S2 E96: Core Values with Craig Wood, CEO of Premier International

In this week’s episode, we're continuing our series on how values drive success in business. We are chatting with industry experts to gain their insight on developing Core Values that create a winning team. 

We're bringing back one of our favorite guests Craig Wood, CEO of Premier International. Craig is a seasoned CEO and Board member who understands how to get the best out of a company and its employees. He is passionate about personal development for his team and the impact that culture has on a company, its growth and its eventual success.

As leaders, you make the best decisions you can with imperfect data. And then you ask your team to commit to it. And that's what one team united is about. It's about agreeing. It's about committing. And it's about being aligned. And that's certainly what we have built here.

Our episode with Craig a few months ago is what spurred this core value series and how drilling into how our corporate values drive day-to-day action, brings alignment to our team, and delivers an excellent client experience.

Connect with Craig
The Premier Way values
Website - http://www.premier-international.com
Linkedin - ​​https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigmwood
Twitter - @craigmwood
Episode 78 - https://tinyurl.com/7djkrcpw 

Connect with Winston

LinkedIn     https://www.linkedin.com/in/winstonfaircloth/
Facebook   https://www.facebook.com/forloveofteam
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Transcript

Craig Wood  0:00  
Really, as leaders, you make the best decisions you can with imperfect data. And then you ask your team to commit to it. And that's what one team united is about. It's about about agreeing. It's about committing. And it's about being aligned. And that's certainly what we have built here.

Winston Faircloth  0:14  
Neither your host Winston Faircloth, and this is for love of team, the podcast to helping you grow team you love multiplying your impact income and freedom in business. And we do this by unlocking two essential leadership decisions required to attract and keep top talent. First, a compelling why, coupled with second a clearly stated what success looks like that Why And What together leaves the how to gifted, committed collaborators bringing your vision to life. 

And in today's episode, we're going to continue our series on how values drive success in business, how having core values that drive your day to day work and business drive success. And we have a special treat for you today, because we're bringing back one of our favorite guests recently, from Episode 78. This is Craig wood, who CEO of premier International, Craig, our conversation a few months ago really spurred this topic for me in really drilling down into how corporate values drives day to day action, and brings alignment to our team, and more importantly delivers an excellent client experience because we are so aligned with those values. And the premier way that Craig introduced us to in Episode 78. We're gonna drill into a little bit more here, I know you're really going to love this interview again with our friend, Craig woods, CEO of premier International. Craig good. Welcome back to the love of team podcast.

Craig Wood  1:51  
It is great to be with you again, Winston,

Winston Faircloth  1:53  
you are one of our first repeat guests on this season of the podcast where we're talking about building teams that you love. And you were such a big hit from our first time that we had you that and you actually inspired this brand new series that's looking at company values. And so thank you for coming back. I'm so excited to dig into this piece of how you're building a team a culture of business that you love, and you know how you balance the love of clients and love of team.

Craig Wood  2:27  
I'm glad to hear that I really enjoyed our first discussion, I guess there's now a little pressure if I'm the first repeat guest to come back. But we're super proud of what we've built is taken time and intentionality. And I'm anxious to dig a little deeper into the premier way and our core values here at premier

Winston Faircloth  2:45  
excellence. So for folks who didn't catch the earlier podcast, can you just give us a little bit of overview about your career and premier?

Craig Wood  2:53  
You bet. I am currently the CEO premier International, we're based in Chicago, we're an IT consulting firm that helps with a very specific part of a technology transformation. And that's getting data from an old legacy system into a new target system. My career has been grounded in data and consulting sort of the combination of the two. I'm a professional services person trained in sort of the sales and marketing aspects of that, and have a history of building organizations that help companies understand how to leverage data, how to understand data, and how to get the most out of their customer relationships and their employee relationships based on the information that they know. I came to premiere in 2018, upon the passing of the founder and CEO Premier, and came in and discovered an incredible culture that I'm excited to talk about. And the part of the story will jump ahead that I know that those who listened to the first episode, not only was this person, the CEO and founder of premier who passed, but he also was my father in law. So I came in with a heavy heart, desire to honor his legacy and to honor his history with the company and take a great culture and try to make it even better. And so that's, that's what brought me here, actually, three years ago today. Exactly. So it's, today is my three year anniversary.

