It is the top of the hour and so we will begin. Welcome to all of you who have joined us. So many from around the world. This is fantastic. The topic today is shaping organizational culture and we're going to spend an hour talking about that and learning the story of Bob Chapman and the story of Barry-Wehmiller. I want to begin... Oh, Argentina. Hello Martin. I want to begin just with a little introduction to Ingenuity and while we're pulling that up just a couple of housekeeping things. We want this to be interactive. Many of you join webinars and we get that a lot of times the questions or comments are put at the end. We don't want to do it that way. We like to make this interactive and it's a great chance to ask questions and make comments, share thoughts, and you could just do that right inside the webinar chat window. And so that's the way we'll do that. Just a little bit about Ingenuity. I'm the senior director of learning for Ingenuity. Just a little bit about our company. We provide four basic services. One is consulting around learning which is needs analysis and gap analysis, curriculum mapping, program marketing and many many other consulting services. We do design and development work for e-learning for mobile learning. We do a lot of gamification work and dashboards and video production, animation production, pretty much anything around learning is a part of what we do. Then we do a great deal of translation and localization work. We have translated more than a billion words. We have translated more than 10,000 e-learning modules. Many of our companies, many of our customers are global. And so we work in 200 languages and so it's a complex thing but an awful lot of fun. And then finally we provide staff augmentation which is temporary staff people all around learning training and development. And we've placed something like 1,500 people in companies around the world helping them think through some of their learning challenges. So, I want to start with an introduction to Bob. So, Bob, if you'd come off mute and turn the camera on, then we can see you. Hello, my friend.
Excellent. Well, we are ready for this conversation. So, as I mentioned, my name is Jerry Zastra. I'm senior director of learning and Ingenuity. I've known Bob, I suppose, for more than 10 years, and it's been one of the great joys of my life to have this man have influence in my life and the life of my family. So, it's been a great experience. Bob, give us just a little bit of background. How did you end up at Barry-Wehmiller? And what has been your role and what was it like when you started and so on?
Well, let me set the stage. My educational background was undergraduate degree in accounting from Indiana and an MBA from Michigan and then I went to Price Waterhouse. So, very, you know, background wise, a very traditional accounting background and my goal was to be a partner in a public accounting firm. I have no idea why, but that was my goal.
I just wonder what happened in your childhood that you're saying you know accounting. Yes.
I think the greatest compliment somebody's ever given me is I can't believe you're an accountant. So I would say to you and then a couple of years into public accounting my dad all of a sudden saw his son doing extremely well in a profession he started in and he was at the time running Barry-Wehmiller which was a $20 million company that was challenged. And he said to me in February of 1969, would you consider joining Barry-Wehmiller, I need somebody I can trust. So never until that point, never talked to him, never considered working for the company. It had always been challenged. I was going to be a public accountant. So I began, I moved from Price Waterhouse into a manufacturing company that was 100 years old and had the fortunate opportunity to work with my dad for six years. It was the best six years of our relationship in our life because he was tired of the stress of the business and I was ready for the challenge. So it was a perfect transition and when he died suddenly of a heart attack in '75 I had been there for six years worked in every part of the business from manufacturing engineering to customer service. So you know again traditional education some unique experience working with my dad and then when he died in 1975 it was an $18 million company that was struggling financially and the first person I met were the bankers who pulled our loans. So that's kind of how that's how we began.
Yeah. And where are you now, Bob? Let's take a look at, I just have some stats up here on Barry-Wehmiller and knowing where you were back in the mid-70s, you know, a challenged company, you have gone from that to this. So talk us through some of this.
