#35- Bill Nye: Creating a Culture of Accountability
“You may think you have a culture, but culture grows just like a weed will grow whether or not it’s intentional. ”
MEET Bill Nye, COO of Berger Rental Communities
His main focus is to ensure that the leasing/management teams are working in harmony with the service teams to provide an amazing experience for everyone that calls one of their communities “home” or is considering one of their communities for their next home.
Bill has more than 20 years of experience in the industry, but rather than relying on past experiences to guide his decisions, he loves to explore new ways of improving the experience for both our residents and our team members.
A baseball fan his entire life, Bill is often found in a stadium somewhere watching America’s pastime as a means of relaxing. He is also an avid runner and a self-proclaimed wizard in the kitchen.
I am SO excited for you to hear this episode about culture and leadership.
We answer these questions and talk about:
How do we know what our culture is really like?
How can you change it around?
Setting rules actually handicaps your employees.
How to let someone go (and how it can actually be a good thing!)
Creating your company culture:
Culture. Everyone's talking about it. Books are being written about it and there are podcasts on the subject every day. It exists everywhere. Every organization has a culture. And when I say every organization that includes every household, every home in America has a culture.
Many people feel it’s their culture that makes their organization unique. They think they have this winning culture. But then when you talk to their employees, their employees are incredibly unhappy. The reality is, yes - you have a culture, but culture grows just like a weed will grow, on a piece of ground that doesn't have anything healthy growing there.
Understand the dangers of not being intentional and take time to step back, look at the decisions you're making, and the way you're treating people.
We often tend to judge ourselves on our intentions. And most have the best intentions. But let's not judge ourselves based on our intentions, but rather on our impact. What is the impact of what we're doing? I think if you focus more on the impact as opposed to focusing on the intentions - that will help you to craft a much more intentional culture that will deliver the results you're looking for.
Culture will grow regardless of whether or not it's intentional. So let’s take a closer look at our individual company culture.
Taking the pulse of your company’s culture
There are a couple that I think are really easy to identify.
What kind of people want to work for you? Everyone has followers. Remember, Charles Manson (the serial killer) had followers. The question isn’t whether or not people want to work for you, the question is what KIND of people want to work for you? Are they the best people in the organization?
Who do you lose and why do you lose them?Every organization has turnover, but look at who is leaving. When an employee decides to go, is it the kind of employee that you are really going to feel their loss? Is it the kind of people that do the right things? Those are the employees you don’t want to leave. So if they are going, it’s time to take a closer look at your culture.
What are your customers saying about you?Your residents can also be a good indicator of the culture. Consider their outside perspective when really evaluating the quality of your culture. You can ask yourself questions one and two in regard to your residents: Who wants to live at our communities? Who goes?
creating culture: Less rules, Higher standards
Avoid the easy trap of immediately establishing a rule when things aren’t going the right way.
Ask yourself: If a few employees are doing something wrong, do I immediately establish a rule that affects everyone, even those that aren’t part of the problem?
Rather than handcuffing employees that are doing a good job by adding needless rules, focus on creating standards. Rules have a tendency to limit and restrict people. Standards encourage people and serve as a goal to try and work hard.
Don’t burden your employees with so many rules, many are necessary, yes, but creating too many rules creates a culture of control. Anytime you put something in place that encourages people to do their best instead of restricting them… you’re ahead of the game.
Don’t get me wrong, every organization has to have some rules, especially where there are laws involved. And certainly, in the multifamily industry, we have a lot of laws we have to abide by and enforce and so it makes sense to have rules for employees to comply with those laws. But if you overrule your organization, you become a culture of control and you'll always lose your best people.
Your best people want to feel trusted and respected. They will want to have some autonomy and too many rules don't allow them to do that. With too much control, you’ll constantly lose your best people and end up replacing them with people who quite frankly operate well, in a world of control, but they're not freethinkers. The danger when you have an organization without freethinkers is that you can quickly become stagnant. You stop growing, you stop embracing innovation because everybody's just so bent on always following the rules.
But setting a rule is easy. It can be done in a 15-minute meeting and that’s why it’s so appealing to go that route.
It’s easy to say, “We’ve established a rule, let’s move on.”
Standards are different. Establishing really meaningful, impactful standards is hard work. It takes time, but I always say that nothing great is done in a hurry. No great meal ever comes out of a microwave - ever.
Once you establish the standards, you have to continue to train on those standards. You have to engage your team on WHY the standard is important and how to actually have a fighting chance of hitting the standard.
Acknowledge accomplishments
It doesn’t stop at just setting the standard and training to meet the standard. As a leader, you have to be standing there, ready to cheer and clap and pat your employee on the back when they work hard to meet their goal.
Once an employee reaches a goal, you don’t want them to get stagnant. You want to raise the bar when things become too routine or when it’s easy to hit the goal over and over again.
How do you know how high to set the new goal? You want it to be something to work towards, but not so much that it isn’t attainable. And as their coach, ask yourself, “What additional support and training do they need to be successful at reaching this new goal?”
But in the end, anyone who has ever worked with me will tell you that this is my rallying cry, we win together and we lose together. When someone is struggling or they're failing to get over the bar, what can we do together to get them over the bar? Because it's a reflection on all of us, not just one of us.
Tune into the full episode to hear bill’s take on terminating an employee with dignity and respect.
Again, I think the important thing is to just remember that every organization has a culture, and if you leave it to chance, you will always end up with the culture that you don't want. And it will always be driven by the person with the strongest personality.
Connect with Bill Nye
COO of Berger Rental Communities
When people think of Bill Nye, what do you want them to think of?
That's easy for me to answer. A genuine person. I think people are drawn to people who are genuine. When people are hurting I want to be there for them, even if it means spending eight hours in the car to get there. Those are the things that the people always remember. I've always tried to be very genuine in my compassion and my sincerity in terms of caring about people.