By Jake Friedman, Consultant My first job out of college was as a science teacher in a local high school. One August morning prior to the start of the school year, I found myself in a department-wide meeting, called by the district. The school district was changing the required structure and delivery of science lessons, and a representative from the district office outlined the new requirements, reading out what teachers must do, must not do, and how they would be monitored for alignment. The district rep seemed to think he was doing a good job of explaining it all, but …

By Bill Kaiser, Vice President It’s time to take our last look at 2019 and begin our assault on the success and excitement that lie ahead in 2020. I hope that 2019 was an outstanding and rewarding year for you both personally and professionally. I wish you massive success in 2020! I wanted to provide you with a summary of some of our “Blogs of 2019.” A convenient collection of the titles, brief summaries, and links to our Culture insights of this past year. We enjoy sharing and learning together and look forward to continuing the same in 2020. Click …

By Al Curnow, Vice President It’s that time of year again.    A fresh start.   A clean slate.   A time to think about what we’re going to do differently this year or get better at.    A time to be intentional and mindful (yes, I used this most overused of words).      Every new year we’re presented with the opportunity to think about the things in our lives that we want to improve or change.  Yet, the real trick is finding a way to implement and sustain these changes.  We’ve all seen this movie before.    We excitedly begin the year armed with our …

By Rob Wolff, Vice President Those of you familiar with our 8-step framework for institutionalizing culture will recognize Integration as Step #4.  It’s a step that demonstrates that those of us at HPC are pretty particular about the language that we use. Where other companies use terms like “new hire orientation” or “on-boarding”, we prefer the term “integration” because it more clearly defines the intent of that process – we want to make that new employee part of our organization, not just show her or him what we do. Reflecting back on my career, I’ll admit to feeling pretty good …

By David Friedman, CEO/Founder In late October, we held our 5th annual High Performing Culture Summit, bringing together more than 90 leaders for two days of best practices sharing, learning new content, and networking.  Without a doubt, it was our best Summit yet, and we’re already deep into planning for the next one. As I sit here reflecting on what I learned, there are two things that stand out most.  First, it truly is remarkable, and gratifying, to hear the stories of how powerfully the Fundamentals System™ is transforming people and companies.  Company after company shared amazing stories of how …

By Jake Friedman, Consultant When I was 22, I decided that I wanted to run a marathon. My Dad, an experienced distance runner and an excellent coach, offered to help me train. He was up in New Jersey and I lived down in North Carolina at the time, so although he couldn’t physically run with me, he created a training plan to take me safely from running a few inconsistent miles a week to be ready to run 26.2 all at once. At the end of the first week, I proudly reported to my Dad how well my runs went. …

By, Bill Kaiser, Vice President Would you expect a quality custom-built home knowing the construction team is using warped, rotted wood? The same goes for our companies. It’s next to impossible to build a high-performing culture when hiring people who don’t fit that culture. In a blog last year, I warned against the trap of being preoccupied with the resume. I stressed the importance and necessity of selecting the right people – those who fit our culture (Step 3 – Fundamentals System™). Yes, there is a certain skill set, expertise, and experience outlined on a resume – and that certainly matters, …

By, Al Curnow, Vice President Building an extraordinary culture, for any organization, is not an easy undertaking.   It requires intention, planning, clarity of expectations, and continual teaching and reinforcement.  If you have remote employees, the process might feel even more daunting. The reality is that many organizations rely on remote employees to fill important roles on their team.  By following many of the same steps we teach in our Fundamentals System, you can have great success in helping your remote employees become integrated into your organization while becoming significant contributors to your team.  Here are seven key ingredients required to …

By Rob Wolff, Vice President I’ve had more conversations than I can count with business leaders where the topic quickly turns to frustrations with employee attitudes and core knowledge.  Whether it’s a complaint about Millennials, or the dreaded “back in my day…”, it’s all too common to see and hear frustrations that revolve around employee behavior.  These aren’t new complaints, I’ve had my share of similar challenges throughout my career, as has just about anyone who’s managed people. I was with a very capable and motivated leader recently who seemed ready to jump off a bridge if one more person …

By David Friedman, Founder/CEO Lately, I’ve been getting more and more questions from companies who are practicing EOS (the Entrepreneurial Operating System) and are curious to understand how the Fundamentals System fits within that structure.  Here’s the shortest answer to that question:  While EOS emphasizes the importance of culture, it’s comparatively “light” when it comes to the actual mechanics for how to actually operationalize it down to the level of every team member.  As an alternative, what many companies do is simply “plug and play.”  In other words, they practice EOS, but swap out the EOS culture portion and instead …