Winston Faircloth  4:15  
Well, congratulations, and thank you for that overview. And thank you for the honor of spending your anniversary with us.

Craig Wood  4:22  
Absolutely.

Winston Faircloth  4:23  
So that was podcast 78 if you want to go back, and we'll link that in the show notes so that you all can access our earlier conversation with Greg. So why don't you How would you describe the culture? I think in the earlier podcast, you you, you described it as a blend of a client first and a team first culture he may have had different language around that, but how would you describe the culture?

Craig Wood  4:48  
Well, that that that is the way I described it, it was actually one of the first times I put those two things together. And we explored a lot of that together when we spoke which is how does that coexist? How do you become Employee first and client first are employee centric and client centric. And too often you see organizations that I believe that try to be one and can't be the other. There's a ton of client centricity out there client centric firms, they do. So I think at the expense of their teams, they do so by making sacrifices or asking their team to do things that they are just not healthy for the team. And then I've also found organizations that are so employee focused and so culture focused that they forget the client, that they forget how to serve the needs of the group that is paying the bills, if you will, and that was generating the revenue. And so we really tried to balance both of those, how do those two things coexist and it's, as I've, I've used the word intentionality a lot. And that's just that's something I think is important is, is understanding that there are decisions, you have to make an intentional pathway as you go down, to try to make both those things happen and, and our values are part of what we believe have helped shape, the ability to be both employee and client focused.

Winston Faircloth  6:08  
So let's let's dig a little bit into the employee side of that ledger. Here in terms of company values. Just before we hit record, we were to I was sharing how, at least my experience with a lot of company values is that they're very pretty poster on the wall. And, and that's it, you know, it's it, you know, so let's talk about your the premier way that your values, maybe recap a few of those for folks, and then how you bring those to life in your daily work.

Craig Wood  6:46  
You bet. To do that, let me let me go back 36 years, when the company was founded in 1985. And founded by a couple of engineers and doing half woman, I mentioned my father in law and mother law. And that was founded to be a different kind of consulting firm was founded to be a firm grounded in ethics was Jim's priority. He wanted to build an ethical consulting firm, that was not after the holy dollar without after view of the highest revenue. But it was after building an organization that exuded ethics and ethical behavior. And we've talked about it, it was in the mid 80s, when that was not always the the mantra, right, that things were not talked about core values were not something on the wall in 1985, people really didn't talk about them even if they had them. And so we didn't have the premier way. In 1985, we had a founder, who was focused on building a different kind of company. And so part of what I would say is the values for us were not words of the wall that we then tried to live out, they were things that we lived out that 33 years later, we found a way to describe them with words on the wall. And that's a really different approach. We did have what is the code of ethics, I'm looking at one of my office right now, it was five ethical statements that we made to our clients. So we made to each other that we hired on, and it became the foundation of our core values. And they were things like, adhere to the highest ethical standards in place the clients interest first and serve all clients with excellence, maintain a professional attitude and preserve the client's confidence. We were dealing with data, we're dealing with confidential information, we were in the HR data business at the time. So the idea of having a code of ethics was a differentiator for us. And for 33 years. Those were the words on our wall. And it was a foundation of who we hired and who we worked with. And it served us quite well. When I arrived three years ago today, I talked about, you know, what makes premiere so unique. And what is it that you know, makes premiere premiere, and I got different answers from everyone. But they all sort of had the same core themes. to them. It started with this foundation of ethical

boundaries and ethical standards. And then it was, you know, that we always exceed expectations, and we have a lot of fun together. But we didn't really have a codification. if that's a word that we were, we were unable to codify sort of in a in a concise way. What made premier premier. So we embarked on a process to do just that. On a process that said, we know we have values, we know we have a culture, how do we describe it, and one of the words or terms that can be used to talk about who we are as an organization and that exercise, which took us about six months. It was part of a larger process of our EOS implementation, the EOS entrepreneurial operating system, it's a business process for small and midsize companies. And as we went through the EOS process, we uncovered these six core values and I won't bore you with the details. That process, but the point being it was it was not overnight. But we knew what we had, we knew what we were trying to describe. And ultimately, we got to what we think are the are the six core elements, the core tenants of who makes what makes premier premier. It's the DNA of our organization, if you will, that's uniquely ours. And uniquely, a combination of things that helps make our organization so special. So let me take a breath and recite for you what those are just quickly. So we've gone from this code of ethics, released in 1985. To in 2019, we released our the premier way, after internal group came up with these and lots of input from our 40. At the time 40 person team, they are as follows. The first tenet is client first always, second tenant is driven by integrity. The third is above and beyond the fourth is rise to the opportunity. The fifth is competent, yet humble. And the sixth and final one is one team united. Those six tenants, not individually, but collectively make up who we are as an organization. And those six tenants, I would say make up the employee focus of our organization, we look for people that live out these values and their personal decisions. They live out these values of how they treat their family and how they treat their friends and how they treat their clients. We focus on on hiring for these values for making performance decisions that are influenced by these values. As I like to say, these are the reasons why people join us why they want to work for premier and why they stay with us as long as they do. It's the reason why clients hire us. And why they continue to come back to us is because they see these six values brought to life and how we interact with them on a daily basis in handling their data and our interaction.

