in situations where I have not always wanted someone to succeed.
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  In fact, I was in a pretty agitated state one time with uh an employee that not only had really troubled me, but also many others in the company.
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  And I I would just I was absolutely convinced that the next time I met with that person, I was going to release them.
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  And and and I have a meeting every week with my head of HR and my COO.
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  And and we talk through the culture of the company for two hours.
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  And in that meeting, I said to them, I'm going to let them go.
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  And I I saw that they were being supportive of me, but I knew that they weren't quite thrilled with my uh response.
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  And so I waited a week and I came back to them.
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  And during that week, I was pondering, would I regret it if I let this person go?
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  This person was the sole provider in their family, uh, fairly up in years.
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  And quite frankly, it'd done some good work.
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  But was definitely stepping out of bounds.
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  And so um I came back to them and I said, you know, I've decided I just can't just let the this person go.
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  And their jaws dropped because I was pretty emphatic when I told them I was going to cut them loose.
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  And and I was and they were surprised that I had changed my mind.
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  I said, the reason I changed my mind was because a question you asked me last week, and that was, do I really want this person to succeed?
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  And I I realized I didn't anymore.
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  And I would regret not making help giving this person the opportunity.
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  I I can't make them do anything different when they're not their best self.
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  But what I can do is give them parameters to make adjustments.
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  And so we met with this person, with the HR person and myself.
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  We met with this employee, start intending to say, hey, we want you to take some time off and we want you to think about it.
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  And if you decide you can follow my leadership and work in this company.
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  with civility that's required here, um, then we we're going to put you in a different position, but we'll keep you on.
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  In that meeting, the person said, you know what?
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  I can't continue on.
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  They said, I'm in so much physical pain.
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  I can't even get on an airplane anymore and go anywhere.
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  I had no idea this person was in that kind of distress.
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  They had never talked about it.
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  And this that was impacting how this person behaved.
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  In fact, they said, I can't go on even past today.
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  I think I'll just give my resignation.
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  And um, and so we went ahead and we executed that process with them.
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  The goal, though, was to help them to leave with dignity.
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  And they were able to do that.
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  and that's someone I didn't even like.
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  Yet I had to get myself to the position of saying, even though I may not like them, can I treat them with dignity?
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  Because they are part of.
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  What I understand to be the Imago Day, the image of the
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  Yeah, I I I I love that you said all that and it makes me think about I was not I'm not the person I was I am now that back then, right?
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  If I was to do things a little differently, I think too often not just in a corporate relationship, but in life in general and relationships in general, is we don't seek first
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  to understand.
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  We don't we don't look for context.
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  We get a surface level without when we fail to dig deeper, right?
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  Um and and you
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  uh the person just exposed what was deeper um to you.
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  And I I feel like um if if I I would really like anyone that to take that away from this call is like sometimes you have or this interview rather, this sometimes you have to dig
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  deeper.
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  there you maybe actually like when we're talking about being Christ like, you maybe actually help that person and they become a better employee than you ever thought they
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  could be.
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  I I had a situation where I I'd mishired a guy.
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  Totally mishired him.
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  And I knew it.
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  I knew it when I saw employees walking down the hall and they would avert their eyes when they saw the person.
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  I knew it whenever I was in a meeting and I realized this person just isn't getting who we are.
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  I it was one of my first hires that I'd ever done in my career.
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  And I knew I was in trouble and I'd blown it.
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  So I I I had lunch with my vice president that I reported to.
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  And I said, Hey Jim, I've just blown it.
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  I mishired this guy.
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  And he looked at me and he goes, welcome to Leadership 101.
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  I said, So this is a thing?
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  He goes, Oh, we've all done it.
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  He said, The question is, what are you going to do about it?
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  So the next day, I knew the guy wasn't going to work.
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  And it was not a situation where he he his values did not match the values of our company.
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  And so the next day I met with him at four PM in the afternoon and I delivered the words, I'm gonna have to let you go.
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  And it it tore me up.
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  It really did.
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  It was it was my first firing and I didn't I didn't nobody likes to fire, I don't think.
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  Anyone that's emotionally healthy.
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  But I have to say that I it just really ate me up and I I actually cried all the way home.
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  So I I get home, I pull in the garage, I walk into the house, and I'm just dying.
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  I'm just thinking, you know.
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  I just ruined this guy's life by even giving him a job in the first place and then having to let him go.
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  I made a big mistake.
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  Well, later that evening I was doing dishes in the kitchen with my wife and the phone rings.
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  And she answers it and she looks at me and she goes, It's him.
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  I'm thinking, no.
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  So she hands me the phone.
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  I get on and he says, Doug, I want you to know today was a bad day for me, but I know it was a bad day for you too.
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  But I just wanted to call you and tell you I think you did me a great favor today by being honest with me.
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  And when that call, it it lasted less than ninety seconds, but it it gave me a perspective I'd never had before.
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  And that is when a person's not doing well, they know it.
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  And sometimes what they need from us is to help them understand that they're in the wrong spot.
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  And I think in a curative culture, we can do it, and we can do it where we we still recognize people's humanity.
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  And I think the the cure for toxicity, stepping away from toxic workplaces, is not policy, but it's humanity.
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  And I think we can look at people and say, okay, how can I treat you with dignity and still get the same result that needs to take place?
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  This wasn't fixable.
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  And he knew it and I knew it.
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  But boy, it was such great relief when after he told me that I sighed the sigh of of forgiveness.
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  And it wasn't God's forgiveness, it wasn't his forgiveness, it was me forgiving myself that I had mishired.
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  So that was an important lesson for me.
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  Yeah, I I uh just going into that, you know, I I don't know what happened to that gentleman after that, but I feel like sometimes you're actually the the f it may not seem
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  like it in the moment, like a lot of things that God gives us don't seem like blessings in the moment, but it could have been a blessing to him to be fired and find an opportunity
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  that actually fit him where he could prosper.
