Good afternoon. Welcome to PCI's production workshop series. Today's workshop is building a plant culture, defining what a good culture looks like. This workshop is sponsored by the Architectural Precast Committee. My name is Nicole Clow, Marketing Coordinator at PCI, and I will be your moderator for this session. Before I turn the controls over to your presenters for today, I have a few instructory items to note. All attendee lines are muted. The GoToWebinar toolbox has an area for you to raise your hand. If you raise your hand, you will receive a private chat message from me. If you have a question, please type it into the questions pane. Also, a pop-up survey will appear after the webinar ends. Earlier today, we sent a reminder email to all registered attendees that included a handout of today's presentation. That handout for this webinar can also be found in the handout section of your webinar pane. If you cannot download the handout, please email pcimarketing at marketing at pci.org. Today's presentation will be recorded and uploaded to the PCI eLearning Center. PCI is a registered provider of AIA CES, but today's presentation does not contain content that has been endorsed by AIA. Today's presentation is non-CEU. To start off the presentation, I would like to introduce Scott Davis, Architectural Precast Committee Chair. Good afternoon. Welcome, everyone, to the Production Management Workshop. Today, we're covering number 10 of the series. It's a continuation of the Production Management Series sponsored by the Architectural Precast Committee. Today's presenter will be Kevin Martlidge, and he's covering defining what a good culture looks like. Today's presentation can be found at pci.org under the Education tab if you search production. Here's a quick look at the future series as we continue on, number 11, 12, and 13 after today. The schedule is March 15th, February 15th, March 22nd, April 19th. Thank you for joining us. Now, Randy Wilson will cover the agenda. Thanks, Nicole. Thanks, Scott. Today's agenda is similar to the other agendas with a slight modification. We will go over the PCI antitrust policy and code of conduct policy. We'll do a little bit of an overview of the topic for this series of the Production Management Workshops. And then Kevin and I will chitchat for about 40 minutes, which if you know me, you know 40 minutes goes by very fast when you're talking to me, and Kevin actually has more to say than I do. So good luck in getting done in 40 minutes. Well, we are going to try to have as much time as possible for questions and open discussion, so please send in your questions. The more questions I see pop up, the more I'll tell Kevin to shut up and we'll answer questions. So we will do a good job of trying to answer as many questions as we possibly can answer in the time we have available. But go ahead and send in your questions because Nicole will go ahead and get those questions to Kevin and myself. We can discuss afterwards and we can respond to people as needed via email. So just go ahead and use that chat box to send the questions and I'll be monitoring that along with Nicole as we go through the presentation. Most of you have read and seen the PCI antitrust policy and the Code of Conduct policy, but just to kind of refresh everyone's memory, is that PCI does follow the antitrust guidelines as established by our country and our states. In general nature, following these does not guarantee compliance with the law and deviating from them does not mean that the law was necessarily violated. But if you hear anything on this call that might infringe on any of those laws, especially talking about pricing, talking about fair profit margins, controlling sales, etc., then be sure to jump off the call. The other thing is we treat everybody with a lot of respect. That's our Code of Conduct policy. So whether we're online, whether we're at an event, we always want to follow the Code of Conduct policy. So let's jump right on into building a plant culture. A lot of our previous series, if you follow, we do talk about culture. We talk about safety culture. We talk about a production culture. We talked about different types of culture and I think it's important that we all again treat each other with the utmost respect. I think that's the root of most everybody's culture, whether it be personal or professional. But this topic really kind of got its nucleus talking about the surveys that we had back in 2019, which seems like forever ago. I think we're all going to live with this pre-COVID, post-COVID type of timeline. But when we were in Fort Worth, Texas, we put a survey together and culture seemed to be a big thing, but we couldn't really get our hands around plant culture doing these production management workshops virtually. So the premise here is to how do we build a successful company by defining a mission and a vision statement, clearly communicate to all within our organization and employees, you know, sharing the vision and executing accordingly. So I kind of like to give the punchline at the very beginning. So as we go through our discussion today, you all can start to think about how these affect your company, which is, you know, have a defined mission and vision statement, clearly communicate to all within the organization and share your vision and execute accordingly to everybody. The goals today are to define that plant culture, identify the gaps between perception and reality, and then execute effective changes within your organization. The key themes today also will be, you know, self-reflection. So I want to make sure that people, you know, kind of look at themselves equal to looking outward. And a lot of that comes from this resource, Principle Center of Leadership by Stephen Covey. It's a very old book. Mine's pretty yellowed. I've probably read it a dozen times. It's got a lot of highlights and a lot of tabs in it, and I refer to it. But I think it's a great resource that you all could pick up very cheaply at Amazon, and you can read it, and especially the Section 2 when you talk about managerial and organizational development. Our other resource is our speaker today, Kevin Martlidge with OrgSource, and I'll introduce him in just a moment. And then also for internet searches, what resonates with you? A lot of stuff on the internet you can't believe, but a lot of times we find things on the internet that resonates with us that we can apply in our daily basis. So it's really good just to spend a little bit of time looking at what's going on in the world, especially of business and construction businesses. So today we're going to define a high-performance culture, what elements are present, which ones are not, improve internal communication. Do you understand the words coming from my mouth? I think that's kind of important. Expand collaborative efforts. How many heads are better than one? Identify answers and detractors. It's not me, it's you. So that's the stuff we're going to cover today, but we'll get right to it with Kevin. I've known Kevin ever since I started with PCI because he's been helping PCI National with our culture. And so Kevin leads organizations through the process of creating cultures that support successful innovation and transformative change. He is adept at translating corporate and executive level strategic plans into efficient and sustainable solutions. He has over 25 years of service to corporations and associations. Kevin has supported both domestic and international organizations on the journey from strategic to implementation. He has been