Learning to Thrive
On the Learning to Thrive podcast, we share stories, lessons learned, and practical tools to help your business go from surviving to thriving.
Reach us at: contactlearningtothrive@gmail.com
Learning to Thrive
Ep. 195 - What is Culture and Why Does it Matter?
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Episode Links:
FREE Download: Culture Assessment Toolkit
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Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh
Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE by Phil Knight
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Show Notes:
Your culture is already teaching people how to behave, even if you’ve never written a single core value down. When you grow a sports program, open a second location, or simply add more teams and staff, that invisible culture starts to drift and the cracks show up as inconsistent coaching, parent issues, staff burnout, and leaders who feel like they must approve every decision.
In this episode, we talk through how we stopped “accidentally” creating a culture and started building a living, breathing company culture on purpose. Along the way, we share what we learned from studying brands known for consistency and loyalty, and why the same generic values on a website can feel totally different in real life. Authenticity matters. If your values don’t match what’s actually happening in the building, families and employees feel it immediately.
Then we get practical: strong core values reduce decision fatigue and unlock team autonomy. We break down how values like “Safety First” and “Do I Matter?” guide real-time decisions at the front desk and on the floor, so staff can act with confidence and you don’t have to micromanage. We also cover how values help you hire better, protect your standards when you’re short staffed, and create clear accountability across the whole program.
Press play, grab the three culture questions we share, and start defining what you want your organization to look and feel like in five to ten years. If this helps, subscribe, share it with a fellow leader, and leave a review so more coaches and program owners can build cultures that thrive.
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Welcome to the Learning to Thrive podcast, where we share tips, tools, and lessons from our nearly two decades of business experience.
SPEAKER_01Our mission is to help leaders in the sports industry go from surviving to thriving.
SPEAKER_00Welcome back to Learning to Thrive. I'm Courtney. And I'm Michaela. And today we are starting our series on culture. Yes, it's probably our favorite thing to talk about. Yes, we could talk about this for days. And we are, which is great. Which is awesome. So
Expansion Forces Culture Clarity
SPEAKER_00company culture for us and our company became very, very important when we were looking to expand. We had at the time two, really two locations, because we were programming at a community center and we were also had our standalone location, which was our first location. And when we were thinking about expanding, I think the thing that got me interested in culture was how are we going to keep the same quality if our leaders, like if the people that are really making this current, you know, program work, if our current leaders are spread out, right? So you're not going to have the concentrated leadership that we have in this smaller facility if we go and expand. So we need to be really, really clear about what we stand for, how to make decisions, and like what is super important so that we could expand our leadership team and we could also expand the number of people that we serve, and we could not burn out everyone who was leading. Because at the time we had about five leaders for a staff of probably 20 to 25 customer base of about 700 to 800 families. So we were doing a good job of accidentally creating a positive company culture, positive customer culture, but we we had no intention behind it. And in order to serve more people, we needed to have, we need to get clear on what we what who we are who we were and what we stood for. So that's how I became really interested in studying um different companies and seeing, okay, how did you guys decide who you were and what things were unique to you? We did a I did a lot of reading um before we went before even engaging a leadership team about um from the owner, the founder of Starbucks, Southwest. Um Zappos, right? We yeah, the book that the book that helped us to shape our company culture was Delivering Happiness by the uh founder of Zappos. Yes.
SPEAKER_01Whose name I don't remember.
