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Diagnosing The Workplace: Not Just An HR Podcast
Diagnosing The Workplace: Not Just An HR Podcast
Initiatives For 2025, Finding Qualified Talent, Using Mission, Vision, And Values - Answering Listener Questions
In this episode, we explore 3 questions from listeners and conversations with clients:
1. What tools or initiatives do you think businesses should focus on for 2025?
2. Why can we not find the certified and qualified talent we need?
3. How important are your Mission, Vision, and Values to Organizational Culture?
Our prescription for this episode: Start routinely asking yourself The Important Question: "What Needs To Exist First Before This Will Be Effective?" and be willing to do the work, relying on data and strategy.
Check out our friends at Cato Creative Inc!
You can reach out to us to talk more about any of these topics, contact us at info@roman3.ca or through our LinkedIn page at https://www.linkedin.com/company/roman3
Don't forget to sign up for our New Quarterly Newsletter that launched in 2024.
About Our Hosts!
James is an experienced business coach with a specialization in HR management and talent attraction and retention.
Coby is a skilled educator and has an extensive background in building workforce and organizational capacity.
For a little more on our ideas and concepts, check out our Knowledge Suite or our YouTube Channel, Solutions Explained by Roman 3.
Breaking down everyday workplace issues and diagnosing the hidden sickness, not just the obvious symptom. Our hosts, James and Coby.
>> [COBY]:Did we lose a patient?
>> [JAMES]:No, that's just m. My lunch.
>> [COBY]:Hey, thanks for joining us. I'm Coby, he's James. And we're gonna do something a little bit different today. We're gonna answer some questions posed to us by you, our faithful listeners.
>> [JAMES]:Yeah, I always enjoy these, Q and A, episodes that we do because, I mean, most of the questions that come in are from people who are listening to the podcast, which is amazing and fantastic. although one of them is legitimately just something that we wanted to talk about. So you're going toa have to just listen to us talk. although that's kind of the point of the podcast. So you enjoy it. I'm sure you do.
>> [COBY]:Let's.
>> [JAMES]:Okay, I'll shut up. Let, let's get rolling here.
>> [COBY]:Okay, so let's just jump into the first question. I'll ask it to you, James. So here's the first question. This one was sent to us by listeners. So what tools or initiatives do you think businesses should focus on in 2025?
>> [JAMES]:Yeah, I. Okay. I always have a bit of a problem with these types of questions. They're well intended and there are lots of really great tools and programs that are out there that can solve a lot of really important problems and challenges that businessers are experiencing. My issue is that people tend to look for a plug and play solution. They tend to look for, you know, what is a boxed program, what can I just take off the shelf and plug into my organization that is going to fix the problem that I'm experiencing. And I don't think I've ever seen that work. Even with really good programs, really good initiatives, really well intended and even well structured programs that are, when they're plugged into an environment that is not ready for them, they create chaos solutions. We've talked about chaos solutions many times because unfortunately we've seen it many times. And the whole idea of, you know, what one thing can I do that's going to improve my business? It's not going to be a single program. It's going to be developing a strategy based on data. It's going to be understanding what is happening in your organization at various levels, collecting the data so that, you know, so that you can create a plan of attack that will actually start addressing the root cause of your problems, not just some of the symptoms that you are experiencing. And that's where these really good programs can come into play as part of your strategy. So if you identify that you're having specific problems around, retention of X, Y or Z doesn't matter. And you want to develop a program that will address that, or you want to bring in a program that will address that or you're have problem, it doesn't matter what it is. These programs tend to address symptoms and unless you know what the root cause of the symptom is, you're never really going to see the benefit that you should from it. And then what we see as a result of these chaos solutions is that businesses tend to be more gun shy when it's time to actually look at solving the actual problem. Because it's. Well, we've already tried these three different programs and none of them have worked, so why would we try anything different?
