Entrepreneur, author, and Founder / CEO of Vanderbloemen Search Group, William Vanderbloemen, explains the dynamics of creating an irresistible workplace, the 3 main reasons people leave their jobs (4 for millennials), what Saturday morning cartoons have to do with job retention, why most cultural problems boil down to hiring problems, the difference between culture and core values, how to assess the 8 key areas of workplace health or toxicity, and gives several quick exercises for pinpointing what your culture is.

My guest that we have for you today I'm super excited

about William Vanderbloemen. His company Vanderbloemen Search

Group wins all these crazy awards. They were like number 23

best search firm in the country number three best. Third Best

Place to Work in Houston. He writes for Forbes has a weekly

column there. He's got a couple books that are out. He's also

got degrees from Wake Forest at Princeton from Theological

Seminary. I mean, just a total awesome guy mover and shaker.

And his new book is called Culture Wins: The Roadmap to an

Irresistible Workplace. So William, welcome to the show.

Wow, that I hope people don't believe

everything you just said. That was awesome. Great to be with

you, man.

Yeah. So in terms of creating an irresistible

workplace, why do people leave? Like if you have to boil it

down? What causes people to leave?

Sure, sure. Well, so we did a whole

lot of research for this book we did, we took time to say, Hey,

we've won a lot of awards for a great place to work. And that

led people to say, Can you write about this Forbes asked us to

write about this. And then we said, well, we can tell our

story about how we built a culture, we actually had to

reverse engineer, we were like, how did we do that? So we

stepped back. And he said, I guess we did this and this and

this. And we sort of intuitively fell into what we've got. But we

said, You know what other books are out there. But let's not

just tell our story. Let's get up underneath the hood of all

the great cultures we can find. So I took a stack of magazines

that were award winning lists of award winning companies for

culture, handed them to a young employee at our firm, and said,

Go find the email addresses of all the CEOs and get me at least

100 phone appointments so that we can study and it did and what

we've been covered with some best practices. So getting back

to your question, what we also uncovered, there are lots of

studies on the internet, which are all true if they're on the

internet, right? And the baseline like the most common

answer to how many people in America like their job, the most

common answer is two out of three Americans hate their job,

not modestly dislike not Oh, I can't wait till hump day is

over, or I need some more time off, I hate their job. And so

like what in the world is causing that? And we found a few

common answers. First of all, people don't leave jobs, they

leave managers. turnover is usually a problem with

management and not a problem with we don't have enough ping

pong tables, or whatever the thing is for culture. The second

thing we found was, people leave the job because they don't know

what their job is. If people say, I don't know what I'm

supposed to get done. And then the third thing we found is

people leave a job is because once they do know what they're

supposed to get done, they aren't equipped with the tools

or resources to actually go get it done. So you know, people sit

around, like, I don't know what success is. And then it finally

gets defined. I can't get there. And I don't like my manager. So

I hate my job. Now, a fourth reason you're, you're, I think,

still a millennial, and what I'm learning about millennials,

because I'm not one is if there's no why behind the what

I'm out, there's got to be a cause. Behind the what we're

doing, you know, the Simon Sinek talk that's been seen 18

bajillion times. Now, I should start with why that whole why

behind the what is a big deal? And I think, well, that's the

fourth place answer right now. I bet in 10 years, it's number

one, because that millennial generation is starting to

dominate the workforce just by sheer numbers. So I think you're

gonna see an even bigger shift. So the answer your question is

people leave managers, not jobs. But I think within 10 years,

it's gonna be people will leave if you don't have a cause for

what you're doing.

Are people job hopping more?

Totally. And not just job hopping, career

hopping? And you're talking about a generation and you can

blame me and say those millennials? Or you can drop

back and say, Well, why is that? So you know, the generation

before where you do 35 years at Ford, and you retire with the

gold watch and all that. That's the generation that grew up with

radio, and then by later in their career, they had three TV

stations to choose from. Now, think about your life, think

about somebody 10 years younger than their life. You know, when

I talk to older groups, I often say I'm old enough, I'm mid 40s.

That for me, my favorite part of the week when I was a kid was

Saturday morning. And the younger part of the room looks

at me like what in the world are you talking about? The older

brother room just nods and it you know why? And all the old

people say the cartoons were on right you look at a millennial

and say what are the cartoons on? What are you talking about?

