Kent Svenson:
Welcome to the trusted leader show. I’m Kent Svenson producer of the trusted leader show. And for this week’s episode, we wanted to feature one of the amazing speakers we had at the 2022 trusted leader summit in this clip from the main stage, David sits down for a conversation with Bobby Herrera co-founder and CEO of populus group, where they discuss how to build a culture of trust and the three areas, organizations unintentionally overlook when building their culture. So sit back, relax and enjoy the show

David Horsager:
We met. You can, I don’t, I I remember, and I’ve been able to speak there as different things, but I, I wanna just tell you my, my view. I get, uh, the privilege of working with, um, CEOs, senior leaders coming had some sports teams and governments and whatever. And there are very few on one hand that I can just think of that really get and drive a high trust culture. And he was this way before we did anything with him. He, he, um, what they’ve done at populous group is an amazing story. It aligns with what we do. I’m privileged have done some things, but they, they, they, um, they get this work. So I wanna tell you just a, a brief bit he’s the co-founder of and CEO populous group. He’s one, one of the fastest growing HR services companies in the United States, annual revenue now over 600 billion and many fortune 100 companies. In fact, where we met, I think I was speaking at a fortune one, uh, hundred deal. Uh, he’s a proud bar army veteran author of the bestselling leadership book. The gift of struggle. He serves our national community organization, board, serving kids and veterans passionate storyteller. He’s an amazing family, man. Please help me welcome Mr. Bobby Herrera.

David Horsager:
So Bobby, uh, we’ve become friends and I’ve gotten to see some of what you’re doing, but this is, this is unique. Tell, tell us a little bit about this, uh, this video, what we just saw and then we’ll go from there.

Bobby Herrera:
Well, obviously love the mountains. Um, so I filmed this documentary style. This was a trailer, uh, in 2020, I took my two boys. Uh, it’s an annual trip that I hand select six climbers, six or seven climbers in my community. I call my company a community, uh, and I hand select six from across the country. And I take them on this annual Trek from where you all saw at start up to camp mu the highest point you can go before the actual technical summit. It’s my favorite mountain. It’s part of a bigger mountain climbing theme that I have embedded into my whole culture. Uh, I’ve tied everything into that theme from the language to the everybody

David Horsager:
Geter. When they join

Bobby Herrera:
First day, day one, everybody gets one of these common

David Horsager:
Language in a company

Bobby Herrera:
Teer on day one. We give them this, uh, to symbolize it. They’re, uh, part of something bigger than themselves. They’re for one another. And so we expect them to take it to meetings, uh, any event that they go to this carer used to be with ’em, uh, and it connects to the bigger story. And, uh, I couldn’t take anybody that year. So instead I filmed it and I took the whole community and, uh, this just, they packed with lessons and it’s a lot of fun.

David Horsager:
I, um, you, we I’ve read the book. Great, powerful, inspiring book, but you tell a story kind of, that was an epiphany. I just wanna just touch on that kinda where it’s some of where this started, some of how you think about running a company started, uh, can you just touch on the school bus?

Bobby Herrera:
Yeah, so, um, uh, when I was 17, uh, my brother ed and I, we were on a return trip home from a basketball game and we were excited. It was a big win and along the way, the team stops for dinner and everybody unloads off the bus except for me and my brother ed. Well, at that point, my family’s story, I’m one of 13 kids. I’m number 11. And, uh, I still eat with my elbows on the table and, uh, we were very accustomed to staying back on that bus. And as a team unloaded this gentleman steps on board, the bus and my brother and I were sitting towards the back and he’s walking towards us and he RAs me a little bit, cuz it outskirt me that night. And then he said something to me that I I’ll always remember. He said, Bobby, it would make me very happy.

Bobby Herrera:
If you would allow me to buy you boys dinner, nobody else has to know. All you have to do to thank me is do the same thing for another great kid, just like you in the future. And I’ll never, ever forget how I felt in that moment. I had this wave attitude come over me that it’s still hard for me to explain. And I remember stepping off the bus that evening and I had no idea what I was gonna do with my life. You know, I had a desire to raise my hand and join the military, which I did a year later. But outside of that, all I wanted was for my future to look different from my past and struggled being the only theme in my story. And uh, but even though I had no idea what I was gonna do after that moment on UI, like I’d somehow some way, figure out a way to create something that would allow me to pay forward. That kind act to other kids who were born on the wrong side of the opportunity by just like me. And that moment just changed how I viewed everything. You know, Gucci said yesterday that a dream start in the heart that hit me right in the heart. And uh, it stuck.

