Transcript: 3 Keys to High-Performance Culture // Mark Miller

Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast

“3 Keys to High-Performance Culture“

March 11, 2024

Mark Miller

Intro: What is the role of leadership in creating a workplace culture? Well, how can you harness culture as a force for good in your organization? Well, today on the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, I talk with leadership author Mark Miller on creating a high-performance culture. Listen in and learn practical steps to building and sustaining a thriving culture in your workplace.

Welcome: Welcome to the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, your home for open, honest, and insightful conversations to help develop your leadership, your team, and build a flourishing workplace culture.

Al Lopus: Hello, I'm Al Lopus, the co-founder of the Best Christian Workplaces and author of the book Road to Flourishing. I'm passionate about helping leaders like you create engaged, flourishing workplaces.

And I’m delighted to welcome Mark Miller to the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast today. Mark has been the VP of high-performance leadership at Chick-fil-A. He's also the author of several books, including Culture Rules: The Leader’s Guide to Creating the Ultimate Competitive Advantage.

Throughout our conversation, you'll hear Mark Miller talk about a great definition of culture; keys to create a high-performance culture; why it's so important for leaders to communicate their hopes and dreams for their culture; the importance of values in your organization; how to handle painful, even toxic, situations; and the link between culture and the bottom line.

I think you're going to love this interview with Mark Miller. But before we dive in, this episode is brought to you by Best Christian Workplaces’ Employee Engagement Survey. You can sign up today to discover the health of your organization's culture before this summer. Now is a wonderful time to engage your employees with our easy-to-use and -administer online Employee Engagement Survey by going to workplaces.org. Being a certified best Christian workplace improves your ability to attract more talented employees and keep them longer.

So, hello to our new listeners. And thanks for joining us as we honor your investment of time by creating valuable episodes like this.

But now, let me tell you a little bit more about Mark Miller. Mark's career at Chick-fil-A began more than 40 years ago as an hourly team member in a local restaurant. Then, he moved to a corporate warehouse job. Since then, he has worked across the business in corporate communications, field operations, quality and customer satisfaction, training and development, and leadership development. Currently, he's the VP of high-performance leadership. Mark also shares leadership resources through an organization called Lead Every Day. He's the author of many books and resources, including Culture Rules, also books like Chess Not Checkers, The Heart of Leadership, The Secret of Teams, and Talent Magnet, among others. He speaks around the world and also focuses on encouraging and equipping leaders.

So, here's my fascinating conversation with Mark Miller.

Mark, it’s great to have you on the podcast. I’m looking forward to our conversation today.

Mark Miller: Well, thank you, Al. I'm delighted to be with you.

Al: First, let me say how much I'm a fan of your work, and I've followed your work over the years. And, you know, you spoke and written quite a bit about the importance of culture in the workplace and how leaders influence culture. And your book Culture Rules came out last year. And as we start this conversation, let's make sure that our listeners are on board with us in terms of what you mean by culture. You know, how do you define culture? What would you talk about in terms of a high-performance culture, and what do you mean by that?

Mark: Okay. Well, thanks. That's a great place to start and kind of level set as we begin. You know, culture’s hard to get your head around. It's invisible, but it's very real. And we spent quite a bit of time as a team working on that question, and here's where we landed. Culture is the cumulative effect of what people see, hear, experience, and believe. It's the cumulative effect of all of those things: what they see, hear, experience, and believe. Now, I'm excited about that definition for several reasons, not the least of which is that leaders have the greatest influence in an organization, regarding what people see, hear, experience, and believe.

Now, the second part of your question about a high-performance culture, we think three things must be true to meet our working definition. First is alignment. You've got to have the vast majority of people aligned with the organization's cultural aspiration. In fact, we think that's the measure of the strength of a culture is how aligned is it? because you can have those things, but if nobody buys in and no one's aligned, then the culture—if it exists at all—it's very fragile, right? So alignment is the first piece.

The second piece is performance. And it's funny how often I end up in this conversation, sometimes even in the faith-based community. It's like every organization exists to accomplish something. At least, that's the theory. Like, that's why you come together. If you didn't believe you had a better chance of accomplishing your thing, you'd continue to work independently. But you say, “No. If we bring people together, we can accomplish more of this, or we can accomplish more of that, or we can accomplish it faster.” And so, whatever your it is, is performance. And a high-performance culture consistently produces high performance.

Now, if you have flashes of brilliance, congratulations. You might have a good place to work, but you don't have a high-performance culture, because good places, from time to time, they get things right. That's not what we're talking about.

