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Culture by Design with Travis McAshan (Part 2): The Playbook for Building Teams
10 Plays1 month ago
In the second part of this two-part series, Curtis and Travis dive deeper into leadership, company culture, and what it really takes to scale an agency without losing sight of your values. Travis reflects on the challenges of moving from designer to CEO, how to build trust within teams, and why authenticity matters more than ever in today’s market. Packed with honest lessons and practical takeaways, this episode is a must-listen for anyone leading creative teams or growing a purpose-driven business.
About Travis:
Travis McAshan is founder and CEO of GLIDE, an Austin-based digital agency that creates impactful, user-centered web experiences. With nearly 20 years in the industry, he leads a team focused on ethical design and strategic innovation for startups and nonprofits. Travis combines creativity with measurable results, championing transparency and positive social impact.
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Transcript
Introduction to Travis Makashan and Glide
00:00:06
Speaker
Welcome again to part two with Travis Makashan. ah This is Mustard Hub Voices behind the build. In these fireside chats, we talk with people building, backing, and running better workplaces.
00:00:18
Speaker
I'm your host, Curtis Forbes. Today's guest, again, is Travis. Travis, founder of CEO at Glide, and Austin-based digital agency that creates him impactful user-centered web experiences.
00:00:33
Speaker
With nearly 20 years in the industry, he leads a team focused on ethical design, strategic innovation for startups and nonprofits. Travis combines creativity with measurable results, championing transparency and positive social impact.
Glide's Culture and Team Dynamics
00:00:48
Speaker
Thank you for being here, Travis. Appreciate you coming here again. Thank you for having me. It's round two, it looks like. It's this round two. So, you know, we talked a lot about Glide, a lot about the culture that you've built there, a lot about how you interact with your teams. You had incredible amount of of insight and and it's obvious you've done Your homework.
00:01:14
Speaker
I mean, you shared a lot with us, which was pretty ah meaningful. Give us a little bit of ah of a refresher on um on Glide, on the team. How many people are there with you?
00:01:25
Speaker
Tell me a little bit about the things that you do.
Main Offerings of Glide
00:01:27
Speaker
Sure. So Glide, we're an Austin-based organization. we so you know started this company in 2003. So you know basically been doing this most of my adult life. you know And it's wild. I actually had a doc up that i i you know I use and share with folks. But you know I mean, ultimately, a creative agency, really what we do, our core service offering is web design development. I would say kind of straddled to that are two other core disciplines, which is brand strategy and then digital marketing.
00:01:58
Speaker
you know To me, brand strategy is upstream. Digital marketing is downstream, but our core, our heart is really user experience for
Market Differentiation and Creativity
00:02:05
Speaker
the web. And, you know, I was actually reading a book called Market of One by Robin Bond. It's just a really beautiful book about how, you know, there's not, the the market isn't saturated. It's just under differentiated, you know? And so it's just an interesting thing to think about. And his whole process starts with belief and like, what do you believe? And it's funny, man, I, you know, I've been doing what I've been doing for,
00:02:28
Speaker
So long, I probably like created ideas and forgot them, you know, five times over. And so, but I just thinking
Design Principles and Empathy
00:02:35
Speaker
a lot. I spent about three hours last night thinking about all of the oh the people, the movements, the organizations, the agencies that has inspired me and my beliefs.
00:02:46
Speaker
And it's funny that there was something that's literally been on my wall for 15 years um that I've even transferred from one house to another that I still put back on the wall.
00:02:57
Speaker
um And it's a quote by the the the the shaker. So there's this kind of movement and the quote is this, it's don't make something unless it is both necessary and useful. I'm looking at it on the wall, but You know, don't make something unless it is both necessary and useful. But if it is both necessary and useful, don't hesitate to make it beautiful.
00:03:17
Speaker
And it's just this concept of fundamental design. You know, beautiful design is not necessarily about ornamentation. It's about stripping things down to the essence of what makes it useful and beneficial.
00:03:28
Speaker
And, you know, you can have a doorknob or a chair that's beautiful in essence, and it's just utilitarian, you know, it's simple, it's simple and clear and it works perfectly. um and the elements of it kind of contribute to the aesthetic, you know, overall. And so was like, wow, this is a metaphor for my life. And, um,
00:03:48
Speaker
You know, it's funny, you know, I don't even think about like vacations because, you know, I love my family, love my kids. and We try to do stuff. But like I love to to that my life would be useful and I want my company to be an extension of that.