>> [COBY]:Yeah, yeah, we talked a little bit about chaos solutions in our last episode, looking back in 2024. But I think that we really cannot hammer home enough the problematic situation you get into with chaos solutions. So I'm just going to quickly define it again in case this is the first time someone heard this term from us. So chaos solutions, or when you implement a strategy or plan that you expect will have a transformative effect, but you have not done the prerequisite work that's required to have the foundation that you need to build off from this creates an unsupported and unsustainable endeavor that will ultimately cause more harm and turmoil than create a positive impact. And this is just it. This is exactly what you're saying, is that, you know, the chaos solution situation that people get into is they're like, okay, so we see a symptom, we see something going on that we don't like. I mean, we hear we have a.
>> [JAMES]:Problem, we need to address that problem. So let's find a program that will address that problem. M. It's a very logical sequence of events, right?
>> [COBY]:It is, but the problem is, is that the extra step of going, how is this problem embedded or ingrained into the DNA of our organization?
>> [JAMES]:Or what needs to exist first before this solution is actually going to be effective?
>> [COBY]:Absolutely. It's. That is the important question. And we actually refer to like that question, what needs to exist first before this will be effective? We refer to that as the important question. And we say it all the time. But I mean, like, part of the way that I think that we kind of try and need to help organizations understand their business is I think they see it like a know, almost like their organization is built with Lego. They can just pull a piece out and then put another piece in and replace it and problem solved. They don't see it as almost like, as if it's not built with blocks, but it's almost like. Yeah, or it'sitted. It's like a knitted sweater. You pull on one piece and it starts to impact the integrity of the, of the whole blanket or whatever. Right. Like the idea of, like, these problems are woven into our workplaces, they're not inserted into our workplaces. So, which means that our solutions cannot be inserted into our workplace. They have to also be woven in as well.
>> [JAMES]:I like that analogy. and it brings to mind even sometimes we are also part of the problem, in a roundabout way. I'll blame it on you, not me. But. So there's a specific client that, we've worked with that, actually they listened to our podcast and we were talking about the importance of, internal succession planning and how it's a great tool to use as part of your, employ. Building your employee experience, building some trust, building some retention, providing people with, career opportunities and you know, letting them see that you value them and their career growth. Lots of real great benefits from it. Unfortunately, they took that, and just tried to plug it into an environment that had nothing, that had no supports, that, that had very significant levels of job dissatisfaction. And it created a mess because they were promoting people internally, but they had no mechanism for really actually assessing the skills of the people who they were promoting and the skills that were actually required to do the position that they were being promoted into. So you had unsupported people putting in, being put into roles where they were even more unsupported with the, misalignment in skills that they had, skills that were required and no training, provided they just. It created a significant mess and we were part of the problem in that, you know, this is something important that we talk about, but not recognizing that even these good things that we discuss, we still need to focus on what needs to exist first before these are going to be successful. So we had to kind of backtrack with them, and help build some of those foundational pieces so that this great internal succession planning, career growth would actually be a net positive and not another driver of people exiting the organization.
>> [COBY]:Yeah, it's always cool when we build a client relationship with people who find us through the podcast. We always love that. So that's something that I hope continues to be a trend going forward, especially because we adore it. but it is kind of funny when we're working with them m kind learning about their company and then they're like, well, yeah, we really jumped on what you guys talked about with internal succession and the career ladders and stuff like that in past episodes. So we instituted that stuff. So that that's been going for a little while and we're like, oh, that's cool. We're glad that you're, you know, taking our advice. But, you know, but we hadn't really done any work with them while they were doing this to kind of just herd the idea and kind of jumped into it with two feet. And then so we're kind of coming in after the fact and we're like, wow, they this is not supported, you know, kind of sustainability. And they're like, well, we took you guys advice. We like, well, no, you took what we talked about on the podcast as broad picture. These are great things, but I mean we talk about data and strategy and that needs to be the how these things happen. So if the internal session is the what, the how is always data and strategy. And if you're not asking yourself the important question what needs to exist first before this's become effective, then you're really not setting yourself up to be successful. So it's one of those things where, you know, know they were taking our advice, you know, from the podcast and implementing it, which was cool. But it know, again, it's about asking yourself what has to be here in order for the stuff that we want to do to work. Like how can we weave this into our workplace, not just insert it. Right.