So, you got to have alignment, and you got to have high performance consistently over time. And then third, and finally, you have to be in the constant pursuit of improvement, because if you're not improving, your high-performance status is always in jeopardy and you will fall, because culture, as a living, breathing entity, you can't shrink-wrap it. You can't say, “Let's don't change it.” When you say you're not going to change it, you've actually decided to kill it. And so, you got to have an improvement mindset.

So, those are the three criteria that we would say are needed to have a high-performance culture.

Al: Yeah. I like the point you make about performance, particularly. And I've had a lot of people say, “Well, if you're focusing so much on culture and not performance, can you have a great culture without having high performance?” And I say no. Those two go together. People have to feel like you’re accomplishing something together and actually performing in order to feel like you're working for a worthwhile, and—

Mark: Yeah. I have some dear, dear friends that that are youth pastors, and I poke at them. And I've been asked that same question, and they said, “Can you have a great culture without performance?” I said, “Well, if you want to be a youth pastor, I mean, you're just trying to create these great…” You know?

Al: Yeah.

Mark: I mean, I actually had it in one of our restaurants, where an operator told me they created a great place to work. The only problem was the performance was not good. And I said, “You lost the storyline.” Like, culture is an enabler; it's not the goal. It's not the goal. It's a means to an end.

Al: Well, you know, Mark, the first area that you talk about in building culture is aspiration. So, that's an interesting place to start. Leaders need to share their hopes and dreams for a culture to be really effective with their team. So, what are some of the specific ways that a leader can provide clarity in defining their culture and aspirations of the organization?

Mark: Yeah. Well, I heard a couple of really good questions there, so let me see if I can kind of pull that apart just a little bit. If you pull up half a step, we determined that there are three, what we call, rules that will enable a leader to create the kind of culture we just talked about, because we did find—we did a global survey. We talked to over 6,000 folks in 10 countries—72% of U.S. leaders said that culture was the most powerful tool at their disposal to drive performance. About 70% of leaders globally said that. That wasn't particularly helpful, but it provided the backdrop for the next question. We said, “Would you please rank your priorities?” Oh, by the way, nothing scored higher than culture for driving performance, according to leaders. We said, “Will you please rank your priorities?” And building and maintaining culture came in at number 12.

Now, Al, I don't know you well, but I want to go ahead and confess something to you. I'm not working on my twelfth priority today. On a good day, I try to work on a few of the top ones, which I think speaks to the sorry state of organizational culture in so many organizations. Leaders, of their own admission, are not working on culture.

And so we said, “How do we make this more approachable? How do we make it more actionable? How do we create something leaders can actually do that will work?” And we came up with these three rules. And the first one is to aspire. And that could feel like a blinding flash of the obvious, and our team debated it longer than I'm going to admit. Like, do we really have to say that? Do we really have to start there? Well, tragically, we met leaders all over the world who could not share their hopes and dreams for their culture. And some that could might talk to you for an hour. It's like, well, now, if you're going to try to get me to join you on that journey, that felt really complicated. And that felt really convoluted. Like, what's the essence of it? Can you say it succinctly? Can you say it in a fashion that is repeatable? Can you say it simply? And so, even though we might not have wanted to start there, we think you got to start there.

And let me say this. I met leaders who would say things like, “Well, it's clear in my head, and it's clear in my heart.” And I said, “And that is fantastic, and that's probably where it should start. But it can't stay there. You can't create this by yourself. It's only when you get it into the head, the hearts, and the hands of the organization can you begin to move toward the aspiration.” So, the ability to codify, to clarify, and to cascade that aspiration, that has to be the starting point.

And so people say, “Well, is that the most important of the three rules?” I say, “Well, there are only three, and they're all important,” but it's first among equals, right? How do you create something you can’t articulate?

Al: Yeah. Aspire. Yeah. Be able to share your hopes and dreams of what your culture is. And beyond culture, let's talk about a key part of culture, and that is having a set of values, you know, because values are so important in every organization. And you distinguish between stated values and operational values. So flush out that idea for us. How can leaders work with their organizations to articulate values that really are lived out through the organization?

Mark: All right. There's a lot in that. Al, you ask really deep questions, so that's good. Give me a little—let me pull that apart just a little bit. And I would ask you for a little grace and your audience, please do not misinterpret the brevity of my response with the magnitude of the question. I mean, that's the limit of our format. But that is another outstanding question.

