Creating and Operating from an Intentionally Authentic Culture

There are some people that make their work just another thing they have to do, and there are those that make their work something that they want to do. Welcome to Working on Purpose with your host Elise Cortez. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration from those people who have found deeper meaning and personal connection to their work life. It's beyond nine to five. It's working on Purpose. Now Here is your host, Elise Cortez. Welcome back to the Working on Purpose Show. Thanks for tuning in again this week. I'm your host, Elise Cortez. Join you live from Dallas, which is home base for me. If you've been tuning in for a while, then you know this program is all about helping people create more meaningful and purposeful lives and equipping leaders inside organizations to cultivate meaning and purpose. Elicits passion inspired contribution, innovation, and persevering performance. I talk with my guests to draw on their expertise and show my own experience consulting, speaking developing workforces across thee. Before we get into the program, let me give a shout out to our sponsor, rent with right to Buy dot Com. This real estate service offers a new way to homeownership and allows you to purchase at home when you may not be entirely ready. It's a great option if your credit is not in the best of shape, or if you are in transition such as divorce, downsizing, or relocating and unsure about the new area or checking out a new opportunity to see if the aligns with your purpose. I love that visit rent with right to buy dot com. Each week In these conversations, I hope you walk away with something you can immediately use in your life or work. And if I can do anything to help you along your journey, go to my website at a least cortez dot com and use the contact me feature to message me. Let's open a dialogue and explore what's going on for you, and I'll see if I can help you. Whether you want to learn more about how to develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused culture in your organization. You want to see about joining a catch fire online inspiration accountability, or master my immunity to nurture your own passion and purpose. You're interested in the Women on Purpose, Thought Leadership Somewhat and Retreat in the Portland Portland, Oregon Time are excuse me area September eight through eleven, twenty nineteen, or you'd like me to speak for your company or conference name you rate. I'm glad we're connected, and thanks for listening. Now onto this week's program with us to date. Right next to me is Adrian Court, who is currently the chief HR Officer with Alchemy, one of the fastest growing technology companies in the US. She is the co author of Bravely She Flies, sharing stories of resilience, and is currently co authoring Conscious Culture, Think, Act and Connect to Inspire uncommon business success. We'll be talking about the importance of carefully crafting your company culture, the culture compounds at Alchemy or Adrian works, and what companies can do to keep their culture vibrant and healthy. We're conducting this conversation on campus here in the headquarters of the Alchemy office in Plano, Texas. Adrian, welcome to working on Purpose. Well, thank you, I'm excited this fun it is final. We better thank our common friend here for bringing us together. Bruce Waller, if you're listening, whoo who shout out to you. Thank you very much for introducing me and connecting me. Company culture is really really important. It's part of what I do these days too, And you are in a very unique position to talk with this about what you're doing here at Alchemy that we can already learn from. It's real, it's magic. I'm here on campus. It's magic. But before we get into that, let's help our listeners understand what we what we mean by culture. You specifically, we are focused on that. So what do you what's your definition of culture? You know, thanks for asking that at least, because a lot of times people think that culture is this kind of myscal thing out there that's kind of fuzzy blurry. For me, it's pretty simple. Within the organization, it's how you think, act, and connect, And the thinking is how you express your culture and words. Acting is how you manifest. It's the behaviors that represent your culture and you're interacting. And connection is how your customers and community experience your culture. And because it's so it's so much, I like to say the water that anyone swims in an organization, it eats strategy for breakfast. Yes, yes, yes, right, really, it's really really important coevity to Peter Drucker, yees, yeah, it's so important that people don't understand the importance of it, and which is why I wanted to bring you one in health and get present to it. So then the next thing, let's talk about that. Why is creating an intentional culture so important? The purpose for an intentional culture is it actually drives your business results. And I actually, you know today we're talking about alchemy. But I just love to use many examples, but one I like to use as Chick fil A as an example. They are one that have been considerably intentional from their culture, from their onset. We can we can disagree or agree on their politics, but let's just talk about they've been fundamental about their culture. They'll be closed on Sundays, they paid the best wages. It's it's my pleasure culture. When you think of a Chick fil A, their average revenue per store is about six point five million. The next largest revenue for story is mcdonald'son about two point five million annually. Wow. Okay, So when you talk about culture, Chick Filas closed on Sundays, not open as many hours, and they pay higher wages. That it's my pleasure of culture translates into a significant differentiation in terms of literally oncommon business success. So I'd just love to use that one as an extreme example, but there's multiple examples like that. Okay, so that that brings it home here, that's that's literally putting your money where