00:04:02
Speaker
And so, you know, and and we do that through the lens of design. um So design for good, designed to move people to to get them to
Challenging Projects and Team Rewards
00:04:10
Speaker
take action. And so I'm probably meandering, but you know just like the journey I've been on over the last week thinking about all of these things um has been pretty mind blowing. And you know some of the kind of core elements of this user centered design, using business as a force of good, um just the concept of empathy. I was thinking about ah quick story, if it's okay to share. Yeah. about
00:04:33
Speaker
I say about five or 10 years ago, can't remember, maybe about seven years ago, we we had the opportunity to work with one of the largest medicare online Medicare sites by one of the world's largest online healthcare companies.
00:04:44
Speaker
And it was a long, complicated process. We actually had to recruit a CRO company that specializes in conversion optimization, funnel analysis, and analytics. using AI heat maps and all kinds of other kind of novel technology at the time.
00:04:59
Speaker
And you know we we probably did something like 400 plus tests, user tests, and and they're simulated and you know online. And we just we were inundated with data.
00:05:11
Speaker
And ultimately, we kind of came to a place where we're like, we can see that it's broken. The conversion rate of the site was exceedingly low. the The recommendation engine was faltering. And I mean, this is an organization that's serving millions of people a year.
00:05:24
Speaker
and And so i had the crazy idea to say, why don't we just get our parents to test this thing? So we had already kind of mocked up and iterated like multiple versions of this entire workflow. And you can imagine the complexity of Medicare, right?
00:05:40
Speaker
The entire process, getting someone who's in their 50s to 70s to be able to go through an interactive experience and choose the right Medicare plan. and the amount of empathy that's required.
00:05:51
Speaker
and And I don't know why we didn't think about this earlier. I mean, we do user centered design and we do interviews and things like that. but Using our parents took things to a whole nother level. And like, I remember vividly watching my mom, someone who I care about more than just about anyone else in my life, like using something that we have made through a lot of intentional thought and just watching her struggle to like go through this process, getting stuck on different steps, you know, thinking that,
00:06:19
Speaker
you know, a chat bubble was an ad and not trying to get help through chat. And like, and so this like the empathy was turned up to 12. And we used a lot of this feedback and iterated. We brought our parents back in after we'd made changes to this designs. and um And it was a beautiful project. And ultimately, interestingly,
00:06:38
Speaker
The caveat is that um our work actually didn't get published, which was a little bit of a tragedy, in my opinion, because it was objectively better. like It was tested to prove to be better. But you know with large organizations, sometimes there's politics, there's budgets, priorities, you know competing factions and things like that.
00:06:55
Speaker
um But our project stakeholder was so moved and impressed by our work that he gave us a multi-thousand dollar tip. like So we were paid very well. Like we were paid very well for the work.
00:07:07
Speaker
um But this guy out of his own pocket wrote us a personal check of, you know, multiple multiple thousand dollars. We ended up taking that money and putting it toward a, a mini retreat for our team that did the project. So we had everybody come together and fly in and um and we we did like, you know, challenge, you know, what do you call those like escape rooms and and all this stuff.
00:07:28
Speaker
But the point I'm trying to make is I just think that that's a really great story to encapsulate, you know, what our true beliefs are is just that what we do is so much more than just make a website, right? It is ah it is about empathy.
00:07:42
Speaker
It is about clarity and transparency and you know turning something from being a static brochure to something that moves people to take action. Almost feels like for ah a snapshot in time, very brief period, they're they're bringing on like another founder just for that small period of time that they're working with you, right?
00:08:02
Speaker
Because you have that level of buy-in to your customer. Oh, yeah. So important. But i I actually I love what you said about under differentiated.
00:08:15
Speaker
um that's That's really powerful. And it's true. And if it wasn't true, frankly, there wouldn't be, you know, yeah yet another hotel opening up on whatever that corner is, right? Or another, you know, fast food restaurant. I mean,
00:08:30
Speaker
There's a lot and um you know clearly there isn't over saturation, but maybe under ah differentiation for sure.
00:08:41
Speaker
um i really wanna learn a little bit from being somebody who creates technology. being somebody, um you know, who is it in in a sense, right? You're a digital design, you know, or you focus on a lot of digital design.
00:08:57
Speaker
um I want to hear about the platforms and the software and the systems that you use for, the teams that you work with for managing, for engaging, for collaborating with these
Employee Engagement and Operational Tools
00:09:08
Speaker
folks. I mean, your team is distributed, right?
00:09:12
Speaker
And you guys work on a lot of things at the same time. How do you collaborate with them? And if you don't want to mention specific platforms, totally fine. Just curious about the types of solutions you leverage.
00:09:25
Speaker
Sure. Yeah. Well, we're an open book. I mean, I've always said will publish our whole business plan online. You know, like it's, You know, if it's there is no, I mean, there's no such thing as competition. I mean, really, we're in competition with ourselves.