employed by Xerox, FedEx, Bound Business Solutions, and the International Society of Arbor Cultural. I don't know, I can't even say that word. Kevin is an accomplished speaker on the importance of professional credentials in the workplace and the oversight policies and procedures necessary to ensure that programs remain accredited, relevant, and defensible. He is also a certified Myers-Briggs practitioner, a member of the American Society of Associate Executives, and is a bachelor's of science in kinesiology from the Indiana State University. He's currently consulting with OrgSource, and OrgSource works directly with association leadership teams, providing strategies, data-driven solutions that reflect our deep understanding of association challenges and approaches for overcoming them. So he's the right guy at the right organization with the right resources to help us move this topic along. So with that, I'll ask Kevin a really loaded question here. You've seen a lot of different corporate structures, and you've learned a lot about us PCI nationally. So tell us a little bit more what really brings different departments together to satisfy customer needs and company needs to be successful and sustainable. Well, thanks, Randy, for that introduction, and it's a pleasure to be here with everybody today as well. And I've enjoyed working with PCI over the last few years and excited to kind of go over this these topics with you. So, you know, to kind of answer your question, I think there's three key things that, you know, I hope we can kind of dive into today when you talk about bringing people together in your culture. That's transparency, intentional communication, and ultimately trust, which we'll talk about. I feel those three things are key to breaking down, you know, not only silos, but bringing departments together and building a supportive and sustainable team, regardless of the industry you might be in. And the reason I think that, if you kind of think about your current teams and departments and your plants, and the things that perhaps maybe have derailed maybe a recent project, maybe created issues between departments or team members, I can almost guarantee that communication played some role in that disruption that you saw. And whether it be a misunderstanding of roles and responsibilities, the why behind why a decision was made, or simply a misalignment of understanding among maybe project specifics, poor communication in those cases can easily be a common disruptor among all those things and can significantly impact trust among members of the team and other departments, which ultimately is what we're looking to do as we bring people together and build this high-performing culture. And throughout my, you know, 25, 30-year professional career, I can count hundreds of times, which we won't get into all of them today, where poor communication, maybe a lack of transparency from, say, leadership to the team producing the project or the product, and the communication was ultimately, you know, led to a lack of trust among individuals and played a key factor in disruption of whatever project that was that we may be working on. And so we're going to dive into that a little bit today. And, you know, with that said, it's my opinion that building trust should be the ultimate goal when developing any team and trying to bring people together. And the easiest way to do that is by providing great intentional communication that's transparent and involved, you know, along the same lines of having clearly defined roles and responsibilities for the individuals involved. So all these things we'll touch upon in the webinar, but I hope that answers your first initial question because I have seen a lot of different environments and different companies, and those three things seem to always bubble to the top in terms of, you know, if you can really focus on those, it'll start to bring those departments together and help the team continue to move in a similar direction. Yeah, I mean, that's a lot of stuff that we continue to talk about at PCI National, and I know it's in a lot of the books that I've read and probably a lot of you on the call have read about how to, and as a parent, right, how to build a culture within your family, but also how to build culture at the work, at the workplace. So, you know, to continue on to that, and what we want to do, just kind of let everybody know, what we're trying to try to do is just kind of play off each other a little bit is that, you know, Kevin has this very broad view of how to build a high-performing culture from different types of industry, and then we want to try to bring it down to how can we apply that to in a precast concrete plant. So, we'll kind of play off each other on those topics, but the first question I really want Kevin to keep expanding on is that, you know, how would you define, you know, this high-performing culture, but what does good look like? You know, you talk about communication, talk about trust, but, I mean, what does good look like when you start to see somebody that actually gets it, understands it? I need to make a change. It's going to be hard to make behavioral changes within an organization, especially one that's been established for many years, or maybe you're established in your position for many years. So, what does good look like to help somebody start moving in that direction? You know, that's a great question. I think, you know, every company or every industry, we're all different, right? We all have different teams, we have different things that we're trying to do, different goals as an organization, different budgets, all that kind of stuff, but to determine kind of what good looks like, there's, you know, it's all about that understanding of not only the clear vision and mission of your organization, but also, you know, the roles and responsibilities of what everybody's, you know, responsible to do, and not just, hey, here's your job description, go do it, but, you know, making sure that you're developing that culture and that environment where it's okay to ask questions, it's okay to challenge things in a professional way, and it's okay to, you know, hold each other accountable because we're all here for the right reasons and here for the same thing, right? And so, what good really looks like to me is the entire team understanding what that clear vision and mission is, what we're all here to do, and then it's also, there's a level of self-reflection and self-understanding that needs to be in play as well about, you know, how do my actions impact those around me? And that's tough to do sometimes, especially as a leader because you have a lot of responsibilities or a business owner, a plant manager, whatever it may be, you have a lot of responsibilities and sometimes you're just like, gosh, I just have to make a decision, we got to go with it, you know, there's no room for question here. But I think, you know, really taking some time to self-reflect on how my actions and my communication style and my decisions are impacting those around me and how is that impacting the empowerment that the team has and their ability to do their job to the best they can. And so, what good looks like is that environment where it's clearly defined, roles and responsibilities are understood, and there's that open two-way communication that's transparent and intentional that is all focused on building trust so we can all trust each other as we move the organization forward or we complete this project or whatever it may be. And so, that to me is what