Let me again pull up half a step and say that when you do begin to articulate in your own spirit, when you begin to identify your hopes and dreams, you've got options for how you convey that. You may even want to think of them as various mechanisms at your disposal. Some use vision. Some use purpose. Some use mission, vision, purpose, mission. Some use values. Some use ethos. I even know a guy who uses an inanimate object. I'll come back to that in a minute to convey his aspiration.

And so values for me is one of those go-to ways. Again, it's not a requirement, but so many organizations have found them helpful because the values, in most situations, when they're done well, they help people understand how to live and how to work and how to think and how to behave in order to move toward the aspiration. And so it operationalizes, if you will, the day-to-day activities that are going to be required to become the organization we want to become. And so I think they're extremely powerful.

I don't—again, this is no judgment on anybody who’s reached a different conclusion. But I've always used values. I think they're a really, really powerful way to shape a culture and to shape it quickly, because people always watch the leader, and part of what they're looking for is what's important to the leader. And so I'm going, the values are—people are eager to know what's important. And you can tell them, and then, you're starting from the same place. And in fact, you're moving toward the same destination, right? So, I’m a huge fan, but that's just one of those mechanisms.

Hey, let me tell you this story about the inanimate object. Interviewed lots of people for the book, in addition to the surveys that we did and all the desk research and other stuff. And one leader said, “Oh, I'm real clear on what we're trying to do with our culture.” And I said, “Love to hear it.” He had a statue, and it was a lighthouse. And he said, “We want to be a lighthouse.” And his employees wore little lighthouse pins. And customers would ask them, and they said, “We want to be a lighthouse.” I said, “Well, tell me about lighthouses.” So he's been educating his team on lighthouses and about yes, they do protect you from danger, but they're also a welcome beacon to the tired and the weary that you're almost home. He said, “We want to be that for you.” And he's been talking about it for 20 years. And that's his cultural aspiration.

So, you can use purpose and mission and vision and values, or you can pick something that embodies what you're trying to create. Whatever you can do to help people get it, because they're the ones that have to get it. It's not about the leader getting it. I mean, the leader has to start it, but everybody's got to get it.

Al: Yeah. And I've run into a number of Christian organizations say, “Well, the Bible is our guide and a definition of our values,” but I encourage them to go and define, you know, four or five values specifically that, as you say, that will help drive the aspiration, the purpose of the organization. Wouldn't you say that’s a—?

Mark: Yeah. I've done the same thing.

Al: Yeah.

Mark: I tell people, the more values you have, the less value they add, because you want them to be an active point of reference. And if people can't bring them to heart and mind, they can't use them. Think of them like tools. The goal is not to have stated and operational. In my mind, they should be one and the same. But the difference actually reflects a gap. Well, we say this, but we do this. We say we value customers, and we make it really hard for them to register a complaint or to get a refund or to talk to a manager. Or we really value customers, but you're going to be on hold for two hours if you call our helpline. So, our stated value is customers, and our operational value is we don't want to talk to customers. And so I think when you have both in place, in my mind, it's a reflection of an opportunity.

Al: Yeah. And that's really integrity, isn't it, Mark, you know, where you say you have a stated value and you actually live it. Yeah.

Well, you’ve made the point that senior leaders define and build culture. I mean, there's no question about that. And they can't delegate culture to the HR team. But there are also roles for frontline supervisors and workers in terms of embracing culture. I mean, everybody has a role in creating a flourishing workplace culture. So sometimes there's a disconnect between the frontline workers and the senior leaders. And, you know, our Engagement Survey, we find that employees, their connection with their supervisor is really significant in how they experience the workplace culture. And talk about the importance of frontline supervisors, you know, that middle level, connecting the leadership and the employees in creating flourishing workplace culture. How can senior leaders empower supervisors and people throughout the organization to create a positive culture?

Mark: Wow. Okay. Great question. I think leaders at every level are essential. I think the point that I have tried to make, and I need to continue to even clarify my language, I have dear friends and trusted colleagues that are human-resources professionals. I'm not anti human resources. What I am against is a leader that doesn't think about culture, doesn't care about culture, and tells HR to handle it. And I've seen that far too many times. So that's what I'm actually railing against. The leader has to be the primary champion of the culture.

But I think you ultimately want everyone in the organization to be a culture carrier, not even stopping with frontline supervisors, because, again, if you think about what percentage of your organization are individual contributors, it's the majority in virtually every organization. So if you leave them out—oh, by the way, they're the ones that are actually interacting with your customer, with your guest. They're the ones providing the service or ministry. So if your volunteers, in a church context, don't get it, it really doesn't matter if the church staff gets it, right?