Winston Faircloth  11:54  
And, and I think that's super important in let's go back to the client side of this for a second. When they see these values, it's not a surprise to them, because they've experienced it.

Craig Wood  12:06  
They don't you don't want it's a great point. Because one of the things that we haven't done is posted these on the wall there on our websites. But this is not something we say hey, look, Mister missus client, we were client first always and you know, we're driven by integrity. And yet, when we get feedback from our clients, it is not uncommon for them to actually use the words that we have in our values to describe what we did for them. I don't can't tell you how many times I've gotten a note from a client saying thank you so much. Your team went above and beyond on this one, they really rose to the opportunity of this. You know, they were they were one team together, you know, one team united. So it's so validating, to say that this that our clients see these values come to life in the work not because they've read them somewhere. I know they have read them on our website, because most of our clients probably don't hang out on our website. Now I do know recruits read them. Because when when we read when we interview someone, folks are getting very good at preparing for the interview. But it's really interesting to see how people in an interview process will try to share, you know how they were a client first always are how they rose to the opportunity. That's just, that's, that's great interviewing technique a, but B, those are the type of people that we want, there are people who have actually explored our values, who have said, this is the kind of place I want to work. And I want to show them that this is a part of who I am. Not that I'm willing to be this way. But this is actually a core element of who I am as a person.

Winston Faircloth  13:39  
I think that's fascinating to me. And in this marketplace of employees, or potential team members, they can be very selective these days, as selective as employers, right?

Craig Wood  13:53  
They can be and I'll actually say what we're seeing now is there can be so selective that culture is rising to the top of what people are looking for. They're looking for a place that is a manifestation of who they are, of how they think of they want to be associated with it. People have talked about this with brands for a long time. A brand is a reflection of who you are, if you're carrying a Gucci purse, or Apple, you know, laptop or whatever the case might be. I think the same goes for companies, they want to work at a place that reflects who they are. And that is at least different for me over my 30 years of leading organizations. That hasn't always been the case, who's going to pay me the most, who's the cool company, you know, who's you know, who's going to help my resume be a brand name, but I can go get another job. And we're seeing now that people are saying, you know what, the world has changed and I want to work somewhere that looks like what I see when I look in the mirror. It's a reflection of me, and we're probably not for everybody. We love who we hire. We have 56 people But as of right now, which is even more than when I was a podcast a couple of months ago, we've hired over 20 people since COVID. And we have 56 people. But I think Winston, the number is somewhere around 40, or 42, have never worked anywhere but premier. And we don't have we, I'm, I'm on the older end of our spectrum in my early 50s, most of our team is, you know, in the early 20s, to mid 30s. And they've never worked anywhere else. So this myth that millennials are going to job hop every three to five years, and we just haven't seen it. And I think it's because our culture is a reflection of who they are. And they're, they're proud to work here. And they're proud to be a part of an organization that lives out what they believe is, is their, their core essence, their core being

Winston Faircloth  15:44  
and what I've really loved. And we're gonna put the link to your website page that talks about the premier way, in the podcast notes. But I love how you go on to describe in some detail, and with very clear, and sometimes emotional language, what it means to be client first, or to go above and beyond and above and beyond can feel like a little bit of a, hey, you know, we're gonna do whatever it takes. And in our earlier conversation, you really talked about how you, yes, we do, but to certain, there's still boundaries here.