I just watch what I want. Again, an on demand. I watch it on

YouTube. I watch it we're so you, you've got a generation

that's grown up in a world of infinite options. So why

wouldn't they see their career as a span of years full of

infinite options? It's just natural. So I think you will see

not just job hopping but career hopping and that's Where I

found, you know, as we studied what makes a great culture? And

who's sinking money into it, and why are they spending money on

it? When I interviewed CEOs, I got a lot of different answers

about why I spend money on culture. But the number one

answer that every one of them answered was retention. The

money I spend on culture always pays for itself because people

stay longer than they would have otherwise, maybe that means they

stay eight years instead of four, not 35 with a gold watch,

but but when you start running the numbers of what it cost to

replace people in the end of this loss, retention is the ball

game for the future of the American workplace.

What are some of the numbers like, what's the cost?

Well, yeah, I mean, you can justify

anything you want, you can find a study on the Internet that

will give you any number you want. But but we try to read a

whole lot and then boil it down to a transferable principle. And

what what we found is just for round numbers sake, $100,000

employee, which is a high level employee, should they leave and

will not will not even factor in Is it a good leave, or a bad

leave? Is it $100,000 employee leaving will probably cost you a

quarter million dollars. And that's how I did soft costs all

wrapped together. And so it's and it's gonna happen, I mean,

turnover happens in turnover, and always bad, you're gonna

fast growing organization, you probably got people that were

great when you had 40 employees. But when we got to 100, they

couldn't, couldn't hang. And that's not their fault. It's

just different. It's a different company. But if you can mitigate

the amount and frequency of turnover, especially unnecessary

turnover, then your ROI goes up. I talked to one CEO of a

software company, he's up in New York City, and they have a very

particular software solution that they sell. They're three

companies that all sell the same type of solution, right? And all

three of them sell it at the same price. They sell to the

same market, there's no product differentiation, and he's a $20

million company. And he said last year, he spent roughly $2

million on culture. I'm like, what, why in the world? He said,

well, because my EBIT da was 60 some percent higher than his

competitors. I said, What do you mean your earnings is, is better

than your competitor? You got the same price point, same

solution said, Did you do more sales? Nope. Same revenue. He

said, In our industry, we're notorious for churning through

people, the average churn rate is about 38%. And I've got my

churn rate down to one and a half percent. So if you think

he's got 200 People 38% means 76. People would leave me

normally every year and my other two competitors, they lose 76

people every year. What are you going to charge me? Well, you

have to do 76 searches, what have I got to do to train 76 new

employees? How much momentum do I lose, and morale that drops

when these people are walking out the door? I spent $2 million

people love working here I fly my whole team to a big retreat,

I spend money on things, not competitors don't, my people

stay. And the fact that they stay makes us more profitable,

even though we're not charging one penny more and not selling

one widget more.

So what really makes them stay? I mean, is it just the

inverse of why they leave? Is that why they stay?

I think a lot of it is inverse, you get

people who actually want to be at work. I think when you say

you know the culture doesn't belong to a corporate entity, it

belongs to a person, the companies that I studied that

got serious about defining what their cultural values were

started hiring around those cultural values. So that up, put

it this way, you know, everybody's crazy. And if you

haven't figured that out, then you know, you will. So it's not

finding people who aren't crazy to work for you. It's finding

people who are the same kind of crazy as you. And when you start

hiring, where you've got a tribe of people that are similar,

well, then you're gonna have personality clashes because

people are broken. And that's just the way the world is. But

at least you're in the same tribe. And the manager is not

insufferable. So frankly, most cultural problems are really a

hiring problem. And I think that companies that have gotten it,

right, the ones that have gotten it, right, frankly, are mostly

newer companies, because they've been able to build from the

ground up, you know, a company two, three generations deep or a

couple 100 years old. The culture is pretty hard to turn

on a dime. And if you've got a real problem, it takes a long,

long time. But the other the other interesting thing about

why people stay, you talked about millennials, job hopping

Barna, you know, this group, they're a polling and surveying

group pretty well known and they asked a question of people born

in different decades. Here's the question, pretend your young

adult 22 years old, what do you want to have accomplished by the

time? You're 35? Great question. Right. So every group that

answered except Millennials had almost identical, the same top

five answers. Here's what they want to get done. They wanted to

by the time that 35 We want to get married, start a family,

owned a home, be on a secure job track and have some financial

peace. Millennials? Have those top five answers, how many of

them hit their top five? Just one, financial peace. So what

does that mean for the workplace and for culture, what that means

is you're hiring people who probably aren't near their

family probably don't have a family to go home to probably

haven't locked into a career yet, and probably see their

workplace as the closest thing they're gonna have to a family.