your mouth is and when when it comes to culture. So now let's distinguish when a company culture is not working? Well, how do we how do we recognize that that an organization might have a problem with culture. I think a great again i'm seeing streams is Uber of recently. I mean, here was a company that was just growing fanatically fast, name brand, and it was a culture that was let's. Let's was not open to diversity. It's fairly caustic, and it took some women leaving that organization talking about it publicly. From that point, the community, their customers started to withdraw very very rapidly from Uber. Now Uber responded very well, they did almost a really a complete turnaround in terms of leadership. They you know, they literally exited folks from the organization and culture first. And now look at how phenomenal Uber has become over these last two years. Considering what had happened, it could have spiraled out of control. That is a great example. Wow, So what's great about that? Distinguishing those two for us, Adrian, is that we really can start to see when when when culture does work and when it doesn't. So now let's get into thinking about first for like a newer organization, there are there are younger companies out there, so what were right and more and more coming, So you guys listen to this especially, So what are some guidelines you would recommend for a newly founded company to create the culture they want to live and work from. So the one thing that you know, this is difficult for many founders, right because it's intuitive to them, this is what my culture should be, right, but it's very important to translate it and as I all use the word to promote and protect it, and usually early on they kind of forget to actually kind of write it and align it right. And actually even here in Alchemy, which we'll get in later in this segment, but Alchemy, our founder kind of knew and instinctly what he wanted it to be, and it wasn't until a few years ago that we said, hey, let's write it, let's be intentional about it, so we continue to grow and scale. The challenge is if you're not like with that early on, it can grow without you. I'd like to use the telephone game as an example. We probably know that right that game. Okay, so when there's just two or three of us and we do the telephone game, the message will probably translate pretty well once you start to add fourteen fifteen to the telephone game. What the intent of the message or the message is distinctly different than what the original message giver was. And think of that in terms of culture. If you are not being prescriptive and describing what it should be, imagine what it's like after you hire two ten, fifteen, twenty thirty forty fifty employees. So I do I'd love to use that. Yeah, So that is a great, a great way for us to get our arms around what happens when we're not writing writing it down? Now, how how can we just willer quick on? Still the new organizations, how do you recommend they capture that is just a breathing document? Is it all over the walls? And it depends because some organizations it may be where we're working remotely and not necessarily together, versus we're in an environment together. So there are some things you need to think about. It's in the language that you use, it's in the expressions you use it is it should be consistent with your brand externally to your clients. So the for example, that it's my pleasure culture should be experienced internally first and then expressed externally to the clients and communities. So there's lots of ways to do that, as I mentioned in terms of your expressions, written communications, and then you know, I can go into we'll go into more details, but there's all types of way to kind of continue to reinforce it, and then you want to check and test it. You do that with your clients or your customers. How do they express what your culture is? Is that in alignment? What you what you think your culture will be or should be. I think about the language piece of it, just really quick. Is it's so distinguished. Do we do we crush the competition or do we collaborate with our with our with with our customers? You know? Are we? Are we proactive? Are we? It's just those words are so so important to distinguish because they drive the behaviors and they drive wickets, reinforced and reward it. Okay, now let's talk about a company that's been around for several years and maybe they are now in that delicate place where they're trying to scale and grow, and they recognize that maybe that original culture what really got them here today someone either needs to be changed or developed or matured, or maybe it needs to stay just the way it is, But how do they go about deciding? How do they go about deciding? So usually your clients or your customers will start to help you in that decision making profits by leaving or staying. Leaving or staying, that's you see a pretty good indication, okay, and that will come out in your your customer service results and your client retention rates. Right. And then there are many times organizations, for whatever reasons, have gone and evolved and the products and things that they offer today are not the products and things that they're offering now, and so that actually might require change in mindset of the types of culture that we need. Right, So it might have been something that physical product that we were producing that required that. It's my as our culture, and today it is more of a virtual experience, but you still need it to translate. And so those are the you have to build into exercises and kind of communicating. There's there's ways to you map it out, you talk about it The most important thing though, is listening to what people are saying about you now in meetings and client conversations in kind of the day to day. That's actually a great indication of where you are with your culture. Okay, that is great, beautiful. I hadn't actually thought about that whole notion of getting what kind of feedback you're getting from other people around