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  Um so, um
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  he did communicate that he did go on, get a job that he really liked and and it fit him in a much better situation.
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  I was always relieved to hear that as well.
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  So your book, Curative Culture, it the title lends itself to me to be okay, there's a problem and it we this is this is the fix.
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  I wanna kinda go back to the beginning because I'm sure you have some insights of how to build a healthy culture from from the ground up.
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  Like if you're if you're just starting a new company or your company's just really getting going, um, can you kind of give some insights into that?
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  Sure.
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  I first of all, I think everybody knows what the word toxic means.
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  I mean, almost all of us have had a toxic work experience.
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  I know I have.
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  I've I've been in several situations and that's by the way, that's what led me to um start my own company thirty two years ago, uh next month.
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  Um, Douglas Shaw and Associates is the name of the company.
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  And and we raise money.
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  We raise hundreds of millions of dollars every year for nonprofits all over the the the country.
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  Um, but before I had my own company, I worked for some very toxic situations.
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  And one of there was a gentleman who my my my dad died and unexpectedly, and he I called him and I said, Hey, I can't come to work tomorrow.
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  My dad just passed away.
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  I'm grieving.
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  Gotta help my mom.
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  He said, I need you in here and I want you in here tomorrow.
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  We've got clients coming into town and we gotta get these reports done.
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  Now this was a Christian man.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  And and I and I I I couldn't believe the cruelty in that moment.
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  Um another, and that's a very negative experience, but it also in very positive experiences, I w I had the opportunity to work with David Allen Hubbard.
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  He he was the president of Fuller Seminary and where I attended and got my Master of Arts and Theology.
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  I had the opportunity to work with the great Max Depree.
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  I don't know if you know that name, but
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  Max Depree was uh the CEO of the Herman Miller Corporation.
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  Um, and he was the chairman of the board of Fuller.
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  And I had the privilege of attending classes that they team taught together, and they're the folks that introduced me to the idea of servant leadership and about viewing people as
• 17:39
  made in the image of God, as employees.
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  So I had the negative experiences and I had the positive ones.
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  I knew that most of us have had toxic experiences at one time or another.
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  And so I wanted to come up with a one-word antonym for it.
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  Because I realized we didn't really have one.
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  And to me, I I did I came up with a lot of words and I tried to tried to come up with what would a one-word descriptor be?
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  And that's where I landed on curative, because it's from the Latin curare, which means to cure or heal.
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  So back in reference to your question, that's how
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  What really started this process was, is there a one-word antonym for toxic?
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  And then what would that look like?
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  And as I went about my own life and as I'd gone through and had my own struggles in toxic environments, when it came time for me to start my own company 32 years ago, I had to ask
• 18:36
  this key question: what kind of culture do I want to have?
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  I've been through a lot of things I didn't like.
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  And most people I know have been through a lot of things that they didn't like.
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  What kind of tone was I going to create in my own company?
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  And that's when I really had to come to grips with how do I look at people and how do I treat them as a leader?
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  Because I think leadership sets the tone for culture.
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  There's no other level that can do it.
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  And uh on that, I c I I'm really curious about this question.
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  We all understand that culture, well most of us hopefully understand that culture is important, but in the hierarchy of of business, of you know, where you would rate putting
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  culture on a scale of one to five, how important is culture and what would you rank it above um some other things in business?
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  I would I would call say it it's a five.
• 19:35
  Um I know it's often been attributed to Peter Drucker.
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  I don't think he was actually the gentleman who said it, but uh it was uh the the good old statement, um, culture eat strategy for breakfast.
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  I think it was actually uh attributed actually said by someone from Ford.
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  Um but um the reason I rank it so high is if you don't have
• 20:00
  A sense of safety, a sense of respect, a sense of purpose.
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  The likelihood of you wanting to stay in a position is not high.
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  And as a leader, if you are not projecting uh safety, uh respect, and purpose to your work community, which is how I view employees, as volunteers in a work community.
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  If you don't do that, you you are you're promulgating something you may not intend to be.
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  Most of us lead in the way that we were treated.
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  It takes great intentionality to lead in a curative fashion.
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  And that all comes down to values.
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  And and I know most of us have talked about mission, vision, and values.
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  But I as I went through this process of of thinking about creating something curative versus toxic, I said, okay, what's the question that mission and vision are asking?
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  It's really what do you do for a living?
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  Whereas values ask a different question.
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  How does it feel to work in your company?
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  And it's much easier to answer those first two questions of mission mission and vision than it is to answer culture.
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  Um so so when I began my company, I um I called a two-day uh session with my leadership.
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  And this is when after I'd grown the company enough to have leadership besides myself.
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  And we worked on what was our value statement going to be.
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  And we didn't want it to be something we hung on the wall.
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  We wanted it to be something that we lived.
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  And so we hammered it out.
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  For two days, we talked through our mission, vision, and core values.
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  The mission and vision were relatively easy.
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  It was the core values that were the biggest challenge.
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  Because if we got it wrong,
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  We were going to be judged by what we we said we were going to be.
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  We knew we were going to be measured by by what we articulated, but more than articulated, we have to we had to embody and embrace it.
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  And we knew that.
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  So we put the together our values, and we still, 32 years later, we're still uh embracing and embodying those values in our company.
• 22:19
  That is that is awesome.
• 22:21
  So i it's probably uh it's real well it is much easier to keep culture in a smaller company like five, ten employees.
• 22:29
  Uh as you scale.
• 22:30
  So here I have some questions aro around scaling, because it seems to me like culture could be one of those things that easily breaks down as you scale, as you're adding
• 22:38
  different personalities, j just different backgrounds, different values of people coming in again, hiring is important in that I'm sure.
• 22:45
  But um two two questions on that.
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  So
• 22:48
  How what were the what are the guardrails that you can use to maintain culture?
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  And then also what um who own who should own culture as in inside the company?
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  Well, l let me answer the second question first.
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  I think the ownership for culture has has has to start at the very top.