So now to your question specifically, the frontline supervisor is pivotal in part because they're the connection, and they're the face of the organization. I know you've got senior leaders in every organization, but the data has been clear for decades. People don't leave organizations; they leave their supervisor. And so I think that is a critical distinction that you're calling out. But the end game is if you've got 100 employees, that 100 employees are champions of your culture. And you'll never get there without all the leaders along the way.

Al: Amen.

I trust you’re enjoying our podcast today. We’ll be right back after an important word for leaders.

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Al: Welcome back to my conversation with Mark Miller.

Based on what we’ve talked about, some of our listeners might find themselves in an unhealthy culture. And, we have empathy.

Mark: Yeah. Hate it when that happens.

Al: Yeah. Boy. So, you know, where they face toxic situations and feel out of control is kind of an outcome of a toxic culture. You've talked about several different strategies a leader can choose to follow when they're in difficult situations, you know. So, what are some of the practical steps that a leader can take to change a toxic situation? Do leaders rip off the Band-Aid? You've heard that approach. Or should they, you know, have a more-incremental approach to painful situations?

Mark: Yeah. We have said that, I mentioned earlier there were three rules. The third and final rule is to adapt, is that you're never finished. You've always got to work to enhance your culture. And when you think about enhancing the culture, you can do that in one of several ways. You could close critical gaps.

Let me give you a quick, fun story about this. I was talking to a group of Christian-school leaders recently, and to paraphrase, their aspiration was around academic excellence, service to others, and servant leadership. I said, “Fantastic.” And as we began to move forward in the conversation, they said, “Hey, don't spend any time on that servant-leadership piece.” I said, “Well, that's one-third of your aspiration.” They said, “Yeah, we don't do anything with that.” I said, “What do you mean?” They said, “Well, we don't do anything with that.” I said, “Is it on your website? Like, on page one?” And I said, “You've got a critical gap. So you've got to decide, are you going to change your website or are you going to change your behavior? because you are destroying your leadership.”

So, one is you've got a critical gap, you've got to close it.

The next thing we talk about is toxins, patterns of unhealthy or unproductive behavior. And you referenced that specifically. What do you do when you've got toxins? Well, I think you've got to judge the severity, the breadth, and the depth, and the potential consequences in order to determine the right countermeasure. And we do talk about several in the book. One is rip the Band-Aid. It's, like, you just got to go in, and you got to just do what you got to do. And again, there will be consequences. And sometimes there are unintended consequences.

After the Challenger disaster, Reagan shut down NASA for two years and said, “This culture is going to change.” And it did. And people close to that situation would say one of the unintended consequences is they lost their ability to innovate. And I'm not saying—no judgment here—but he wanted a safer culture. That was the new aspiration. Like, take all the risk out. Well, okay. Great. You take all the risk out, and you take innovation out, which I would argue is what opened the door for Bezos and Musk and all these other people. But that's okay. But that was a rip the Band-Aid. We're actually shutting it down, and we're changing this culture. And the leader had the authority and had the resources and said, “Here's a new aspiration.”

You know, there may be a time when that's what you do. But on the other end of the spectrum, we call this take it off Broadway, and Google is a great example of this. They’re constantly running experiments, and they're trying to learn. And then, they'll take an experiment and say, “Ooh, that worked. Let's expand it. Or let's do A/B testing.”

One thing they did a few years back, they want their employees to be healthy, wealthy, and wise. And they said, “How do we help them be wealthy?” And they said, “Well, we need to encourage them to invest in a 401(k), because we're going to put money in it, and when they get to the end of their career, they'll have money. And that'll be us helping them.” And so, they have been sending out different emails to different groups of people who have not yet signed up to see what the response rate is. And if one has a bip, that's the one they send to the next group, and then they'll play with that. So, it's not under the spotlights, but also, the consequences are decades down the road. There's lower urgency. It's actually out of the good of their heart, not to try and fight off competition or any imminent business threat. So they've taken a different approach.

I think the context matters. And they're any number of interventions that you can take.

I'll give you one more. Think small. Truett Cathy did this 15 years ago. When we wanted to have more of a culture of hospitality, we started with asking young people to say, “My pleasure.” That's where it started. And over time, with consistency, we changed our culture. Now, we did other things. I'm not saying that's all, but that's where we started. We didn't have this huge program, because we actually realized what a challenge it is to get a couple hundred thousand teenagers to say, “My pleasure.”

