Automate Your Agency

Why don't your Friday lunches and snack cabinets help improve your turnover?

• Alane Boyd & Micah Johnson • Season 1 • Episode 24

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Building a strong, sustainable company culture isn't about offering perks like free snacks or Friday lunches. It’s about creating systems, fostering accountability, and building trust from the ground up.

In this week's episode, Alane Boyd and Micah Johnson discuss how implementing the right systems and fostering shared accountability helped transform their company culture. They share how their early struggles with burnout and high turnover were turned around by focusing on creating structure and promoting trust across leadership and teams.

Tune in as they dive into:

🔹 Why systems and accountability are more effective than superficial perks

🔹 How leadership can foster trust and support employee well-being

🔹 The importance of respecting employees’ personal time and family commitments

🔹 And much more!

If you’re looking to strengthen your company culture, this episode will give you practical insights on how trust and effective systems can lead to a happier, more productive team.

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0:00:00 - (Alane): Welcome to Automate youe Agency. Every week we bring you expert insights, practical tips and success stories that will help you streamline your business operations and boost your growth. Let's get started on your journey to more efficient and scalable operations.

0:00:18 - (Micah): Hey, Alane. So for this episode, I was recently speaking at a conference and one of the things that got brought up I thought was just. It became a really interesting discussion and it was this concept that systems is the foundation for accountability and accountability is the foundation for trust. And by having all of those three things connected and building that trust, that's how you actually create great company culture.

0:00:45 - (Micah): Not just buying snacks and making sure the snack cabinet is filled or doing Friday lunches or essentially buying culture with money.

0:00:57 - (Alane): And it doesn't work. People will. If you have a great system for accountability and you add those things, great. But it doesn't fix having accountability and having a good company culture. It has to already be a good company culture. And then you add on having the snack cabinet and having Friday lunches or whatever you want to help build community, but that does not fix a bad culture.

0:01:23 - (Micah): Yeah, absolutely. Those are the bonus items. Yeah.

0:01:26 - (Alane): I mean, and I can think back, you know, 15 years ago when we were starting off, we didn't have a great company culture. We were disorganized. It was feed em to the wolves. People were just thrown into work. And it was a bit chaotic. It was very chaotic. We were growing faster than we could handle and just figuring it out as every day just like a shitstorm of things that we've got to do and our team has to do.

0:01:53 - (Micah): And it's funny because you bring that up, I definitely remember that. But at the same time, I also remember that transition point where we put our systems in place. And then the important thing here, and I remember this vividly, I made a huge deal that the leadership team was going to be just as accountable to the team doing the work and the rest of the team as the team doing the work needs to be accountable to that leadership, to the leadership team.

0:02:23 - (Micah): And that shared accountability created so much stability, so much trust. People knew that if you and I showed up for work, we were going to do what we said we were going to do. If we said we were going to do something or head down this direction or, you know, tackle these opportunities, we were doing our damn best to do that. And everybody knew that. We didn't have the politics once we had all this in place, you know, we didn't have the, the BS that typically goes with this, like, oh, you know, here's you know, Micah saying he's going to do this again. We know that's not going to happen.

0:03:04 - (Alane): Yeah.

0:03:05 - (Micah): Or if something bad happens in the business. Right. It was the leadership team that would take the responsibility, and that's a little different than accountability. But we take the accountability or the responsibility, and we wouldn't say, well, that's because so and so didn't do it correctly on the team. That's ridiculous.

0:03:25 - (Alane): Yeah. I mean, I remember too, where this transition started to happen and employee turnover was high. And does that mean every employee leaves? No. Some get comfortable. Some don't want to put in the effort to find anything. So do you see every employee leave? No. But if you do see that for an average, that you have employees turning over like we did, then you can start to spot, okay, how can I make improvements?

0:03:51 - (Alane): And accountability is such a crucial one. And in your personal life, think about it. If somebody continuously lets you down, doesn't do what they say they're going to do, you can't depend on them. If your car breaks down, they say they're going to come get you, and then they forget. Do you think you're going to stay friends with them long? No. But in work, we think, oh, well, we can keep letting each other down. We can let co workers down, and it's okay. It's part of our culture that is a huge red flag.

0:04:19 - (Alane): And we were experiencing this like we had. We started seeing employees weren't lasting very long, and we're burning through people. The cost and time resources of retraining people was so costly. And that's when we started. And you really were leading this, like, we had some things in place. And you said, elaine, we have got to change things. Like, we cannot continue growing at the pace that we have to and keep doing things the same way. And you're like, I have some ideas.