>> [JAMES]:Yeah, it'anyways was kind of, it was great to have that validation of, you know, somebody listen to what we talk about and wanted to implement. It reached out to us, but at the same time kind of felt like we had let them down, even though we weren't a part of that process. But it's something that can be fixed.
>> [COBY]:Yeahsoly.
>> [JAMES]:And it's just, we're not saying that you shouldn't take and try to implement any of the things that we talk about in the podcast. We're saying you need to understand the environment that you are inserting these pieces into and whether or not they're going to be supported and whether or not they're going to be effective and how we're going to actually measure that success.
>> [COBY]:Well, and, and I mean we like anyone else that works kind of in the business supporting consulting, fractional work kind of field, love working with companies that are really trying to forward thinking really want to not spin their wheels and kind be be stuck and just doing the same old same old. There's but sometimes the overzealous can be as problematic as those that are kind of stuck kind in the past. Right. I mean I'm thinking of kind of a client that we had worked with before that they would go to like all these CEO networking events and kind. They would read articles and they were really keen about trying to find the best way to optimize their workplace and what's going to be the tricks and the hacks are going toa help them kind get a competitive a. And they would, they would just sort of insert these kind of like programs after hearing someone else talk about it and then say cool, that would work for you. Well I'll just insert it into our workplace. And I mean like we love the enthusiasm but man that creates such chaos.
>> [JAMES]:it was brutal and like God loved the guy. Wonderful person. Had a great network and support system of other business owners, CEOs that could share best practice and what's working and what's not and problem solve and he would hear these great initiatives that other people were having success with and hearing somebody talk about the outcome of a program for 15 minutes at a networking event is not enough context and information to develop your own copy of it. I think that it's going to have the same impact but very enthusiastic, very forward thinking, wanted to do well by the people that they employed. Really great person overall to work with and work for. well not the greatest to work for because of the chaos that he created. But intention.
>> [COBY]:We're definitely in the right place.
>> [JAMES]:Absolutely well intentioned.
>> [COBY]:Yeah. Well and but again it's the idea of kind of chasing new, the new shiny like I mean we talk like.
>> [JAMES]:Both flavor of the month type of mentality.
>> [COBY]:Yeah. So I mean I recently went to a networking event kind of and a bunch of businesses owners talked to me about what's some stuff that's going to be big in 2025 and stuff like that. And I kind of told them stop chasing those things, start doing the pre work start doing.
>> [JAMES]:And it's why we start our engagements with new clients with a data collection activity with an assessment because we have to understand the current reality of the workplace before we start making any type of recommendations or implementing any new solution.
>> [COBY]:Well the thing is that these solutions going back to the difference between complicated and complex. So complicated, something that easy to repeat, in multiple situations will work the same way there may be.
>> [JAMES]:A large number of steps involved, but there's a process for getting to the same answer.
>> [COBY]:Right. So complicated is that. Whereas complex is when things are multifaceted, but every situation is unique. And what works in one place won't work in another. What worked at one time won't work again. And this is what we kind of try and explain to people, that you can't take a complicated approach to implementing these solutions. What worked in company A, you can't just cut that and put that into your organization. Even the same steps, even if they detailed steps, won't work unless you allow for the complexity of unique businesses and unique workforces and un. Even timing.
>> [JAMES]:Well, and people are complex by nature. Right. and anything that's going to impact your people is going to have a layer of complexity to it.
>> [COBY]:Absolutely. And though it is not as fun or as catchy or as sexy to kind of say, what should be doing in 2025? Well, you should be doing the boring Grun foundation work to make sure that you're in a position that you can actually leverage the enthusiasm you have about trying something new and actually do it. Right.
