Transcript: 5 Keys to a Healthy, Engaged, and Purpose-Driven Team // Brad Carr, SonicAire

Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast

“5 Keys to a Healthy, Engaged, and Purpose-Driven Team“

November 18, 2024

Brad Carr

Intro: Are you ready to transform your workplace culture and see your team flourish like never before? Well, in this episode we reveal the key strategies that will inspire your employees, boost engagement, and drive operational excellence, all while staying true to your Christian values. If you want to create a flourishing environment where people love coming to work, this is the podcast you won't want to miss.

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: Hi, I'm Al Lopus, the co-founder of the Best Christian Workplaces and author of Road to Flourishing. And my passion is to equip Christian leaders like you to cultivate engaged, flourishing workplaces. This fall we’re dedicating our Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast to the most-powerful driver of flourishing cultures, and that’s inspirational leadership. Join us as we dive into insightful conversations with top leaders who will provide you with the tools and inspiration to grow and excel in your leadership journey.

Today I’m delighted to welcome Brad Carr to the podcast. Brad’s the founder and president of SonicAire. In today's podcast, we'll help you improve the way you lead to cultivate a flourishing workplace culture. First, we’ll discover practical strategies to inspire your team and help them find deeper purpose in their work. Secondly, we'll learn the proven steps to achieve operational excellence without sacrificing your core values. Third, we'll dive into actionable ways to boost employee engagement so your team is motivated and aligned. And finally, we’ll reveal how building a flourishing culture leads to long-term retention, keeping your best talent energized and committed. So don't miss these insights that will elevate your leadership and impact today.

I think you're going to love this interview with Brad Carr. But before we dive in, this podcast is proudly sponsored by the Best Christian Workplaces’ Employee Engagement Survey. Don't wait. This fall is a perfect time to gather vital insights from your employees and assess the health of your workplace culture. As today's guest, Brad Carr, shared, “We started out with a toxic culture, but through the Survey we worked on it, became healthy, and now we're flourishing.” So are you ready to transform your culture? Visit workplaces.org to learn more and to start your journey to become a flourishing workplace today.

And hello to our new listeners. Thanks for joining us as we honor your investment of time to listen to top leaders like this so that we can create valuable episodes.

Let me tell you a little bit more about Brad Carr. Brad's the president and founder of SonicAire. He started the company because of his passion for providing the best engineering solution to a business problem, and he saw that no one had had a way to help their plants be safe from combustible dust and lint fires. Leveraging his 40 years of commercial air engineering and international sales, Brad decided to develop a solution to take care of that. He and his engineers developed a revolutionary new design called the BarrierAire Technology. Brad is a noted expert on safety issues related to combustible dust and speaks and writes for industry conferences and publications.

So, here’s my conversation with Brad Carr.

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

Brad Carr: Al, it’s great to be back on a podcast with you again.

Al: So Brad, I'm really looking forward to talking about what you do and the culture that you've created. And you create and manufacture fan systems, and it's a key safety component for factories and warehouses, and the value of your product makes employees proud to work at SonicAire and helps employees engage in the mission of your company. And it's a fascinating business that you're in. What are some of the practical ways that you and your senior leadership team help your staff embrace the mission of SonicAire, and how do you increase their understanding of the value of their work? How do you talk with them about the importance of the work that they're doing? And what would you suggest to a leader who's trying to help their employees understand the value of their mission, but maybe struggling to get their staff on board with that mission? Give us some advice on that.

Brad: Well, Al, let me tell you kind of what our company's doing that I think addresses those questions. We run on EOS, Entrepreneurial Operating System, and where that helped us on our culture is we have regular departmental weekly meetings, we have quarterly state-of-the-company corporate meetings, but it basically sets up a rhythm, kind of like a devotion, if you will, but you just need rhythms where you're communicating. We use a scorecard or metrics for all of the important work that we do so that everyone can see if they're winning or losing, and that is an important thing. And if they're losing, we all pitch in together to understand the issues and to solve them.