Craig Wood  16:22  
There are and I appreciate you acknowledging because we've worked very hard not to sum the words to describe our values, but on the words, the actual devalue themself, I should say, but um, the words that describe the values as well. And I'll hit on a couple of them end on the one that you mentioned. But the idea of the client first always, you know, one of the things that we said was, that doesn't mean the clients, right, always, client first doesn't mean that you always have to agree with the client, it does mean that the client's needs are our primary for us. And we want to make sure but sometimes it's in the best angle for the client, it's in their best interest is to say no to something or to say, we can't do that, or we're not going to work on a weekend or you don't need that, you know, we've oftentimes said, you know, what, you don't need to spend money on us, here's someone else that can do it cheaper than we can because it's not, you know, we're not the best resource for you. That's quiet first. That's not revenue first, that's top line first, that's client first. And that's so that's a good one. The other one I think is interesting is right, to the opportunity. You know, we always say that we're other see a challenge, we see an opportunity, the gnarlier, the more complex, the more complicated the solution is the you know, we get people say, our data is so bad, you're never gonna be able to work through it. And our team's ears perked up at that point, because that's what they want, they want to be able to rise to that opportunity, we don't see the negative aspect of a challenge, we see a chance to, to exceed their expectations, which leads us to the one you brought up, which is above and beyond, which is probably the the easiest one to identify in behavior, both for us and our clients. And the hardest one to manage. Because I'll you know, in all honesty, this is a this is a tough one, because we at sometimes believe that we have to do more than we probably do. And that we've set the bar so high for ourselves, and then we try to jump over that bar, that it takes its toll. And the example that I shared before is is is one where clients get used to map they, they are expecting that, and then and they sometimes will ask for things that probably are unreasonable. And yet, I have a team and we have a team that's just willing to do that. And that sometimes manifests itself in a 90 Hour Work Week, or you know, canceling a vacation or doing things that just are not who we are as an organization. And we've had the balance that we've had to actually say to employees, you know, there's there is a boundary here, and we need you to not say yes to this, but I'm supposed to go above and beyond or but it's quiet first, always, and how do those things coexist, and we've had to have tough conversations, and make some tough trade offs. We've had at least one client that just didn't really match our values and was expecting more from our team in a way that just was not consistent with who we are. And we sort of mutually agreed to partway isn't the right time it was it was not a good cultural fit for us. And part of it was we were not treated with the respect that we expected. And yet our team was having to do the things that were being asked of them. And it was creating a very unhealthy environment for a handful of members on our team. I grateful so grateful that that we didn't lose anybody during that because it would have been an environment where someone says the heck with it. I can't put up with it anymore. And I think that speaks to the strength of these values was that our team was able to get through a very difficult situation with their head heads held high, proud of the work that we did successful by all technical accounts, and we survived and that's the That's where these values become not just words on a wall, they become what does it mean, when going above and beyond actually, is a bad thing for the company? And how do you deal with that? And how do you

maintain it the balance? And how do you protect your team who really wants to exceed expectations, to say, it's still okay to only go here and allow yourself this weekend to reconnect and recharge your batteries, because that's what's that's what's required for you to be able to go above and beyond next week. So that those are good examples. And we tried to convey that not just for people reading our website, but for our employees to understand, this is what you told us, these are the words you said to us that were important to you, as we described what you know, what it meant to do and be these things. And the last one I would just hit on quickly is just one team united. Sometimes that's perceived potentially, as we agree on everything. We don't agree on everything. We have a diversity of not just, you know, race and ethnicity. And that continues to be a priority for us in terms of how do we improve our diversity. But we also have a diversity of thoughts and ideas and voices and opinions. And we celebrate all of that. And we want to be a place where we can have healthy discussions, and dialogue and potentially debates. But when we leave the room, we are aligned on where we're going and how we're going to get there. There's a saying I heard another leadership person speak about which is, you know, what you want from your team is to be able to leave a room and saying, I agree and commit, or I disagree, and commit. And that that is that commitment that we're looking for that says you know what you might not fully understand or agree with, why we're doing this or why we're taking made this decision. But we want you to commit to it and be united with it. And we saw that throughout COVID. Winston in all kinds of areas, right? We had to make tough decisions, whether open the office closed, the office wear masks, not wearing masks. And while we had lots of good dialogue about it, ultimately, as leaders, you make the best decisions you can with imperfect data. And then you ask your team to commit to it. And that's what we that's what one team united is about is about about agreeing. It's about committing. And it's about being aligned. And that's certainly what we have built here at premier.

