 Good afternoon everyone 12 o'clock on the dot and I'm going to go ahead and get started I always like to leave time for questions and I just saw the last session and they were like I had to scoot them out So um, I don't want to lose any time But I wanted to welcome you and I'm always so shocked when I have a session that's kind of squishy And it's like not technical and that people show up. So thank you for coming so this session is why building awesome culture is Essential and not just a nice to have and my screen Keeps going on on me So Who I am I'm Nicole end and a little bit about myself. I work for phase two and If you see my title it says chief of staff and I just actually got that title and people have been asking me What it means and it actually has some relevant relevance to this session and that my prior title was EDP of client services and my main part of the job was we handled all of our I handled all of the delivery services Which included the project managers developers product people strategists it was basically putting our product out to market and Managing that entire piece of the operation What we found is that to make that even more Amazing is that I needed to take on some responsibilities around our people. So right now I now have our human resource department that's reporting in to me and that will start to make sense on why this title now Chief of staff and this how we're labeling it is now a combination of our delivery services and our people services so the intention of this session is I wanted to provide insight and awareness into why Why culture is so relevant to this topic of Drupal nowadays and that when I Actually started thinking about submitting a session. I said there's not actually anything. I really want to talk about and The only thing that was really foremost on my mind is a lot of what we're seeing in our business and you know phase two is a hundred and twenty person agency We've been in business for about 16 years. Thank you 16 years And so we've done a lot of stuff and so the last few years I've been seeing a lot of things around Drupal that I actually wanted to get out there and share I wanted to provide something around for perspective change so that I think a lot of people go into looking at technology one way and I want to provide another perspective for that and that Understand and recognize culture as it relates to strategy or things like strategy and skills development and the last is inspire You towards making a positive cultural change and again the context of this is that I see Something happening in the Drupal community and I think culture is as something that could really Provide some insights for us so I'm calling this the age of disruption and it's like it's like my little catchy term and that I think for all of us who work in the field of technology know that we're constantly being bombarded with new Technologies, we also see this probably some could argue in politics and and you know many other areas in our life In my experience as I said in the last three years. I've seen a lot happening with Drupal specifically and that I'm hearing it from my teams. I'm hearing it from our clients and most importantly and I'll just share freely we saw it in our bottom line as a company as well and I was like what was that about and and We're often finding that our buyers Don't really care as much about the things that we thought that they cared about and and I and there was also some Conversation by trees about the marketing buyer So I will cover that later in my presentation But again that we're in a disruptive state and I wanted to talk about that and that there's this great book That actually made me think of this and I read it years ago and it's called the dilemma the innovators dilemma Has anybody ever read that book? yes, all right, so you know what I'm talking about and this was written by Clayton Christiansen who is a Harvard Business School professor and He's he talks about this problem that I'm going to describe as a simple kitchen problem that I had So I had some light sockets above my kitchen counter that had went out and there was like three of them Like I had other sockets that were working in the kitchen. I had three of them so I called an electrician in and he quoted me $1,800 and He basically, you know sold me on how great he would do this how up to standard that they have the best practices Like the best life I would have the best light sockets ever and I thought to myself, you know, I Don't really value my light sockets for $1,800. I Don't that I I actually could plug some other things into some other sockets and work around that So I actually went out and found another contractor another electrician Who was doing some freelance work on the weekend and who came in and fixed my like light sockets for 300 bucks? That is the innovator's dilemma or one of them and that right now Truth be told that is what is happening to Drupal They were having some of that commoditization Happened to our beloved technology and so, you know, we've historically tried to tackle this problem And there's lots of sessions here packed rooms about skills development doing it better Strategy all of those things But at the end of the day, I believe that those things lead to Exhaustion and burnout and that people will ultimately abandon Drupal anyway because of it. It's hard to keep up with So I start with this slide because I went back to some of my academic roots before I did tech I worked for New York University for like 10 years. I was in the field of education. I was a psych undergrad So I was like, let me go back to my roots and like study this problem that we're having and the first thing I stumbled on was this quote. It is not the strongest of the species that survives Nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is most adaptable to change So that's where I started adaptability and the disruption is the new normal for us and because it's the new normal How do we get our people to live with the fact that the sand is always shifting with under their feet? We can't do that alone You know sitting behind our laptops, you know Just pounding away at learning new skills is not