0:04:50 - (Alane): And I was like, that sounds fantastic. And we put those things in place, and we did start seeing improvements. People stayed longer. We could, as we grew, we could move people if they weren't in the best position for them, we could move them to a different position in the company where they could thrive and we didn't have to retrain on everything. They already had institutional knowledge, and that's what you're looking for as you grow. Okay, how can I maneuver these little pieces?

0:05:18 - (Alane): And what we got to see when we went through our merger was the band aid effect. When you. When you try to do snacks and Friday lunches and things to try to improve a company culture without putting systems and Accountability in place. That's when you see you're spending a lot of resources fulfilling something that people at the end of the day do not care about.

0:05:44 - (Micah): Yeah, Zero gain. Zero gain on that. And I. I would even argue that can create a negative effect. Like, oh, okay, I get it. Mike and Alane just want to pay, just want to spend their money. Just spend the businesses money. Like it's. It becomes to a point where it's not worth to the team members, no matter how much money. Well, obviously there's. If there's. There's enough money, you'll get it. But, you know, within reason, it becomes a negative effect. It's not.

0:06:14 - (Micah): Wow, thank you so much. Maybe the first time. Right. But the second time, okay, I'd rather spend time with my family. By the third time, you're like, you don't get it. I want to spend time with my family. I don't want to work on the weekend. Yeah, stop trying to bribe me with. And then that's where you're going. That slippery slope of like, this place sucks. I'm not going to work here. Now, another topic that's alongside of this with accountability is the difference between negative accountability and positive accountability.

0:06:44 - (Micah): We've seen both of these as well, pre merger and post merger with our last business. But, you know, my management style and what I try to do is positive accountability. It's changing that mindset as a leader to say, I need to be a supportive leader. I don't know everything. The people doing the work are going to have more information than I do, even if I want to feel like I can make the final decision.

0:07:12 - (Micah): Right. So that positive accountability means creating systems that create accountability and then supporting your team in a positive way with that accountability to create the trust.

0:07:24 - (Alane): Mm. You know, one huge change that I've seen in the way that we run our business is early on, we were more like times of the day that you have to work and we didn't care if you were five or 10 minutes late and you stayed five or 10, like that, that kind of stuff. It was okay. But we still had like a period of time that we wanted people to work. And now it really. We like to have overlap in people's days so that we can move work forward, we can tackle roadblocks instead of having to wait, you know, hours in between.

0:08:00 - (Alane): But we don't have anything saying, you gotta clock it at this time and you gotta leave at this time, like, get your work done. These are the things that we've gotta get done. These are the things we need to execute for our clients or for marketing or whatever. Let's get it done.

0:08:14 - (Micah): I think that's a perfect example, Alane. That covers all three. We needed the systems to be able to do that. We needed the accountability from those systems to be able to understand when things are and are not happening. And that. And then we also needed the trust, and it created the trust to say, like, look, here's the deadline. Here's how we need it done. Let us know if you have questions.

0:08:37 - (Alane): Yeah. Yeah. I remember when we first started this business and we. We started off with our values, the core values of the company. Our first one is Families First. We're coworkers. We love working with each other, but we're not your family. Of course we feel like it. For some of the people we've worked with for years and years now, we do feel like they're family, but we are not at the end of the day. And we need to be respectful of that.

0:09:03 - (Alane): And just like you and I want to be there for Fletcher's cello holiday lesson concert, then they want to be there for their kids or their family or their significant other. And we need to be respectful of that. And that was our first value that we put on there so that people knew that they could be there for their important family events and that we honor that.

0:09:28 - (Micah): Yeah, it's an excellent, excellent point. I think with all of these things put together, again, this is just my belief, but I think I feel like this is the only way to create a sustainable culture. You can do quotas, you can do performance reviews. You can have negative accountability. Right. You can have discipline, just disciplinary actions. You can be a leader and not take the blame for anything.

0:09:56 - (Micah): You can try to cover it all up by making the rest of the work environment seem better. Like snack cabinets and lunches and all.

0:10:08 - (Alane): Those other good Netflix tertiary subscription, headspace subscription. I love those things. Those are great perks.

0:10:16 - (Micah): But the only way to make it sustainable is to create that trust between your team and you as the leader. And it's just such an interesting. To me, the dichotomy is that comes from systems which are like the coldest thing you can create in a business. Right. Like, who cares about the automation or the repeatable process and the procedures, but without those, you don't have anything to build upon.

