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Ann Rhoades - Building Values-Driven Cultures That Outperform

I’m thrilled to share my episode today with Ann Rhoades on building values-driven cultures that drive outperformance. Ann was the VP of People at Southwest Airlines with founder Herb Kelleher and was a founding executive as VP of People, and eventually a board member of JetBlue Airways. She has also worked with companies like Doubletree Hotels, P.F. Changs, Restoration Hardware, and countless others through her consulting and research firm, People Ink.

Our discussion focused on building and maintaining values-driven companies from the perspective of the CEO and how they can drive the process forward. One of my favorite takeaways was the importance of tying your values to behaviors, providing real-life examples of how to act in accordance with your values. It’s one thing to announce your core values to your team, but tying them to their everyday roles is crucial. We also talked about how to hire based on values, employee retention, continuous improvement, and how strong values-driven cultures create category leading companies. Please enjoy this fantastic episode with Ann Rhoades.

This episode is sponsored by Oberle Risk Strategies, the leading specialty insurance brokerage catering to search funds and the broader ETA community, providing complimentary due diligence assessments of the target company’s commercial insurance and Employee benefits programs. If you are under LOI, please reach out to learn more about how Oberle can help with insurance due diligence at oberle-risk.com. Or reach out to the CEO, August Felker, directly at [email protected].

Show Notes

(00:00:00) – Intro

(00:03:46) – Why values are so important

(00:14:24) – Ann’s career path and key experiences that led to building a high-performance culture

(00:24:50) – Typical symptoms of a lackluster culture

(00:27:25) – Implementing values

(00:30:22) – The most common obstacles CEOs have in implementing values

(00:32:46) – Having a values-focused hiring process

(00:47:27) – Connecting values to behaviors

(00:50:01) – Tools and systems to measure how an org is living the values

(00:52:50) – Retaining A-players

(00:55:03) – Advice to CEOs looking to build stronger cultures

Think Like an Owner is sponsored by:

Hood & Strong, LLP – Hood & Strong is a CPA firm with a long history of working with search funds and private equity firms on diligence, assurance, tax services, and more. To learn more about how Hood & Strong can help your search, acquisition, and beyond, please email one of their partners Jerry Zhou at [email protected].

Oberle Risk Strategies – Oberle is the leading specialty insurance brokerage catering to search funds and the broader ETA community, providing complimentary due diligence assessments of the target company’s commercial insurance and Employee benefits programs. If you are under LOI, please reach out to learn more about how Oberle can help with insurance due diligence at oberle-risk.com. Or reach out to the CEO, August Felker, directly at [email protected].

Interested in sponsoring? Reply to this email and let’s chat.