The Culture Code

The CPO of Aperian, Addie Johnsen talks about what it's like to be CPO at a 65-employee organization. We discuss: how she uses the smaller company size to personally coach every leader. how she indexes company values team by team her book recommendations for HR professionalsEnjoy! ☕️ 🎧 

I break down my problem with the Kirkpatrick model and what you should do about it! 

Dr. Keith Keating, CLO at BDO Canada, discusses evolving L&D from 'order-taking' to strategic advisors. Topics include common stumbling blocks, overcoming them, critical traits of a learning advisor, and strategies for dealing with stakeholder resistance.

In this interview, CPO of Consensus Cloud Solutions, Lynn Johnson, explains how she scales and sustains company culture to 600 hybrid and remote employees. A few highlights include: 1. How she sustains culture with "an iron fist but a velvet glove." 2. How despite being a 600-employee company, she scales executive coaching to all of her first-line leaders. 3. Lynn's favorite books and advice for CPOsEnjoy! ☕️ 🛋️ 🎧 

In this episode, we sit down with Heather Laychak, the CPO at The Aerospace Corporation. She covers everything from her best-in-class approach to aspiring leadership programs to an industry-shifting diversity initiative and her top three book recommendations.Key topics include:The Aspirational Manager Program: How and why Heather and her team take an “open to all” approach to her aspiring leader program.Measuring Program Success: The unique way that Heather and her team measure the success of their aspiring leader program.Space Workforce 2030 Initiative:* An industry-wide effort led by Aerospace to significantly increase diversity within the technical space workforce by 2030.Enjoy!*CORRECTION: One of the goals of the Space Workforce 2030 pledge discussed in this episode was inaccurately presented. To learn more about the initiative, visit http://swf2030.org.

Five years ago, I wrote a check for $1 million to launch an AI-powered coach using IBM Watson.We then created the world’s first executive coach bot (long before Chat GPT).And it DID NOT work.Here’s why:Even though the leaders liked the tool…The BUYERS—CPOs, CHROs, CLOs—DID NOT.The issue was this: Occasionally the bot would make a mistake. And this put the Buyers at risk.Sure, the mistakes were small, uncommon, and not costly. But, any risk when it came to a coach was too much risk.---So here’s what we realized: People didn’t want a Bot coach. They wanted affordable, text-based access to a coach.And here’s what we did to meet that need: We put together a staff of on-call, ICF-certified coaches to interact with leaders by text.Like a call center of expert coaches.Learners can message an expert at the exact moment they run into a challenge or a question.That was the balance between scalability and impact that people wanted.

Abbie Buck, CPO of Collective Health, breaks down her scrappy approach to leadership dev. This one's full of creative and stealable ideas! Key Topics Covered:Her scrappy approach to develop frontline leaders: Abbie designed and delivered in-house development programs and recorded them for future use. Cultivating a customer-centric culture: The company uses "love letters" from customers to reinforce company values and maintain a strong mission-driven focus.Her innovative sabbatical initiative: Abbie gets into the company's sabbatical program which rewards tenured employees with long periods of time off. First-principle thinking for CPOs: Learn how Abbie Buck leverages first-principle thinking to navigate ambiguity and align actions with the company's core values.Tune in for an inspiring session full of actionable advice. 🔉

In this conversation with Courtney Panik, CPO of Symphony, we cover:How she helped Symphony scale its culture as it grew from a startup to a scale-upHow Symphony's flat organizational structure and an open-door policy foster accessibility and trust.The role of people managers as "culture carriers" at Symphony.Leadership Development Tactics: Panik's "secret weapon" for cultivating effective leaders.Practical advice for aspiring CPOs. She covers all of the above and much more! Enjoy. 

This episode explores the innovative way the CHRO of SugarCRM reduced employee turnover from 23% to 9% after joining the company.In addition to reducing turnover, CHRO Shana Sweeney shares: How she cultivates a unique company culture: She unveils the core values that make SugarCRM’s culture stand out, including the transformative "Yes, if" approach to problem-solving.How she tackles learner overwhelm: She uses special initiatives like the Manager Minute newsletter and quarterly manager panels.Pro tips for CPOs: Sweeney shares her experience and lessons learned as a CPO.Tune in for a deep dive into the leadership strategies that not only retain talent but also empower them to thrive within a rapidly growing company.

LEADx and Gallup research on employee experience shows that “your manager cares” is now a top five driver of employee engagement.One great example of “caring” in action is at One Medical, where “manager care” is a top-scoring item on their engagement survey year over year. To learn more, I had the chance to meet with CPO Christine Morehead. Here are three highlights from our conversation. 1. Christine sees aspiring leader development as key to her success. “All too often, somebody raises their hand or they get tapped on the shoulder to lead people, and then they begin training once they’re already managers. We went upstream to proactively train our emerging leaders." 2. Employees fittingly refer to company values as "strands of One Medical's DNA" The five strands are: 1) human-centered, 2) team-based, 3) intellectually curious, 4) exercises unbounded thinking, and 5) driven to excel. 3. Her research-based approach to sustaining cultureBased on research that Christine collected at a previous company, she fosters culture by delivering a program at one of the most statistically critical moments in an employee’s tenure: the 90-day mark. ---As I always say, Christine covered all of the above and much more in the full interview. I know I've had a few MUST LISTEN episodes recently, but once again, this one has to make that list. The 90-day trick and her approach to emerging leaders are what seal the deal. Enjoy! 1️⃣ 🏥