00:09:38
Speaker
You know, like all of the battle is inside your head of like what you're trying to accomplish and if you have the kind of wherewithal to see it through. And so absolutely happy to share any and everything, whether people want to reach out after or whatever.
00:09:51
Speaker
You know, we were sharing a little bit before the call um this past year. actually sat down and we we put together very comprehensive operating budgets that that span, know, market sales and marketing um you know administrative and hr and then general um and i think i counted 63 separate platforms across all of the different business functions you know so insane so we have you know essentially kind of three major business functions we have client acquisition client success and then hr admin legal all the other stuff right so it' sales and marketing rev ops as some people call it and then client delivery you know all of our projects services and support
00:10:29
Speaker
And so when you kind of break those three apart, yeah starting with, you know obviously a lot of what you guys do is in the HR admin space. And so you know some of the platforms that have really been effective for us um you know was a platform called 15.5. And so being a virtual and distributed agency,
00:10:48
Speaker
it is tough to kind of keep the pulse and to check in. you know When you are on a Zoom call for 30 minutes, especially with a company like ours as a four-day work week, we had we we had to kind of reinvent how to be efficient with our time with one less day a week.
00:11:03
Speaker
And so it it does It is like a conflict with culture where, you know, when you get on a call, you really have to get to work. And so you can't have a lot of small talk. um And if you're not having small talk on calls and you're not in person, then where are where are you having these moments of connection where you can kind of check in with people? and And so um kind of like my role, quote unquote, in the EOS terminology as visionary is to kind of like stimulate progress to like, you know, come up with 12 new ideas every day. And like one of them is good and 11 are bad, but I can't tell. I think they're all great, you know.
00:11:37
Speaker
And so it's up to the rest of the team to kind of take these ideas and see which ones make sense. But one of these ideas was using a platform called 15.5. The idea concept behind this platform is you spend 15 minutes, you know,
00:11:49
Speaker
um uh or what is it yeah you know so 15 minutes once a week and you basically um check in with everybody and so instead of like waiting a year to have an annual review each week you answer a couple of key questions related to how your week went there's a mood pulse uh which just rates your kind of mood on a scale of one to five and oh And then you add just some feedback about how your week's been going. It takes less than five minutes to do. It takes your manager less than 15 minutes to review all of these things.
00:12:21
Speaker
And um we've been using that for about five years and I think it's highly effective. And so, you know, we have, we use EOS, so we have a scorecard and a spreadsheet and every week we look at how many people, what is the percentage of people at our company that checked in? So we have about 25 FTE.
00:12:38
Speaker
Some of those are contractors, so we don't mandate that, you know, that they contract, they fill out. So we'll say of 20 people, Our check in, we want to see our check in be about 80%, you know, about 80% of the time or 80% of the people checking in each week. And then our mood pulse, which is just, how are you feeling? How does your week go?
00:12:55
Speaker
and And it's an interesting open ended question because you could have the flu that week and have a meeting pulse of two. Or you could have the worst client experience you've ever had in your life and have a meeting pulse of two. So it's it's personal and professional all kind merged together. But I think ultimately it it needs to be that way because you're looking at the whole person.
00:13:13
Speaker
ah yeah you know It's like you can't separate out if this person's struggling at home, then they're they're inevitably going to take that into work. and and And it's our job as managers to be empathetic to that. um And so we look at this at ah at a macro level of the whole company, but then also each we have groups into teams so we can look at kind of the mood pulse for each team of the company. So it's the SEO team, the project managers, leadership, um you know, our design team and and be able to see, gosh, we're we're we're really low. like
00:13:45
Speaker
you know What's going on? And we might find it's one person, one or two people. I mean, we're pretty small company, right? so um But I think that tool has been highly effective. It's also got something in it called 360 degree review. we do We used to do biannually, now we do annually, which is very comprehensive and and laborious, but it is extremely powerful. In fact, it's so powerful it um you know It asks all these different questions about you know your progress and it it does just what you think a 360 does, right? So you're getting feedback from people above you, the people below you, people to the left and right.
00:14:18
Speaker
And all of these questions kind of get into this gigantic multi-page report. Well, you can take this report, put it into AI, and have it give you an action plan you know as a manager in five minutes that would take hours to kind of process. And so I've gone into one-on-one reviews for an annual session, you know having processed this information with the kind of a strategic prompt framework that have blown away the people that I've reviewed. like they're like They're coming out of this meeting going, this is like the most beneficial thing that I've ever experienced.
00:14:50
Speaker
And because it's talking about here's where you have areas to grow. Here's areas that you're, here's your strengths. Here's areas you have to grow. Here's your trajectory. You know, here's what I see. And then awesome questions to elicit further feedback. And um so that platform has been game changing for us, like from an ah and an administrative perspective.