Winston Faircloth  22:21  
It's a great story. And I want to go back to above and beyond. Because as you were describing that story and that situation with a particularly difficult client, the one thing that came to mind for me was you went above and beyond in protecting the team from, you know, a wrong fit client. Potentially, I'm strict using stronger words than you did, but but I think that that taking those kind of counter intuitive actions, really is a symbol that the company can go above and beyond to.

Craig Wood  22:56  
Yeah, thank you for that compliment. I, I will I will just caveat by saying we tried to, I we're not perfect as an organization. And I'm sure there were moments where we sided with the client that probably we could have done a better job of taking care of our team. And but overall, that was our intent. And that was, you know, we uncovered it early enough to be able to do something about it. And like I said before, it became so late that we that we lost people on it. And I think that's the that's the beauty of what above and beyond the means one of the things that we joke about is we don't just go above and beyond with clients, we go above and beyond and everything we do as an organization, whether it be company parties, whether it be you know, celebrations or happy hours or Fantasy Football Bets, I mean, everything we do is is above and beyond, we try to surprise and delight, we try to exceed expectations. And that can be from the you know, the PTO policy to you know, what you do to protect your team, you know, in a sticky client situation. And that's why it's such an interesting mesh, when you think about employee and client, right? This above and beyond is not just about client behavior, it's about internal behavior, rise into the opportunity. That's what we think we did with COVID, we rose to the opportunity, they've had unbelievable challenges and obstacles. And we found a way to have our best year ever, we found our way to grow more significantly than we ever thought we could and to set ourselves up for new, incredible 2021. Because we rose to that opportunity. And I think that that's that's where this becomes an interesting mosaic of, of client and employee. Internal external values become not just words on paper, they become the essence of who you are as an organization. And you don't leave that at home. You don't leave that when you're interacting with someone you know, on a personal thing. It's really a description of who we have as our team are the six core values.

Winston Faircloth  24:54  
So let's talk about how we bring this home in terms of a day to day experience. Maybe you can think of a recent story about how these values really kind of kind of flow through the organization. Do you have like a fairly recent story about how these values are relevant in day to day work?

Craig Wood  25:19  
Sure. Let me I'll have to think about that for a second for a specific story. But I'll tell you a specific application that I think is interesting. One of our team members, as we were, as we roll this out in late 2019, we talked about how can we celebrate this? How can we acknowledge this in a, in a real time way. And her idea is such a simple one was we created the email address, the premier way app are our websites. And it's a way for our employees to call out people who are living out these values in the moment. And that email addresses is goes to the mailbox that goes to the leadership team that we then share with the whole company. And I would bet that there hardly is a day that goes by that I don't see an email from someone to someone saying, hey, me, thanks for going above and beyond on this, or thanks, Nick, for you know, rising to this opportunity when I need to do and it's just a, it's a beautiful reminder that that we all want to be recognized that it's easy to find these values come to life in the in the mundane of our day to day jobs. And so I can read to you the last 20 of these that we received. And they come from everybody, I you know, people are writing them to the CEO, and they're writing them to, you know, to the newest associate who just joined the company a few weeks ago, it's just a, it's a, it's a wonderful way to celebrate each other, but also to celebrate that the premier way of is alive and well in the organization. The most recent one I was involved with was a, you know, a situation where we were not being paid in a timely manner. And, you know, quiet first always would tell you that you keep doing work for the client, and you, you know, you just kind of wait for your payment to come. And we had to struggle with that. And we talked about that, like, what's it mean to be quiet for us always, when potentially, the obligations of the of the client aren't being met on their head. And that's where it's in our best interest to have that honest, authentic conversation. That's exactly what we did got escalated to the highest level, and we navigated it. And they appreciated how we approached it, they even called out to us like we were grateful for your patience. But we're also grateful that you called us on it. And you've helped us identify some breakages in our system for lack of a better word that we need to address. And, you know, thank you for the partnership. And so it's it's just, there's example, after example, after example of that, and for 33 years, we did that. But I don't think we have, we didn't have that anchor to say this is what that was, for the last three years what I'm so excited about it. Now people say that was the premier way in action, that was this value that was that value. And really what we've done is codify and be able to bring into the light, what really has been here for a long time. And I would, I would just I was just gonna say one thing is that as I as I think about you, and and the work that you do, and your team does, and your clients, I would offer this encouragement, which is every organization has a culture, don't kid yourself, you're starting an organization as a start up, you have a culture, the question becomes, you know, who is that culture? And how do you describe it, and those to me are the values you're living out. There are such things as aspirational values, we want to be this. But I would be careful to understand what are your values today? And what are your aspirational values for tomorrow? And make sure that you don't conflate the two because there's one thing to say here are values that we think we are we are this, this and this. And if you don't live them out, you're going to actually be worse off than not having said what your values were at all. In case in point for us older folks, you know, just look back at what the corporate values were of Enron, right. They were they had kyphosis of what Enron was doing. They were aspirational values that they could not live out. So I would say from a practical point of advices, understand who you are as an organization today, and describe your your core values and who you are today. If there are ones you don't like, or ones that you think are not who you want to be, then create some aspirational values to get to and find a pathway and a plan to get there. But don't kid yourself that you think that we don't have a culture yet or we don't have values yet. You have values and how you make day to day decisions as an organization, the lens by which you make those decisions. Those are your values today, whether you're a one year old company or a 36 year old company,