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  Um whether we like it or not, if you don't have the buy-in for the either if you have a board, the board level, the CEO level, you've got to have buy-in at the highest level of a
• 23:22
  c of a company um t to a set of values.
• 23:26
  If you don't have it there, it's not going to happen and not be maintained.
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  I wish I could say differently.
• 23:32
  I wish I could say that middle management can establish culture and have the have those that they work for not buy in.
• 23:40
  It's not gonna work.
• 23:40
  Um I've been asked the question many times.
• 23:44
  What if you're not at the highest level in the C suite and and uh how are you go can you impact change in corporate culture?
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  And yes, I think we can be ourselves and be a person of integrity, honesty.
• 23:58
  Um
• 23:59
  And civility.
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  But if you're in an environment that is not supporting that, and you know you're going to be undermined by top leadership, you might as well move on.
• 24:10
  And that's a hard statement.
• 24:12
  But I have to say that I think that's where the ownership of it begins.
• 24:16
  Now, as to your uh first question, remind me again and I'll be glad to answer it.
• 24:21
  so so no, no.
• 24:22
  It so um scaling, right?
• 24:24
  So the guardrails, the guardrails to keep 'cause it gets more it seems like it get would get more difficult um as you scale.
• 24:32
  I've been asked that and and you know, it's interesting.
• 24:35
  I don't have a huge company, I have small company.
• 24:36
  I've I have about sixty employees at this point in time.
• 24:39
  Um, but and I've been asked by many in larger corporations, how can you possibly have a curative culture in a large scale situation?
• 24:48
  But if you think about h how many people a day does a leader interact with inside the company?
• 24:54
  Um, you're not going to interact with thousands and thousands of people.
• 25:00
  You're going interact with a core group.
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  And the question is, how are you going to interrelate with those people?
• 25:08
  Because um I have even in my company of 60 people, I probably have about five or six that I d work very closely with.
• 25:18
  Um and and I work very hard at delegation and in trusting and empowering those that do work for me.
• 25:25
  Uh I don't wanna give them a the the old expression is you don't want to hire a dog and bark yourself.
• 25:31
  And and and I really don't want to try to do people's work for them.
• 25:34
  Um, so I have interactions with a fairly small group of people.
• 25:39
  I think that's true of just about any company.
• 25:42
  You have to trust those around you, but you also have to see them as human beings.
• 25:49
  and I think that's where I come back to the Imago Day, which is really it's Latin for the image of God.
• 25:56
  I'm always amazed by the fact that
• 25:59
  Um in the creation story in our scriptures, it talks about on the sixth day he created man and woman in his own image.
• 26:11
  And if we think about what does that mean in his image?
• 26:16
  So now I've got to look at everyone and say they are created in God's image.
• 26:21
  I'm in created in his image.
• 26:24
  How am I going to treat people that are created in the Creator's image?
• 26:30
  And I think it requires things of us.
• 26:33
  In a curative culture, we want to be able to say to someone, uh, when they're doing great work, we need we want to be able to affirm that.
• 26:42
  When they're when they need course correction, we need to address those things as well.
• 26:47
  Um but knowing that we're all created in God's image, to me, what that says is how do we deal with each other in our human condition?
• 26:57
  Um
• 26:59
  I know psychologists will often refer to family of origin stories.
• 27:05
  And we all have Um, I have mine, you've got yours.
• 27:08
  Everybody's got a family of origin story.
• 27:10
  We I went steelhead fishing one time with a friend of mine, and he had never fished before in his life.
• 27:19
  And he got up there and we are fly fishing no less, we hired a guide.
• 27:25
  Right out of the gate, the guy catches the fish of a thousand casts.
• 27:29
  That's what they call Steelhead.
• 27:31
  He catches two steelhead right out of the gate.
• 27:34
  And I'm jumping up and down.
• 27:36
  The guide is jumping up and down, and he's standing there just kind of smiling, not even smiling.
• 27:40
  He's just standing there.
• 27:41
  I said, What Chris, what's wrong with you?
• 27:44
  He goes, family of origin, Doug.
• 27:46
  He said, That's all I got.
• 27:49
  But it's true.
• 27:50
  We are how we're raised impacts who we are so much.
• 27:55
  And and it's very mystifying to us that our family of origin story is what we all bring into the workplace with us.
• 28:04
  Every single one of us.
• 28:06
  And when I think about the Imago Day and the image of God, and then I think about our family of origin, I have to reconcile those two.
• 28:13
  Because we don't all act the same way.
• 28:16
  We don't all respond in the same way to the same circumstances.
• 28:19
  Um I know uh I had an employee recently who
• 28:24
  Knew he had an anger problem, but he chose to not do anything about it.
• 28:30
  And it wasn't that he wasn't aware, he was making a choice that he wasn't going to do anything about it.
• 28:39
  it was even heard to say, not only by me, but by others, that's just the way I am.
• 28:43
  Uh now, you put that together with the destructive nature of of what an anger problem can do in a company.
• 28:52
  um and and what that says to people around you if you don't deal with it, that's a big issue.
• 29:00
  So I had to deal with it, and we did.
• 29:03
  And and he eventually he ended up resigning.
• 29:06
  Um and and that's I prefer to have resignations than firings personally.
• 29:12
  But if it's necessary, I'll do it.
• 29:14
  I mean I I mean curative culture does not say be soft.
• 29:18
  I d I've had some people in the business world that go, you know
• 29:22
  I this all sounds good, but this is really kind of soft stuff, Doug, you're talking about.
• 29:27
  You know, we're talking about, you know, hard knuckle work here and we gotta be excellent, we gotta be profitable.
• 29:33
  I mean, one of the things I love is the name of your program, Profitable Christ Christian Business.
• 29:38
  Um curative culture to me feeds profitability.
• 29:43
  and and 'cause there is a call to excellence in a curative culture.
• 29:49
  I
• 29:50
  I I need to set the standard as a leader for for what a company should be.