David Horsager:
Thank you. So,

Bobby Herrera:
Um,

David Horsager:
I’ve heard that a lot of times and I’ve still feel it. I remember growing up in one of the poorest counties in Minnesota. Yeah. We had enough food. We grew our own food. Right. And we worked, you know, it had some things that way, but I was thinking of even Lisa and I starting out in a whole lot of different things. But, um, one thing that I’ve been in most impressed by when I think of seeing how you run the company, um, the, the, the whole, the culture, the names, I think there’s some things we can take away. Of course we love it when people drive a culture of the eight pillars, but there’s other things people do. Like you’ve done to really build alignment and connection and building a common language and building an identity. And somebody saying, I, I know I can state the three that I remember from what your work in the book, but you’ve got these three key areas. Let me just let you start out. Let’s start with the first one. You talk about building identity. Mm-hmm what have you done at populous group? What, what do you do there to build an identity?

Bobby Herrera:
Well, you know, what’s interesting about that story is although that story became the invisible force, that drives me, uh, it was all also, it’s also my biggest leadership mistake because I of 10 years, I started my, my, my company in 2002. And I didn’t tell that story until 2012. And yes, I had been, uh, I was a, you know, intense entrepreneur, just trying to make things happen. And I had the, this desire to bring that story to life so I could do what I wanna do with it, but nobody knew. And once I told that story and I I’ll often tell people that that was the beginning of transforming my company into a community, because after I told that story, my company then had a clarity that I’d never given ’em before on the identity that I wanted for the organization, what the real purpose and the mission of it was. And at up to that point, I hadn’t done that. So, you know, without that clarity and you’re, you can’t bring to life what you want for, of the organization, what you want to do with that story that you’re building, cuz in the end, that’s what culture really is. Culture is a story that you’re narrating and everything you, you do and connect to it are symbols and traditions and components of the story that you have to bring to life. And as a leader, you connect that identity together.

David Horsager:
So you start with this identity. You’re you’re number two is you have to have a guide behavior. Mm-hmm maybe even start with what let’s jump here. I’ll jump around a little bit. Sure. Because I know, tell us a little bit more about the symbols. like, what are some of the symbols? What’s the, what’s it like you, like, I’ve done work for Vanguard and they’re all, um, you know, the ship theme and the, you know, that it’s all, um, crew members and that kind of thing. And you have this, not that we all have to come up, you don’t have a lot to come up with these kind of things, but there certain language mm-hmm uh, that can bring people together, can unify around something. If it’s authentic. Tell us a little bit more about some of, some of the language.

Bobby Herrera:
Yeah, well, you know, the, this annual trip that they, everyone just saw a clip to, like, that’s one of my favorite traditions, but I have other traditions throughout the year that compliment the overall climbing theme. So, you know, for example, my version, every September, I give the Sherpa and it’s my version of the Heisman. And I give it to one deserving climber a year that best lived our purpose and our values. And so I will do symbolic things like that, like the carabiner. And we tell them on day one, like you were selected to make our story better. And we then guide ’em that second part guiding behavior. We show them exactly what that means.

David Horsager:
So tell me what what’s, what’s a one expectation. I jumped on the team. I’m a climber now. Yeah. How how’s it different than working at wherever I’m on the populous group team? Mm-hmm , what’s the behavior you expect?

Bobby Herrera:
Well, the three principles that we, that we share with ’em from day one is we expect you to give more than you take. We expect you from the heart and we expect you to go off the beaten path. And we, for the first week, when someone joins our community, they do not do a single job task oriented activity. Their first week is embedded in engulfed into our culture. And we call that our uncommon welcome. And so we, we will give them a very in-depth intentional culture quiz, where they’re literally calling climbers all across the country, learning stories about each other, talking about those different principles. And we have story after story that bring those to life. You know, and Allison shared that, you know, yesterday, like stories, NTA, they inspire us, they give us meaning. And so that whole first week they’re embedded into it. And so we invest up front and given the context that they need. And on the second week when they start, they have so much context around why we do what we do and how we do what we do that their ramp up time to productivity is, uh, it’s, it’s, it’s so quick because we don’t have to then spend time doing it on the fly and they don’t have to guess. Yeah.