around your culture. Another additional question we've just got from our Facebook book livestream from said I need be great questions IID is he says acquisition brings its own culture. So talk about how when two companies come together, there's the acquirer and the acquire if you want to say that. And I'm actually glad that you bring out that question because many times that's that can be overlooked and acquisitions are mergers can be ruefully unsuccessful because of the culture aspect. Yes, and taking a look at the cultures and many times keeping cultures distinctly different maybe the outcome. Actually, the Zappos acquisition by Amazon is a great example. I mean, everyone thought that Zappos would lose their culture, but yet even though they are owned by Amazon, they've been able to keep their specialness of their culture very distinct, and that was well thought of well before that final signature on the line to acquire Zappos. The other thing with acquisitions is really kind of thinking about how we're going to work together, what are those cultural norms, and also be very thoughtful just because for what works at Alchemy today, I'm going to charge in and tell you this is the way it is for you. Sometimes you have to really stop and listen. And many times merger cultures, I would think that I've never been part of a culture work where we're working on a merger and acquisition. I would think that would be incredibly challenging and really really interesting and difficult to pull off, and it is. And that you know, there's a variety of reasons why an acquisition is happening too, so that has underlying impacts. Is it because the company is failing or suffering, or it's been growing tremendously and doesn't have the infrastructure and sport. There's a variety of things that you need to think of in terms of just the underlying reason for the acquisition and merger. But then when you have that understanding, understanding the impact of the culture, and you know what you want the culture to be And with that, let's go ahead and grab our first break. I'm your host, ELISEE Cortez. We've been on the air with Adrian Court, who is currently the chief HR officer with Alchemy, one of the fastest growing technology companies in the US. We're conducting this conversation live in the headquarters office here of Alchemy here in Plano. We've been talking a bit about what is culture, why is it important? What can we do about it? How can we shape it? After the break, we're going to get into Alchemy's culture itself. It's awesome to stay with us. We'll be right back. Alise Cortez is a speaker and engagement and development catalyst. She designs and delivers professional development, leadership and engagement workshops and can bring her expertise to your organization. She will help ignite meaningful development within your workforce that will increase employee engagement, performance and retention. To learn more or to invite Elise to speak to your organization, please visit her at www dot Elise Cortez dot com. She would welcome the opportunity to help get your employees working on purpose. This is working on purpose with Elise Cortez. To reach our program today, send an email to Elise ali se at Elise Cortez dot com. Now back to working on Purpose. Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose if you're just joining us. My guest is Adrian Court, who is currently the chief HR Officer with Alchemy, one of the fastest growing technology companies in the US. She is the co author of Bravely She Flies, sharing stories of resilience, and is currently co writing Conscious Culture, Think, Act and Connect to inspire uncommon business success. I'm your host, Elise Cortez. So for this segment, we want to focus on the Alchemy's culture itself. And I'm here, listeners and viewers. I'm here in the headquarters. Adrian gave me a tour. The energy of this place is amazing. I would say that's another thing about culture is you get the vibe already and there's it's big open spaces, lots of natural light. So if you would let's talk a little bit about culture here, and first, if you would just say a little bit about Alchemy as a business, why it was found in et cetera, give us an idea of that. So Alchemy, let's kind of start with the foundational partner build up. So alchemy is actually the phonetical spelling for the word alchemy, alchemy. An alchemy means kind of magical chemical transformation, and alchemists and medieval times believe that you could somehow take primary elements to the fire, water, wind, and earth and convert those and combine those to create lead, for example, an ordinary element into gold. And so for alchemy, it's creating that gold level experience here for our alchemists and our clients in our community. What we do is pretty straightforward. So we do digital banking, so most of us now don't go into bank branch. We do online and mobile apps. We have one hundred and thirty plus clients on our platform today and nearly seven million users in the platform. We're based here in Plano, Texas, fairly unique. We don't outsource, we don't labor arbitrage. All of our all of our alchemists sit here and work together. That's very important for us in terms of collaboration and working and speed execution in terms of outpacing our competitors, which we are. We have the highest mobile app rating than any other of our any other mobile bank app out there. We were founded ten years. It will be August twenty first, so next week will be ten years started with our founder, Stephen Bohannan, with an idea, a small investment. And now, as I mentioned, one hundred and thirty six clients, we're the fastest, one of the fastest growing Texas, one of the fastest growing technology companies in the status Texas. We've now been ranked actually we just found out this week the third time in INC five hundred top fastest growing Companies in the country tech Titans. So it's kind of a unique environment that we're in in terms of who and what we are. And really quick what I would say is, I think they're doing a couple of things right, Yeah, we're