necessarily cutting it and I'm you know Hopefully I'll get some feedback and questions later on what about what people are going through as they're trying to Kind of work through what's happening but This is one of the biggest things that I landed on first was adaptability The other thing is is that I learned you know in my psych is that people don't like to change and that when we don't change What happens is that we don't innovate We start to hate our jobs We are not engaged. We start looking for other jobs If you're owner owner of a company or you're an employer your people start leaving because they're not engaged You know that our brands may take a hit And as we know our clients may actually even choose other technologies because of this and Then it may be and for an individual it may be becoming harder and harder for you to find a job That is your dream job or that you're getting paid the value that you think that you're like your worth These are all the things that we're starting to see kind of creep into our community and that again We don't like change And then another thing is is that we don't trust change and that we unconsciously believe that longevity equals goodness and that I Was doing all of this research to get ready for this presentation and one of the things is that I read this study that basically people Like things that have been around for a long time There's this 2010 study and I have like lots of notes on where to find it but the one that they quoted that was really interesting to me is that When they were checking with students when someone when they University listed that the course has been around for ten years or more people were more likely to sign up for it and So we get really comfortable We've gotten very very comfortable and think that we're always going to be around and that that's just not the case And then and then on top of it things may have been good or they you know for us At least at phase two we started to see signs of it because we have a lot of clients for some of us We might not quite know what's going on and not know that we have some natural resistant to want to change and Then also it's a little bit of an unconscious bias We don't even know that we unconsciously don't want to change and so we're resistant and we don't even know what that we're resistant So what do we need to do to survive? In this age of disruption So how can we change the organization when people inside it are naturally resistant to change? How do we do that and that's what a lot of the sessions about and that? The big word is culture I'm betting my stuff on culture and that I it it doesn't mean that all the other things like strategy skills development Are not important, but culture is the thing that we operate in and then I love this quote and it was said and it was by Peter Drucker and It's culture each strategy for breakfast and then I just I put a couple Statements on here is that we went when we commit to restructuring or constructing a culture that builds and supports this type of person And the type of person it's the person that is going to adapt and be flexible and try new things We need a culture that supports that and Strategy and skills as I said cannot do it alone Strategy drives focus and direction while culture is the emotional organic Habitat in which the company strategy lives or dies Strategy is about intent and ingenuity and culture determines and measures desire engagement and execution Strategy lays down the rules for playing the game and culture fuels the spirit for how the game will be played That's a big that's a lot of big stuff And so I would ask how many of you are spending your time in the world of strategy and skills development And not in culture and culture is like a hard thing to go at especially when we're so resistant to change and that We're not necessarily focused on trusting that as a technical community as a technical community We think that writing really really great code or whatever it is is going to be the big win And that what we're finding is is that it's not going to get you the gold star. It's not going to always get you the big client It's not going to always get you the best-paying job. It's just not and then I love this I just took this off the internet and that at the very bottom it says culture and I like the the Biology version it's a verb and culture maintains. It says tissue bacteria Cells and it's in conditions suitable for growth if you actually just put people In the middle of that statement culture is technically the Petri dish for which we Provide our people for that to kind of cultivate that growth that type of person that we're trying to Cultivate the word cultivate For this change Another way of looking at culture is how we show up together and that it's you know culture And I choose the word show up. It's because culture does not or showing up does not exist in isolation I've been doing all this reading also on metaphysics and one of the things I find is that nothing exists in isolation nothing And if that's true, we are always in relationship to one another and So the creation of great culture has a lot to do with the way that we are relating to one another in an organization It is that Petri dish So keep that in mind and when you work in an organization and within a specific context and everyone is a relationship to each other That same relationship translates into what is happening with your clients because you're then in relationship with your clients That same relationship translates into what happens with your co-workers on your teams that same set of relationships on how we're showing up Translate to how you're relating to your boss so it's like Kind of one big mass of stuff. So how do we move that? That's like that's why a lot of us don't want to work on this because it's like really hard to like ponder how to create a positive culture of growth for people to really step into so One of the things That I put on here is how do you show up or better said support a culture that helps us thrive and What really works and this is for us as individuals because the other thing is about creating positive culture This is not just the organizations