>> [JAMES]:What should you do? Do the work.
>> [COBY]:Yeah. And that is really good. And that really is kind of the answer to the question. We always say that the first whatever you want to do, whatever the what you want to do is the how you do it has to start with data and strategyy. And if're not. If you're skipping over those steps, you're setting yourself up to fail. So whatever you're. So in 2025 we should be looking at how do we improve our data and our strategy so we can actually get the most out of the fun cool new programs that other people might be having success with. But again, if other people are having sustainable success with them, it's because they got the data and built the strategy custom to their situation.
>> [JAMES]:Or it's at least part of a larger initiative or part of a larger, strategy.
>> [COBY]:They wove it into their workplace instead of inserting it into their.
>> [JAMES]:And rarely by the time that you hear about these great successes, rarely is it the first thing that they've tried, rarely is it the first step in their journey. It's usually the 8th, 9th, 10th step that they've been building towards.
>> [COBY]:Absolutely. Yeah. But ultimately the solution to all these problems are you have to be willing to address the sicknesses that you're dealing with, not just chasing the symptoms kind. Going back to what you said earlier is that again, again we hear these Things around talent, trs and retention. You have to realize that there's what you're seeing around your issues that you're trying to solve around track and retention, for example. Those are not necessarily the sickness. Those are the symptoms of something else. And that's why the data is so important, because you have to make sure that you're actually getting to the root of the problem. You're actually getting the heart of the issue. You're not just chasing the symptoms and inserting something that you're hoping, will clear up the symptom, but you haven't done anything to address the underlying sickness. And that's something that, again, that's probably what we should be trying to save. 20, 25. Let's start strategically going after the sickness and not chasing the symptoms.
>> [JAMES]:Yeah. All right, let's jump into the next question. so this is for you. It helps if I can actually speak properly. Why is it we cannot find the certified, qualified talent we need?
>> [COBY]:Right. Yes. This has been something that, has kind of been coming up. so this is something that wasn't necessarily a question that was asked to us. This is a question that has come up in a number of recent. Well, I say recent, but really it's come up in a lot of conversations over the years, but it's almost reemerged, lately. Right.
>> [JAMES]:Yeah. So we've seen. Honestly, I've been hearing this question since our economic development days, going back to developing industry solutions through a regional economic development framework, working with sectors around, you know, what their common challenges are. And it didn't matter if it was egg or manufacturing or tech, or aggra. Food processing. It was, we are starving for qualified, certified, trained employees. And there was always this, this was always a problem, that we kept bumping up against, in economic development. And you know, we try to work through, college and university systems to provide these solutions. And they never seem to really latch on to, what the actual business need is for, these programs. And it's come up in recent, industry work that we've been doing, through Roman 3, where we're seeing these industries that we are supporting having very real, very critical needs for a very niche certification. And we have, at least in Canada, and specifically in our province in Nova Scotia, we have, training institutions that their primary mandate is to provide business. their training is supposed to support the business community. Right. It's supposed to be from a business lens. It's supposed to address specific business needs and they're failing at it. Yeah.
>> [COBY]:So really that's you know, thank you for the extra context but I mean really that is the heart of in my opinion where you know, where the why comes from. So I mean I asked you the.
>> [JAMES]:Question to you and I started ranting.