And so if you find a workplace, that's just, frankly, hell bent

on building a culture where that family can feel like they're

more connected than just their work and connected through a

cause, and connected to the cultural code, well, then people

are gonna stay, and they'll put up with highs and lows

economically a lot better. And they'll put up with rising

health care costs, and all those things a lot better. If this is

my family, I don't have a wife and kids to go, this is it. And

it's a cause I believe in and a well defined culture. And the

people here are somewhat like me in terms of belief and how we

function and the companies that I studied that got that right,

have very few turnover issues.

So getting into the practical, how do we actually

keep people? How do we create retention?

I think it all depends on what's the old

advice of I forget which Greek philosopher it was that his his

best advice was know yourself. And I think if a company will

take time to drop back and know themselves, and then build all

those bells and whistles around that, then that that will make a

difference in here. So I'm guessing that a lot of your

listeners have businesses that already have what they call core

values. But are they cultural values? And when you say

cultural, you know, you think what, what is a culture, and

lots of different definitions are out there. But it's the

traditions and symbols and behaviors that are passed along

from one generation to the next without thinking about it. And

and if a company can can get a hold of those customs and

traditions and behaviors? And what is it that that we do

that's good, and then build the ping pong table in the vending

machine in the Yogen. Stir all that around that well, then that

is a win. And here's a really practical question to ask if

you're saying we do have core values, but they're not cultural

values. They don't describe how we behave. They don't describe

our customs. They just say things like, excellence. I'm so

tired of excellence being a core value, I want to find the

company that says, you know, mediocrity is really what we're

after. But, but like, a cultural value is more how do we behave?

It's the how we get our work done. And the question that a

company can ask all of its employees to start the

conversation is this, you can say, Look, when we are

functioning at our very, very best. What do we do as a team

that's common to us, but uncommon to other teams we see

around us. Because there's some quirkiness that you guys share

when you do your best for us. It's like responding with almost

dysfunctional speed. Like, don't you have a life form getting

back to me so fast? But you know, that's, that's our deal.

And it's been a signature for us. And we didn't even realize

that we went through this exercise. When we're functioning

at our best, what do we do as a team that's common to us? That's

uncommon to others. And long story short, through the process

of building cultural values. We named it as ridiculous

responsiveness. That's our deal. And, you know, we interview for

it, we, we do sneaky bad stuff, during interviews to see if

somebody's got the same dysfunction we do. If they're

really ridiculously responsive. If they are, they're gonna fit

if they're not, they're probably a great employee for somebody

else.

Yeah, before we go, where should people go? If if they

want to kind of learn about Culture Wins? And where would

you point people?

You can go to culturewins.org And find

the book there. If you're really interested in other things about

us, you can go to vanderbloemen.com and it just

spell it just like that.

It's clear and obvious and easy to spell, and there's a lot

of vowels.

You know, we bought probably 300 domain

names when we started. And we hired an SEO consultant and

said, which one of these I don't want to name it after me, don't

be my name on the door. And he came back and he said, I got

good news and bad news. I got the great website for you.

You're not going to like it. So bad news. He said, We need to

use your last name. Your last name is so screwed up that you

can misspell it 200 different ways into Google and it'll feed

back to you so we just went with that. So misspell it however you

want vanderbloemen you'll you'll find your way or there or

culturewins.org.

Smart. Alright, William. So what's the first thing? The

first step?

That's a great question. We tried to

answer that while we were writing the book. There's really

two layers to culture. The first thing you have to ask yourself

is is this a healthy place to work? It is toxic. That's a

whole different conversation. And then defining values. So to

help people know, are we functioning? Well, we did some

research, we found eight key areas of health or toxicity. And

we built online assessment. So if people go to the culture

tool.com, they'll find a free online assessment. They can have

their whole team, take the test, we'll send you back a report

that shows you how you measure up, what's your median score,

where you work, what's better, what's worse, and how do you

measure up against all the other businesses that have come and

taken this test? So that's the culturetool.com.

I love it. Thank you for sharing this this as interesting

perspective to have from somebody who has a full time

living of talking to people that are coming and going in and out

of companies.

Thanks so much. I appreciate you having me

on.