And let me say this. To Truett’s credit, 10 consecutive years at our annual meeting, when he stood up to do his keynote address, he reminded everybody, “Hey, when somebody says ‘Thank you,’ what are we going to say?” And he made them stand up, and he made them practice it. And he stayed on that message. And again, that created a ripple effect in our organization. Sometimes you start small and you're just playing a long game. It all hinges on—the countermeasure hinges on the severity and the urgency and the consequences that you're dealing with.

Al: I love the story of where “My pleasure” came from. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark: That's it.

Al: Yeah. That's something I coach, even servers at restaurants. It’s like, “Oh, you know, it'd be great if you were to say, ‘My pleasure.’ I'd feel a lot better instead of, ‘No problem.’” Yeah.

Mark: If you find ones that do it already, say, “Hey, if you're ever looking for a job, Chick-fil-A is hiring.”

Al: Okay, great.

You know, speaking of that, you've got deep experience with Chick-fil-A and their culture and many other organizations that you've spoken to and worked with and been connected with. So, when a leader emphasizes high-performance workplace culture, does it also make a difference to the bottom line? You know, I'm always asking the question, what do you see as a difference between culture and the bottom line? You know, what's the relationship?

Mark: Yeah. Well, I probably let the cat out of the bag 10 minutes ago. Culture is essential, but it is an enabler. And it's not the only enabler. And I think you'll resonate with this. So, we think there are four things that all high-performance organizations do. One is they're well led. We can't find one that's not. People are aligned, which certainly is about this conversation around culture. People are engaged, which I know is what, you've been singing that song for a long, long time. And when people are well led, when they're aligned, and when they're engaged, you've got a much better shot at executing. And execution is actually the hallmark of all high-performance organizations.

Now, whatever that execution looks like, right? Are you running good Sunday morning services, or are you graduating all of your students, or getting them into good— I mean, everybody got to decide what is it your execution goal and aims are. But it's leadership alignment, which is culture and engagement, which is, you know, you know more about that than I do. Those are the enablers of execution. So, we keep coming back to performance is the goal. And if you don't have leadership, it's virtually impossible. And if you don't have alignment, it's much, much harder than it needs to be. You're more likely to see flashes of brilliance. And if people aren't engaged, game over. I mean, that's probably one of the root problems in the world today, when you look at the global numbers on engagement. People that don't care, they're not going to execute. Execution is the pinnacle. If you don't care, why would you execute, right? It takes a little focus. It takes some attention. It takes some diligence, takes some effort to execute. They got to care.

Al: And some emotional involvement, you know, and desire. Yeah. Yeah.

Another question, Mark. You say that work is what we do; it's not where we go. You know, work location isn't the same now as it was prior to COVID. So, when you wrote the book, we were still coming out of the pandemic, and you talked about empowering people for different work environments, in the book. And maybe you've got some more thoughts as time has gone on.

Mark: Yeah, we were working on this during COVID, and everybody said, “Well, you got to tell us what to do about remote work.” And I said, “Well, I don't know what to do about remote work.” I said, “I think it's a grand social experiment. I think there are some things we know.” And what I intended to say, I'm not sure how it came across, is that for many jobs, there has been the realization, it is what you do, not where you go. Like, if you're writing code, whether you're sitting in Manhattan or in Biloxi, Mississippi, you can write the same code. So there is that piece for some jobs.

I do go back, though, to link it to your cultural aspiration. It's like, what kind of culture are you trying to create? If leadership wants to create a highly relational face-to-face culture, then that needs to drive your decisions about how often you got to show up at the office. I still believe that if you want high levels of creativity, high levels of innovation, I think you got to have some face time. If you're not interested in those things, if you basically are trying to create this massive virtual work group where lots of people do individual work and you add it up at the end of the day, week, and the month, then I'm not sure you'd ever have to get together, if that's the work style that you want.

Al: I remember coming out of college, and I worked in a bank, and 9:30 was coffee time. And you were actually expected to show up for coffee time. It wasn't just a “go get a cup of coffee.” It was a highly relational experience. And it was a culture that they were really promoting as highly relational.

Mark: And by the way, I've challenged some leaders on this. You do get to decide what kind of culture you want to build. But now when you decide, then you're going to exclude some people who don't want that.

I mean, even Chick-fil-A. I give you an example. Corporate. This was a decade ago. We had interviewed some very talented people, back then wanted to be remote. And we said no, and they don't work for us. And that's okay. And that's what I'm saying. Even today in this world, I'm not saying that's the right answer. But when you declare what kind of aspiration you have, by definition you are going to exclude someone, and I think leaders have to come to grips with that.