Another thing that kind of helps us align is we have a big, hairy, audacious goal of protecting 8o million square feet of factory air by 2028. And we created, using Google Maps, a video, and we showed on a monitor in our lobby that shows all the locations of SonicAire fans around the world. But it also shows that we are currently protecting 25 million square feet, but we still have a ways to go. But when people come in, in the morning, they take a look at that, and they realize all the areas that we are protecting people, which is part of our mission.

And I would encourage any leader to implement either Entrepreneurial Operating System or something similar. Most entrepreneurs, I find, are more creative than they are organized, and they need a good structured system. In fact, a major move at SonicAire was getting me out of the chief operating position and putting Jordan in, who had the giftedness to excel at that responsibility.

Al: And tell us real quick, so, these fan systems, what is the value of that? What problem are you trying to solve?

Brad: Well, in a manufacturing facility that creates, we call it, fugitive dust, and particularly, if it's combustible, if it accumulates overhead, and for whatever reason, if there's an explosion or something like that in the factory, then it all comes raining down, and it becomes a big bomb, and the factory will blow up, which, you know, you read about it, quite often you read about it, particularly in the grain industry. But it happens at all different industries. There's a big sugar plant in Georgia that blew up, killed over a dozen people and wounded or maimed or whatever several dozen beyond that. So it's just a—it's an OSHA requirement, and it really falls under NFPA standards.

Al: Yeah. And so you're protecting people's lives in this—

Brad: Exactly.

Al: Yeah, right.

Well, it's one thing to have clarity of mission, as you described, at the senior level and to have a high degree of trust in what you guys do and your employees say that you do. But it's important to have not only trust, but mission clarity for leadership at all levels. And so your supervisors, kind of the middle of your organization, are keeping the momentum and energy of the mission clear, and they're communicating that every day with their employees. So what do you do to create the consistency and the focus at the supervisory level? How do you connect the company and your employees? What are some of the specific ways that you equip your supervisors to care for their staff, to encourage their staff, and equip their staff for day-to-day operational success?

Brad: Well, basically, because we operate on EOS, we start out at the senior level, but we've moved it down through the whole organization. And every supervisor has a weekly meeting with everyone on their team, usually lasts about an hour. They begin these meetings with each person sharing a personal gratefulness and a company gratefulness. That's one of our core values. And that just really helps people not feel like victims and to be grateful for what's happening, kind of positive. Next, they review their scorecards, you know, their metrics. Then, they check each person has a quarterly rock or project, know how are they doing? And then, they spend a fair amount of time identifying, discussing, and solving whatever issues have come up in the past week or some that are even older. And because of this, everyone knows what's happening, and everyone—and this is the important part—everyone speaks into the issues that spring up, and this gets everyone engaged, motivated to be successful.

Al: Yeah. So having everybody engaged, everybody kind of saying, “Well, this is an issue I'm facing now. How can we solve it?” You know, as EOS talks about: identify, discuss, and solve issues people are facing. And a weekly meeting one on one is—does that go down to the shop floor?

Brad: Yes.

Al: Yeah. So, you're basically saying every employee has a weekly meeting to discuss a personal and a company gratefulness—we’ll talk about that in terms of value—and reviewing the progress they're making. Wow.

So, operational excellence is a key part of inspirational leadership. And we've looked at inspirational leadership from an employee-engagement perspective, and we see that that's the key driver of employee engagement, the most important. And character is clearly part of that. But also, competence is a key part of running a successful business. And I know that you use the EOS system—you mentioned it already—as a framework for how to run SonicAire, but what are a couple of the best practices of EOS in helping you achieve operational excellence? What are some of the, maybe even, cautions that you might offer someone who's considering a system like EOS?

Brad: Al, I think the most important part about EOS is the accountability chart, making sure that everyone is in a seat; that they get it, want it, and have the capacity. And I say capacity, that’s they've got the giftedness, the education, the experience so that they can functionally get the job done. But equal to that is holding people accountable for keeping our core values: humble, hungry, people smart, and grateful. We absolutely hire and fire based on these characteristics, and all of our team members hold each other to the same standards.