good looks like and that can take many forms, of course, but you know, it's important to start with that clear vision and mission and that understanding of what good looks like for you in terms of those key things that I just talked about. Yeah, and with, you know, right now in our culture, worldly culture that is, where workforce development is huge, you know, people come in, people go out, we can't find enough workers, workers, you know, move from one company to the other for one reason or the other. So, how important is it that we have a vision and or a mission statement and how is it relevant? So, got those few questions, you know, up on the screen and I'd like you to talk to a little bit about it. Again, I come from the background of, you know, vision, mission statements are just words on a page, they don't mean anything. Once we walk out of the conference room, we actually have to get to work, but I think the more that, the older I get, the more I understand and see that the vision and mission played out on a daily basis can really make or break a company. Absolutely, yeah, and I think that that's a key point, you know, not only to have your vision and mission, but the understanding of that vision and mission all the way down through all levels of your organization, you know, and there's a lot of organizations I've worked with that, you know, the board of directors or the leadership team comes up with a vision and mission and they don't even understand it all at the same level and they created it together, right? So, you have, how do you make sure that, you know, if the leadership team doesn't understand, how do you make sure your team understands it? And so, making sure that vision and mission statement is clear and understandable and simple in some respects that, you know, even anybody outside of your organization could understand it if they were to pick it up and read it is the first place to start. So, that's absolutely key and then from there, it's all about, it's so important to have that because from there, then you get into the roles and responsibilities of your team and making sure they understand that and they understand, you know, all the way down to on a daily basis, what impact did they make towards that vision and mission and what responsibilities they have, how do those impact those and then, you know, in a great high-performing culture, they don't only understand what that is through great, you know, communication with them and understanding from their leaders and from themselves but they're also able to, you know, feel empowered that they can make decisions throughout their day to a certain extent as long as that will help them impact that vision and mission, right? And so, you have to really create that sense of empowerment with them and that's done through, you know, constant communication with them and performance updates and metric updates and, you know, having those frank conversations with them about, hey, you know, I love how you approached this yesterday or hey, you know, when you started on your first day, we start to onboard you, we're letting you know exactly why these things are listed in your job description and why you're doing these and why they're important to the overall success of the company and how they tie that vision and mission. Those are all things that as you continue to do and develop processes around being able to do those things are going to continuously help you build that trust and ultimately that high-performing, you know, culture within your plan or within your team. Yeah, we also talked about enhancers and detractors. I think that's a great term, I mean, because everything was great in the boardroom, but when you get out in the shop, all crap goes loose. So, you and I, we talked about, you know, the lack of commitment, poor alignment between the structure and the system and, you know, it's not me, it's you, it's, you know, he went this way, he went that way. How does having a mission or a vision that everyone, it's relevant to your company, your products, your service, your customers, but it's also something you all have input in, you all can get behind. How does that help decision-making processes and relationships with your co-workers and sometimes your employees? Yeah, sure. You know, obviously, you know, in a perfect world, if, say, you have a team of 20 people, you're all involved in every decision. But that would be great. But that's not reality sometimes, right? And so I think going back to the clear defined roles and responsibilities and how important that is, is that when there's decisions that need to be made, or a vision and mission is being developed, or whatever, you're bringing the proper people into the room to help make those decisions based on what their roles and responsibilities are, right? And knowing that it's not always possible to bring everybody in the entire plant in on these decisions, at the very least, you have to, when those decisions are made, you're intentionally communicating why those decisions were made. And if somebody says, well, hey, how come I wasn't in that room, you're being open and honest with them and say, well, look, we had to make a decision very quickly. I brought in some of the leadership team to make that decision. And here's how we made that decision. Is there any questions you have? Or give me some feedback on how that decision was made. And perhaps there could be some updates that we could make to it. But I think it's just very, that's where the intentional communication comes back in and that transparency is that being honest with the team about, hey, I know you weren't involved in this decision, but here's the reason why we made it, and here's the impact it will make. And we're not perfect, but we feel like we've made a good decision, and we'd love to hear your feedback, and let's move forward with it, And so I think that's where having that transparency is very key as you're developing those. And just being honest that you can't have everybody in the room when you're making every decision, but you're having the key people in the room. And as you're clearly defining those roles and responsibilities, people will understand, oh, I understand why I wasn't in the room on that decision, but I was in the room on this decision, which makes sense because it directly impacts my job. So as you start to build that high performing culture with those clearly defined roles, responsibilities, and that transparency, and all that stuff, people will start to almost self-reflect and understand why decisions were made and why they maybe weren't involved in those decisions. Yeah, and again, that's a great segue, even though as far as communication goes, is that I always love the why as much as the how. Sure. And in fact, as a manager of one, me, it's good. It's really a lot of times you don't even need to tell the employees or the team the how, you just need to explain the why and the when. Sure. So let's talk a little bit about communication. It's a key component to defining and developing a high performing culture, obviously. But what are some of the, dive a little bit deeper, and what are some of the communication tools that can be incorporated into a plant's culture? And again, this is so difficult because you have so many different personalities, and I don't want to stereotype construction professionals because I have the utmost respect for, especially the architectural forming people, what they can do is amazing. How QC people can just take aggregates, and pigments, and matrixes, and be able to make