• 29:55
  And when I'm when I'm going to embrace the culture, we're going have a culture of excellence in a curative situation.
• 30:02
  Now, can you can you have profitability and not be uh and still be in a toxic situation?
• 30:09
  Yes, you can.
• 30:10
  Um I've seen it over and over, but not in the long term.
• 30:15
  Your turnover rate is so high in a toxic environment.
• 30:20
  And um one of the things I saw in our own company, our right now our retention rate for an employee is nine and a half years.
• 30:29
  The US thank you labor the Department of Labor and Statistics is three point nine, it's what they quote uh across the country.
• 30:40
  Excuse me.
• 30:42
  the number the number of years a client is with my company right now is nine point five years.
• 30:49
  That's
• 30:49
  To me, there's a correlation between w the employees and their um sense of belonging and clients and their sense of being partners and treated with dignity.
• 31:01
  Um so I think how we treat people, when I have an anger uh an employee with an anger situation, I've got to deal with it.
• 31:10
  But the bigger issue, I don't know about you, but one of the big things I encounter with people all the time is what do you do with a high producing
• 31:20
  employee that's toxic.
• 31:24
  Yeah.
• 31:25
  And I f I struggled with this several years ago and I had a consultant friend who came in and he said to me, You know, Doug, if you don't deal with I had two people that were very
• 31:37
  toxic.
• 31:37
  He said, If you don't deal with those two people, you know what?
• 31:41
  People here are gonna think you approve of how they're behaving.
• 31:44
  Mm-hmm.
• 31:46
  And I was horrified at the thought that they might think I endorsed that kind of behavior.
• 31:50
  He said, if you don't get them out of here, that's exactly what you're doing.
• 31:55
  It scared me to death because of the high performance.
• 31:58
  I thought, what am I going to do if I take these two high performers out of this company?
• 32:03
  And what happened was absolutely counterintuitive.
• 32:07
  I did, I confronted the situation, I helped them to leave.
• 32:11
  Again, both resigned.
• 32:14
  But I have to tell you what happened.
• 32:16
  As soon as those two personalities were out of the mix, people rose up.
• 32:21
  They felt the freedom to grow and to talk and to express themselves.
• 32:27
  They weren't being put down anymore by their colleagues.
• 32:30
  And they blossomed, and the company flourished as a result of the removal of those two very toxic people.
• 32:37
  Um but I have and I have to tell you.
• 32:42
  That is a big fear and I I face it from leaders all the time.
• 32:45
  I was being interviewed by a gentleman who um he owns a a chain of restaurants and and he said, Doug, I got high producers there and the customers love And we bantered back and
• 32:57
  forth about that.
• 32:58
  And I was telling him about my own experience.
• 33:01
  And he said he could see that, that that it comes down to if you don't remove them, you are indeed endorsing them.
• 33:10
  Mm-hmm.
• 33:11
  So tough decisions.
• 33:14
  I uh one thing I love to do on the podcast is give practical tips to anyone listening.
• 33:20
  Because a a lot of the business owners be listening right now, yeah, this all sounds great, culture, they don't even know where to start.
• 33:26
  Right.
• 33:27
  So could you give two to three practical tips for someone wanting to improve their culture?
• 33:32
  Sure.
• 33:35
  I think first and foremost, I think there's a real need for us to be self-aware as leaders.
• 33:39
  Um, because what we believe is what we do.
• 33:44
  Uh that's a very simple statement, but very meaningful.
• 33:50
  What we believe about people is how we're going to treat people.
• 33:54
  So what do we really believe?
• 33:55
  Take a self-inventory.
• 33:57
  I think that's a great starting point.
• 33:59
  I think self-awareness is so critical.
• 34:02
  To leadership, to know how we come across, what are our strengths, what are our weaknesses.
• 34:10
  But then also, what do I really believe about people?
• 34:12
  So asking ourselves meaningful questions to begin with are great ways to start.
• 34:18
  It's very practical because if it and if you can't, if you can't really do that, get some help to do that.
• 34:24
  There are support groups, there's vistage, there's there's um all kinds of organizations available.
• 34:32
  Not to mention good old therapy, places where you can learn about yourself as a leader.
• 34:37
  And it's worth investing in yourself to gain this insight.
• 34:41
  But knowing where you are first and foremost is a great practical step.
• 34:46
  Now, I'm not saying it's easy.
• 34:47
  For some of us, it's easier than others.
• 34:49
  I get it.
• 34:50
  But if it was easy, anybody could do it.
• 34:52
  uh And that's and that to me that's an important phrase.
• 34:57
  But also, not only self-awareness, but also then saying, okay.
• 35:02
  How do I want it to feel to work in my company?
• 35:07
  That's different, again, than mission and vision about what are we going to do, but how do I want it to feel in our company?
• 35:15
  And so, in terms of feeling, the only way I'm going to be able to be involved in that is to be able to come up with um what are um our values?
• 35:27
  And to me, articulating our values, if we've not done it,
• 35:32
  I think it's really critical.
• 35:33
  I'll I'll go on websites of companies uh and I'll look at this one company and it are it it lays out what their values are.
• 35:41
  I'll look at another company and they don't have anything listed at all.
• 35:44
  That tells me a lot about that company.
• 35:47
  So a practical step is really to start being very intentional about if if I know what I believe about people and I know what I believe about what I want our company to feel like,
• 35:59
  to work in our company.
• 36:01
  Then what might I list as my values?
• 36:05
  And and being able to articulate those values is really critical.
• 36:10
  But just articulating them is not going to do it.
• 36:15
  So then y we have to ask ourselves, am I willing to embrace and embody those values?
• 36:20
  And what does that look like?
• 36:24
  Let me give you a quick story.
• 36:25
  I I was in my company early on, and all of a sudden, uh
• 36:31
  I I get word I'm in the middle of a management meeting.
• 36:34
  I get all of a sudden someone's raised the alarm.