Al: And that’s okay, isn’t it, Mark. I mean, that’s—

Mark: I think it is.

Al: Yeah.

Mark: It think there’s enough work out there for everybody. There's enough ministry out there for everybody. My son runs a nonprofit organization, and he just lost an employee who wanted to work 100% remote from some state far, far away, and everybody else is in place. And they said, “We love you, but no, because that's not what we're building.” That's the leader's prerogative.

Al: Highly relational, with creativity and productivity. You know, you need to have relationships to do those things. Yeah. Although, there are clearly, like international remote teams that can work together effectively, and it's, you know, okay, you've got a choice, you know, what do you want? No question.

Well, Mark, we’ve learned so much from this conversation, it’s been like drinking out of a fire hose. And I appreciate, you know, even defining culture. And it is invisible. It's hard to see. And, you know, I think about it, it's cumulative. It has an effect on what we hear and experience and believe. And I love your point on aspiration and how as leaders, and I think about our listeners even now, have you really been able to describe your culture in an aspirational way? Were you able to communicate it effectively? And as Mark, as you said, consistently, the same way over and over again; to codify, clarify, and cascade that to culture story. And also, you know, I love the discussion about values. And again, to our listeners, let's be sure that you've got clearly defined values about how you want people to behave in your workplace so that you can really move forward. And even the lighthouse example, I hadn't heard of the inanimate-object value, but what a great story and a great image to consider. And how supervisors are pivotal. And not only, of course, your point is, everybody's pivotal in having a really effective and a flourishing culture, and particularly as a supervisor, that people will join organizations, but they'll leave because their supervisor is ineffective. And then, I just loved the way you talked about, you know, how to really think about painful situations and have a countermeasure that's appropriate for the level of difficulty, whether it's rip the Band-Aid off or take it off Broadway. I love the way that works. Or to think small and, of course, the “My pleasure” story. That's going to be helpful for a lot of us that love Chick-fil-A, not only for good sandwiches, but just for the behavior of the team members. Yeah. So, yeah, and all high-performing organizations are well led, they have clear alignment, and engaged employees because that leads to effective execution. It's all about execution. And when you've got good execution, then you've got ultimately growth and profitability.

So, Mark, thank you so much. Is there anything you'd like to add to what we've talked about?

Mark: You know, every—and I'm preaching to the choir, talking to you—but every organization has a culture. It's either by design, or it's by default. And I think the challenge for so many leaders is they need to engage, because if it's your twelfth priority, you still got a culture, and it's probably not good. It's probably not good. So, the culture rules: if they'll aspire, they'll amplify that aspiration. We didn't talk a lot about it, but leaders know how to do that. They've got to amplify that aspiration. And then, just always work to make it better. You got to continually adapt. You can create a culture that will enable phenomenal performance. But you got to do the work. Leaders animate culture. Or not.

Al: Well, Mark, thanks so much for your contributions today. You know, most of all, I appreciate your years and years of commitment to serving leaders, to helping them grow in their effectiveness. So thanks for taking your time out today and speaking in the lives of so many of our listeners.

Mark: It's been my pleasure. And one last thought. Let me give you my cell number for anybody who has a question. You know, I'd love to get into questions from the audience. 678.612.8441. And I'd love to serve, if that makes sense.

Al: Yeah. And we'll make sure that that's in the show notes. So, thanks so much, Mark.

Mark: Thank you, Al.

Al: Okay.

Mark: Have a great day.

Al: Thank you so much for listening to my conversation with Mark. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

You can find ways to connect with him and links to everything we talked about in the show notes and transcript at workplaces.org/podcast.

And if you have any suggestions for me about our podcast or have any questions on flourishing workplace cultures, please email me, al@workplaces.org.

And leaders, if you want to improve your leadership, expand your organization's impact for good, and see greater faithfulness in our broader culture, help us achieve our goal by seeing more flourishing Christian-led workplaces. To help, please share this podcast with another leader or launch a project in your organization to discover and improve the health of your workplace culture. If you're interested in learning more, go to workplaces.org and request a sample report.

Outro: The Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast is sponsored by Best Christian Workplaces. If you need support building a flourishing workplace culture, please visit workplaces.org for more infotion.

We'll see you again next week for more valuable content to help you develop strong leaders and build a flourishing workplace culture.

Al: Our guest next week will be George Greene IV, the president of Water Mission, a Christian engineering mission focused on providing safe water in the developing world. You won't want to miss it.