just about any color under the sun, I can't do it. So these are highly trained professionals, but you also have the newbie that you want to nurture and bring in. So how do you communicate to such a vast variety of personalities? Yeah. And I think, before I answer that, I think it's important to note that you go online, there's all kinds of communication tools and approaches you can do, and people you can bring in, and training, and all this kind of stuff that you can do. But in my opinion, the most impactful tool or approach you can use is to, and it's kind of a different way of thinking about it, but is to always provide your communication, whether it's written, verbal, nonverbal, whatever, with the understanding of what I call mutually serving intentions and context around that. What I mean by this is that, if you approach how you communicate with your team, your customers, your vendors, or even those maybe in your personal life, or other departments, with the intent that you are communicating with to ensure you're telling them everything you need to know in order for them to fully understand your decision or what you're communicating, you really can't go wrong. And it almost becomes like a game where I'm trying to communicate with you in a way that you have zero questions about my intent and about the why behind what I communicated with you. And so if you're not intentionally providing that context and reasoning around your decisions, or your communication, or the communication going between departments or whatever, then ultimately, if you think about it, you're giving that person the right to make up their own story about what it is you're communicating, or to make up their own story or definition about your vision and mission, because you're not clearly communicating with it. And when I work with organizations on communication, you try to get the point across that, as the communicator, it's my responsibility to make sure you understand what I'm saying. It's not, I'm just saying it. It's up to you to figure it out, right? That's not productive for anybody. And so how can you formulate your emails, or your letters that you might be reading, or your communication, or even your conversations like we're doing today, to make sure that people understand the intent and the context around that, because as people make up their own story about things, that leads to lost time, lost productivity, misunderstandings, obviously, unclear expectations, has a huge impact on trust. It's like, well, the way you said that, I really took offense to it. And the person saying it was like, oh my gosh, that wasn't my intent at all. Let's talk about it. Maybe I can talk differently next time or whatever. And so it really can have an impact on trust. But the most important thing is, you're communicating that and providing that context around what you're saying, and the intent behind what you're saying, with the thought of, hey, we're all in this together, and we have mutually serving intentions. And so it's my responsibility to help you make sure you understand what it is I'm communicating with you. So it's not really a tool, it's more of just the thought process or an approach to it. And it takes some time, but I guarantee as you start to do it, and you start to think about, okay, how is that person going to receive what I'm about to say? It changes your whole dynamic about how you're going to communicate, right? And it could even be different amongst people on your team, because there could be different communication styles that you have to use as a leader, depending on the department or depending on the person, the direct report that you may have. And I think that's where it goes back to one of our initial thoughts that we had about that self-reflection, is really taking that deep look into yourself about how you're communicating and how people are reacting to you, or is there a lot of questions when I roll things out? Is there a lot of animosity? Is there a lot of, you know, break of trust, whatever? Maybe I need to adjust things, right? About how I'm communicating those things. So- Yeah, and that's where, sorry to cut you off, but I think- No, that's fine. I think, you know, trying to put myself in the shoes of some of the plant managers and some of the conversations I've had with plant workers when I work at precast plants and big plants. How many times have you heard somebody say, that's not what I heard him say? You know, he said, do it this way, and you're doing it the other way. And I think as a manager trying to communicate through the different styles, especially with all the stressors that you have on a day-to-day basis, sometimes the words coming out of your mouth aren't coming out in the nicest tone. And treating everybody fairly, treating them all equally, knowing that they want to, you know, receive things differently because kids learn differently. We learn differently as adults. We have different visions for ourselves. So what's some of the tools that somebody could have that they can go and research to try to learn how to communicate to different communication styles, especially when that person receiving is completely different than you? Sure, sure. You know, I, not necessarily a tool as much as a book. There's, you know, Patrick Linciconi has a great book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. There's a lot of tools in there about communication, about how you can, you know, adjust your communication styles based on the people you're talking with and so forth. So that's a great book that you can reference that has not only communication, but kind of all the stuff we're talking about. He has a lot of concepts and things in there that do that. But I think the other tool is to, you know, put into place where you're having, you know, standard, you know, update meetings and conversations with your employees. And you're asking, you're not like going over like, you know, what's going on in the department and all those kinds of things, but you're having those conversations about, you know, how can I better serve you? How can I better support you in your role? What was my communication on that last email? Was that okay? Was there, it seemed like there was some confusion there. What could I do to better clarify that, right? And so I think having those follow-up, you know, or those opportunities to follow up with your team to have those discussions, especially if it's something that you noticed automatically that, hey, there's just a lot of confusion around this, right? So what's the Coney's one, that's kind of just a way to kind of check yourself and to have those conversations with your team, which I think are important to have in all of these instances. And then the last one is, I like to say, you know, hold up the mirror, right? And before you get ready to communicate, be very self-aware of, okay, what emotional state am I in, right? Am I upset? Then I need to know that, okay, I need to take a deep breath and maybe I need to communicate this a little bit. I need to stick to the facts in that case, right? Or, hey, if I'm really excited about something, do I need to jump into it too quick? Do I need to outline things a little bit differently? So, sorry, go ahead. You have a question. No, I love all that because, you know, we do tend to lead with our emotions and we don't, you know, sometimes we lose the messaging. But a couple of things that I took away from that was, you know, one, yes, you want to be friendly with your coworkers, but there is some times that you have to, as sidebar one-on-one