• 36:37
  We we do a lot of direct mail, we do a lot of online fundraising.
• 36:42
  We had a mailing that was scheduled to go out in in just very short order, and someone had discovered that our top donor mailing, there were two thousand pieces of mail in postage
• 36:52
  trays, they were they were out of order, meaning a letter did not match a reply device.
• 36:59
  Um, Doug is going to get Bill's reply device in his mailing.
• 37:03
  That's not gonna work very well.
• 37:05
  Someone brought that attention to me in the the management meeting.
• 37:08
  We're sitting in there.
• 37:10
  I said, okay, let's go.
• 37:11
  And we all got up, we all went down to my production facility, and the management team of the company sorted out that mail to get it ready to go, and we got we met our deadline.
• 37:22
  That said so much to the employees in the company that we wanted excellence and that.
• 37:28
  Nobody was beneath the work to get it done, to get it out the door.
• 37:33
  Now that was a long time ago.
• 37:34
  And I don't even have a production facility anymore in my company.
• 37:38
  we can buy it cheaper than we can do it.
• 37:41
  But I have to say, that spoke so loudly.
• 37:43
  I had no idea how loudly that spoke until our 30th company anniversary.
• 37:48
  I had an employee get up and speak, and he said, That day I knew I was in the right company.
• 37:54
  Because I saw the leadership embodying what they said.
• 37:58
  They wanted us to be.
• 38:00
  That really moved me.
• 38:03
  I want to I want to go back to kind of what you you touched on about the name of this program, Profitful Christian Business.
• 38:08
  And and the funny thing is, yes, we do want businesses to be more profitable from a monetary standpoint, but really the underlying principle of that is how can we be more
• 38:19
  profitable for the kingdom, right?
• 38:21
  Um, how can we show God's love through our businesses uh and attract people to Jesus?
• 38:27
  So a lot of things come up in a lot of a lot of the undertones of what I'm hearing.
• 38:33
  You're saying it's like the servant leadership, the stewardship, real recognizing that it's not ours, right?
• 38:39
  And then if we're really if are we suing this for ourselves, or we're suing this for God, right?
• 38:44
  And um the other one is pride.
• 38:46
  Like we gotta keep our pride in check, right?
• 38:51
  Well, I I'll have to say I think the concept of servant leadership is very near and dear to me.
• 38:55
  In fact, that's one of the chapters in the book, is servant leadership.
• 38:59
  uh I mentioned earlier that I had spent time under the tutelage of uh David Allen Hubbard and Max Dupree.
• 39:08
  It was in that teaching sessions, in those teaching sessions that I heard them first reference the phrase the the legitimate use of power.
• 39:19
  And that was an
• 39:20
  And and I was taking notes as fast as I could in this class.
• 39:24
  And I didn't I didn't take the time to get that defined.
• 39:28
  And it really stayed with me.
• 39:30
  So um several weeks later, uh David Hubbard came to the town I was living in for an alumni event.
• 39:40
  And I and I had graduated and I was I I I was living in this town and I decided to go because I wanted to ask him this question.
• 39:47
  So
• 39:48
  Here he is, this great theologian, this old testament scholar.
• 39:53
  and I I I went to the alumni event and and he he made a few remarks and then he kind of circulated amongst the the people attending.
• 40:00
  And I I walked up to him and I said, Dr.
• 40:03
  Hubbard, I took this class with you and Max DePrit.
• 40:08
  He goes, Oh yeah, Max.
• 40:09
  He said, We had fun with that one.
• 40:12
  And and he he said, how did you find it?
• 40:15
  I said, Well,
• 40:16
  I really enjoyed it, but there was something I came away with, a question that I never got answered, and that is, you talked about the legitimate use of power.
• 40:24
  He said, Well, you've read Greenleaf, haven't you?
• 40:28
  And I said, No.
• 40:29
  He said, you need to get a copy of Greenleaf.
• 40:32
  Polished Press, I believe.
• 40:34
  And I'm thinking, eh?
• 40:35
  And I said, Okay, I'll, you know, I wanted to say, yes, I'd read Greenleaf, I read all four volumes, but good thing I didn't, because he had never written four volumes of
• 40:43
  anything.
• 40:43
  But Robert K.
• 40:44
  Greenleaf
• 40:46
  gave several talks, and they were compiled by a guy named Larry C.
• 40:51
  Spears into a book entitled Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness.
• 41:00
  That book became a mentor to me.
• 41:03
  Robert K.
• 41:04
  Greenleaf was the right hand man of ATT.
• 41:08
  He worked for the directly for the president, and he would ask the president to dispatch him to places that were troubled.
• 41:15
  But not to tell them what the problems were.
• 41:19
  And so he would be dispatched, he would go, and he would look around and he'd find out what was working, what wasn't working.
• 41:27
  But he also brought with him the attitude of I'm going to serve the people that I'm with.
• 41:33
  I'm going to help them by becoming a servant first and then a leader.
• 41:39
  And that's the whole concept of servant leadership that.
• 41:43
  That um inspired the writings of Robert K.
• 41:47
  Greenleaf and his speaking.
• 41:49
  And by David Hubbard introducing me to that great body of work, it changed the way that I wanted to look at leadership.
• 41:58
  I know some people have always talked about an inverted pyramid, you know, the the the CEOs at the bottom and and and so forth.
• 42:06
  Greenleaf didn't use those terms, but he does talk about the institution.
• 42:12
  uh as as servant, the church as servant, the corporation as servant, trustees as servant.
• 42:20
  And it's a great book and I highly recommend it.
• 42:23
  I abuse servant leadership as part of the foundation and built on it for a curative culture.
• 42:31
  Because if we first seek to serve, which I believe that's what Christ modeled for us, he came as a servant.
• 42:38
  And if and if we seek
• 42:40
  To be like him, then I think we need to at least ask ourselves s the servanthood question.
• 42:47
  Am I really here to serve or am I here to dictate?