that you live and work in Pouring culture into you you actually have to show up as an individual To pour back into the culture and the people as well So it's a partnership and that being contributing authentic creative supportive Collaborative committed open grounded are all things that support the building of positive culture What doesn't work is being resistant rigid closed resentful Entitled I deserve this arrogant ambivalent distrusting and I will ask all of you as well How many of you work in environments or with people who display a number of those traits or show-ups? So you can imagine People are raising their hands so you can imagine why it is so hard to create this type of culture and I have this like really great example and when I started getting into this years ago when I joined my first startup when I left NYU and Left the comfort of academia and decided to do like straight tech I went to work for a startup in New York City and I was managing an IT department and one of our jobs is we were supposed to We had all these servers located in Boston and we had 18 sites being hosted on those servers. They were highly public Brands that people you know knew so they couldn't go down and it was like in the first midst of the crashing of The internet like 2,000 bubble and so they wanted us to move all of our servers from Boston into a New York City Location Colo facility that was less expensive So I was told I had three months to do it I had to take my team get it done and I had to do it with very little money and I'm like hmm I'm always up for the big challenge. I love to like be the superhero. So there we went I was like a general I mean kicking butt we got those servers. We moved them. We got it all we no sites went down It was like spectacular. It was glorious and I'm like waiting for my big pad on the back and my boss said to be yeah It was great It was great. Got it done. Thank you got it done, but I'm still giving you a C plus He gave me a C plus. He said because everybody hated me He said they hate you. He said you have caused such Disruption in this organization by your behavior and your tactics. I Basically disrupted the Petri dish Even though I got the job done So that was like I so when I reflect back on that moment and I think about how I was showing up I disrupted culture and that's like a really big deal when it becomes it's it's It's a really big deal when you're trying to do big things and so although I got that one project done The organization that I was working for at the time was not as successful as It wanted to be so yeah, I got some servers moved got some stuff done, but the organization was not successful and That's where I had my first lesson in culture and so and that the other thing I would say about this list is that these are also a long list of values That you hold and so organizations as you're trying to foster culture You want to develop a value system that you want people to step into that's why values are so critical and mission and vision And again, a lot of us don't like to page into that. I remember we were working on our vision statement And that it was like a relentless Assault on me trying to get the the words of the vision statement Exactly right because I was like that is the thing that our values will stem from and this is what our people Will be stepping into and I know we don't like to discuss it But it's so critically important that people get this because it does relate to their day-to-day world And how they show up if your people are showing up to work not living their values You know that you're corrupting your culture so Lots of big stuff to do. So how do we do it the playbook on building awesome culture? And this is the best I can do to get it out there and hopefully I can answer some questions But this is my framework as I thought about the work that I've been doing at phase two and And maybe the over the course of my career I tried to kind of encapsulate it into kind of like six things that these are the to-dos So the first is to listen And and it's not just listening like simple listening like I'm listening to you It's listening to your customers, and I mean customers in the broadest sets. We all have Customers we all have them and your customers could be Another department your customers could be your boss your customers You know if your project manager your customers could be your developers Or it could be in the classical sense that your if you're your business and your customers could be actual like real clients And so it's like really listening to what they're saying to you And that's hard That is really hard and it's and you know, this is not a Workshop on listening skills, and I would recommend anybody if they feel that they have any listening issues to definitely do I call it generous listening or There's a bunch of stuff I even have something that I call create listening how do you create listening with people but listening is very very big You've got to hear what people are telling you and what they are saying so that you can be in lockstep and Connected in the Petri dish because if you are not listening There is probably chaos in the peak redish the Petri dish And this goes before both individuals and for organizations The next is fostering trust and this is huge and again, it's another one of those squishy terms How do you foster trust? ouch, how do you do that and And that you know, you know, we've struggled with that conversation on how you actually really develop it and it and again It's creating a conversation With individuals and people and some of them are like being your word some of them are being authentic some of it's being honest Again all the soft-skill stuff that people don't like to talk about or do because it's hard but you've got to have a trusting organization and then a part of that also is creating space and It could be just you as an individual creating space for the people around you to take risk and They fail and you not criticize them. That's hard So creating trust and the other thing is is that under risk-taking you have to give permission to people for people to do that Is you have to tell them actually very Straightforwardly