Stan Slap, founder of SLAP and author of 'Under The Hood,' shares his expertise on building effective employee cultures. He explains how culture drives business performance and emphasizes the need for trust in management. Slap discusses viewing culture as a dynamic organism that can evolve rather than resist change. He challenges conventional corporate values, advocating for genuine commitments instead. Middle management's role in maintaining employee connection during growth is also highlighted as crucial for a thriving workplace.
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insights INSIGHT
Culture's Impact on Business
Employee culture is critical for successful strategy implementation, impacting both internal and external stakeholders.
Customers, often employees themselves, judge companies based on perceived employee treatment, influencing their buying decisions.
insights INSIGHT
Culture as an Organism
Culture is a shared belief system about survival and prosperity within a specific environment, like a company or team.
It's an independent organism focused on self-preservation, not automatically aligned with management's goals.
insights INSIGHT
Cultural Dynamics
Cultures are not inherently resistant to change but are wary of perceived threats.
They prioritize safety and interpret their environment based on past experiences and established beliefs.
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Stan Slap is the founder and president of SLAP, an international consulting firm that helps organisations get maximum commitment from their manager, employee, and customer cultures. SLAP has worked with the who's-who of the Fortune 500, companies that you've heard of like Costco, Oracle, HP, Caterpillar, Microsoft, Amazon, General Electric, Intel, Viacom, Tesla, Glassdoor, Warner Music Group — and some companies that you haven't; all told, SLAP has worked with companies doing business in 44 countries. Stan is also the author of two books: Under The Hood and Bury My Heart in Conference Room B.
This podcast dives into Slap's ideas about understanding, managing and shaping effective employee cultures. His model for culture is the first coherent model that I've found that is useful and tested at scale; it is therefore more powerful than most other formulations of employee culture that you'll find.
SLAP Company — https://slapcompany.com/ Under The Hood — https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22571574-under-the-hood Commoncog summary of Under The Hood — https://commoncog.com/under-the-hood/ Bury My Heart at Conference Room B — https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7810760-bury-my-heart-at-conference-room-b
(00:00) - Introduction
(02:32) - Employee Culture is About Business Performance
(06:56) - What a Culture Is
(10:21) - Thinking About Culture as an Organism
(19:40) - What Management Gets Wrong
(22:56) - What To Do When You've Lost The Culture's Trust
(26:36) - Tension Between Managing Individuals vs Managing Culture
(30:09) - Giving a Culture Energy
(35:16) - Introducing Change to a Culture
(42:28) - Doing Cultural Understanding at Scale
(50:48) - Four Step Process for Cultural Commitment
(01:00:04) - Danger of Corporate Values
(01:04:29) - Managing Culture in a Rapidly Scaling Company
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