• 42:52
  And and I think I know uh early on you were you were asking me in this interview about if I could tell when I walked into a company whether it was it was a uh toxic culture or or
• 43:03
  not, or a healthy culture.
• 43:06
  One of the things I look for is do leaders ask questions?
• 43:10
  Or do they make pronounce?
• 43:13
  Because what happens when a leader makes a pronouncement?
• 43:16
  Who's gonna bucket?
• 43:19
  Even if he's wrong.
• 43:20
  I mean, or she is.
• 43:23
  but if someone asks a question, that's an entirely different way of approaching your work community.
• 43:29
  Um and so when I see a leader who's got all the answers, I know that's probably not anybody I'm gonna be able to impact or that's gonna wanna listen to me.
• 43:41
  One one of the shows that I really um I like watching, I don't even know if it's still in the air but is undercover CEO.
• 43:47
  It might that might not even be the title, but you know the the show I'm talking about where the head of some big corporation will go down and and pretend to be a a normal
• 43:55
  worker and and blend in.
• 43:57
  Yes.
• 43:59
  with the concept of culture I think just kind of going back, it's would be easy for the person in leadership to uh start getting out of touch unless they do things like that.
• 44:08
  So how w is that something that you'd recommend, is that they get in and um to the ground level with their employees every now and then?
• 44:18
  Well, I think we all uh have the right and I think we could exercise it to dip in.
• 44:25
  I I think it it would be hard for most CEOs, unless it was a massive corporation, to be undercover.
• 44:33
  Um but but you can have people that work for you that that that can that you trust that that can give you information, not in a spying fashion.
• 44:46
  but rather in an observatory fashion, which I think I'm I'm not looking for anyone to do spying for me.
• 44:53
  What I do need though is trustworthy information that tells me how healthy are we doing, what is our standard of excellence, what's our error rates, what are our what are our key
• 45:04
  performance indicators?
• 45:05
  Are we meeting them?
• 45:06
  That kind of thing.
• 45:07
  Um I need people that I can trust in roles that that I I know that I'm getting the truth.
• 45:16
  Because that's really it com so much of leadership comes down to trust.
• 45:20
  Not only do they trust us as leaders, but can we trust the information and the people that report to us?
• 45:27
  So I I don't know that I I think undercover is the best way to do it.
• 45:31
  I I see the novelty of it.
• 45:33
  Um, but but for me, I don't I don't know that you can go undetected all that long.
• 45:39
  Perhaps you can.
• 45:41
  Yeah.
• 45:41
  Um I I d basically it I I I was just using the show as a reference, but I'm just saying just even if the employees know you, just to get on the ground floor every now and then um
• 45:51
  and let you know, and l experience what they experience, right?
• 45:57
  I I I absolutely love um what uh what do they call it?
• 46:03
  management by walking around.
• 46:06
  I have to say my company went remote during COVID.
• 46:12
  And it it it was one of the best things that could have ever happened to my company.
• 46:15
  Now I'm not a manufacturer, so I understand it doesn't work in all situations.
• 46:19
  Um we stayed remote.
• 46:23
  But before we went remote, when we were all in an office
• 46:27
  Together in the western suburbs of Chicago, which is where my company is based.
• 46:31
  um, I was able to walk around and I would walk the floor and just say hello to every single person I met.
• 46:42
  Stop by their office, chat with them.
• 46:45
  I didn't do it every day, not by any means, but I would do it with fair a fair amount of frequency because one, I wanted them to see that I was there.
• 46:54
  And that I I knew their name and that I cared about what they were doing.
• 46:58
  Now they're not gonna bear their souls to me.
• 47:01
  I'm the CEO.
• 47:02
  They're not gonna do that.
• 47:03
  But what they are gonna do is see that that that I care enough to go out and be with people.
• 47:09
  And and when also when it comes to bonus time, I love to present those I'm bonusing in person if at all possible.
• 47:19
  Even during COVID, my son and I went to our leadership team's homes.
• 47:25
  and and we brought their bonuses to them and we stood on their front porch and we chatted with them and we handed out bonuses together.
• 47:33
  Now they knew it was coming 'cause we'd call them ahead of time, we'd tell them we were gonna do it, and we we're gonna stop by and we got something for you.
• 47:41
  And it was such an incredible experience 'cause we got to see their neighborhood, we got to see the house they lived in, the kids' toys in the front yard.
• 47:48
  Um it was it was uh a very meaningful human situation.
• 47:54
  And I think it went a long way with the people receiving it.
• 47:57
  Um, the same is true when we get involved in the business and dip in.
• 48:02
  We can you know, you can talk to someone and say, you know, this equipment looks like it's it's stalling out on you all the time.
• 48:09
  You go, yeah, I know, they won't fix it.
• 48:10
  Oh, well, I think we can probably get that done.
• 48:15
  Um, it tells it tells people you're listening to them and you you want their input.
• 48:21
  And I think
• 48:22
  Also one of the things that I I I've learned over the years about in a in a in a in a c in a good culture, in a curative culture situation, is when we ask people questions, it
• 48:35
  builds confidence in them that we think they actually know something.
• 48:41
  They actually asked me my opinion.
• 48:43
  That's a big deal to a lot of folks.
• 48:44
  Um, especially if they're not in the top leadership of the company.
• 48:50
  Another thing I learned is that people like to be given extra work.
• 48:54
  A lot of times people think you don't.
• 48:57
  But I remember when I got tasked before I was in in uh owned my own company, my employer came to me and said, Doug, we just had this great lead come in.
• 49:08
  It was a huge organization.
• 49:10
  In fact, you probably know him.
• 49:11
  They're called World Vision.
• 49:13
  Okay.
• 49:14
  They called me, my boss called me in.
• 49:16
  He said, Doug, I'd like you to take the lead on pitching the World Vision account.
• 49:21
  I felt l w wonderful.
• 49:23
  I thought he trusted me enough to do such a big important account.
• 49:26
  And you know what?
• 49:27
  We won
• 49:29
  That's awesome.