that it is okay to make a mistake or it is okay to fail Because you took a risk that you tried How crushing is it to an organizational culture that where people are actually trying to take a risk? And then you call them out and you critique them and you criticize them and crush their soul Where do you think your trust is gonna go? Not very far So this is the second big thing About creating awesome culture is trust The third is cultivating leadership and leadership is you know when I talked about values and vision Even though it's not a big part of this presentation leaders are the folks and it's not managers There's a there's a distinction between me leaders are the people who take your vision and your values and Spread it across your organization. They are the cultural ambassadors They are the folks who are creating space Cultural space for everyone else to step into so if you're an organization that wants to create trust and Foster innovation you need leadership to actually create that Because it's not a checklist. It's not a task list It's a leadership question and leaders create context for people to step into and And that again most leadership programs and organizations I will actually most organizations don't even have a leadership program that I've come across But if you have a leadership program It's like what are they up to are they creating an environment and a culture for people to actually do the things that need To be done to make a trusting creative Amazing place for people to work so you can really innovate That is leadership and the other thing about leaders and fostering great leaders Is that they're the people who are also going to help your organization scale because remember strategy? culture each strategy for breakfast that statement is It's to scale to scale what you're doing you need that that context for people to step into because remember If we're in an age of disruption and people are becoming exhausted They need to get reinspired We need to make it look shiny and new again. We need to make it exciting And that that's really leadership that comes in and helps and does that for an organization The next one is mentorship which is related to leadership But mentorship is very specific and I think it has a lot of meaning in the technical community because there are things that you can Like go take a course for you there are things you can like You know look on the internet, but mentorship is is big especially when the skill set is Very difficult and so for a long time And I will mention his name here We had this guy named Steven Merrill who was like the the most the most of most Around dev ops and then he had very specific skills that you just don't go to a class to take and So you have to get those people mentoring The folks who don't know as much and guess what the folks who are mentoring or the people who should be mentoring They probably don't have a lot of time They may not even have a lot of interest So it is the cultural context to get them excited so that they love mentoring they love passing their knowledge on and Here's the thing sometimes you just even have to like rip it out of their like cold hands and Force them you have to give them the time and the in the space to actually do the real mentoring It is critical critical critical to your organization that there's real mentoring in the organization And it could be formal or it can be informal, but you can actually look at the state of your organization And is it growing or scaling? Or as you as an individual are you growing in scaling? Do you have a mentor? Do you have someone kind of walking you through the path and And the other thing is is that this is also really big for diversity issues I mean people of color and women walk into organizations and often don't have anybody to grab at To teach them to show them the way So mentorship is critical and and so I put that on there because I think sometimes people Overlook it the next on the list is professional development Again, I'll speak about our own organization is that because we banged our head against strategy Like everybody else for a long time and skills development thinking that the answer to our growth problem was a strategy problem, and it's not not only Professional development is huge for us and We've taken a look at it again, and we've read it. We've re Reenvisioned it and so this year our professional development program is being outlined in like three areas So we have a tier one which is tier one is basically everything That everyone in the company needs to know or everyone in the organization needs to know and it could be anything from Value and vision down to how do you log a JIRA ticket if everyone in your organization needs to know How to log a JIRA ticket that everyone in the organization needs some kind of professional development And you need some way to make sure that everybody knows how to do that if Values are big for you because you want to create the culture That we're talking about you need to make sure everybody knows your values and That they're not to slapped up on some website or some internet for people to go dig and look at that They know how to actually really live those values, and are you actually having them show up that way? the second tier in our professional development program is more career-specific so our project managers will have a track our Strategists will have a track our developers will have a track, and they're very specific and we have Programs being developed for each of Those tracks, but then we have tracks like soft skills because soft skills play across our sales people They play across our project management staff. They play across our strategies They play across like all the people who are like kind of doing the back-and-forth with our clients So we're looking at all the things that people need to know for career specific development The other thing there is that a lot of this is now being driven by our listening Not just what people think that they want to do It's by what we hear that our market wants So if you're gonna make a huge investment in professional development You don't always have the dollars to do it. So you