conversations with them, get to know their style and let them get to know you a little bit, because it's a two-way street. They've got to know that you're being abrupt, you're being urgent, you're not being nasty or negative. Also, I think leading a conversation with, I know I told you this yesterday that things have changed. Because things have changed, our direction is going to change. I don't want to be, it's not me, it's you, which is one of the things we're talking about. But there are certain constraints that we all live by. We have customers and our customers sometimes get absent-minded or say something that we misinterpreted. So, you know, making sure that the people are communicating to understand why and where it's coming from, to try to build that consistency. But I think the idea of tying these two, first two topics together, yes, we have a vision, we have a mission. Yes, this is how we do business. This is how we treat each other. And so let's make sure we communicate in that same light. I think is the big takeaway there. And then moving on to the big one, which is trust. And again, trust comes in multiple forms, as you've taught me. But interwoven through cultures, always a level of trust. And it wanes, it goes up and it goes down. So speak a little bit on the importance of trust, how to build trust is really kind of the thing that I'm more enheightened to. And then what happens if you don't have trust and a trust could be, whether it be you against the world, i.e. you as a plant manager against everybody out there on the floor, or it could just be one individual that could be that one angry man that can turn the whole thing around. Give us kind of an overview of that and we can dive into some strategies. Sure, and I think low trust or lack of trust in any relationship or organization or company or plant, whatever, team, it undermines everything if you really think about it. And trust can take on many forms, but the key to building trust outside of the intentional communication is consistency, right? Consistency in context. Consistency is difficult to maintain sometimes since we're all human and kind of subject, like you said, to emotions, stress, making mistakes, et cetera. But being consistent in our behavior and decision-making process and how we treat people is a key step to building trust. And there's a great saying, I don't know who said it, but when describing trust, it says, trust comes in on footstep and out on horseback, right? So meaning you have to build trust over time through consistent actions, through transparent communication, through understanding those that you're working with and how your actions impact all the things we've talked about. You have to do those things and it builds trust over time. But the more you build that trust, if there's something that happens like a conflict or a misunderstanding, the higher level that trust is and how it's been built over time, the less impact it's gonna have. Trust is gonna drop a little bit because something happened, but you're gonna be able to build it back up and at a higher level because you're consistent on how you address those things. You've communicated about it. You have context around what that is. And so you're constantly having to show that consistency about how you're addressing those things and being consistent in your behavior. Because if you're not consistent, people are gonna start guessing, well, why did you act that way yesterday and you're acting this way today? And that was a really important decision you made and you didn't seem like you had a lot of emotion around it, but I know you did. It just starts to open up all these things where people can make up their own story about what's going on. So you wanna really try to be that consistent person and that consistent approach to things. And then I also think it's important to go back to that ability to self-reflect and understand that our emotions can get away or office politics get in the way or the day-to-day fires may get in the way and that may impact our ability to provide that consistency that we're looking for. And I'm a true believer with all the executive coaching I do and some of the team building work that I do with different organizations. I always try to focus on not only the team, but each individual person's impact into that and how can you continue to be consistent on how you're addressing those things. So I think those are the big things. I think going back to providing that context is also key because you're helping people understand that. And then when those emotions and things like that get in the way, the best way to be consistent that I've found is to go back to that vision and mission or maybe an SOP, standard operating procedure that may be in play, or a policy, or even go back to the roles and responsibilities because you can get through that emotion, get right to the facts and use those things as the reason why you're making decisions or point to those things. Hey, we had to do this because we deviated from the standard operating procedure and we just can't do that, right? So it's not about me being upset. It's more about, hey, we need to make sure we're doing things the proper way. And so you're providing that context to the individuals as you're talking to them. Yeah, and I go back to success begets success. A lot of trust comes in, hey, he's got my back, right? And success takes many different forms. It could be three of us went out and we had to get a task done. One person may have made a mistake, but we're all three gonna go in together and say, hey, it took us a little bit longer because we all made a mistake collectively, overlooked something. We didn't say, hey, Tom, the weak link over here, give me somebody besides Tom. We don't throw somebody under the bus. And I think I always go back to a couple of organizations I worked for is that we could say anything we wanted to to each other, but by gosh, if somebody else said something to us, there's gonna be a fight. I think that's the level of trust that I think a lot of our precast plants have. And I think that's the trust that we're trying to get to. And I think it does start with success. And it starts, is it bottom up? Is it top down? Is it middle out? I don't know. I think it's different for everybody, but I think it really does start with a nucleus of one. And when one turns into 10, 10 turns into a hundred pretty quickly. And it's not the bully on the playground. It's basically, it's more like a, forgive the sports team analogy. It's like, we're here with a winning culture. We are going to win games. You know, and to win games, you have to step, you gotta be there early, stay late, work hard, and then do all the little things it takes to be the best. And I think that's the consistent behavior that I believe builds the trust because you're successful. I'll also say that one of the things I really like is that what I think culture is pretty easy for us as precast producers is we already follow a process. We follow a quality control process. We're audited by it. So that process and how to manufacture products is a pretty easy roadmap to try to develop a mission vision that's a roadmap process to building a culture. Absolutely. And I think, you know, to your point, when to, you know, hey, we had a team, we could say anything to anybody. You know, as you start to build this high performance culture within your organization, you may see this already. It's kind of interesting that people start to hold each other accountable instead of a leader coming in and