>> [COBY]:Well no, but I mean you know you provided good some great context because honestly that's kind of where I think a lot of the why. Again this is a very complex problem. Workforce development and workforce kind management and solutions are very complex. But honestly I don't have a lot of love loss for our post secondary institutions. I don't mean necessarily the specific colleges and universities. I more mean the system that they're built around because you. Yes, in Nova Scotia we can speak specifically about what's happened in our home province because we've done a lot of work in that space. But any publicly funded post secondary institution has some degree of accountability to support the workforce. Otherwise why are they receiving any kind of public support? The point of our post secondary institutions is to make sure that we have the trained, skilled talent we need to function as a society. That is its primary purpose. Regardless of what anyone else says, that really is their main purpose. so this idea that the colleges and the universities are know, not meeting that expectation in the way that they once did is a problem that I see. I mean education is in my background, adult education specifically. I've worked in the realm of post secondaries stuff for a long time and I've seen them move away from the need that they're supposed to fulfill in supporting kind of the niche kind of certifications or the very specific type of the qualifications and certifications that are essential to again especially when you're talking about industries that like primary industries like said ag, fisheries, forestry, that kind of stuff. But even again in manufacturing or anything in the innovation space they require stuff that's not necessarily mass appeal but m. But they're moving away from trying to support those critical jobs that are impossible to get certification and qualification in unless you've got programs built specifically for it in favor of trying to go after mass appeal. And when you talk to post secondaries a lot of them are like well you know, people aren't interested in these niche programs. They all want these, you know, generic, you know, business administration or whatever like that. I'm like yes, but part of your job as post secondary is to work with industry to change that, to remarket that reposition that talk about the value of having these specific trained certified roles that are essential to keeping our workforce functioning. And I mean colleges specifically are in my opinion totally missing their mandate when they start offering like business administration, degrees or sorry, diploma and stuff like that that are really like a two year business program as opposed to a four year university program that doesn't, you know, what gap is that trying to fill? It's not, it's trying to create mass appeal instead of, instead of you. It's like well people want this so we offer it. That's not your job. Your job is to
>> [JAMES]:And that's when it. They're productizing education rather than providing the education and training that will actually help people to find meaningful and specific employment.
>> [COBY]:Yeah. And like when we talk to sector groups and we're like, you know, like, you know, you need, you know, part of one thing that's big in almost every sector that we ve work with is kind of sector branding and recompositioning the value of working in those sectors, trying to make them, you know, exciting for people again. But they, but most of the sector groups are often run by these small organizations that don't have the kind of the, the marketing muscle that they actually need to fulill on their own. So a lot of like. But if the ones that partner up with post secondary to kind of say we're gonna help, we're work together to fill seats in the program for these jobs. So then these jobs exist, we can keep these industries running. That's supposed to be how this all works together. And again I'm kind of being a little more critical on colleges now. But universities are in my opinion are also kind of missing the mark on some of these things too because yes, they're not designing to train people we for certain jobs, but they're not training the people to really be employable in the way that they should be either. Because I mean we talked about college programs can be great because as far as you are part of this program so everything is kind of decided for you. What you take, how you take it. And they try and try and mold you to be a more complete employee. They're trying to and teach you employability skills, technical skills. Try and wrap it up in this kind of defined program where in university because it's all kind of. You pick and choose your own courses for the most part. They don't give you the employability side, they just give you the book learning side. And they don't make you a better employee. They don't work on those employability skills. So I do think that there's failures happening to our workforce from different aspects of post secondary. And I, you know, yeah, I'm kind of calling out post secondary is they're part of the reason why we're having a lot of these issues. Am I saying this university is for autatic and this college problematic? No, I'm not saying it's on the universities and the colleges specifically themselves, but it's on this system that we've built around them that is failing industry. And we hear industry saying this but as someone that kind of works industry, works with industries and has the post secondary educational background. Yeah. There is a complete misalignment and this is why we cannot seem to find the certified qualified people. We need to fill the jobs now and we're going to struggle as we go forward into the future.
>> [JAMES]:Yeah. Personally from my take on it not being as intimately knowledgeable of the post secondary world as you are, but where is the accountability for the public funding? If the intent is to If colleges and universities are receiving public funds to address workforce needs, why are we not holding them accountable? So it's also a failure of the system, it's the failure of government, which big surprise. but there's far too little accountability for the way those funds are being spent. And I mean yes, colleges and universities need to generate revenue so that they can keep going, but treating them as the productization of education and turning it into, turning post secondaries into a strict business for profit business model I don't think is healthy.