One thing we do is each month, we have a company lunch to celebrate the people, identified by their peers, as exhibiting one or more of the core values. We call it “caught you caring.” And this really makes it feel like a family because everybody's telling what they appreciate about each other.

I'd say my biggest caution to people with implementing EOS is to be prepared to get some people off of the bus and put others on or promote others to new positions. Once the mission’s clarified, the core values are set, and some people simply don't fit the values or don't support the mission. This will be, I call it, a great refining period to set your company up for a great future and a great culture. It probably took us a year to get through this, and I hated going to work every day as we were doing this. But I can tell you today because we did that work at that time, we've got great unity, and I look forward to Monday mornings.

Al: Yeah. Isn't that great? And I'd encourage our leaders to search for previous podcasts. We talk about that in that process that you went through. But we also know that having employees understand, embrace, and accomplish goals is a part of a healthy workplace culture. Oftentimes, people are afraid to really embrace, “Well, does flourishing culture mean that people just sit around like at a country club and have fun?” And I believe that now you actually have to—people feel like they're accomplishing something important in order to have a culture. The last time we were on the podcast, you talked about setting goals to stretch but not be goals that are unattainable, and that in fact, if you hit 80% of your goals, that's good because if you're hitting 100% of your goals, then maybe they should be higher.

And so what does it look like now? How do you and your leadership team decide on goals and communicate those throughout the organization? And this is, again, focusing on operational excellence in the sense that things run well at SonicAire. And that's one of our questions that “my company and my organization, things run well.” So how do you involve your employees in creating these goals and find the right balance between, well, stretching and maybe something being unattainable?

Brad: Well, one thing that we've done in setting our goals, or we call rocks, is we are learning to make them SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. Too often we’ll set a goal that really depends on someone else out of our organization doing something. You know, an example would be we were trying to get some stuff certified by UL, and our supplier or vendor, whatever, didn't get it done. So you got to be careful about that.

Al: Yeah.

Brad: Most of our goals, or rocks, they come out of meeting our sales targets, our profit targets. A lot of it’s, Al, is solving issues that we've got, or sometimes it's just capturing new opportunities. And I would say that when we're setting these goals, everything is filtered through our core focus, which begins with showing God's goodness. So if we don't feel like it does that, then we're not going to make it a rock.

Many times, our leadership goals filter down to supervisors. So they participate in it. And then from there, it filters down to individual team members. But supervisors also get to create their own goals and rocks, based on their issues. And there are some responsibilities, so, you know, it would be in addition to it. And one thing that we've learned over time is we try to limit the number of rocks a quarter—we do this every 90 days—that an individual has no more than three or four. And even less if one goal is going to take a lot of time. So we've become much more disciplined, we've become smarter, and we've really learned the saying, less is better than more sometimes. And that has really helped.

Al: Yeah. So let me go back to this. You filter all of this with showing God's goodness when you're creating these. So you go through, you say, “Okay. We need to do this, this, and the other thing,” and you put it through that screen or that test, “This has got to show God’s goodness.” And some people might say, “Well, making fans are your purpose, what's that have to do with God's goodness?” So that's interesting. Yeah. Tell me a little more of how that works in practice.

Brad: Let's say someone brought up, as a goal, they want to create a less-expensive fan. Well, if it's not as reliable, and it doesn't perform well, although we can sell on price, it's not really selling on value. And to me, that is kind of, no. You’re almost being deceptive doing something like that.

Al: Yeah. Right.

Brad: I think that, you know, in the marketplace there's competition. And competition, you can try to do shortcuts or do things that are not for the right reason, so it's really helped us to make sure we keep the quality and the value up.

Al: Yeah. Wow. I love that. Thanks, Brad.