trying. Culture is very important, yeah, absolutely. One is we have long term clients. Our average contracts are six to seven years long, and so when our clients are making a decision to partner with us, they understand that technology is always not perfect and that they really want to know who's going to be hanging out with them for the long run. So our sales team will say about eighty five percent of all our clients make the final decision based on culture when they decide to sign with us. Wow, it's very important for us. Well, and you might get into this later, but just for our listeners and viewers here, you gave me a tour and this. We're in what was an old bank building interestingly enough, ironically enough, and the vault is still there to help our listeners understand what's in that vault. Yeah, so you probably can imagine one of those big bank vaults with the big door that we'd walk in maybe when someone would keep all their precious possessions, you know, their money, their jewelry. For us, we keep only two things, and that's logos of our clients and pictures of our alchemists. Those are employees. So it's a physical expression of what's the utmost important for us here in Alchemy. And as I was telling a lease, literally have candidates come in and see this and weep and say, it's never experienced organization that could physically express, like how important I would be as an employee here in Alchemy. I love this culture stuff. It's so important. So let's get into yours, starting with the fact that everyone, so nobody's in the department, they're aligned with an element that's important to talk about that. Yeah, So when we talked about alchemy, where you would take the four primary elements fire, water, wind, and earth and convert those that makes gold. So for us at alchemy, we're each one of us in our roles to find by either firewater, wind, and earth. And one of the things that's really important when I share this is our founder Steven Bohanan. When he first started the company, he'd worked in organizations where it felt lopsided or you know, you work for a company, we're a sales and marketing different organization, or we're an R and D, and he really wanted to be intentional that not one element is more important than the other. But so for example, I be Earth and so HR accounting, finance support functions our earth and so earth holds everything together. But we also know what the dangers of our element is, which is if we're shaky, things fall apart. I love our for example, sales their fire. They create the spark to the client relationship and they know that's very important, but they understand the dangers of their element is they can burn us in our clients if they oversell or over promise. So each one of us understand our element and we unite to make one alchemy culture that it's beautiful. It's so what I appreciated about it. It's so well thought out. It just it gives people a place to stand from work, frump, think, act, and interact with and through It's I think it's stunning. I've never heard of anything like it. Yeah, well, thank you. Yeah. So let's talk about these I don't know if you want to call are these components or elements for our compounds? Are compounds? Okay, culture compounds? So the first one is carrying collaboration. Yes, see more about that. So let's kind we have six culture compounds and they are pairings of words, and these pairings of words are things that being consistent with us throughout the history of alchemy. I'm going to share a fun story. Actually, one of our clients who's been with us the longest was recently promoted to CEO of our financial institution in January, and as part of that promotion, she reached out to us and said, hey, you know, I've been with you when you were twenty five alchemists and now nearing five hundred alchemists, and the thing that really sticks out with me about alchemy beside your easing products. But what really sticks out to me is alchemy is your culture is rein consistent, whether you've been twenty five, one hundred, you know, two hundred, three hundred and now five hundred. Can I come spend a day with you kind of learn some of the things you're doing so I can take that back to my organization because I want to have a culture like that. So that to me is you know that that tells you right there, absolutely, it's brilliant and so and she will actually tell you that. You know, even in the early days working with our founder Stephen like transparent communication was out there. It was the product wasn't perfect, it was broken, it was painful, and she said always I would get the straight answer. It was never oh well or this. It was We're going to tell you exactly what's wrong and why it's wrong. And if a person made a mistake, we wouldn't out the person would say, hey, it's human error. I mean, it was none of that, you know, that whole like jargon that people try to write something. It was always so transparent commarification has been and then carrying collaboration of very important elements. So you were asking, so we have these six culture compounds that define our culture, and they're in these word pairings. And you asked about caring collaboration. So one of the things that's really important I believe, and we believe that Alchemy and any good culture is you need to describe what your culture means. So the whole thinking, So, Karen collaboration is important, but what does that really mean? So Karen collaborations to us is you care about the successes of others, right, So it's not just about me, it's about the success of others. It's connecting collectively with others, right, connecting on that human level. And it's also emphasizing empathizing with others and assuming positive intent. So while we have that big brand Karen collaboration, we help define what that means here at Alchemy. So what I hear a lot of there is intentionally utilizing and ever developing emotional intelligence is just one thing. Yeah it's great, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I hear. And so much what I see surfacing