00:15:07
Speaker
um And then let's see what else. I mean, but any reflections on that before I... Continue on. I think that's awesome. I mean, I think that the the the fact that you're willing to put in that time and that effort to make everybody's experience, you know, better is, I think, definitely a sign of great leadership.
00:15:26
Speaker
um But this is yeah exactly what I was curious about. You know, you have such a high performing team. team, right? You have a team that's going to go above and beyond, right? For your all of your customers and clients, even the ones who don't publish your work, you know? And it's evident, right, in in the job that that they do.
00:15:47
Speaker
So, you know, I think that um anybody sort of listening to that and hearing that, I mean, you know, can certainly make this a, you know, an infomercial about 15 five, but I mean, anybody really listening to that and and hearing that kind of feedback, I think is, would be meaningful, right? because there's going to be a lot of people who are really interested to know what are the steps that I can actually take to do the things that you're talking about, to get the feedback from my team, to get, you know, action plans, right. To make people's experience better, you know, or, you know, whatever kind of performance management, you know, they're looking to pursue. Yeah.
Purpose and Values in Business
00:16:26
Speaker
Yeah. I just try to like, it's interesting. You said that I think like immediately I think like tactics, right. You know, like one of my like favorite quotes, favorite professional quotes of all time is, you know,
00:16:38
Speaker
um Amateurs focus on tactics. Professionals have a process, you know, ah you know use a process. And and like it's by Pete Blajah. He was the co-founder of CXL, which was a ah famous conversion optimization agency.
00:16:54
Speaker
And um when I heard that quote, I was like, oh, man, that's so good because a lot of times we all do this. I mean, I've been on podcasts where... the podcast authors, like, you know, their audiences, mid-market marketing leaders, CMOs, and they're like, tell me three things, you know, five things that that marketing leaders can change on their homepages, right? And I'm just like, what kind of question is that? Like, it doesn't even make, it doesn't even compute in my head. There's like,
00:17:19
Speaker
there's like a one hundred things that I need to do before I need to tell you what changes you need to make on your homepage. You know, like strategy comes first and strategy is not a plan. It's not a checklist. It's how you're going to win and how you're going to win starts with what are your business objectives and what are your user needs? Okay, now let's figure out,
00:17:35
Speaker
you know from that and triangulate to you know what is the the technology that's going to get you there and anyway so kind of bringing this back to the to this space um like i would be remiss if i didn't share how we got to that and you know the thing that we did that i think was the most beneficial as it relates to helping our people is, is to clarifying our purpose, clarifying like why, so there's purpose, which is why do you exist?
00:18:05
Speaker
You know, there's mission, which is okay. Now, you know why you exist and get out of bed. What are you doing every day out of that purpose? That's mission. That's like the day to day. And then vision.
00:18:16
Speaker
If you were to come out of this purpose and live out your mission on a day to day basis, how would the world change for the better? you know, and describe that in a vivid description. And so purpose, mission, and vision are three separate things. And then there's one additional thing, which is your your core values, which which course correct you along the way. We talked a little bit about this on our last call. yeah um So purpose, mission, values, and vision. these are the These are the four things. And so my recommendation is before you choose any tools, you know, if you don't have those four things,
00:18:51
Speaker
that's where i would recommend. And I think that purpose and values are the most important. I think that you could probably get a long way with just those two alone. um Mission is a nuance. I think vision is is difficult, especially in the age of AI, where we don't know if we're going to be managed by AI overlords in 10 years.
00:19:08
Speaker
you know like Very possible. So purpose and values, like but values, like you can come back to those. like You could be lost in a sea of uncertainty and just look at your values for direction alone.
00:19:21
Speaker
Um, but so that's where I would start. And, you know, um there's so many good people that are so much smarter and, you know, more knowledgeable about all this stuff. Uh, Jim Collins talks a lot about, you know, the hedgehog concept and just this concept of like, good you know, good to great. Some of his really awesome books, um, you know, how the mighty fall, um, you know, uh, great by choice. This is just really good books that kind of talk about purpose and,
00:19:47
Speaker
and and his concept of core ideology, which is really core values um and your kind of envisioned future. But, and then Pat Lencioni talks a lot about values um and he, he knows way more than I do about that stuff. So, you know, read the advantage by Pat Lencioni if you want to learn about that.
00:20:05
Speaker
But so there's that. But then the second thing i think is, especially as it relates to your people, the best thing that we ever did, If if i if like people walk away from this podcast and they watch this and like, you know, look, we we now are, ah we have been featured as Inc. Best Place to Work for the second year in the row. So that's a little bit of credibility for the people listening.