better make sure that it's like right on target for what people are really asking for and Then the third tier Is leadership and that's a hard one to describe How do you actually train or develop leadership and that's very complicated and I can also do a whole session on that But we have tiered our professional development at three layers and that's how we're looking at it All I'll say is is that if you're looking to make a big cultural change Professional development is critical because if in fact we are being disrupted as I started at the very beginning We need to have our people make a shift into new ways of thinking into new ways of being and to like You need to put the dollars and the time there to get your people there And and that's hard because not everybody gets that Another big part of this is how are we doing and this is for both Individuals and organizations culture must be monitored to understand the health of the engagement of the individuals in the organization it must be monitored and being monitored is hard and Feedback and surveying are the techniques that I like to use and so creating a healthy space for Feedback and you know, how many of you like to have feedback? Oh, okay. What about when it's not great? Very open group, I love it Not everyone is so calm that not everyone is so open to having feedback. That's a little rough Um, but creating an organization that creates and fosters healthy feedback is Game changer Also surveying is great because not everybody will be able to get a chance like an organization itself Like you may get feedback and for performance reviews, but how is your organization doing? How do you find out how that's doing? So we we launched this huge survey to our entire company to find out how we were doing a few months ago That was fun Because it was anonymous So if you really want to know how you're doing Ask for feedback Ed survey and even survey anonymously so that you can find out what people actually think and how you're doing and how you're As you start to kind of outline what kind of culture you want You need to you need to hear about it. It's kind of a cycle so that you can it's iterative It's like it is like software development It's an iterative building an awesome culture is iterative and you need to constantly improve upon it And last but not least in my playbook is money recognition and appreciation And I see this as largely an organizational function on building awesome culture and that um I think sometimes we forget how important it is to show appreciation Uh and recognition Even when You know, it may not be that great that the performance may not have been that great to keep people motivated And to know that they're appreciated It's like a big deal and that the last thing that I would say on this It's like, you know putting your money where your mouth is It's it's not just words that you're saying when when you pay people or bonus them or incentivize them like It's using all three of these things in a very How should I weigh a thoughtful manner To get the best out of your people And to get the best organizational culture so that people are like really in it with you and so I wanted to leave a couple of things in terms of organizational takeaways and then I just wanted to open it up for questions If you're an organization, I would ask yourself how resilient are your people and teams? Because again, if we're in disruption and that the disruption causes exhaustion and people are having to constantly It's like a hamster wheel constant hamster wheel. How do you? How resilient are your people? second question being as I said before being Being adaptable is exhausting and how do you prepare the people for this level of fatigue? Which is where the mentorship professional development Um All of that stuff comes in and there's even more Um Do you have an organizational vision that inspires your people? Are you inspired? Inspiration goes a long way When you're inspired, how long will you work? How long like it's like it's amazing when you're inspired And that it is possible to create inspirational culture for people to actually be a part of To do the big things And the last is what is your level of investment? What is level of investment is your organization willing to make in leadership and professional development? These are two areas that I find organizations fall short all the time All the time they may not even have a leadership program People may not even know the difference between leadership and management. They're like just manage But it's not really that's not leadership. And so is there really even a program and this stuff does cost time and money So it's a big deal When we start to talk about organizational or cultural change That we get some answers to those questions as an organization And the other thing is uh, there are individual takeaways and as I said before they were there are This is a partnership. It's the organization and the individuals Is as an individual to get yourself ready for this is build your own resilience by taking care of yourself I don't know how many developers That I watched over the years work themself to death I cannot say that like there were times like in our history where we had to go through our time sheets and look Who was just like Overworking like just like it was not healthy You cannot sustain that So as an individual this is a marathon. This is not a sprit So you've got to learn to take care of yourself And in this community in particular, I have seen a lot of people not take care of themselves Which has led to burnout and led them to leave Drupal because of this The second thing is get clear on the impact you want to make If you're going to join the petri dish You need to get clear about what you want to do in the petri dish In this cultural context And so when you go into an organization or whatever it is that you're doing You have to have some sense of your purpose When you don't have a sense of your purpose and it's all about the money guess how inspired you'll stay for how long What five minutes a year It doesn't last very long The third thing is everyone as I said before everyone has customers Know what they want and