in the work that I'm doing around leadership and effective culture and communication is emotional intelligence. So the fact that you're really encouraging it here is beautiful. You talked already about transparent communication, but anything else on that one transparent communication is it's not only just some people think, oh, it's just you know, open feedback, but are open communication. But for us, it's being constructive not necessarily negative. Right, It's also we define it as I wanted to kind of think about cascading information too. So sometimes as leaders we forget our failed to share. So it's cascading information timely and appropriately and also communicating with integrity. So somewhere in there, then you must have some kind of mechanism in place to make it safe to talk about. We do that because I've been, I've been, I've done a lot of work with various companies where it's very clear that there's no safety. People do not feel safe to share what's really on their mind. They're guarded about it. So if you're going to be really transparent, you must have something in place, right, what is it? Well, it's some magic sauce. So the magic sauces we actually live the culture. So okay, okay, that's much so things that I've let you know, people ask us and I'm going to take a little bit of term, but people ask us like, what's what's your diversity initiatives, and so we're actually thirty percent female here at Alchemy, which is fairly extraordinary for our technology company. And they'll say, well what are you doing around that? Said, well, well, we live our culture, right, so we through all this people feel respective, their perspectives are appreciated. We do the right things right, and we also though we do test our rate our culture how we're doing. So every six months we ask our alchemists to anonymously rate how we're doing on each one of our culture compounds. Wow. So if we start to see, hey, will transparent communications going great, but you know, Karen collaboration or vice versa, we kind of keep a pulse of that to understand and then take actions around it so we don't lose sight of it. That is brilliant, that's so brilliant. Oh my gosh, aren't you glad you tuned on rockets line, ladies and gentlemen. But it's it's so smart though, and if you're doing it consistently, it's is brilliant. And then one that we get, well, you might a real fun So a lot of folks get real fun as one of your culture compounds. But that doesn't mean necessarily you know, keggers on Friday. But for us, we define it as taking time to recognize others, celebrating milestones, connecting with our community. So if you just look at real fun as oh gosh, parties, that's not how we define it. We define its celebrating successes, and it's real fun for us here at Alchemy. Yeah. So what I want to add to that then from the work that I do is, if you're celebrating success, most people want to make a difference, and if you're celebrating them making a difference, that's amazing. And they also they also want to know that their individual work actually is connected to the larger hole. And when you can presence that and articulate that, that's incredibly beautiful from people. And if that's part of your culture and your heartbeat, that's part of what I do to work with my clients to help them add in those kinds of activities to be able to get to that point. So that's gorgeous and I like fun. Yeah, Okay, what about courageous innovation? So courageous innovation, So we are we are a technology company, and we have to continue to innovate and kind of draw innovative thinking and continue to outpace our competitors. Right. The other thing kind of just altruistically, our clients are credit unions and smaller financial institutions, so they have to compete against the megabanks or not survive, and from us, it's giving consumers a choice, and so having courageous innovation to give them the tools to actually compete and beat the makeabanks in their communities is a big deal. So for us, courageous innovation means encouraging original thinking, seeking ideas, looking at emerging trends. But the thing that's really important about courageous innovation is that translating ideas into action because so many time you have all these innovative ideas and nothing ever gets done gets done. And I think we'll probably get into it, or maybe you'll ask you, but I think what's really one of the important things about reinforcing our culture and then actually having those discussions is as part of our performance reviews, we talk about results, but our everyone's performance review, whether it's our CEO Mike or you met our front desk ambassador, we all have the same six questions, and it's how did I show up? How did I show up as caring collaboration. How did I demonstrate real fund how did I demonstrate transparent communication? So that creates that connection of how my performance relates to our culture. Yeah, okay, so that that is that's fascinating, and it relates to this comment we just got here now on W four c C Wise Chat from Liz. She says, I've had jobs where I couldn't be open because of the fear of getting fired. Yeah. I'm telling you, Liz, there's unfortunately we'll see of people that probably feel the same way that you do. And Adrian and I are working together, well not together, but we're each working independently to create more places where you don't have to experience that. So and I've been in places that myself too, I have to so hopefully that's not where you are today. List thanks for your comment. Appreciate you. Okay, we have two more to get through. Yes, we have trusted accountability. So trusted and accountability is doing the right things, always right, So even if it may be a financial a financial impact to our clients. I'll give you a really great example. I mean I won't give names or anything, but the end of last year, we had one of our actually our top producing salesperson. We let him go and the reason was because he didn't have alignment to our culture even though he was exceeding results and our VP of Sales RSVP