00:20:28
Speaker
There's only 500 companies in the United States that have achieved that honor. There's only 20 in Austin that have achieved that. this year. We've also won Built and Fortune and a number of others. But the point I'm trying to make is we have credibility you know to be talking about this. But the best thing that we ever did for our people was in 2020, we mapped our employee journey and visually.
00:20:55
Speaker
And, um, heck, I mean, I could even share my screen and show you guys all, I mean, I'd be happy to, to, to, was this, was this a democratic process that you went through? What, did you have your team involved in mapping the journey or was this just leadership?
00:21:08
Speaker
um It was primarily leadership. In fact, it wasn't even just the leadership team. It was primarily myself and our people ops manager, who at the time was one of our lead project managers, but had a deep passion for people, very empathetic.
00:21:21
Speaker
Her and I were kind of the core drivers of this, but it it was absolutely influenced at every step of the way by just listening, right? Because I think empathy, again, going back to empathy is...
00:21:32
Speaker
is critical. um So we mapped the entire journey and we read a number of books together to kind of really infuse the ideas. There's a really great book called The Employee Journey. I think that's the book, but it was actually written in another language. We had to get, we had to find a translated version you know, ah like a special order from Europe. It was crazy. But um there's there's not ah there's not as much on this as you think. I think that employer brand, i' I've heard this term a couple times now.
00:22:02
Speaker
I don't even know what that meant, but apparently that's like how do employees see your brand as ah as a place to work? and And people are realizing how incredibly important that is to have a strong employer brand. But this thing didn't, employer brand didn't exist, I think, five years ago.
00:22:17
Speaker
um So, or maybe it did, but I'd never
Improving Employee Experience
00:22:20
Speaker
heard of it. you know but But what I want to encourage people is is figure out what your stages to your employee journey are, they're not going the same at every company.
00:22:29
Speaker
You know, we identified some core stages starting with recruiting all the way through alumni. So finding people to hire and hiring them, you know, so recruiting to onboarding and then all the way to offboarding and ah and people in in maintaining people in your alumni, you know, like loving on people that have previously worked at your company. So that whole life cycle.
00:22:48
Speaker
um And so we mapped the whole thing, including all of our employee benefits and where that falls into our journey. And we color coded it according to how bad we sucked. So like, you know, when i I, mean, to, to give you context in 2019, I had zero employees. They were all contractors.
00:23:07
Speaker
Um, because I had had some bad experiences early in my company history. And I was like, man, employees suck. I don't want employees, you know, I'm going to make money their boss, you know? So if they don't work, they don't get paid.
00:23:19
Speaker
And, you know, I, uh, I came across a quote in 2019, doing a business blueprint with a business coach. And the quote was, You're either building your dream or someone is paying you to build theirs. And it was like, I got stabbed in the heart.
00:23:32
Speaker
And I was like, man, I don't want to take advantage of people. I don't want to be the only person that benefits from all this hard work. And all of the opportunity I'm creating is mine and mine alone. And so I went on a journey of hiring everybody, you know, like giving them and giving them the what we have now is we probably have like the 1% of 1% benefits. Like, i mean, we are offering some pretty elite level benefits at glide now, but we did not start that way.
00:23:57
Speaker
We had nothing, you know, like I had a bunch of contractors. The second they stopped working, they got nothing, nothing. Right. Right. And, you know, and even when we hired our first employees, they still didn't have health insurance or for o one k or,
00:24:09
Speaker
you know All the basic benefits, vacation, you know but ah parental leave. um But the point i was trying to make was, and I'll i'll be succinct because I tend to talk a lot. you know but um So we mapped this employee journey. We call it the glider journey.
00:24:24
Speaker
And um we color coded it it according to where we felt like we were underperforming. And we just went to work. And so each quarter, you know, we use EOS, Entrepreneurial Operating System, and it has quarterly rocks, which are just projects that you do on a quarterly basis, a 90-day cycle.
00:24:41
Speaker
And every quarter, and we would look at what we're trying to accomplish for the year, and then we would sync sequence the the the quarterly goals to accomplish the annual goal for that year for our employee journey.
00:24:54
Speaker
And so, you know, some some goals took three quarters to accomplish, right? You know, you do part one, part two, part three. Part one is just research what the plan is. Part two is execute the plan. Part three is see how it works, you know. and oh And so I just want to encourage people, if you've never done that before, and, and you know, I want to encourage people too, if you want to see ah our version, our literal version of our employee journey, I'd be happy to share it.
00:25:17
Speaker
um And then one final note on that and I'll shut up, but you know, about two years ago we identified an additional path, um which is kind of just thinking about our our team and realizing where do they go? Like, you know, do we, how do we have trajectories for people to grow and become a better version of themselves? And we created,
00:25:37
Speaker
an additional kind of dimension, which is um the man, the the leadership journey. And so we realized that it starts with personal leadership. um And then we have two paths, either subject matter expertise or true leadership management, you know, um because some people don't want to like, it's not a natural consequence that the longer you're at a company and the better you get, that you're going to get promoted and manage people.