Winston Faircloth  30:00  
Oh, so well said and and that was, I think a very difficult balance for a lot of people who are beginning to codify these values is that they can be so aspirational. And yet, you know, employees and team members, sniff out that delta and no time, right. And they were like, Well, that sounds great. And it goes in the wastebasket never to be seen again.

Craig Wood  30:25  
That is a great way to put it sniff out. People can see when you're not being authentic, and it's gonna start with your team, who's gonna say that's not who we are. You know, Craig says this, but that's how Craig acts. And that's, that is the death knell, right of an organization culture is all of a sudden, there's this alignment between who somebody or an organization thinks they are versus who they really are. And I spend a lot of time speaking about and talking about being the best version of yourself. So much, so I think my team kind of get sick of it. But But when I talk about it, I think about the best version of yourself individually. But I also talked about what does it mean for premiere to be the best version of itself? How does it How does that happen to a company, and and the process is the same. I talked about understanding yourself being self aware, being okay, getting in the discomfort of or uncomfortable places, and then kind of giving yourself grace and being able to say, you know, what, I wasn't the best version of myself there. But I can be a better version of myself. Same thing applies to a company, and to acknowledge that, hey, we're not the best version of ourselves, or, hey, we're not living out this value the way we want to, how do we get there? Give yourself some grace, when you don't, those principles sort of are are easy to sort of understand from an individual perspective, but they're even easier to apply to an organization or a community or communal activity, like like what we're trying to do here at Premier,

Winston Faircloth  31:55  
it out. And you just anticipated the question I was going for, which is how do you continue to improve and level up these values? And what you've just described is an ongoing evergreen process of growth, right? If I have to keep constantly measuring, am I showing up as the best version of myself, and therefore, we, as a team, become the best version of ourselves? That's not a static place?

Craig Wood  32:20  
It's not, it's not probably better to be the better version of yourself, because you're always trying to get better as opposed to the ultimate best. I do believe that these core values sort of stay. You know, they're the core of who we are. We have talked about every year when we sort of reevaluate, are there any we should take off? Are there any we should add. And there's a couple that I would say as we as our culture continues to grow as we grow as people, we talked about cultural ads, at our last conversation, as we add people who are bringing new things to our culture, we are growing and evolving as an organization, I wouldn't be surprised if two years from now I'm back on your podcast that we've added a core value or the premier way now has seven things for eight things, because there's some things that are important to us that are actually living out how we interact, that aren't reflected here. And and the that comes with that comes with time and will be a better version of ourselves two years from now than we are today. And I would argue are better today than we were three years ago. And we were better three years ago, we were 30 years ago. So it's just fun to watch this organization grow into the best version of itself, whatever that looks like, and knowing that we continue to have a ways to go to do that.