Well, your company operates in a very precise, technical space, and I think that retaining highly effective employees is an important part of your success in maintaining operational excellence. And in fact, I oftentimes will say, “Healthy and flourishing workplace culture leads to having employees that are highly effective in their work and stick around long enough to have them be very effective to meet your customers’ needs.” So, what factors have you seen as important in employee retention, and what challenges do you face in this area, either in your local labor market or within the industry overall? which leads to, oftentimes, when it comes to employee retention, people think about pay and benefits. How big of an issue is that, and what else is important, maybe even beyond these monetary incentives, when it comes to employee retention?

Brad: Well, Al, I think a flourishing culture is the most critical factor. By flourishing I mean everyone is doing work that is fulfilling and challenging for them. They actually look forward to Monday morning because they're having fun doing what they like to do, doing it successfully, and doing it with people they like to be around.

I’d say that most of our turnover, if not all of it, currently is from us letting someone go because they slip out of meeting our core values, for various reasons. We haven't really had much trouble attracting employees that are attracted to our core focus, which is to show God's goodness to our partners and communities through proven fugitive-dust solutions; to create safer, healthier, more efficient work environments; as well as our core values. And when we interview new employees, we really hammer that really hard. So we are attracting people that want what we want, that in many cases have been working for companies that really had no purpose, I guess you’d say, you know, beyond making a buck.

So regarding pay and benefits, we collect data every year on compensation ranges for each position in our company. And we actually share what that is, kind of a curve depending on what's the experience, that kind of stuff. And we make sure everyone is fairly and competitively compensated in our marketplace. And I think as far as benefits, for a small company like we've got, I think we're pretty generous on that—health insurance, 401(k)s, all that.

Al: That’s great. So, you do compensation analysis—this is interesting, and for our listeners—and you actually share the results of that analysis with the employees so that they understand the value of their role based on this analysis in the company. Is that what I understand?

Brad: That’s correct.

Al: Yeah.

Brad: So, they can see on the curve, based on their experience, kind of what in the industry. And of course, that's specific to the location and stuff like that, that they are being competitively compensated.

Al: That’s great.

So, Brad, you're leading a marketplace business. You're living out your Christian values in an industry where people, you know, maybe have very different values or experiences. So how do you shepherd your employees? As it says in 1 Peter 5:3, “shepherd the flock that God has entrusted to you,” how do you do that in a caring way and point them toward positive values, whether they embrace your faith foundation or not? How do you keep your own faith vibrant, growing in the day-to-day pressures of life?

Brad: Well, I'd say our leaders love everyone where they are. Whoever they are, we love them where they are. We all want everyone to live full and meaningful lives. We can't demand or coerce a particular belief system in another person. It just doesn't work that way. But you can inspire the person to want more and to be inquisitive about why others seem to have a purpose and peace in their life that maybe they don't experience. In addition, we have what we call a caire team, and it's run by our employees. The caire teams help set up two quarterly team-building events a year, one quarterly community outreach work day. In the past, we've helped Habitat for Humanity, and this year we're doing physical labor on the campus of a group called Solus Christus that help get women out of addiction and set them free. The caire team also gives grants and loans to employees for extenuating circumstances: a car breaks down, or whatever. And they make donations to different organizations. Like, we made a donation to help the people in western North Carolina with the current hurricane damage. And they have their own budget. The company gives them budget.

So I'd say my faith grows by loving those people around me. I love managing by walking around, catching up on the small things in people's lives. I love mentoring people, trying to point them to a positive future. And certainly, if invited, I love to talk about the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Al: Yeah. Amen. I just chuckle when I see the way you spell caire team.

Brad: It's kind of like the “aire” on SonicAire.

Al: Yeah. A-I-R-E. So, C-A-I-R-E is the caire team. And probably in software, word-processing programs, it comes up as a misspelling.

Brad: Yeah. Right. Yeah. It’s particular to us.

Al: Absolutely. Way to connect it. That’s an example how you're an innovative thinker.

And since the foundation of your company's success, I know you're part of the C12 network, which equips business leaders. What are you reading or listening to these days that help you keep fresh in leadership? I know C12 encourages you to do that. And how do you apply what you're learning and hearing to the day-to-day challenges of your business?