00:26:02
Speaker
Some people don't want to do that. That's right. Yeah. You know, they're just a rock star at design or SEO or whatever, you know, and so um and they want to be the best in the world at it.
00:26:12
Speaker
And so, you know, helping them, contributing to them, becoming a subject matter expert, sending them to conferences, getting them to write and to research. And and then you have people that are just on the leadership track, you know, in management and you know, through training. and So that that additional dimension, I think, has been really powerful for us over the last few years.
00:26:33
Speaker
I love that.
Metrics for Culture and Profitability
00:26:34
Speaker
And i I'm curious, so, with all these platforms that they use, with all the feedback that you get from 15.5, data is is big, right? It works its way into all these conversations.
00:26:48
Speaker
um You know, a vast amount of data can be spit out from a lot of these systems. What kind of insights and analytics are are most important to you and leadership? Are there things that you wish you could measure that you can't? Do you think that there are things that you get that simply aren't really moving the needle?
00:27:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's organization specific because we're a professional services company who sells services, not products. um One of the most important data points is utilization rates um you know so rates. every person at Glide tracks their time um through a platform called Harvest, which is kind of an industry leading time tracking platform for professional services companies.
00:27:32
Speaker
So we track our time in Harvest. um And from that, we can look at project profitability. We can look at overall utilization rates, um you know just tracked hours period.
00:27:43
Speaker
ah Because we offer a four-day workweek, it's pretty imperative that people get a sufficient number of hours tracked. you know Because like you know if you have a professional services company, you're working 40 hours a week and someone gets 35 or 38 hours, no big deal. But if you're in 32-hour week,
00:27:58
Speaker
and you only get 30 hours or 28 hours, but you know, come on, man, yeah just get your hours, you know? So, but I think utilization rate, which then directly translates to profitability, you know, which is the lifeblood of ah of a healthy organization.
00:28:13
Speaker
Another thing too, is just culture, right? So when you're looking at, you know, so that's profitability, revenue, um And, you know, we obviously use qui you know we're QuickBooks Online, which is a pretty prototypical ah finance platform. And so we have um in our EOS scorecard, which is our weekly scorecard. So every every week we meet um in a cadence of of a weekly meeting called the L10 or Level 10 Leadership Meeting.
00:28:38
Speaker
with our leadership team and we have a scorecard with about 20 plus metrics and they're broken into four parts. you know So we kind of have revenue operations and then we have culture ah or people ops.
00:28:50
Speaker
And then we so so we have revenue ops, people ops, and then we have you know client ops. So people ops is our people, client ops is our clients, and then we have finance. And so each of those has about five metrics.
00:29:03
Speaker
And so we we pull these metrics from different platforms um So most of our financial metrics coming from QuickBooks and you know we're looking at things like our um you know are our monthly recurring revenue, we're looking at you know billable hours, we're looking at you you know profitability over a 90 day and one in a 365 to kind of see like profitability trends.
00:29:25
Speaker
um But, you know, I'll give you guys one interesting metric that I track that I don't know if anyone else in the world, and i mean I'm not to say anyone else in the world. I'm not that unique, but I guarantee you most people don't track.
00:29:39
Speaker
I track how many shout outs our team gives every week. So at Glide, we have a channel called Shoutouts. To each other. Correct.
00:29:49
Speaker
So each week um for the last five years, we've tracked this. And and the team you know has been nebulous on if we continue if we should continue to track this. I think it's still important as ah as a metric for culture.
00:30:03
Speaker
But we're averaging... thousands, like, you know, three to 5,000 shout outs per year on a team of 20 people. If you divide that by 52, that's a crap ton of shout outs a week, you know, that's great.
00:30:16
Speaker
And so like, what I always say is like, it's really difficult to have a toxic work culture when you have shout outs flying everywhere all the time, you know, and, I was talking to my VP this morning. She goes, Travis, you, you know, you're pretty, here you're pretty cause charismatic.
00:30:31
Speaker
And in some ways I think it's a little cultish, you know, like, um, and I think it like she meant that in a, like in a positive light, it's like, look, we're a little Magoo and we're a little cheesy.
00:30:42
Speaker
And I encourage people to lean in never through toxic positivity. But my theory is that we're living through a poly crisis, not indifferent than every other generation, but it's ours and it sucks. And there's a lot of bad things going on in the world. And so like, why not be slightly over positive at work?