SPEAKER_00But we know we can link it in the notes. But um that one really helped that one we use, we we walked through that book over the course of about two and a half months, chapter by chapter, and that's how we really squeezed out our core values. Um But just the study of different, different companies and different cultures really is an interesting. If you've never, if you've never done that, uh shoe dog, I think it's called Shoe Dog by Nike Phil Knight. Um, that was a good, you know, that was a good one. I don't think that was in that time frame. But figuring out how other companies, where you experience their product on a regular basis, really the behind the scenes of it, I think it's quite fascinating. And as a leader, if you've never, if you've never done that where you're diving into what really makes you know the front-facing piece of a business work, oftentimes for those high-achieving overtime companies, it is the company culture. And it is a very, very, very intentional choice to make to like they really spent time about who they are and who they are actually reflects who they actually are, right? Because you have a lot of companies when you because when I was doing this, I was, I think I was preparing for a staff meeting. This was like 2015,
Values That Live Beyond Posters
SPEAKER_00and we we were roll, we're getting ready to roll this out. So I'm like, okay, what are the core values of you know, McDonald's or Dunkin' Donuts or, you know, like whatever. And honestly, the words on the website to describe their core values, very, very much lots of overlap, right? You know, integrity, service, um, community, and how they applied those did not feel the same. Um, so we we wanted to culture you can put on a wall, you can put on a t-shirt, you can put on a website. I think living the culture though really is what separates the good from the great.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yeah. And I think um with culture, we view it very much as like a living, breathing thing. It is not just a box that we check. It is not, like you said, just like words that we pop up on our website that sound nice, that are like, yeah, people, people would like this, you know. It it is truly something that the time, the energy has been invested into it, um, and continues to be invested into it so that it's like a it's it is it's like its own thing. It's like this living, breathing thing. Like you feel it when you walk in to a space. Yeah, that's the goal. That's our goal, right? Yeah. We've our goal is that when you walk into a Thrive, you feel it. You feel different than when you walk into somewhere else. Um and I think also kind of just going back to what you were saying about how some companies have or say they have these certain cultural pillars, but then it doesn't feel like it. There, there's no authenticity there. There has to be a level of truth and and authenticity.
SPEAKER_00It doesn't need it to be.
SPEAKER_01Well, in order for it to do what you want it to do, right? In order for culture to serve the role that you want it to serve, right? There has to be some truth, there has to be some authenticity. Um, it cannot just be what sounds nice. It has to be what what is actually happening in your building.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I think so, so and and these culture conversations also can get very A, philosophical, and B, they also can get a little bit like um, gosh, that's just one more thing on my to-do list, right? So it's like it's such a big so if you do not have a company culture side, if you have not picked your core values, it can feel daunting to be like, what do you mean? What are my core? I don't even have time to do all the things on my to-do list. How am I supposed to sit down and figure out what my core values are, right? It is one of those things that can feel very overwhelming. And so I think today we just kind of want to talk you through a couple of questions that you can be thinking about in the next week. We're gonna give you some tools as we go through the month as far as like, okay, if you really want to establish that culture, you really want to check up on your culture, what what do I need to do? But I think for this, for today's conversation, it's more what do you need to ask yourself in order to get clear and to get up the really the motivation or the you know gumption to be like, okay, this is the year that I set these core values, or this is the year that I take the ones that I wrote because they sounded good off the website, and really find the ones that truly represent who we are.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00So we're talking to a couple of different camps here as far as you may not have your culture set, you might have it set, but you don't you don't use it or believe in it. You're you're like, I gotta go back to that paper to figure out what were our core values. And then we have we probably have some listeners that are like our our company culture actually, our core values are not are not what I want them to be, right? Like maybe maybe what you're seeing you know, you're like, I don't think we're, you know, maybe it's not a positive culture, right? And you could be working in a program like that, you can be observing a program like that. Many of our sports programs um today, you can watch the parents on the sideline and tell what the club's company culture is, right? Like, and maybe that was not intentional, right? Maybe decisions have been made where you're like, I don't want it to be this, but going all doing anything to win is one of our core values, right? Did did you mean to do that? Maybe not. And you might be sitting there going, I really, I really want to change that. But wow, that's that's a real daunting task, right? Because it does mean, because core values are at the center of everything that you do, it does mean dedicating time, energy, and effort to kind of excavating that and rebuilding it, which can seem really daunting. So, so we don't take this conversation lately. No. And core values, we also don't mean that we're not talking in this conversation about putting something on a shelf and calling it a core value. We are literally talking about walking with it every single day. So, um so yeah.