those customers Can be your boss. They could be your teammate. They can be your actual clients But get keenly aware of what they want it's get listening to what they're saying and sometimes getting listening means getting feedback Doing the research reading the internet seeing what people are buying seeing what skills are hot all of that Making yourself transferable and valuable wherever you go I think we get the transferable we look for the transferable, but we don't necessarily look for let make ourselves valuable And sometimes making ourselves valuable is doing things that we don't want to do or being in compromise with the organization or in compromise with your teams And then showing up being open and showing up being excited and enthusiastic But instead sometimes we're like Entitled and I'm that's beneath me and I'm resentful and like whatever So making yourself valuable often means showing up a different way than you may be showing up And that's hard to change And the other thing I would put on this last thing and it's one of my favorite books Called the four agreements nothing technical here and it says don't think don't take things personally None of this is personal nobody woke up In the morning and said i'm gonna screw you over like most it does the world doesn't generally operate the way even though some of us believe it does It just doesn't operate that way and when we don't take things personally we don't build resentments And stories to ourselves about why things are the way they are Because when we start doing that We then can't show up in our teams and our within our clients and our organizations as a positive cultural change When we're taking things so personally So with that said Wow, I did talk for that long I was going to say did you guys have any questions and I just spewed it out there? It was a lot of information and I could probably talk for hours on this stuff But I tried to encapsulate it as best as I could so at this point I would ask any questions No, thank you Nicole Okay, so I think I'm understanding it. So the best way I think to get in there and ask is always open-ended questions And and open-ended question is that you're not putting anything leading into it And and I think and then you just keep asking those and you keep asking those And then the other thing is is not putting any of your own story into it Like be genuinely interested in what they have to say and be open to what it is I mean, how many of us go into a conversation With the conversation already going on in our head And already preparing our answers and already have our position laid out So it's I would say the the best recommendation is being open and like shutting your brain off a little bit and letting people actually Like letting them in letting their thoughts in and taking it in and hearing what they really have to say And it's and it's just open-ended questions. Oh, good. Hi. I have a question. So near the end you mentioned Making yourself transferable and valuable and gave positive examples of being positively engaged But how do you prevent the negative side of it of tying in some earlier comments about Um, you know mentoring but it can tend to one way to make yourself more valuable Is to hoard your skills and not share and not be collaborative. So how do you fight that? so How do we fight the people who do that or how do we fight the desire to do it for ourself The desire to do it. Okay. Um, I would say the desire to do it for ourself is Probably one of the things that all the hoarders that I've known and I've known a lot of hoarders because I managed an IT department for a lot of years and all the hoarders that I saw were actually not ultimately very successful and that They are being disrupted quite quickly and that on our side of the business as we go in We're running up against the hoard. I'll call them the hoarder of the of the information And They're marketing departments. They are trying to dig them out Like in a real way. So I think it's a dying breed and so I would just recommend anybody who's in here hoarding And wanting to like maintain their power by holding on to information. It doesn't work long term It just doesn't So that's the first thing how you stop that in an organization Um, there's something what I find and this gets a little bit more in the squishy side of things is that when When you are showing up as I call it the best version of yourself When you are being positive and you're being authentic It's contagious It is absolutely contagious People cannot Help but want to be with that They can't help it. So they may for a while resist you, but if you just keep showing up in that like positive open authentic Innovative like I'm I'm being that person Even though you have the crazy people and the negativity like if you keep at that day after day People start to really come around and it's actually shocking How quickly they they will it's shocking But we just have such an urge that when people do that we want to like retaliate or or Get fearful or hide out or There's a lot of things that we do So I would say the the best antidote Is to show up the way that I labeled and that ultimately that stuff starts to work itself out Because you get other people want to do that because you're gonna on this journey other people are going to join you So you may start as an individual. So when I I've done leadership Training and I show this video and they call it like the lone dancer I don't know if any of you saw this video and it's a guy at a concert and he's out there dancing by himself And he's like being wild and crazy And then some people see him and then you know by the end of the video Like there's like hundreds of people dancing with him And it's it's it's kind of like a leadership concept in that if you just keep dancing the people will come Okay Anything else? And I'm literally like right on time All right. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it Okay Yes I I haven't I haven't but I will now read it I have to read it I so let me actually write it down because I I love I love I actually um Power of open question by who? Okay. I am definitely picking that up. Okay. You're welcome. Thank you