>> [COBY]:but that's anywayseah because again I do want to get to a little bit of what can we do about it. But, but you're right, it's the idea of when we are so focused on enrollment that it's about mass appeal. And we're just offering what people want and we're doing nothing to work with the industries that rely on us to provide the jobs that people don't even know exist. Because this is the thing, I remember one of things I, I used to give talks in high school all the time and about kind of workforce and stuff like that in my younger days. And I'd say, you know, the jobs that you're, most of you are going to work you don't even know or exist yet because, because there's so many of them out there and they're evolving and everything like that. But we've gone from trying to help people find their niche to saying well it's easy for us to fill, you know 300 seats in this mass appeal class. So we're just going to do that. Yeah, and that's the fundamental breakdown. But again, I do want, I don't want, I don't want to answer the question to be, you know, post secondary is the problem, moving on. I think that if businesses really want, if this is a problem that you're facing, again, finding the certified qualified talent we need, it's going to be, you know, I think change is only going to happen through getting more involved with your sector groups and participating more with them to kind of work with as ah, a unified voice to, to kind of go to post secondary and go to government. And'like there is a failing here, there is a mismatch of we're misaligned and what we need to do and it's going to need to be about coming together to kind of find the solution to getting back to this more collaborative kind of coexistence rather than everyone is on their own chasing dollars. And I think that's going to be the only way we can really address this issue. Which isn't an amazing answer, but it's a real answer.
>> [JAMES]:Yeah, well, I mean there'a lot of players that need to come to the table and need to be willing to actually act in good faith.
>> [COBY]:Yeah, absolutely. And is it doable? Yes. Is it easy? No. Is it quick? No. Are people going to have to completely rethink their, the business structure around how post secondary operates and where funding goes?
>> [JAMES]:Maybe.
>> [COBY]:They probably are. So I do think that we could do a lot more to make our public or our post secondary education program institutions be more reflective, employee of what workforce and future employees need both in preparing them for jobs, but also preparing them as employees and not just giving them knowledge by giving them the employability side of it too. I do think that. Yeah, absolutely.
>> [JAMES]:Yeah.
>> [COBY]:Okay, so that's, that's good. I could have mean I could have gone off on that forever. so let's just I'mnna stop right now before this turns into just take.
>> [JAMES]:A breath, calm down, you're in a.
>> [COBY]:Safe place that is boiling. So again, just throw it back. All right, let's move on to the next question. So I'll ask this one of you. Okay. And I get the feeling this is going toa also turn into, another rainfill question.
>> [JAMES]:isn't that just the whole purpose of the podcast for me to rant? Yeah, guess I purpose but I mean it's just a happy outcome for me.
>> [COBY]:All right, so the question number Three. How important are your mission, vision and values to your organizational culture?
>> [JAMES]:marginally. I mean I see mission, vision and value or for a long time I've always seen them as benign at best. Largely because of the way that they are talked about, the way that they're implemented are really not implemented into the day to day. I've always. Mission, vision, values at their best tend to be a nice guiding framework for decision making. Right. We know what our purpose is, we know what our mission is that we are trying to accomplish and we use that to funnel our decision making process from an executive or leadership team, perspective. Cool. Great. Having a focal point that you can work towards is a good thing. It keeps you from, hopefully keeps you from chasing the flavor of the month. New shiny object syndrome. values same. We know what our core values are, how we want to operate. It should be a framework that we can use for determining the methodology for achieving our mission. Are we doing things that are consistent with our core values vis vision casting, where do we want to go? All those, they're good. They're not great because they tend to be. That's okay. That's when they're really well done. They tend to be. Yeah, okay, there's good there. The problem is I rarely see that. I rarely see them being used as actual frameworks and focal points that will guide our decision making and instead they are, are flowery, wordsmithed, coobbled together garbage that doesn't mean anything, doesn't speak to anything specific, has no impact on employee motivation or the employee experience and their day to day. It's completely disconnected from the reality of the workplace. And so it just becomes a joke. Right. It's the statements that are plastered on the wall at the head office that get reviewed every few years. And then there's a memo that sent out that says we have a great new mission and nobody cares. Right. They go back and then. Well, I mean it gets, after the memo sent out, it gets tossed in the garbage. Nobody thinks about it again. Right. that is so I see mission, vision and values benign at best and usually not at their best.