00:31:00
Speaker
Right. Like, why not have work be a place that's actually encouraging, you know? And um one of my favorite things is hearing people say, gosh, I wish my family used these core values. you know So like our core values are random values that like Enron put on the wall, right? Like that are just like a poster. They're like, this is what we live by, deliver faithfully. I want to be a person that delivers faithfully to my wife, you know? yeah So like having values, like one of my favorite things to see We have multiple team members who have been with us for years who have put the core values of Glide on their wall at their home. you know And so like realizing how valuable these things are and how they can inspire us to live a better life and become a better version of ourself.
00:31:47
Speaker
And so um you know when we're doing these shout outs, a lot of times we include the values in them. you know So we kind of name the value when we're shouting people out. And so... Yeah. I mean, we'd love, and then we divided by the number of people. So we have a metric, which shout outs per person per week.
00:32:01
Speaker
And the goal would be somewhere between three and five per week. Right. um Which is pretty powerful. You just think, okay, well, if you have 20 people times three to five, I mean, that's, that's a lot of recognition and praise and encouragement getting passed around in a given week.
00:32:16
Speaker
That's good. That's good. And, you know, we preach a lot of those things. So the fact that, you know, seeing seeing it in action, hearing it about it in action, i think just further goes to show what kind of difference that can make in an organization.
Positive Work Environment and Leadership
00:32:30
Speaker
And yeah, I mean, who wouldn't want to show up to to a job or you know, a gig that's like overly positive. You know, I definitely don't think that that's a but ah bad thing. And I'm not sure anybody can put a bad spin on that one. So Travis, we can take tech off the the the table for this one, and unless it's part of your answer. But I'm curious if we think about tomorrow's leaders,
00:32:52
Speaker
you know What do they need to grasp about people and culture that I think a lot of today's leaders might be missing? And and maybe are there there misconceptions that the business leaders need to to shake off when it comes to people dynamics?
Advice for Future Leaders in an AI-driven World
00:33:08
Speaker
Man, that's such a good question. I mean, there's a part of me... that just kind of sees this kind of conscious capitalism, business as a force of good is like stalled a little bit, you know, which is like kind of a foundation for the direction we've been heading. I mean, when you look at the world, it's just a kind of a crueler, harsher place. I mean, it's like zero sum. If you're not my friend, you're my enemy. There's nothing in between.
00:33:33
Speaker
Um, and it's a little bit, the political climate and not to kind of dip into that at all, but just, I was just going to say, do you want to run for office? I think that, yeah you know, a leader like you never or never, but I will say that, um, you know, kind just thinking about this, like there's, it's trying to find the balance again, you know, kind of just kind of tapping Jim Collins, this idea of preserve the core stimulate progress.
00:34:01
Speaker
So you have, you have some, a company like Facebook meta Zuckerberg. And I feel like, you know, he's, he's making these knee jerk changes over the years where they get in all this trouble, you know, um with the analytics scandal, you know, and then they they try to become ah ah metaverse company and then they reverse course and focus on AI and they have just fired a zillion people. and And, you know, I just feel like they have a pretty clear picture of where they're going, stimulate progress, but they're lacking to preserve the core, the the core ideology, the purpose, the values.
00:34:37
Speaker
And, you know, for being one of the largest companies in the world, it's kind of sad, you know? And so, but I also see the need right now, especially when you look at AI and you just think about how this is disrupting kind of so many different industries, that there is a level of urgency and a level of adaptivity and a level of like,
00:34:57
Speaker
kind of ah moving fast and breaking things that is necessary. Like we're in a moment of transition. And I think that anytime there's a major disruptive general technology, there's always going to be a large kind of component of transition. I mean, if you look at, and don't know, the cathode ray tube or the personal computer the,
00:35:18
Speaker
the internet or cloud computing or the mobile device, you know, the smartphone. I mean, all of these were like major transitions, major general purpose technologies. Don't confuse that with generative, but like, you know, general purpose technologies that had massive kind of uh groundswells transition and digital transformation and so i think that like one of the things you're seeing right now is like teams are becoming more lean you know you you can you can get more done with less people and so i think the difficult kind of journey we're on right now is like how do you employ i mean if you know that you
00:35:56
Speaker
we're going We're moving into a future where AI and agents of of AI can can do the work of five people that used to be able to do this work and now they don't. you know um I think empathy it just goes back to empathy. you know It's funny. um One of my favorite kind of quotes, I don't even know where I heard this. I think it was like literally in a chat and a work in ah in a Slack shared workspace. But you know people don't stay at a job because of money.
00:36:22
Speaker
they that's like number three to five on their list. the The number one reason they stay at a job is their boss or manager. The second reason is generally going to be work-life balance.