Brad: In terms of reading, each quarter our leadership team reads a new book, or in my case, I listen to a new book. They are either business or spiritual oriented, kind of goes back and forth. Our most recent book was Unreasonable Hospitality, which is about what the title would indicate. It's kind of a business book. The quarter before was The Way of the Shepherd, which is about leading like the Great Shepherd, Jesus, leads. So we go back and forth.

But also, each member of our leadership team is active on a monthly C12 forum. And we discuss the takeaways we each get each month from both the business section and a ministry section. In my way of thinking, this tremendously provides management development, because their business section is excellent, but it also keeps the team aligned on really where we're trying to go. All of them, my leaders love going to these meetings because they just, they keep us, you know, getting out of the box and thinking about what we really want to do.

Al: Yeah. Right.

Well, Brad, this has been a very insightful conversation. You know, looking back, you do such a great job of creating clarity and really having operational excellence. And, you know, I look at your Employee Engagement Survey results, and the top item is that your employees know what's expected of them. And that's so important, that clarity. And also, they love working there so much that if they knew somebody, they would recommend their family or friends, you know, use your products. I mean, that's 97th percentile. But also, your point about meeting with employees on a one-on-one basis. You know, in the last six months, somebody’s talked with you about your progress. That is remarkably high, in addition to recognizing people for doing a good job and that the supervisor helps with work-related problems. There's a lot of organizations that are realizing that, you know, the importance of being and supporting your managers and supervisors in the middle of your organization is of growing importance. So that was really helpful. And, you know, the way that you set goals. I loved, you know, it just touches me when you say, “Well, the key to retention” and a lot of business leaders miss that, “the key to retention is having a flourishing culture to start with.” And in your case, how you're able to explain life-giving work and to have a written core focus that helps you even, then, attract people to the organization. And it is very attractive. And the way you live out your Christian values with your employees and the caire teams, the C-A-I-R-E teams, like SonicAire, just great.

So, I really appreciate all we've talked about. Is there anything you'd like to add based on our conversation so far, Brad?

Brad: Yeah. I'd like to tell your audience, we started out on this journey about eight years ago, and Best Christian Workplace Institute did a Survey, and we were toxic. So then, we worked on it for two years. We became healthy, and we worked on two more years, and we became flourishing. And we've maintained that for about four years now. So, thank you for your help.

The other thing I'd say is if you want to know if you have a flourishing culture, it's when everyone looks forward to coming to work on Monday morning.

Al: Yeah.

Brad: That's the good measurement.

Al: And I love your definition of you want to do good work, and you want to do it with people that you enjoy being with. And so that's something that people oftentimes overlook in business.

Well, Brad, thanks so much for your contribution. I appreciate your commitment to excellence and to serving your staff and the customers with Christian values in the marketplace. And so thanks for taking your time out today. I appreciate it very much.

Brad: Al, thanks for inviting me. I hope that I've been able to share something that will encourage another person to continue their journey to becoming a company with a flourishing culture. And I call a flourishing culture the “Gospel petri dish.”

Al: Amen.

Well, thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Brad Carr. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

You can find ways to connect with him and links to everything we discussed 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.

So, as we wrap up today's episode, remember building a flourishing workplace starts with taking that first step. Don't just settle for a good culture; strive for a flourishing one. Take action today by conducting the Best Christian Workplaces’ Employee Engagement Survey and gain the insights that you need to make lasting impact. Visit workplaces.org to learn more and to begin your journey toward creating a workplace where your employees are inspired, engaged, and excited to come to work every day.

Keep listening to our weekly podcast as we continue to learn from leaders who are proven inspirational leaders exhibiting Christian character and excellence in their leadership.

Next week, we're going to hear from Ashley Wooldridge and Jeff Osborne of Christ’s Church of the Valley in Phoenix, and they'll share how a leader sets culture for an organization.

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 information.

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