Yeah, I think for your audience the biggest thing I would say is when my father passed away my passion was to take this company he had struggled to keep alive when he bought into it in the 50s to carry forward because that's all I knew, you know, how can I take this company that he tried to keep and we had some significant initial success and then we ran into some significant challenges because we outgrew our competency ran into some in '83 some serious financial challenges and our banks pulled on us again and we got through it barely seven months without financing. You know, we got through it. But at the end of it, I looked at my team because we had finally gotten refinanced by an asset-based lender, which is kind of the lender of last resort. Got through it and I looked at my finance team and I said, 'You know what? I'm proud of our history. But our history does not give us a future. We need to start looking at acquisitions to get into markets that have a better future than the historic business was making returnable bottle washers for the brewing industry and people don't buy beer in returnable bottles anymore and pasteurization.' So I realized I had to transform the company, not being an engineer, being a financial guy. The only way I could do that was through acquisitions. The only problem I had is I had no money. I mean, it's like going shopping without a wallet. So, I began this journey, there's now over 140 adoptions, I call them, or acquisitions with no money. And so, what do you buy when you have no money? You buy things nobody else wants that they'll virtually give you. So, that's how I began. And today, this journey has taken us to a $3.6 billion dollar company. Our share price, we have a simulated public share price has gone up 12% a year for 25 years and we have a vision to be a five billion dollar global company. So again today we have 12,000 team members 100 locations all over the world. So what I'm going to talk about is not a US issue, it is a global issue. Okay. So, and our experience from India to China to Serbia to Italy to France is universal true. People simply want to know they matter in every country in the world. And as leaders, we have the opportunity to show people they matter.
And yet, right, I want to move into the next slide because the last time I heard you speak, you use these slides. You gave a speech at my alma mater, Calvin University. I don't know, in the last year at some point and these statistics are stunning and deeply, deeply disturbing.
Yeah. The way I like to say it, Jerry, is my granddaughter was graduating from Aspen High School and I went to the ceremony and everybody cheered as their child, their granddaughter, grandson walked up to get their diploma. And when my granddaughter walked up to get her diploma, I got tears in my eyes because I knew the world we were sending her into. Okay. Again, 88% of all people feel they work for a company that does not care about them. I tell CEOs, you're all worried about the cost of health care. You are the problem. 74% of illnesses are chronic. The biggest cause of chronic illness is stress. And the biggest cause of stress is work. Jeffrey Pfeffer of Stanford wrote a book on this and he quotes this in his book called Dying for a Paycheck. And Raj Sisodia, my co-author, said, 'We have a 20% increase in heart attacks on Monday mornings when people have to go back to work.' Why would you want your precious child to leave your care and go into a broken world? And that was a startling revelation to me when I learned these statistics.
It's deeply disturbing. And I just want to define the audience here, Bob, of the people on this webinar and who will be listening. The majority of them are in learning, training and development or in human resources. And one of the unique things about our industry is that especially the people in HR and the people in learning and development L&D, we touch just about everybody through the courses that we make through the opportunities that we provide through our hiring and through the development work. So, the people who are on this webinar are not people who are isolated and don't have influence. Sometimes they don't really realize all of the influence that they have. And it's pretty remarkable. There's one other stat that I want to put up here. And I've heard you say this before that your supervisor is more important to your health than your primary care physician. Yikes.
Startling. You know, again, I guarantee you, never in my life, never was I told in my education, my experience at Price Waterhouse, my experience at Barry-Wehmiller, my awareness of the business world, never was I told that the way I would run Barry-Wehmiller would affect the people's lives at home. I just thought your home life was your home life. I was focused on business. And so it never occurred to me the way I would treat you at work would impact the way you go home and treat your spouse, treat your kids, affect your health. And so what we say is the way we lead impacts the way those in our care live. Okay. And that change was dramatic for me when we teach at Barry-Wehmiller University people to go from management to leadership from using people to caring about people 95% of the feedback we get is not how they run a better marketing department or finance. It's about their marriage and their relationship with their kids because parenting and leadership we have found is identical. It is a stewardship of the lives entrusted to you. And if you see the people in your company again the biggest transformation to me I want your audience to hear is I saw people as functions for my success. I needed an engineer. I needed a machinist. I needed an accountant. I needed these people for my success. I was a nice company but I saw them as functions. The world changed for me. The lens was reversed and I didn't see people as functions. I saw them as somebody's precious child whose life I would profoundly impact by my leadership. And that changed dramatically my sense of responsibility as a leader.
Yeah. And we're going to get into that story because that story is very moving. But before we leave this slide, this is, I mean it's sad. There's something funny about it. 65% of people if given the choice between getting a raise and getting their boss fired would choose, 65% would choose to get their boss fired rather than take a raise. I mean that's astounding. And I think one of the most important things that you point out and you've pointed it out already is what you were taught versus what you learned and so let's go to the next slide because I think there are some key points on here. Our society is suffering from malpractice. So connect malpractice and the expression poverty of dignity. What do you mean by that?