00:36:34
Speaker
And the third is usually going to be skill match. Like, are they getting fulfilled in their role? did Do their skills match? that And then after that, you know, as long as they're in a ah quartile of pay, that's kind of reasonably, you know, relevant, you know, they're they're going to stay at that job. And now this may be different for people that are, that are looking for a job. I'm i'm speaking specifically people that are in a job already.
00:36:58
Speaker
And I mean, just that like a perfect example of this as an anecdote is like, you know, Dell, which is a gigantic company. I mean, they, They basically said, hey, return to work, return to the office. If you don't return to the office, then you will you will be passed up for promotion. You won't be able to be promoted.
00:37:13
Speaker
Half the company elected not to return to office. Half. Of a gigantic enterprise company. and and it just shows you how incredibly important work-life balance is you know, over, you know, pursuing a career and growth and and all these other things. And, and so, you know, to me, i think that what that tells us is the, the incredible importance of, of leadership and the journey of, of their, of their employees, of their reports. And, and so there's a, there's a beautiful book called what got you to here, won't get you to there.
00:37:45
Speaker
And I just always love this book. And it just talks about, as you grow as a leader, you will always kind of, as you elevate up, you're gonna get less and less feedback.
Leadership, Empathy, and Impact
00:37:54
Speaker
And it's your job to go out and find it, you know to to ask for it, because it's kind of like the emperor's you know not wearing any clothes, right? Like no one wants to tell you,
00:38:04
Speaker
the worst traits about you, the higher you get, the higher from a, from a manager to a director, to a leader, to C-suite, to a founder, you know? And so one exercise people might do, it takes less than 15 minutes and it can be life-changing. I did this through an agency leadership initiative with Carl Sakes was I sent a 360 or a ah ah feedback request to 26 people.
00:38:29
Speaker
And it was six questions. It was, you know, what should I, so you know, what are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? What should I start doing? What should I stop doing? What should I continue doing? And as do you have any other feedback you'd like to give?
00:38:41
Speaker
And it was, and here's the beauty of this is it was anonymous. And so it was just like a Google form. And I sent this to 26 people and just said, I'm trying to become a better version myself. I'd love to get your honest feedback. It'll take five minutes, uh, you know five or 10 minutes. And, um,
00:38:57
Speaker
it was really deeply valuable for me. I took this feedback and of course I skipped all the positive stuff.
00:39:05
Speaker
ah You know, but I, I took all of the constructive stuff and, yeah um and put it on this board. yeah And by the way, it's kind of, it's kind of like the criticism sandwich. Cause the first question was like, what are my strengths? And the last question is what should I continue doing? And everything in between is the constructive stuff, you know?
00:39:23
Speaker
um And so it allows people to kind of like warm up with the positive stuff and finish with the positive stuff. But, you know, I mind mapped all of this constructive feedback into basically six kind of core areas.
00:39:35
Speaker
And then I summarized it all into kind of three pillars to focus on, you know? So for me as a leader, I realized that I needed to work on letting go because I tend to try to own too many things and then I'm pulled in a million directions. Yeah.
00:39:47
Speaker
you know Another thing for me was work-life balance. I tended to work too much and I didn't spend enough time you know with my family. And people could see that. They're like, Travis, when's the last time you've gone on a vacation? you know Because you will only if you if you work at a company that has a limited vacation, you will only ever go on as many vacations as your leader goes on.
00:40:04
Speaker
That's right. know And so if I don't model... Anyway, so I'm going long, but the point I'm trying to make is you know i think as a leader, having empathy, right getting into people's shoes, and then asking for feedback...
00:40:16
Speaker
And just realizing that that that you are the most important component to the success of your endeavor, but not just yours, the people underneath you and the organization you serve. You know i think you you you've pointed out a lot of great things today. You know, to think leaders who are looking for ways to get it right, you know, with their people,
00:40:38
Speaker
but their growing teams, retaining their people, those things that they need to be from doing from the beginning, right. Defining those values, um you know, choosing empathy and getting a lot of feedback, you know, is, ah is some, some pretty, some pretty powerful advice. Well, thank you, Travis.
00:40:58
Speaker
I know it's, ah I know we're running short on time. I really, really appreciate you coming back for round two. This was fantastic conversation. Really appreciate you being here. Well, I'm honored to be here and, you know, i I'm thrilled to be able to share and hopefully something I've shared is going to make a meaningful impact on the folks listening.
00:41:15
Speaker
I think it already made one on us. who I think I'm taking notes. For everyone watching, listening, appreciate you joining Travis and Emmy for today's episode of Mustard Hub Voices Behind the Build.
00:41:28
Speaker
Don't forget to subscribe, like, share this fireside chat. While you're at it, be sure to check us out at mustardhub.com to see how we help companies become destinations for workplace happiness and turn culture into a competitive edge. Till next time.