saying, hey, this doesn't seem right. Because they all have buy-in onto what, how they impact the vision and mission, how we interact with each other. We're all know communication is important. We're all building that trust. We're moving in the same direction. We all understand each other and the consistency that goes around that. And as things start to challenge that or conflict arises, they're almost holding each other accountable. It's like, hey, wait a second. That's not how we do this. We need to adjust in what's going on here, right? And that's when it really gets cool as a team and as a leader of a team. When your team is almost self-adjusting based on the culture that they know is success, to your point, success builds success, right? And so that's ultimately kind of like what really good looks like is the team itself that's holding them accountable to the things that they know are important that allow them to be successful in their job and then as an organization, so. Right, and then you're not micromanaging. You're not micromanaging. You're not subject to the stressors. You're not knee-jerk decision-making. You're referring it back to the process. Yeah, absolutely. Isn't it great? We can live in this hypothetical perfect world on a webinar. No, it's important to talk about because even if you can start to work towards, if you take one thing out of webinar, if you start to work towards that, it'll start to make an impact, right? And that's why it's important to talk about it because even though it's hypothetical on the webinar, I think it's reality. And there's teams that do this kind of stuff all the time and are very successful at building that high-performing culture and it shows in their work that they do. Yeah, there's no doubt. So the last question, so if you guys have any questions out there, go ahead and start sending them in. I got a couple already. So if you want yours answered, then start typing. So how can we impact our plant's effectiveness in an individual fulfillment by collaborating more effectively? You and I talked about this. I think it's so important. It kind of ties this whole subject, this first webinar together is that, let's try to get down on the plant level. We wanna be effective. Effective means a lot of different things, right? When it starts, people that are changed that word, effective might be, I got X amount of man hours to do this job. Did we do it for that bid? Effectiveness may be something that's more of a bigger, broader stroke. But it's also, I also like to pull it back to humanistic scale about individual fulfillment because workforce development, how do you repay your employees? When they go home at night and they're, yes, they're tired, but they can still go bowling, right? They still got energy for the family and they feel fulfilled. They accomplished something today and they can see their work and they know that it's appreciated. So, talk about a little bit about, how do you collaborate? How do you get a good collaborative culture working? Yeah. I think it's, it's not like a broken record, but it's the communication, right? And understanding that as a leader, you're pulling in the right resources to not only get the job done, but you're pulling in the right resources when there's decision-making that needs to be done, or you're pulling in the right resources when a project comes into your shop and you have to get it done by next Tuesday. Well, let's pull everybody together that's gonna be impacted on this and let's come up with a plan to do that. Or if you have to have that knee-jerk reaction because of a situation, or there's something that, you know, you kind of have to get in that micromanaging or whatever, you're being very intentful with your team and telling them that, hey, I don't like the micromanage, but this is a critical situation. I need your input very quickly. We're gonna make a decision and we gotta go with it, right? And so you're framing that upfront as to what that, why it's important and why you're doing something maybe differently that's not consistent with how you normally do things. So, I think the key thing is, the best approach to this is not only a top-down or bottom-up or however you wanna say it, but as an organization, as a leader, you understand what the key roles and responsibilities are of everybody. Your team understands those too. And so you're pulling those in and collaborating effectively with those people because you're so in tune with how they're impacting your overall vision and overall mission and the project that you're working on. So that's just going to spur really good collaboration because it's gonna be very effective and very efficient because you're gonna have the right people at the table, the right time, right? And then the other thing is, is that you have to, I think I come from a servant leadership kind of mindset when I was managing Xerox out in New York City or some of my positions where I was managing even teams like a hundred people or even volunteers in some cases, that you have to have that servant leadership and you always have to have that conversation with your team or that ability to talk with your team and those that report to you about how are things going, right? Have a little humility in it and have a little bit of empathy and understanding that, my gosh, that was a tough project I gave you guys or that team. You did a great job. You knocked it out of the park. I don't want to ever try to put you in that position again, but my gosh, you did a great job. What can we do to make sure that next time that comes up, we do it even more effectively and we collaborate on those things. So not only is it collaborating on how you might get a project done or collaborate on how you're going to strategically advance the organization, but it's having that collaboration with your team about really trying to understand what their challenges are, how you can better support them as a leader and what are some of the things that are going on that maybe you don't know about because maybe you're not out on the floor all the time or out in the production facility all the time. And so having that opportunity to talk with that just continues to build that collaboration and it's also going to build that trust because they're going to feel comfortable to come talk to you, right? Yeah, those are all key things in my opinion. Oh, well, yeah. And we, you know, I always look at the danger, right? Okay, I'm going to call in these four people from our plant because we got to, they're out there, their bed, their pouring bed is full today, but in two weeks they're going to start, one job's going out and another job's coming in. What's going to be the best way to bring this complicated job into your area of the plant? So we got extensive forming, extensive rebar, we got a particular, you know, finicky mix or whatever. How's it, you know, how do you get that group? Who do you call in? Do you call in the whole team? Do you call in two people? You know, who do you call in? How do you decide who to call in? How do you not leave somebody out? What happens if somebody comes in and says, I think we should do it this way and everybody looks at them and go, I don't think so, bro, we ain't doing that. Yeah. And then if it does go wrong, how do you not penalize and point it was his fault? And, you know, how do you build that kind of culture, one for all, all for one? Yeah. Well, I think it's just, it's understanding each other and understanding your projects. And, you know, if you're, you know, you may have a lot of projects that you're