• 49:30
  It was incredible.
• 49:31
  Um it so people want to be asked their opinions and they want to be given extra work.
• 49:37
  And to me, that's part of excellence.
• 49:40
  You you you brought up something kind of in the in the mid there too about um you when you COVID you went remote and I that's another thing.
• 49:48
  Like technology I think can sometimes be a barrier um to culture.
• 49:53
  Like you'd have you have to do some navigating around going remote to keep culture, I would imagine.
• 49:58
  The other piece and I don't I'd love to have your opinion on where AI now fits into the whole culture conversation.
• 50:05
  So if you could just dive into technology a little bit.
• 50:08
  Sure.
• 50:08
  Um, I wouldn't be where I am right now sitting here talking to you if technology wasn't at the place that it was at.
• 50:15
  Um I what happened with COVID was, of course, we all had to stay home for a time.
• 50:21
  Um, but what happened was when it came time and people were starting to call their people back into their businesses and so forth, is we decided to take a poll.
• 50:31
  We wanted to know what our people thought.
• 50:33
  So we did an anonymous tech using technology, we did an anonymous poll.
• 50:38
  Um, so we didn't have the names of the people, we just got the response.
• 50:42
  Only eight people out of sixty wanted to be back in the office.
• 50:46
  And of those eight, they only wanted to come in two days a week.
• 50:52
  And um so we started we we dealt with that reality.
• 50:56
  We said, Okay, well it doesn't sound to us like it makes a lot of sense to rent a lot of real estate and have desks and all that stuff for people to to that are only going to come
• 51:06
  in even two days a week.
• 51:08
  And if they want to come in two days a week, we still have an office and they can still come in.
• 51:12
  But a big thing happened for us because of the kind of business we do, which is fundraising.
• 51:19
  So much of it is uh we are we we are consultants where we we deal in ideas and we consult with our clients.
• 51:29
  Now we do that by going on site.
• 51:31
  During COVID, we didn't go on site, we did it like this uh on Zoom.
• 51:36
  but I will say that.
• 51:38
  Um, what we have found is we had to set some standards to keep our culture in the use of technology.
• 51:46
  So we decided out of the gate, okay, we polled people to find out what they wanted.
• 51:52
  But then the question was, can we still get the work done?
• 51:55
  Well, we have operating systems within our company.
• 51:59
  We do well over probably 800 to a thousand projects a year, fundraising projects.
• 52:07
  And all of those have like a hundred and thirty nine steps and all this kind of stuff.
• 52:11
  Well, we have systems and we all do our part and pass it along to the next person.
• 52:17
  We we are self monitoring.
• 52:20
  So we know whether the work's getting done or not, whether the projects are started on time, whether they achieve their goals or not, and whether they they end on time.
• 52:29
  And and do they do they generate the money that it's supposed to, which is what we do is raise money.
• 52:35
  so we had an ability to monitor things, but the other thing was how do we not lose the good culture we have and how do we maintain our humanity?
• 52:46
  So we decided, okay, if we're gonna stay remote, then every single meeting is gonna be on camera.
• 52:55
  We all do it.
• 52:57
  We provided the equipment.
• 52:58
  Everybody's on camera for every meeting.
• 53:01
  Um now i if if you're eating something crunchy or sloppy, you're gonna mute yourself.
• 53:08
  You know, we'd we because we work across time zones, we have to do things like that.
• 53:13
  I know with my executive team we do the same thing.
• 53:15
  I'm on West Coast time, they are on Central Time.
• 53:18
  So we're always out of sync on meals and stuff, but you you can deal with that kind of stuff.
• 53:22
  But the other thing we decided was
• 53:24
  We still want to get together, and it's important that we do that.
• 53:28
  So twice a year, every six months, we get together as a team and we spend two days together.
• 53:35
  And most of that time together is really just relationship.
• 53:40
  We do use it as information dissemination.
• 53:43
  Maybe we'll introduce a policy, but we also do a lot of reporting where we all get together, but we also do meet staff meetings online.
• 53:53
  Um and literally I'll have sixty people on my screen.
• 53:58
  And um I I enjoy it and they enjoy it.
• 54:02
  When when I'm back in my office in Chicago, and I'll be back there next week.
• 54:06
  When I'm when I'm back in my office and we're having a full staff, those meetings are mandatory, by the way.
• 54:12
  The when we get the whole team together, that's not optional.
• 54:15
  You you do we're you're gonna be allowed to work remote, but when we need you in the office, you will be there.
• 54:22
  When when we need you at a client, you will be there.
• 54:25
  You know, we have standards, but but when we all get together, that's not optional.
• 54:30
  We will do it.
• 54:31
  And so we're all there together.
• 54:33
  I have to tell you, I'll be sometimes sitting in my office and I'll hear people arriving for that two days period of of meetings.
• 54:43
  I cannot believe the uproar.
• 54:45
  People are embracing each other, they're laughing together, they're just carrying on.
• 54:50
  It's so
• 54:51
  good to be in the same place at the same time.
• 54:54
  So it's been a real plus for us as a company.
• 54:57
  And and quite frankly, we've we've grown exponentially.
• 55:01
  A big thing it did for me, Doug, was it allowed me to create uh recruit talent from all over the country.
• 55:07
  Mm.
• 55:08
  And and because I had a great company in the western suburbs of Chicago, but try getting a guy from San Diego to move to Chicago.
• 55:17
  It's not going to happen very easily.
• 55:19
  And and so for me now I have the whole country I can recruit from.
• 55:24
  It it really opened the door to talent for me.
• 55:27
  Yeah, that that is awesome.
• 55:29
  Wow, I I feel like I I I have more and more questions that I could ask you, but we've we've been talking for all such a long time.
• 55:36
  Um and there's just been so many great things.
• 55:39
  There there there's uh anyone that's watched the this show for any amount of time know that there will be times when I say, Well, that's a rewind moment.