Core Values That Cut Decision Fatigue
SPEAKER_00So why does it matter? Right? So, yes, core, you've culture, core values, why does it matter? How does it actually help you as a leader in the program or as a coach in the program or as a program owner to say, I this is worth my time? I think the answer to that is if you do it right, it will eliminate so many decisions. Right? So, and and this is what we tell our leaders and tell our staff is the reason we have core values is because we want you to be able to make a decision in the moment. And if you make a decision based on our core values, you will never not have the support of this team, right? So one of our core values is do I matter? So let's say you get a parent that comes in and is like, oh my gosh, you know, I came in, I was supposed to be here at four, I came in at 445. I, you know, I you gotta, you she's got like three kids and she's like, we, you know, my and then my three-year-old, she really wanted to do the class today. And oh my goodness, I can't believe I missed the time and whatever. That person at the front desk, because our core value is, do I matter? can look at the next, the five o'clock class that this woman has not even signed up for, see that it has a space in it and be like, you know what? Why don't you stay? I'm gonna, you know, sit down, stay, I'm gonna grab some a crayons for your little kids, and then we're gonna let your three-year-old do this next class. She doesn't have to double think whether or not she's gonna get in trouble for that decision, right? That decision is based on a core value. Do I matter? This mom matters, this family matters. We're gonna go ahead and do it. Right? Safety first is also one of our core values. So she's gonna check that class first and not overbook it. Right. Right. So there's nuance in it as far as, you know, we've got to make sure that we know what matters. And you cannot override a safety decision to make somebody feel like they matter.
SPEAKER_01Right. Because that's the first that for us, that's the first is, you know, safety matters. Um, but I think also with that, when you are making those sorts of decisions and you have a team that is so invested and so bought into your company culture, your core values, things like that, that they can make those decisions on the spot. Yeah. It's not just, oh, well, I might be able to, but you know, let me, let me text this director and ask them, or let me, you know, they know I've got the space. This is gonna, this is true to who we are, um, and they can make that decision on the spot, then the customer feels that, right? Yeah. The customer feels that, the employee feels that. Um, and it's it's that living of the of the core values as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And and you as the leader did not have to sit there and make every single decision. So the benefit of investing the time and getting clear on your core values and making sure they're what you want is if you do all that work up front, or you do the work to look at your core values, audit them, and re revamp whatever you want or or re umphasize. Let's say you got great core values. Are you emphasizing them enough? In fact, we we just worked on that um a couple months ago, just really getting gritty about um, which we'll go into later in the month, but you don't have to make every decision. And then you're also you're going to attract other people that also like are able to live those core values too, right? So it changes the whole energy of it. And then you're gonna attract customers that support that, right? So if you're looking at your customer base right now and you think that they're all terrible, pulled the mirror up. Yeah. You know, like what core val what values are you living by? And how is that then being reflected in
Using Values To Filter Fit
SPEAKER_00you know that customer base? Yeah. Or your staff.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yes. Well, going off of what you said with like your staff and everything like that, I think once you have a company culture that everyone's kind of on the same page about these values and and what's important to them, and everyone is actively making an effort to live those out day to day at work, then because here's the thing, right? Your company culture and your core values and everything, that is for you and your group of people. It might not be for everyone. No, there will be people who don't align with it, it doesn't make them wrong, it doesn't make them bad, it just, you know, it's just it's just not for them. But so when you have a team that's so clear on what it is that's important to them and is so actively living it out, then when you have other people come in, whether that's a new customer, whether that's a new employee, and they don't align, it becomes very obvious very quickly. And it's it's then very easy to say, like, again, nothing against them. This just might not be the right fit.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Whether that's an athlete, a class, you know, family, like I said, a new employee. If it's kind of like this is this is how we do things, either get on board or get off kind of things. And if you get off, that's fine. Yes. We wish you the best of luck, but we're not willing to bend what we're doing for someone else. And I think it, I think going back to making decisions easy, I think sometimes with staff that can be hard. Um, especially if you're short staffed and you're like, we just we need someone, we need someone to teach, you know, pre-K. We need someone to coach upper level team, like whatever the case is, if you're short staffed, that's where I feel like it's very easy to be like, well, you know, I don't love this about them, but we're really in a bind. Always better to go understaffed than poorly staffed. Um, right? That's the saying.