approaching them the same way every day, right? You're doing them the same thing. It's just maybe a different design or whatever. But, you know, at the end of the day, you're really making sure that that team is on the same page and understanding that. It goes back to that mutual serving intention thing, right? Nobody on this team, I hope not, in your plant or whatever, is there for malicious reasons, right? You may have that employee every once in a while that's like, you know, they're just not a good fit, their performance issues, whatever. You have to make that tough decision and promote them to customers, what we used to say back in when I was in retail. But at the bottom line is, is that everybody knows what their responsibilities are and you're bringing those people in. And while you may do something the same way every time, you're always having those conversations with them about, you know, what good looks like and you're owning up as the leader of, hey, we made a mistake, but let's change it for next time or whatever. And to your point about who do you bring in and who do you, you know, how do you point without pointing blame, you know, make those decisions. You own it as a team, you win as a team and you lose as a team, right? And you're setting those expectations at the beginning when you're planning a project or when you're having a follow-up meeting about a project that went wrong or whatever, that, hey, we're not here to place blame, we're here to understand what happened and understand how we can not get in that situation again. So you're framing the context of that discussion upfront, right? And that typically works and that typically is the way that, you know, you continue to build trust and communication with that team and you continue to advance your organization. And the only X factor is if you have that employee that's just there and out to get everybody or whatever, you know, you hope you don't get in that situation, but, you know, 99% of the time, that's not the case. And you have a team that they're all there for the right reasons. And you capitalize on that by discussing, you know, what went wrong and just being honest with them. And as you build that trusting culture, you'll find that some people even feel comfortable to raise their hand and say, hey, I made that mistake. I'm sorry about it. I'm owning up to it. Here's what I'm going to do to fix that in the future. Right? And that's a high performance culture is because people are self-identifying when maybe they caused the problem and are willing to raise it up and resolve it, you know? That's, yeah, that's maturity, right? When somebody says, I know I'm the new guy on the team and you all trusted me enough to give me a chance, but I screwed it all up. I'll do it the same way you've done it for 20 years from now on. A little tongue in cheek, but I got a really good first question for you, Kevin. That is, is there a certain way to fix a broke culture? Can it be better if there is no communication or trust or is it better for the company just to start from scratch with quote unquote new people? I think that's an amazing question for you. That really is. And that's, well, it might take another hour to kind of answer that. But, you know, to my first initial, you know, thoughts on that is, you know, you never want to get to the point where you're just wiping the whole team out and, you know, hiring news. That's going to set you so far back. And so what I would suggest is, you know, maybe as a leadership team or whatever, you get together and you really talk about, okay, what are the root causes of why we feel we have no trust? We have no communication, whatever it may be. Why do we feel like we need to get rid of the whole team and start over? Why is that even coming into our mind? And as you're doing that, maybe you're coming up with, you know, let's focus on one or two things. What are the root causes that are causing us to feel that way? And let's focus on those things for the next like 90 days. Let's put some action plans in place and be very transparent with our team about, hey, we feel like there's a culture issue here and here's some ideas on how we're going to start to turn the ship, so to speak, into getting the same row in the same direction, right? And come up with those things and then, you know, stick to them and really do those things and provide that follow-up and be checking in on it. It has to become a priority for you as a leadership team if it's something that you really feel like there's a culture that's taking away from your effectiveness as an organization. So that'd be the first thing. Let's identify what the really root causes are and try to focus on one or two of those things and see if we can start to see some advancement in that. Right? Another way, another suggestion would be, you know, come up with some key questions or key things about, you know, do you feel like your roles and responsibilities are clearly defined? Do you understand our vision and mission? How do you feel like our communication? Is it effective? Is it transparent? Come up with some of those questions and almost do like a survey. You can do it anonymously using like, you know, Survey Monkey or something like that. Do a survey of your team and say, you know, what are some of the challenges if you think about the culture in our organization? What are some of the positives? What are some of the negatives? And that'll give you an idea as a leadership team of maybe some things you can focus on, right? If you don't wanna go any of those routes, you know, I encourage you to have conversations with the employees and ask those questions directly because I would hate to see any organization completely clean house and hire all new because then you're starting over. And if you get to that situation where you feel like you have to do that, I would encourage you really to focus on your culture and have it something that is just ingrained in the onboarding process. This is what good looks like in terms of culture for our organization is you're bringing those new people on and you're staying consistent with those things. That's so key because you don't wanna go hire new people and then a year from now, you're in the same situation, right? So if you get to that point, really define what good looks like and make sure that those things are integrated into your onboarding process as you're hiring new people on. So I hope that answered your question. I'd be happy to talk offline with you about it too, some other ideas. Yeah, I didn't put your email address on here. What's your email address, Kevin? Yeah, it's martlidge, so my last name, at orgsource.com. It's all lowercase. I might be able to type that in as we go. I got another question here too. Can you give me an example on how to improve leadership and communication style when you see a manager and supervisors reporting to this manager with different styles? I have a way I interpreted that question. You may have a different one, so I'll let you go first. Well, I think it's, so if I'm understanding kind of the way I'm interpreting it is you have, you're a leader and you see somebody that reports to you or another leader kind of maybe approaching something or communicating in a way that it's just not effective or it's not productive or not supportive of a great culture. I assume that's what you mean. So if it's interesting, if it's a peer, like another manager, say, or leader at your same level, that's a different conversation than if it's somebody that's maybe reports to you, right? And so