• 55:46
  Well, I'm just gonna go ahead and say the the whole podcast up to this point is a rewind moment.
• 55:51
  So go back and listen to everything that that
• 55:54
  that Doug Shaw just that said during this podcast, if you're looking to implement uh positive culture or change the maybe you feel like you have a toxic culture right now and
• 56:03
  you want to find ways to improve it.
• 56:05
  So the first thing is go pick up that book.
• 56:07
  The link's gonna be in the show notes.
• 56:08
  I think I'm even gonna if it's all right with you, I'm gonna reference that um book by Greenleaf um as well in the comments if they if they if they wanna grab that because um it
• 56:18
  seemed to hit home for you, so I'm sure it'll hit home for a lot of people.
• 56:22
  Very much so.
• 56:22
  In fact on Amazon it'll say people that bought curative culture usually also bought servant leadership.
• 56:29
  So there you go.
• 56:29
  Buy both at the same time.
• 56:31
  There you go.
• 56:31
  Um, anywhere else that we can direct people to to find out more about what you do and who you are.
• 56:37
  Well, I think I I think if you'd like to know more about me and and some of my writings, that kind of thing, you can go to Doug ShawPerspective dot com.
• 56:45
  Um if you'd like to know more about my company, um it's Douglas Shaw and Associates.com.
• 56:51
  Uh I'm sorry, it's just Douglasshaw dot com.
• 56:56
  and and there and and if you want to look at the book and buy the book, you can get that at Amazon.
• 57:03
  it's available in hardcover, soft cover.
• 57:06
  Um and I hope it's meaningful if you do take the plunge.
• 57:12
  Well, this this has been awesome.
• 57:14
  There's been so many great nuggets.
• 57:16
  and I love I love that I I think what doesn't happen often enough on this is the stories are shared.
• 57:22
  You actually shared real life stories.
• 57:25
  A lot of guests will come on and just answer a question just maybe from their experience, but they don't really dive into their experience and how that all played out.
• 57:32
  So I love that you that you were able to dive into that.
• 57:35
  Um I do uh about your company in particular, I know I want to have a conversation with you after this because I feel like
• 57:42
  I could there might be some network connections here, but um for anyone that's listening that that's a non profit that you might be able to serve, kind of what are your
• 57:50
  qualifications?
• 57:51
  What kind of nonprofits are you looking for?
• 57:54
  Well, first of all, I I I only work with nonprofits that I think I can succeed for.
• 58:01
  Uh the last thing I want to do is take people's money if I can't raise them money.
• 58:06
  Um so I generally will say no nine times out of ten.
• 58:11
  Uh and I'm not trying to brag when I'm saying that.
• 58:15
  It's just the last thing I want to do is say, Hey, hire us and then people say it didn't work.
• 58:20
  I I worked with Douglas Associates and didn't work.
• 58:23
  So I have to limit myself to who I think I can succeed for.
• 58:27
  And the organizations I do really well for, most of the organizations I work for are faith-based organizations.
• 58:35
  Um, folks like Wycliffe Associates, the Gideons International.
• 58:42
  I work for rescue missions all over the United States.
• 58:45
  Um, a lot of social service organizations, um, feed the hungry.
• 58:51
  I I work for
• 58:52
  So many different organizations, but most of those are somewhat historic.
• 58:56
  So that would be a criteria.
• 58:58
  If it's a startup, it's hard for me to make it work for them.
• 59:02
  Um so it it helps if they have uh and because what the fundraising we do is what uh is called direct response fundraising, it requires a database of donors.
• 59:16
  And that database is the number of donors that we've our sweet spot, is anyone
• 59:21
  Usually with seven thousand or more donors we can help.
• 59:26
  And our job is to not only help those donors to give, but to grow their donor file and acquire many more donors.
• 59:32
  Uh we we acquire hundreds of thousands of donors every year for our clients.
• 59:37
  Wow.
• 59:38
  Um well well thank you for that.
• 59:40
  And if if you feel like you fit that criteria, go on to DougTheshot.com.
• 59:44
  I'm there's a way to to get in touch with him um and explore that conversation.
• 59:49
  Uh Doug, I ask one last question every single time on this podcast and I s and I the reason I ask it is because I don't like to leave any wisdom left on the cutting room
• 59:59
  floor.
• 1:00:00
  So it's a total open ended question.
• 1:00:02
  What um advice, knowledge, wisdom, whatever
• 1:00:07
  Would you wanna say that you felt like might not have been said or that is just on your heart right now to share with the audience?
• 1:00:14
  It's always a it's a tough question, but I will say this.
• 1:00:19
  I I don't think that we are able to to accomplish what we would like to in our in our um roles as leaders unless we can help those who work with us and for us uh have a strong
• 1:00:36
  sense of purpose.
• 1:00:38
  And I think I see one of the big things we can offer as as CEOs or as leaders.
• 1:00:44
  in a company is to have people have a sense of what are you really accomplishing here when you work in this company.
• 1:00:53
  A sense of purpose will keep employees longer than high paying salaries.
• 1:01:00
  And some may not believe that, but I've seen it to be true.
• 1:01:03
  So part of what we do is we tell our employees, you are part of what is right with the world.
• 1:01:10
  Because you are helping people all over this country and internationally with international causes to be part of what is right with the world.
• 1:01:20
  So when we help people, people come to faith, people get fed, sheltered, clothed.
• 1:01:27
  They're
• 1:01:28
  That's possible because of what you, the employee of Douglas Shawn Associates, are doing.
• 1:01:32
  So giving people a sense of purpose.
• 1:01:34
  What is your purpose and your job that you can help pe your employees understand?
• 1:01:39
  I think that's a that's that's something that I would not want to leave unsaid.
• 1:01:43
  Yeah, just not to have a job but be on mission, right?
• 1:01:47
  Oh, so so good.
• 1:01:50
  Well, thank you, Doug, and until next time, entrepreneurs, keep moving forward.
• 1:01:56
  Thank you.