David Horsager:
So in this, I think this is interesting. I’m gonna repeat it because I think it’s replicable in your space for culture. So talks about this, this culture ambition, number one, building an identity there’s specific bullet points to that. But if you have not built a very clear, specific identity, it’s gonna be really hard to win it culture. And we talked a lot. That’s a lot of clarity mm-hmm

Bobby Herrera:

David Horsager:
Right, right. Number two is you have to then take it to things that guide behavior. Uh, this is what caribou did with the whole Bama thing. Bama it’s Memor. Oh, we gotta learn all this other stuff we did. Okay. Now, but every 17 year old barista knows. Oh yeah. Be excellent. Not average. Oh. Act with urgency. Okay. I should give ’em the copy quickly. They like it. Okay. Make a connection. Oh yeah. I try to do that. Oh, I anticipate needs. I try to look for, they might wanna nap in with it. They want water with, they they’ve created this, they’ve taken this and they’ve made, uh, this into behaviors, right. Not just because integrity. Isn’t really behavior on its almost it it’s. It’s great. But what, what does that look like? Right. Oh, what this means here and then get us a little more on speaking. A common language. Number three is speaking a common language.

Bobby Herrera:
So speaking of common language should help bring to life the identity and the guiding behavior. Right? So I introduced a climbing theme one because of my passion for the mountains and mountaineering. However, um, the, the word employee just never like, it doesn’t mean anything to me. And so I started reflecting on some of my past journey and you know, I still remember this day, you know what it meant to be a soldier in the military. I still remember. I, I worked for a summer at Disney and there they call their employees, cast members. And I still know exactly what it meant to be a cast member. And so when someone joins our community, I want them to be able to, to understand the essence of what it means to be a climber. And then we give ’em a climber number. So they know exactly where they joined on our climb and we do all our connection points annually around the summit and EV uh, that everything interconnects, you know, we, our one-on-ones are called grips. Uh, and we’ll often say, Hey, how’s your grip. A fundamental of climbing is having a great grip. And so I’ve just interconnected it’s it was just my corny way of helping make it something that’s simple and palatable for people to remember. And you know, it, they, everyone picks up on it very quickly and it creates safety.

David Horsager:
Think about it. If anybody has one que I’m gonna I’m I might take one question here if somebody has a burning one or two. Um, but I think a question I have at least, and I, we talked early in the pandemic Uhhuh and, um, well we talked after that too, but yes, uh, I was saying, and I saw some things challenges in the pandemic for you two. Right. But, uh, for all of us, but you were doing some things and I asked you what what’s working and what are some of the things, something that work

Bobby Herrera:
Yeah. You and I talked about, you know, managing the VUCA. Yep. Um, you know, uh, VUCA is a term that’s, you know, for those of us that have served that it’s an acronym for, you know, volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. And one of the things that I learned in the military was when there’s a lot of VUCA, when there’s a lot of chaos, our responsibility as a leader is to slow the game down for everybody. And in simple application terms, all I did throughout the pandemic and all I continue to do is slow the game down to, uh, to edit everything that is non-essential out of everyone’s life and keep it just on the things that we can control and then simplify all the routines that follow, you know, the consistency pillar, you know, uh, I made sure everyone knew when they were gonna hear from me how they were gonna hear from me, how often they were gonna hear from me. And I just embedded all these routines and I’ve just been tailoring the system all along. Like we don’t like surprises unless they’re good surprises. So, uh, that’s really what managing the V is about is editing everything out with the exception of the most essential things that you can control slowing the game down and giving people predictability on the communication.