of sales Like for me, I was like okay, And he said, Adrian, if I don't take action, then how can I have trusted accountability? You know, like, how can I say that I do the right things always? So those are kind of the when you kind of think about, you know, the actions and organization takes that someone that we've all worked for sales organizations, been with stores where their kingpins and not here they're all we're all one. But how about that at the end of the year, the top performing you know, the culturally Adrian and the results are there, but the rest it's not. Yeah, I've got to shout out a celebration for that, because what I would see is if you would allowed him to stay, Oh yeah, he would have been a runaway train with your culture. Yeah, and you can't let that happen. So I think that's a brilliant story to share for our listeners and viewers. Let's grab the last one after the break here, Okay, okay, all right, let's grab our last break. I'm Elist Cortez, your host. We've been on the air with Adrian Court, who is currently the chief HR officer with Alchemy, one of the fastest growing technology companies in the US. We're conducting this conversation live here on campus in the headquarters office of Alchemy in Plano, Texas. After the break, we're going to talk about how to keep culture alive and well in the company and reinforce what you wanted to be Stay with us. Will be right back. Alice Cortez is a speaker and engagement and development catalyst. She designs and delivers professional development, leadership and engagement workshops and can bring her expertise to your organization. She will help ignite meaningful development within your workforce that will increase employee engagement, performance and retention. To learn more or to invite Elise to speak to your organization, please visit her at www dot Elise Cortez dot com. She would welcome the opportunity to help get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with Elise Cortez. To reach our program today, send an email to Elise ali Se at Elise Cortez dot com Now back to working on Purpose. Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose if you're just tuning in. My guess is Adrian Court, who is currently the Chief HR Officer with Alchemy, while one of the fastest growing technology companies in the US. She is the co author of Bravely She Flies, sharing stories of resilience, and is currently co writing Conscious Culture, Think Act Connect to Inspire uncommon business success. I'm your host, Alice Cortez. Let me just thank a couple of people who's just short up on Facebook. Debbie Martin Gillen, thank you for joining. She's my sister. Thank you for joining. Jimmy from the from the hood, Marla. Great to have you all Right, So before we get into well let's do this, let's grab your last culture compound optimistic perseverance, Okay, and then we'll share what we were chatting about on the break. Actually, optimistic perseverance is really probably the most fundamental one in the history of Alchemy. When Stephen Bohannon began ten years ago this coming week with a small but mighty investment, he had to persevere in order to get the first client and to things that technology didn't work and all the struggles that happened and that still happens today. So optimistic perseverance is probably one of the highest still for us when we rate our compounds. But it's basically driven to success. It's that metal, it's that grit, it's that determination. In fact, we actually have an award here Alchemy called the Metal Awards. So that's grit and determination. Yeah. Yeah, So hopefully it gives you some insights. I love it. I'm down with it. Okay, So you and I were talking on the break, and I'll see share the same thing you said that you the one thing that you can't stand about companies around culture is when they say customers first, as in fact, were some defining it is some dumb finding thing at Alchemy. I guess you'd say it's culture first. And so what we're doing here, how we treat ourselves internally expresses how we treat our clients externally. If you're not doing that internally and you've put clients first, they will never be first. Yea, our lives just turned off. I see us even better. Actually, well so too, peggyback on on that. I'm not going to say the name of the company and not even sure I remember the name of the company. I think I do actually who took out a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal saying just that where you put our customers first? Wow, well really that's you have to somehow come out and say that. I mean, I'm just I was and I've been environments right where a client could actually abuse an employee, right, but the client comes first. The client's always right, the clients this, and so then you become kind of in this like submissive abusive relationship you can imagine if that's how you know, And then then the client isn't getting what they want either, because they're just getting an answer that they think that you want they want to hear. Yeah, so its back getting results. Yeh. I'm back to Lizz's point about is probably driven from fear anyway. So yeah, okay, let's let's get into this. I really want to make sure that our listeners every time I do a show, Adrian, I trying to give them something they can really just take it a long way. My favorite part implement, right, implement. So we're talking about reinforcement here, So I want you if you would talk talk about some of the ways that alchemy keeps your culture alive well and in play. Okay, So one of the things I know you do is culture training. Yeah, it's fun to say more about that. Yeah, so we do. It's called our Essential Culture Training ECT. We have forty to fifty alchemists every month come together and it's cross functional, cross reporting. Just the group of folks who can sign up, and it's experiential. It's about an hour and a half to two hours. And what we do is we explore our culture compounds and then we challenge them too. We can literally say sometimes hashtag it's not real fun Adrian here. Sometimes you know, it's our