in the instance where it's maybe somebody that reports to you, I think that the best place to start is it has to be that understanding for them and pointing that, I call it shine the flashlight, right? You're as a leader, it's up to you. If you see something that just didn't seem right or was handled incorrectly or whatever, and they report to you, it's up to you to have that conversation with them. And it may not be a fun conversation, but it's one that you go into with intentionality and context, and you say, look, hey, I'm here to talk to you today because, I really care about your development and your advancement as a leader. And I saw something the other day in that meeting that just did not seem right. And I wanted to talk it over with you and then tell them about the conversation or the situation and get their feedback, right? And I've had conversations like that with some of my employees over the past, some leaders. And it's interesting, I wouldn't say it's like 90% of the time, but a majority of the time that person didn't really understand that the way they address that person or the way they address that situation was wrong or that it came across that way. And so just by having that conversation, it helped them to really understand that, hey, from an outside perspective, looking in, the way you handled that, it just didn't seem right. What are your thoughts? And so you're having that conversation with them. You can do the same thing if it's a peer to peer. So say it's another, say director in your organization, you're at the same level, same leadership team, whatever. You know, that's where the trust really comes in. And do you feel comfortable having that conversation? And you're going up to them and saying, be honest with them. Hey, this is difficult for me to bring to your attention, but I really noticed something the other day that just rubbed me the wrong way. And I felt like it kind of detracted from your leadership. And would you mind if I kind of go over that with you? You know, ask them for permission to have that discussion with them. They say, no, forget you, then, okay, you tried. But if you have that trusting culture and you have a relationship with that person, they're probably like, if it was me, I'd be like, yeah, give it to me. You know, what did I do? You know, kind of thing. So I think it's just, the big thing is it's important to have the conversation and to go at it from there and to provide the context and the attention behind why you're having that conversation with the person and have a very open and honest discussion with them and see where it goes from there. But at the very least, you want to take all emotion out of it, right? You want to be very clear with them. It's just, hey, I'm here for you and the organization. And I'd like to, you know, tell you about something that just didn't seem right, right? And have that conversation from there, so. Yeah, and we kind of tiptoed around this kind of extension of that question is we kind of tiptoed around this. It's like, what if there's a supervisor, you know, person in managerial and you're not? So on the org chart, no pun intended, the org chart, you're on the bottom and they're on the top and you see them treat one person one way, they treat somebody else another way. And from your view, your perception is someone's getting treated unfairly or someone's getting special treatment. I think, and again, I'm not a professional like you are, but I think it's very difficult for somebody in the bottom of the chart to step to the person on the top of the chart and say, excuse me, I'd like to have a closed door meeting with you. Can you explain to me, I saw you said one thing to this person, another thing to that person. I didn't quite understand the dynamics there. Can you help me understand the dynamics of why this happened? I don't know if that's the right way to say it, but is that something that we should, in a trusting organization, you should be empowered to be able to go to that supervisor and say, I saw some inconsistency in your style. Yeah, I mean, I think it really depends on, you hit the nail on the head, like what the level of trust is and the development of your culture within your organization. But at the very least, you want to have that environment where people feel comfortable. You need to go through the chain of command too, right? It's never a good sight to see, or a good thing to have somebody jump like three levels of management. If you have an organization where there's that level of trust, then great. But I always encourage people, if they get in those situations, you go into your direct supervisor and have that conversation, and you're following that kind of chain of command because that's gonna help to also preserve that trust. And there could be some things, depending on the situation, maybe there's some confidentiality involved too, right? That you're gonna have to deal with. So I always encourage people to go directly to their supervisor to have that initial conversation, especially if it's a level above them or an equal to them or a couple levels above, because you wanna really follow that kind of chain of command when you're escalating things like that. And then, the outcome of that would be something that have to be determined between that person and the person that saw whatever was going on or had concern with it. And hopefully, the ideal situation would be then that there's that trusting environment to where that supervisor could then take that to the person and have the conversation and provide that feedback in a professional way. And depending on what the situation is, it could be, I could take a lot of different avenues and a lot of different ways of handling that. But certainly, you wanna have that empowerment of people that they feel comfortable enough to escalate things directly to their supervisor, first and foremost. And if you get to that point where it's okay to go a couple levels, I don't always encourage that because I think it's great to have kind of that organizational chart and the chain of command, so to speak. But that empowerment of the person that feels comfortable to raise those things in a trusting manner with their supervisor is key. Well, Kevin, I appreciate it. And I started at the onset, we could talk all day. We will talk three more times. So what you see on the screen is the subject matter, the dates for our next workshops. The next one is going to be before convention. So we've got a few weeks to get prepared for it. If you see one of these topics that you really, really feel it's important for you and your company, then be sure and reach out to me at rwilsonatpci.org or to kevinatmartlidgeatorgsource.com. We would definitely bring you on board in our preparation for those because you may have some really good ideas that we need to cover. So if you have some hot topics when it comes to plant culture, please reach out to us. Don't wait till February 15th or March 22nd or April 19th, just jump on board. We'll be happy to speak with you because as PCI, I support you. So thank you, Kevin, so much. And I'll pitch it back to Nicole two minutes late. No worries. Thank you, Randy. On behalf of PCI, I'd like to thank Kevin, Randy, and Scott for a great presentation. If you have any further questions about today's webinar, please email marketingatpci.org. Thank you again. Have a great day and stay safe.

plant culture

Architectural Precast Committee

clear vision

effective communication

trust

defined roles

empowerment

self-reflection

collaboration

leadership