David Horsager:
I remember one of the things you said, I’m gonna say really quick. So we’re, we were talking about, uh, the VUCA and talking about what you did wherever. Anyway, anyway, that’s at the point, um, sorry. Mm-hmm um, the, but the bottom line is we, I, we noticed something it’s like a lot of people in, in chaos, they, uh, they start focused on everything they cannot control. Yeah. And we came down to the, the question of, okay, okay. We can do all these things, but what can control? What, what can I control? And, and that, that turns out there’s a lot more we can control than we ever thought. Right. See what happened in many when they actually pause, thought about what they could control mm-hmm um, anything else in the culture or

Bobby Herrera:
Pandemic? Yeah. You know, and I think from a culture perspective, when everybody went virtual, like I had to zoom out and I had to revisit every team that we did, like, uh, for example, like I couldn’t take anyone to this annual hike. So I then started revisiting all the routines and all the symbols that we do. And just simply started asking myself, okay, what tweaks do I need to make? How am I gonna do it differently to bring to life the essence? So for example, in 2020, I have taken six people. I filmed a documentary style and I took the whole community. Right. And so, uh, there, my observation has been, yeah, it’s not gonna work out the way that you want it to the way that it has been, but then if you focus on, okay, well, what can I do? What’s the best I can do and how can I tweak it to make the same type of impact act that I wanna make? Because my responsibility to advance the culture is to keep the narrative of the story going mm-hmm . And if I don’t find, if I don’t do those things repeatedly over and over and over again, the culture’s gonna decline.

David Horsager:
That’s the work of it. Anybody have a key question on culture for Mr. Herra culture or, um, you have to see their company, what they do, anybody. Yes. Dr. I

Bobby Herrera:
That don’t. How do you deal with get the culture? Uh, that’s a great question. Question.

David Horsager:
And repeat, you wanna repeat

Bobby Herrera:
It? Yeah. So the question was, how do I deal with the naysayers, right? The people that either, for some reason or another, just don’t connect with it. Right. Um, so I, I mentioned this to someone earlier today, right? I believe three areas that organizations unintentionally overlook, uh, when it comes to building culture is, uh, they in their hiring, in their onboarding and in their, if instead they focused on selection, welcoming and onboarding and then, uh, development. Right? So the question there is, okay, well, that’s, those are just different words, but actually they’re not right. So the selection piece, so to, I’m gonna get to the heart of your question here in a second. What have happens before then is selection versus hiring. There’s a real simple difference. There a hiring is, is off the front of the resume. We symbolically anytime that we sit across a table for someone to see if they’re gonna be a good fit for our community, we flip over the resume and we don’t ask, ’em a single question about their resume until the third interview.

Bobby Herrera:
I wanna know their life story. I wanna know what they believe. I wanna know what makes ’em tick. I wanna know what gives ’em energy. I wanna know who they are. I wanna know all about their identity. And so they go through that selection process, which is four. They meet with four different people. And the first two are all about the back, the resume. The second, the second, the last two are on the front. So we align that competency and that character. And then on the welcome that culture quiz that I mentioned, right? Most organizations, they will invite someone into their company. And after the first day after they fill out all the, uh, forms and so forth, they sit ’em right now next to somebody and they start job shadowing. And they have no idea about the purpose of the organization. They have no idea about the, the culture code, the values, the behavior models, and so forth. We take that off the table. And so in that first week, like we try to actually scare them like your culture, if you’re doing it right, it should repel some people. And that’s a good thing. Like you should not try to build a culture that is a one size fits all for everybody.

Bobby Herrera:
So we actually try to invite them to make themselves available to the marketplace after that first week. And after that, if they still aren’t, uh, aligning to our principles, we’ll remind them, we’ll correct them. But we have a saying, we call it, choose a trend. When we have to address a colds, uh, value more than twice it’s time for us to, uh, uh, invite more joy into their life and make them available to the marketplace. That’s a nicer way to say. Yes.

David Horsager:
I’m um, just so grateful to know you and I’ve learned I’ve gotten better because of being around you. And I’m grateful for that. And you’re an example to many,

Kent Svenson:
That’s it for this week’s episode, be sure to check out trusted leader, show.com for all the links and information on anything mentioned in today’s episode. And if you haven’t already, we would greatly appreciate a review on apple podcasts. This is a great way to help support the show and to help other people to discover it. But that’s it for this week’s episode. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time stay trusted.