hashtag trusted accountability. I feel like I'm trusted accountability, but the guy over there is not. So we kind of challenge our culture compounds. We do this fun working session collaboration. People who've never connected with each other before or only know each other through our internal communications connect. But the real fun, apart that hashtag real fund is at the end, we're a sticker company, So we have all kinds of stickers for all kind of things. They're kind of like badges of honor. At the end, when you complete, you have the six culture compounds stickers, one for each culture compound. You get to keep one that you think you exemplify, and then you have the other five to give out to others when you see them exemply flying one or more of our cultures. So that's one way, Hi guys, Hi Oscar. So hopefully that kind of gives a little bit of example the culture training and this year so far I had the stat before it's about sixty five percent of alchemists have completed it and sign up as about ninety percent of our alchemists by the end of the year for the future ones. So okay, so two things. First, let me just say that Oscar joins from Guatemala. That's where I met him so a couple of years ago. Thank you so much, Oscar for joining us. This is hopefully helping you develop your English as well. Thank you about that because I was one of the first I got to help and work with all that. I love that great memories, Oscar. And then second, I want to just call out that that what you're doing in that training is to really make sure that everyone really is living these compounds and to call it out when they're not, because it's it's inevitable that you're going to stray from absolutely and so having a system in place where you do call it out and it's part of it's comfortable, it's not considered, you know, a horrible crime. Like List said earlier about being in fear, that is incredible. It's it's fun too, and it's it's okay good and it's probably a little bit of work too. Yeah, I'm definitely and it is interesting. Even when I I facilitate a lot of these, I can't make all of them. But when I facilitate, I have to step back because you hear someone talk about I don't know, caring collaboration and we're not doing and I go, oh, like I want to get defensive, and I just have to let it go and listen and be part of the process of working with the team. That is so great. So we all have to keep we have to keep learning and developing. That you're another one that you do to keep your culture alive here. So what do you do in that area? So I think fairly unique for the size of company in the stage of growth we are in. We invest a lot. So when you think about trusted accountability, it is shares knowledge and learns and incestantly. So that's very important to our culture. We have our Alchemy University with thousands and thousands of courses available. Every Alchemist has twenty four hours of professional development annually as a personal goal. So you might have all goals this year, but you have that goal. Doesn't matter who you are, so you do have that goal to continue to learn. But what I think is even beyond kind of the just general learning. We have our goal gold standard leadership development program, which many companies multiple, triple, quadruple, a hundred times our size may be able to do something like that. If you think about our investors and where we are in our stage of growth, no one takes time to even breathe that we have our very own developed for us, a gold standard leadership development program focuses on our culture. It's a six month training program. We're just finishing up our second cohort. We're preparing our third cohort with twenty to twenty five participants learning every month, and then an individual coach for everyone in the program. How about that that's investment. That's serious investment. Not many can say that. No, I actually I actually think that I've heard that. I've heard the number like two hours a year for one company about was what they were willing to invest in for learning and development. Yeah, no, are gonna cut it? No, I mean serious, I have to get giddy about how when I when I first joined, I've been without coming two years, and within the first two months, I said, we really need because we're growing so fast. This year, we've had seventy five promotions. I mean, you know, just think about company in five hundred and seventy five promotions. Okay, I said, you know, we got an end to have an organization invest in this level of training and coaching. So we've had fifty of our leaders and high potentials. We'll have another twenty five go through the program. And I tell you now we have a waiting list. I mean, you know, so it's incredible. I mean I've been around so many organizations where where the employees are so hungry for learning and development. They're hungry for it. So that's just phenomenal. Okay. And then another thing that you do is around performance reviews. So how does I mean Usually that sounds like that's like a nonny work. It is it is. And as you know I mentioned earlier, so we rethought our performance reviews and by the way, there's a lot of discussion in the HRM community to keep the performance reviews don't Okay, I'm a little old school. If you don't kind of at least have it, it doesn't happen, right, And so that's the one we said, it's only on our culture compounds. And let me tell you it was a flip out. Everyone's like, what, like, it can't be ahead of a sales well, Adrian, I mean it doesn't relate to sales. This was initially with you, Okay, So let's talk about in what area of sales does not all the six culture compounds relate to Oh, I get it right, So you know that they got their performance center not but this is how their behaviors, how their actions are related to them achieving their results. And so again that's when we talk about intentionality culture. Can you imagine when you have to write how your performance was related to each one of the compounds and then rate yourself and then your manager and your peers do the same