Winston Faircloth  33:31  
So does this in terms of creating and stewarding and communicating this, you know, some organizations feel like this responsibility resides in a single position. How did how does this How does this come about in terms if we haven't yet codified it? If we don't have? Is there an owner of this process? Or is this everything? everybody owns this? Great,

Craig Wood  33:57  
great question. There's a lot of writing about this, that values really often should and do come down from leadership teams, because it's the leaders of the organization that are living this out that are making decisions about where you spend your money and your time, and therefore have the greatest influence on the values. And I can see that and I understand that this culture for 30 years was a manifestation of who Jim Templeman was. He was a great man, and he had great ethics. And we're proud to have that. He influenced it greatly, but it wasn't just that. And I would argue when I read these things in academia, I read these things other places, I would argue that Yes, that's true. And it also comes from the bottom up is the organization that the people you're hiring the newest employee, who's adding something to your culture is driving what your values are, and and you can't have either or you can't just have it be a bottom up and have it come from your team and they can't just Come top down from your leadership, we're a small enough organization that you know, 56 people that we don't have a chief vision officer and chief people officer or you know, someone who's in charge of culture, necessarily, I do believe is my role as CEO, I have accountability for the culture. I, the buck stops with me, if we've got a cultural problem, this is not my leadership team's problem, this is my problem to help try to address. But that doesn't mean that those decisions emanate from me, it just simply means that I have the accountability for it. And it's my responsibility to make sure that when we uncover cultural issues are challenges that we that we are able to address them and that I'm making sure we're doing everything within our power to do that. Now, because you have a cultural Azhar, or someone who sort of, quote unquote, owns the culture, I think you could, I would just argue, make sure that person is nothing more than a, an amplifier. For a for the entire organization, and not someone who sees their job as sort of dictating what the culture is, you can have someone who's in charge of communicating that and coming up with ideas and planning parties. And that's all fine and good. But that person should not be the sole person responsible for describing and living out the culture that falls on the team.

Winston Faircloth  36:20  
Well, I hope everyone goes back and plays this answer back. Because it is so wise and so true. You know, where we've seen this kind of continuum from everybody, everybody's into one person, and you described a great and, and that's one of the contributions Craig, you make every time you're on this podcast is you bring a unique insight in terms of not all thinking but and thinking is really part of your DNA, I

Craig Wood  36:52  
believe. It's very gracious of you. Thank you.

Winston Faircloth  36:56  
Well, thank you for this conversation. I know it's gonna spark some more conversation from our listeners. Let's just remind people how to connect with you and the premier way. Premier international Chicago. Let's just give folks a couple more reminders of how to connect with you. We'll put this in the show notes for everyone to reach out to you.

Craig Wood  37:20  
Absolutely. Thank you for that. And there probably be a link in there but our website is premiere dash international comm we're on LinkedIn, my personal LinkedIn is there as well Craig M. Wood as in Michael. And that's my Twitter handle as well at Craig m wood. So I I love talking about this. I love talking about it with you, in particular Winston, but I I'm starting to do more writing and thinking and communicating about these topics and would love to get feedback from folks, I'd love to get into more dialogue about what does this mean in real life, not just in theory, but in practice. And I'm grateful, so grateful and appreciative for the opportunity to share this with your audience and to be with you and talking about things that I think are really, really critical to the success of business going forward.

Winston Faircloth  38:07  
It's been an honor, it's one of the highlights of my years to reconnect been reconnected with you. And you know, going back as long as we have is just feels like we just picked up where we left off. So thank you, my friends. So glad you are here.

Craig Wood  38:24  
While the feelings are mutual, I appreciate the opportunity. And we'll look forward to the next one to be the first third time guests.

Winston Faircloth  38:29  
You have a date.

Craig Wood  38:31  
All right, thanks, friend.

Winston Faircloth  38:33  
Man, did you all get some great takeaways in terms of these values and how they really align with client interest as well as team interest? There's going to be some good stuff coming out of this episode. I know as you think about building values and a culture for your team. Whether you have a team today or you're about to start building a team, Craig just bring so many gems. I'm so thankful, Craig for your participation, make sure to go check out all the show notes for links to the premier way premier international and Craig wood. He's a great follow on social media. I love him. He's such a wise and gifted leader. And I know you're going to love connecting with them. So you know what's really cool about this is that premier international is a business that you love, because it's supported by a team that you love. And as owners and leaders. What could be better than this a business you love supported by a team that you love. And you remember that our client experience will never exceed the love we show to our team and for love of team is a leading indicator of your future success, multiplying your impact income and freedom and business. Be blessed friends. I'll catch you on the next episode.