CEO Perspective: Building and Adapting Culture

Dave Regnery: Culture is one of those things where don't ever take it for granted and you need to work at it every day. And as the chair and CEO, I would tell you that I spend a lot of time listening to our people, understanding what's top of mind for them. It's always hard to have a top-down culture because that doesn't exist. But it's a local culture that works up, which is more powerful.

One of the best meetings I had in 2020 was when we got the feedback from all of our employees when we developed our leadership principles. I was like, this is so much better than 14 people sitting in a conference room trying to decide whether a word was the right word or not. It was so much more impactful. And it again speaks about our culture right because our people created our culture. Our people created our leadership principles.

Carrie Ruddy: The past two years have been challenging in a number of different ways. And we're constantly seeking to improve our business and our culture. So how do you think culture is evolving as the world around us is changing?

Dave Regnery: You always have to be looking to how you enhance your culture. We’ve all had the experience of the last two years of being more isolated than many of us ever wanted to be. I certainly don't want to go back to where we were. I don't really want to stay where we are. But I think we'll all together figure out what the right balance is going forward. We learned that some meetings we never want to have in person again. We learned that other meetings are powerful to have in person. We all have a new tool in our toolbox and we're going to leverage that in the future.

Jason Bingham: I think we should assume we don't know the future, right? Assume we can't project where it's going to be and instead be very interested in what's going on. It won't be like the old norm and we don't want to go back to the old norm, but we're not really sure exactly what new norm is. And so leaders have to be very open. There is no prescription for what we have here. It’s going to build on its own.

Most of our people have worked harder than they've ever worked in their lives over the last two years. And we've got to recognize that first of all, and make sure they get balance in their lives. But second of all, get give a wealth of trust. Allow them to go figure that out, get feedback on how we need to adjust as we go down that road and then together, you know, build something better than what we had before.

Dave Regnery: Open and flexible.