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Robert Richman – Have you ever noticed that many of the most admired companies these days tend to have one common thread, and it’s not just a great product? They have one thing that everyone seems to be talking about, despite what industry they are in, where they are located, or what they do. That one thing is culture. Culture has become a buzzword that gets thrown around in every coffee shop in Silicon Valley. Every CEO dreams of building a culture like Zappos, or Apple – where the employees seem to literally LOVE their job. But what exactly does it mean? And how does a company build a truly incredible, profitable, and unifying culture? Additionally, how do you as an individual figure out which organizational cultures are better for you? We answer these questions and many more this week when we speak with speaker, author, and culture architect, Robert Richman.
Robert is the author of the upcoming book, The Culture Blueprint: A Guide to Building the High-Performance Workplace. Robert was the co-creator of Zappos Insights, an innovative program focused on educating companies on the secrets behind Zappos’ amazing employee culture. Robert built Zappos Insights from a small website to a thriving multi-million dollar business teaching over 25,000 students per year. Through his work, Robert has been responsible for improving the employee culture at hundreds of companies like Procter & Gamble, Whole Foods and Amazon.
As one of the world’s authorities on employee culture, Robert is a sought after keynote speaker at conferences around the world and has been hired to teach culture in person at companies like Google, Toyota, and Eli Lilly. He has pioneered a number of innovative techniques to build culture, such as bringing improv comedy to the workplace.
“To build a strong culture you have to first ask yourself, ‘What is most important to us above everything else?'”
– Robert Richman
Quotes from Robert:
[shadowbox]”I love studying cultures that are cult-like. Not actual cults, because that get’s really scary. But I was obsessed with the Apple culture for a really long time.”
“The real key to creating strong groups and culture is that there aren’t a lot of rules, it’s just a lot of belief, principles, and values that can be easily understood and summarized.”
“The strongest cultures are not the ones that everyone would love, but the ones that polarize.”
“The tenants of a strong culture is that their is alignment and that people have all agreed, explicitly agreed, to whatever that standard is.”
“Alignment can be a dangerous word without a principal to align to. If you use alignment without a principal, what you are really saying is, ‘You better align with the CEO. You bet get in line.'”[/shadowbox]
What we learn in this episode:
- How did Zappos build one of the most incredible corporate cultures in the world?
- As an employee, how do you find cultures that align with your values?
- What works and what doesn’t work when building culture in an organization?
- How do you create alignment in an organization without setting in place too many rules?
Resources:
The Culture Blueprint: A Guide to Building the High-Performance Workplace – Pre Order Today!