Consistency And Accountability By Design
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yes. Okay. I was like, I'm pretty sure that's the saying. Yeah. Love him. Um, but yeah, going going back to those core values, and if they don't align, it's not, it's not gonna work out long term.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So it, so, so having the clarity on your core values and living them, decision fatigue, it it starts to eliminate that. Consistency, which I think is what you're what you're also saying, is there's gonna be consistency across the board, and that is going to allow you to eliminate a lot of problems in itself, right? If everybody is doing something and one person is not, that becomes very clear. But you're not gonna get to consistency unless you have clarity in what you all stand for and what you're what you're doing. So reducing decision making, increasing clarity, and then it's it's also a matter of accountability, right? It sets up, it sets up the foundation for a system of accountability. And having a system of accountability in in a program means that whatever you set out to do, you're gonna get. Right? So if you set out to have a, let's say you do set out to have a program that, you know, we're gonna win 90% of, you know, winning, winning is one of our top priorities. We want to be one of the top programs in the country, or we wanna be, you know, the top, you know, soccer school in the country. And that means every team that we have is going to only accept players of, you know, this caliber, right? Okay. Well, having that core value means you've made a decision, right? Which in theory means that you're gonna be consistent in your expectations, which then means when those expectations aren't met, your your accountability system is gonna be very clear too, right? And that will then support and reinforce your core value. So it kind of makes a nice loop of giving you back what like actually creating what you wanted.
Three Questions To Define Culture
SPEAKER_00But it goes back to that first step of what do you want? Right, right. So if you're if you're thinking, okay, what do I want? What questions do I need to ask myself? Well, you need to ask yourself, what if if you fast forward five years, ten years, and you're is and you're in this organization, what do you want to see have been created? Right? Like what is the dream? Is it and and when we started out, as especially going back to that 2015 time frame, and this is just part of part of the dream, was can we get can we get kids to do great gymnastics and not be beaten down? So can you can you truly have a culture that nurtures high-level athletes and still be winning? Right?
SPEAKER_01And at that time, there were a couple, maybe more than a couple, but like in our area, in our local area and within our sport, I feel like gymnastics, yeah, old school gymnastics was a was a thing for a very long time.
SPEAKER_00And so knowing, okay, so knowing, okay, in 10 years, if we could be producing high-level athletes and also athletes who were confident in who they are, you know, were it felt like they were supported and not terrified. You know, like, okay, what is that? Okay, we built that picture out first. Okay, what would we need to be doing every day? So rewind to core values, right? What is the, what is the, what would we have to believe in order, and that's where, you know, life lessons through sport, right? You're not, you're someone is gonna hang up their grips, their, you know, jerseys, their whatever. All of these, these children are gonna hang them up one day. They might, maybe they go pro and they don't hang them up till 28 or 30, you know, but like, what is the life lesson that comes out of it? And so knowing, okay, we want high-level athletes, we also have excellence as a decision. So can you marry excellence as a decision with life lessons through sport? Can you marry those two core values and get that program 10 years from now? So asking yourself, what do I what do I want this program to be five years from now, 10 years from now? Okay, get that vision clear. Number two, how do I want it to feel when I come to work, when I come into this building or to these to the field for these practices? How do I want to feel when I'm around the people in this organization? Do we want to be family? Because remember, family comes with a lot of problems too. Yeah. Do you want to be a community? You like, you know, do you want to be everybody's super serious? Do we want to let things roll? Like, what who how do you want it to feel when you walk in the building, when you walk on the field, when you're with the people that are in this organization, what things are important to you guys? We have one that's smile and pretend it's on the lesson plan. Because honest to goodness, if you cannot adjust on the fly around here, you can still, you could still survive here, but you would make everybody else miserable. So put smile and pretend it's on the lesson plan means if you're gonna be a part of this team, you've gotta, when somebody messes up, you can't be pointing a finger, you've just got to roll with it. We can go back later and figure out what happened, but like smile as in like, okay, yep, I know we all make mistakes and then roll with it. And keep going. And that is one of our core values that because I I would not survive well in an where I couldn't make mistakes. And everybody pointing fingers at me and going, you did this, like that would be like, I don't think I'd want to, that wouldn't be good for me. I make a lot of mistakes.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, and also when you're working with kids, right? Oh. Just going back to that particular one. When you're working with kids, there's always something that pops up, you know, something a little off the wall, and you're like, all right, we are gonna keep going. Yep. Absolutely. Show must go on, sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00And then the last question you're gonna ask yourself is what is gonna be, what is your what do you think your superpowers are as a as a group, as a team? So like, and if it if maybe not what they are, but what would you like them to be? Right? So or a little bit of both.