thing. So it's it's a way to kind of continue to reinforce it absolutely well. And what I like about that, I don't know if that gets into the peer to peer okay, but what I like about that is kind of like the three sixty feedback. I would love to have that. Yeah, I know it's hard to really do. Yeah, no, No, we were talking about the other way to kind of force your culture is through recognition programs, and well, of course we have our Pinnacle Metal Award, which is the Select whatever, but we have our peer to peer recognition. I'm telling you, simple cost, no money. Okay, So this is not like I had to sign up for some big thing. Literally, it's a program one of our developers helped us put in Google and it is so beautiful. It's literally I can write to Elise, thank you for today and for helping with you. For helping today and the great radio show, you certainly demonstrated caring, collaboration and transparent communication. Hit button. Immediately you get an email that says Adrian said this, these are the culture compounds you to express CC the manager and the HR team, and then when I get them great ones, I forward onto their leadership team R to OC. Wow. So there's no money, there's no it's just a nice little and gosh, I think we've had eight hundred of them sent already this year. Constant reinforce I love that. And then you mentioned something I forgot. You told me already when you're gave me the tour, and I've already you know, I haven't slept since then, like we say in Texas, but I've already forgotten since then. What do you do with the employee survey? Oh? So we have a we do a semi annual Alchemist engagement survey. We do it every six months, which is pretty out of the ordinary, but because we're growing so fast and the world is changing so quickly, we do this every six months. Besides kind of your normal engagement survey questions, we literally ask them to rate each one of our six culture compounds. And then we'll also ask is there something missing in our culture or is there something that hasn't been stated? Should be that it is here? That is here? Yeah, and in fact, we just had one come up and we're going to explore it. So it's called calm focus? So is it? Should we because everything's optimistic, perseverance, everything's like make it happen? Should we also have calm focus where not everything is a priority. How do we balance that with a crazy high growth company? So awesome? Okay, really quick, you gotta tell them about lunch. Oh right, right, right, So we provide lunch every day. Why we do that is because it reinforces the connection and collaboration. As a side note, I don't even have told you this. We actually even if you are a naysayer and like, you know what, but a lunch is expensive, and we actually did a study and it saved twenty minutes of time for every alchemist and it's actually savings. But that's not the original purpose of it. The purpose is to break bread, connect together, collaborate, people put out their board games. It's just a way to kind of connect and kind of express and it helps us with speed execution. I think I mentioned that we all sit here. It's I know that's hard for our different sized companies, but it was intentionally decided about three years ago that everybody sit here in Plano, Texas. So it's not the least expensive market. No, it's not the least expensive strategy on paper, but we believe to kind of reinforce a culture connecting together, ability to respond, collaborate. Being all here together in this campus is really important for our strategy of growth. Just brilliant, Adrian, brilliant, and we're really at the close of our time together. Already it goes so fast. It does does, but say in about thirty seconds, what would allegedly listeners with today? I think the most important thing is culture is how you think, act and interact with your community and your employees, and culture is something that you have to protect and promote. Wow, that was succinct. It has been so great to have you on, Adrian, and again, Bruce Waller, Thank you again for making the connection for the two of us. This is such a rich and important conversation to have, and you've given us a beautiful glimpse into Alchemy and helped us really get access to what can we do for our own organizations and start to distinguish what's healthy cultured what's unhealthy. Thank you for this opportunity to showcase we and our CEO will tell you we would just love for more organizations to be like Alchemy, just to create wonderful work environments everybody. Well, another reason I wanted to have you on for that reason is one of the things I stand for professionally is to help more organizations create this because right now, according to the GALP Organization, eighty five percent of the global population does not want to go to work on Monday morning because it sucks in there, and there's a reason it sucks, and we can do something about that. And so you've really given us, beautiful, real genuine access to your culture, and thank you being so generous for that. Thank you, beautiful. If you want to learn more about Adrian and Alchemy, visit their website. It's just alchemy dot com a l kami dot com. Last week, if you miss the live show, you can always catch a recorded podcast, we were on air with Paul Garrett at Austin Community College, where he returned to work from retirement. So I took the show on the road because I was speaking there in Austin, and we talked about the perils of retirement and how staying connected to the workforce, whether paid or volunteering, is such an important component of well being and longevity. His health declined significantly when he left the workforce. Next week, we'll be on the air with a partners scene talking about her work in conscious capitalism. See you there. Remember that work is at least one third of a life, so let's work on purpose. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune in to working on Purpose, featuring your host Alice Cortez each week on the Voice America Empowerment Channel. This week, find your life's purpose at work.