0:10:43 - (Alane): Yeah. And it's. It's so interesting that most companies, this is the last thing that they focus on as they're getting things figured out. They eventually get to a breaking point where the founder, the exec team, is Just burnt out. And then they're like, I think we actually need some systems and processes. Because in the end, in the early days, like, you have to sell to survive. You know, you have to have clients. So figuring out the rest, and, you know, this goes perfectly with our previous episode, is that, you know, you do have to sell, you have to get clients in. But there is a time to build and be and have sustainable processes that people can follow. So you have accountability and you can grow so that people enjoy coming to work.

0:11:25 - (Alane): People, even if they are staying on a long time and they hate their job and they hate coming to work, that is affecting how your clients work with you, how long they stay with you, what work is being produced by your team. When you're happy and you're enjoying things, you're going to produce a lot better work and you're going to come across a lot better to your clients than the other way of doing it.

0:11:49 - (Micah): Yeah. And that. That reminds me, one of the topics that I got involved in a discussion around as well was the difference between in office and remote and culture and enjoying working with people is so much easier in person. That's not saying everybody should go back to the office because times change, technology changes. I mean, you and I are sitting in completely different states having this conversation right now, today.

0:12:19 - (Alane): Yeah.

0:12:21 - (Micah): But that just means that things have to change a little bit. On, again, going back to systems, right. If you have the right tools in place, if you have the right systems in place, if you have that accountability, it breaks down that barrier of whether you're in the office or not, or whether you're remote or not, or even whether you're working asynchronously. You can still work at completely opposite ends of the day with somebody, still create accountability, still have systems, still build trust so that when they wake up and start working, they trust and know that you've been accountable, that you got your stuff done. When you wake up the following day, you've got that trust because they've got the accountability in the system that their work is completed.

0:13:10 - (Micah): And that creates the engine of productivity and efficiency to keep going.

0:13:14 - (Alane): Yeah.

0:13:14 - (Micah): Wild.

0:13:15 - (Alane): It is. And we always think when we put in these kind of systems, initially the thought is it feels like micromanaging because it's assigned to a person with a due date. It is the opposite of micromanaging. It is the idea that when I go to work, I know what needs to get done, I know when things are due and I know how to prioritize. I can manage how these tasks get Done. I can manage. If I do this one first in my day or this one second in my day, I know the priority so I can plan my day.

0:13:47 - (Alane): It is. I don't need to go into my team members and micromanage them because I've already said, these are the things we need to get done today. These are the things we need to get done this week. You choose how they happen and how they fit into your day. Let's just make sure they happen. And that leaves me from having to check in, you know, constantly, hey, where are we at on this? Where are we at on this? Because the system is there and the team members know what is expected of them, when to get things done, and when they hit roadblocks, they know where to say, hey, actually, I think it go this way or this way.

0:14:22 - (Alane): I think it should go this way. But I just need a second perspective. Can you give me a thumbs up here with what you think?

0:14:28 - (Micah): Yeah, I mean, I don't think I could have said that better. Absolutely. You're providing information that they need to run autonomously. It's the complete opposite of micromanagement, is not giving enough information and then going, hey, Alane, where's this at? Hey, Alane, is this done yet? And you freaking out because you didn't know the priority. You didn't know all the task details, you didn't know when the due date was, you didn't know who else was working on it, you didn't know how the task fit into the projects that forces micromanagement and frustration and loses trust.

0:15:01 - (Micah): So, yeah, but we, you know, I think when we originally were doing this too, it did feel like, oh, man, we're, we're controlling every aspect of this, like these puppet masters and tools like ClickUp and like. But it's the, it's a hundred percent the opposite. And if you haven't given it a try and you're doing the opposite of what we're saying, where you're not doing this, give it a try and see if it works better for you.

0:15:25 - (Alane): Yeah. And we also allow for changes. So if our team has a better idea on how we execute on things, if they think we need to make a change to how the task is being ran or the project's being ran, please. We want to make improvements. I'd love to hear your ideas on changing it and then we can have a discussion about it. And Micah, to wrap this up, we have an episode on the software platforms. We think every business needs to run their company.

0:15:54 - (Alane): And this one would be perfect if you're wondering how to execute on this idea of accountability. It'd be a perfect one to listen to. We describe each one, how to use it and why we think it's so important. And you can start building these systems of accountability so you aren't the accountability.

0:16:11 - (Micah): Love it. Thanks everybody for listening.

0:16:13 - (Alane): Thanks for listening to this episode of Automate Your Agency. We hope you're inspired to take your business to the next level. We have free content and tools for automating your business at our website, workdayninja.com.

0:16:25 - (Micah): And join us next week as we dive into more ways to automate and scale your business.

0:16:30 - (Alane): Bye for now.

People on this episode

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Alane Boyd

Co-host
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Micah Johnson

Co-host