SPEAKER_01Like, what are you doing well? Like what what is something that you're like, oh, I know my team will X, Y, and Z. I know they will, you know, make every kid smile when they walk in, or I know they will get the job done no matter what. You know, like what is it that they are currently doing, and what is it that you want them to be doing?
SPEAKER_00And ours was before we even decided what it was, nothing is impossible and do more with less. Oh, yeah. That's who that is at the core who we are, like who we are as as people, because number one, there's many situations we got ourselves. I mean, the very first week we opened the the our first standalone location, we had an earthquake and a hurricane. Like in the same in the same game.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and we had uh people going to pick up equipment in U-Hauls. Yeah. And no equipment was delivered. No, no. We went and picked it up in a U-Haul.
SPEAKER_00A spring floor in a U-Haul. Spring floor and yeah, so we had we had a lot of stories where we had already shown up that way. In naming it and giving it the value, right? That and making it part of our core values, that was let's see, the the U-Hauls and the earthquake were 15 years ago. And if you talk to anybody on our team today, they would say nothing is impossible, right? That we don't accept the fact that you can't. So when a kid comes in, and this is this is an example from you know the last couple weeks, we have uh when a kid comes in, let's say with special needs, and the mom's like, he wants to do a class, but I'm not sure it's gonna work out, or he wants to do a class, but we're gonna need, you know, like nothing is impossible. Of course. How do we figure out the best place to put that kid, right? We're not going to accept the fact that no, he shouldn't be in this class. Or you know, like he shouldn't be in this program. Maybe we need to adjust classes a couple times, but the idea that, you know, you come in here and you need something, we're gonna help you figure out how to get it. We're gonna do our darndest to make sure that, you know, we can work something out. And that that has been taught as a part of our story and has been lived in our core values for 15 years. Yes. Definitely looks a little bit more than that. Because those those kids were not probably even, you know, some of our staff was gymnasts here, you know, back when that was happening. So they weren't a part of the actual, you know, picking up of the spring floor because we were afraid to flood two days after we put it down. Like that wasn't, you know, that wasn't part of it. Um, but it has lived on. So deciding what your superpowers are and really highlighting those with core values is a good place to start, right? So to kind of wrap this all together, your culture is important because it helps you make decisions, it helps you keep consistency, and it helps you keep accountability, which then gets you the things that you want. If you're wondering how do I start or how do I, you know, what where do I even begin or how do I upgrade? You're looking at what are your superpowers? What kind of place do you, like, what do you want to feel when you're around here? And what are your goals? Where do you want to end up the next three, five, 10 years? If you're if you're building something of sustainability, uh clear picture in your mind. And then as we go through the month, we'll work backwards from that point to say, okay, now what do I need to do? But getting clarity on those questions can really begin the process and make it less daunting. Don't think, oh, I've got to figure out my culture. Think I've got to answer these questions. Right? I need to figure out what I want and paint a really clear picture of it, and then we'll work backwards on core values. Yeah. So love it. Yeah, it's so, it's so good. And and it makes it makes life easier. Once you do the work, it makes life easier, but it's daunting. So um, so we hope that helped you. We hope that you will spend the next week thinking about those questions, and then you'll meet us back here um next week so that we can start to assess where you are and then help you get to where you want to go. Keep on thriving.