>> [COBY]:Right. Yeah. I mean I would have to say that for a long time I've kind of been on the same page with that because I know when we've talked to organizations in early days, early conversations about the organizational culture, they always, many will point to their mission, vision and values and say well that's our organizational culture.
>> [JAMES]:Yeah.
>> [COBY]:They were like, no, that is of what you have decided is how your aspirations. But just having aspirations and then chanting the magic words of mission, mission and value does not conjure up a magical spell that creates your organizational culture. Right?
>> [JAMES]:Abracadabra. N. focus, Mission, vision and values.
>> [COBY]:I'm joking but it's not that far off from kind of how a lot of these conversations go is they like well we've done this, we've created this mission, mission and value. So this is what our culture is now. And just like again devoid of the idea that they're not magical spells, they just make stuff happen that they're an aspirational commitment.
>> [JAMES]:The work starts after you've crafted your mission, vision and values. The work is not crafting them.
>> [COBY]:Yeah. Now we should say that this James sing benign at best and rarely ever at the best in me saying that businesses see them as three word magical spell. The conjures culture has been for a fairly long time kind a reaction, the eye roll reaction we get when people talk about their mission, vision and value. But we should state that that position has changed, correct?
>> [JAMES]:Yeahah. It really got to give credit to one of our partners that we've been able to connect with do some fantastic work around this and they've really kind of changed my opinion on it. But they've also changed it from. One of the things that've really that hit me with kind of how they talk about it is if you can take the mission, vision and values and slap someone else's company logo on that and it reads the exact same you failed. Right. And it's kind of a shift from. And I'm going to use their language and this is kind of their So also I'll say first, if you are doing anything around internal comms, developing these types of understanding what your organizational identity is going to be, Cato Creative is phenomenal. and so I'm blatantly stealing their language. so thanks Becky. but really what's been really interesting in the conversations we've been having is the shift from this mission statement, mission, vision, values is still a part of it, but it's more about your organizational identity. Right. And starting with kind of your story. What is the purpose behind what you do? Why was the company founded? How does that, how is that journey progressed and then shifting, taking that and turning it into not an employee value proposition, but employee value proof. How do you actually take that organizational id, that identity that you've crafted that is integral to how you work and not just talk about it with your employees, but how do they experience it? How do they live that experience of your org id? And honestly, the combination of those two factors as a development of the whole mission, vision and values component has really changed my perspective on whether or not there's any value to mission, vision and values in organizational culture. Because if you can take that and connect it to your employee experience, it can be a very powerful tool that actually does something of value rather than just a random statement that is plastered in, on the wall in nice calligraphy.
>> [COBY]:Well, and I mean, kind of going back to the first question where we talked about chaos solutions, I think mission, vision and value in the way that we've always understood it as being kind of like the executive team kind of went away, created these and they've been inserted like blocks into the organization as a chaos solution. And it's just like we're defining our organizational culture. Here it is insert these words and now this is what our employee experience is. Now is what we're saying the problem is. But you're right, the work we're doing with Cato Creative, has been really about taking the organizational identity and the employer proposition proof that kind of like, is defined in a lot of ways by things like mission, vision and values, play a big role in that. And saying the kind of this is the contract that we're making two employees, the commitment we're making two employees that will be kind of what the employee experience will be, should be that you can hold us to. And a lot of it is about kind of saying how can we weave, these aspirational goals of mission, vision and value into kind of our organization to allow it to be sustainable, not just insert as chaos solution, but woven into the fabric of the organization that defines the employee experience. And that's really something that is like, you know, is what is needed.
