Sean: First is culture, and we have tackled culture numerous times in the podcast, but that is really because it is so elusive on how people can grasp and concretize culture. It's not something that you're going to have a formula with. It's not something that I could just give you a blueprint of, what is so important about it that is one of the four pillars of your book?

Tom: Well look, every organization is going to have a culture. It may be a culture that you haven't designed. Maybe it's a culture that you didn't want, but it's like an organism is going to happen. So I always tell people, look, you might as well take the time and the effort to try to design a culture that you want breeding in your living organization. Because if you don't spend that investment in time, it will be there, but it may be a toxic culture.

It may be a culture that you don't want in your organization, but because you didn't pay attention to it, it kind of just took a life of its own. And it happened. The second thing I'll talk about is that culture is never negotiable. So if you're an organization and you can have, let's say it's a young organization and you don't know what your culture is going to be.

You can have all the discussion upfront to say what our culture should be, but once you decide what the culture should be, you can have dissension. It's going to be that culture and if people don't buy into that culture, then they don't belong in your organization. In fact, I tell young executives all the time and because I guess in the old days, you know, when I was a younger executive, three career moves in the span of about 25 or 30 years was yeah, that that was acceptable.

You know, and now you have, you know, people changing jobs, you know, three jobs in five years, right? So there's this constant, that's when you know its constant turnover. But I tell folks, look, it's very easy in today's world to look up a company and look at their website, look at some articles. And, as soon as you look at their website, their culture and their vision should be apparent. If you don't see it, or if you don't understand it, that's a yellow flag.

And then also do yourself a favor and say, could I live in that culture? Could I, you know, be really good at it and achieve stuff in that culture? You know, how will I function in that? And, if it's not clear to you, don't even take the interview because I guarantee you within six months or a year, you will leave because you will hate it. Or they will ask you to leave. Right?

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