>> [JAMES]:Because yes, these, we've talked about strategy so much and that's what CATO does really well in taking turning your mission, vision, values into an actual strategy of how this is going to be of any impact.
>> [COBY]:Absolutely. Yeah. And because I mean if you're, Because I mean if we're going toa have these kind of again this strategy then these things that define the employer proposition proof or the or ID employ value.
>> [JAMES]:proof, not employee proposition proof, employee value proof.
>> [COBY]:Thank you.
>> [JAMES]:As you can tell, we are experts in this topic.
>> [COBY]:Yes. But the whole idea of these, of this new positioning of how we can actually take things like mission Vision and value and actually make them actual effective is a about trying to make them clear, specific and measurable. Because you're right, one of the things that we often see when our eyes would roll back the backs of our heads and we would hear about their mission, vision and value is yeah like you said, they would be very proud that they have them and then they'd shared them with us and we were like if we just replaced your logo with any of your competitor's logo or honestly a logo from a completely different company in a different sector, it would be. You wouldn't know the difference.
>> [JAMES]:Our mission is to be the best company in this industry in this area.
>> [COBY]:Yeah, right.
>> [JAMES]:That's not a mission, that's lazy.
>> [COBY]:Well or just like we are customer driven. Like oh most no business thought about to having their customers be a part of their, their profit journey. Right. Like I mean again you're going after mass appeal. Right. And the idea of know it's almost like we can't be good. We're going to be vague.
>> [JAMES]:And this is the problem. Like me going back to kind of my early rant on this question. This is why I've never seen the value in mission, vision and values because I've never had, I've never seen a company be able to take that those three statements that they craft and turn it into something that actually matters to employees.
>> [COBY]:Yeah, exactly. How those things can define the employee experience is something that most companies completely miss. Which is why it's so awesome to work with Cato Creative because they're trying to bridge that gap where most people say box is checked. Mission, vision, value set. Let's move on to the next thing. And again often these things are devoid of the actual strategy needed to actually go after again go after the sickness, not just chase symptoms.
>> [JAMES]:We should probably toss a link ah in the show notes or something.
>> [COBY]:Absolutely. Yeah. So if this is interesting to you and you want to learn more about, about Cato Creative, we'll put a link to their website kind of in the show notes because we're always happy to sing their praises. They're the best. But yeah I think that's second best.
>> [JAMES]:We're number one.
>> [COBY]:Okay, there we go. So yeah, I think that kind of kind of answers that question. really, I really do think that again like a large theme of these three questions are really kind of about you know like especially the first and the lastove talking about like the chaos solutions and just inserting things that we think are going to make a difference, we need to change something so we find something that's easy to change regardless of it's actually effective to change. Yeah, and the idea of going after mass appeal I think is kind of a bit of it too. Like that's the problem I was saying about with post secondary kind of again, not meeting workforce needs. It's also kind of the problem with kind of going after things like, you know, vague mission, mission, mission value is that, you know, if again, it can't be good be vague. And it's one of those things where I think that just being a bit more kind of aware what is needed, the hard work that has to go into stuff is really going to be kind of the most important thing. Because again, the question of what needs to exist first before this will become effective can really work in all three situations. Right in the tools or initiatives for 2025, that should be your guiding principle. If you're going to do anything new, ask that question. Even when it comes to trying to certify talent and restructuring kind of again, post secondary programs asking what has to exist first, what partnerships, what realignment has to exist before we're gonna actually have an effective use of our post secondary systems. And it comes the mission, vision and value. The idea of what has to exist first, what infrastructure pieces do we need to actually make these things matter is really going toa be kind of that core question. And I really think that, you know, in a lot of ways that really is. That's why we say it's the important question, you know, capital letters. The important question really is that what needs to exist first before this will be effective.
>> [JAMES]:Yeah, that's a good summary.
>> [COBY]:So really that about does it for us. For a full archive of the podcast and access the video version hosted on our YouTube channel, visit Roman3ca podcast. Thanks for joining us.
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