Well, go back, you know, what is the purpose of education in our country? I went back to Harvard and I said the purpose of education is to have an informed citizenry so we could have a democracy. But then the industrial revolution came along and the leaders of our industrial revolution said I need engineers. I need accountants. I need scientists. I need these skills to fill my offices, to fill my factories to meet our demand. And so the industrial revolution thought, well, we're going to create better paying jobs with better benefits, better security than working on the farm. And so the industrial revolution was thought to be the solution to the society we all wanted to be a part of where wealth is created by the skills you have applied to the company. The one thing they forgot is clear because here we are a century later. We have the most prosperous economy in our history and we have the highest level of depression, anxiety and suicide we have ever had. Why? Because we forgot one fundamental. As we come together, we have to have the skills of being good stewards of these lives that all of a sudden we will have a dramatic impact on. And so the problem is we don't have leaders. We have managers, bosses, supervisors, principals. We don't have leaders, mentors, and coaches who look at those people as somebody's precious child and treats them with respect and dignity. So as Tom Friedman wrote an article recently in the New York Times, he said, 'More than a poverty of money, we have a poverty of dignity. When people feel used for an organization's purpose, they feel a sense of humiliation. And when they feel that, you'll see anger and unrest like you've never seen before.' So what we, the name of our book is Everybody Matters. Okay? Everybody is somebody's precious child. Treating the people that you have the privilege of leading with respect and dignity which validates, it doesn't give them dignity it validates the dignity they were born with and they go home at night better husbands better wives better citizens and all the anger and unrest we see in this country despite our economic prosperity this country is more divided than I've ever seen before because we don't know how to live together and care for each other we have a very me-centric world.
Yeah. So just a couple of comments in the chat. Jill, good to see you on, by the way, Jill. But Jill says this, 'You are the person that your team members talk about with their families at the dinner table.' And she says, 'Managers are shocked when she tells them that people go home and talk about you as the person in leadership.' Yeah, it's some of these things are, you know, when the golden rule becomes the management rule employees will thaw and they'll respond and top performance will be the norm. This is from Mildred Ramsey but... Hey Katherine, one of the things I want to, one of the things I want insight, we didn't do this to solve a problem. We didn't do this to improve productivity. We didn't do it to improve engagement. We didn't do it to be more efficient. We did it out of a sense of responsibility because we knew the impact we were making on people's lives and that is why we did it, you know, and we had no idea how it would be a source of healing in the world. Remember Bill Ury of Harvard came and visited, saw our, and he's a world peace negotiator of 30 years. He saw our company. He talked to our people for two days and he said he saw the answer to world peace in our company. I said, 'Bill, how could you see the answer to world peace?' He said, 'I saw a place where people genuinely care for each other.' At work, at home, in our communities, the healing power of business could be profound, where we should model caring so people look forward to coming to be with this group of people they enjoy. Number one source of happiness in the world is a good job doing meaningful work with people you enjoy. And that's what we deny to most people in this country.
Yeah. Hey Katherine, one of the things I want to, one of the things I want insight, we didn't do this to solve a problem. We didn't do this to improve productivity. We didn't do it to improve engagement. We didn't do it to be more efficient. We did it out of a sense of responsibility because we knew the impact we were making on people's lives and that is why we did it, you know, and we had no idea how it would be a source of healing in the world. Remember Bill Ury of Harvard came and visited, saw our, and he's a world peace negotiator of 30 years. He saw our company. He talked to our people for two days and he said he saw the answer to world peace in our company. I said, 'Bill, how could you see the answer to world peace?' He said, 'I saw a place where people genuinely care for each other.' At work, at home, in our communities, the healing power of business could be profound, where we should model caring so people look forward to coming to be with this group of people they enjoy. Number one source of happiness in the world is a good job doing meaningful work with people you enjoy. And that's what we deny to most people in this country.
Yep. So, I want to go back just a second. Let's move on to the next slide. But just a little bit of, you talked about education. You know, you came out of an accounting degree in Indiana and an MBA in Michigan. And you were taught to manage people. Those are spreadsheet functions, right? And when you do that, you inherently take away human dignity. When you objectify somebody or turn them into a person where their dignity is tied to what they do or what more importantly what they can do for you. You, it just, it really mixes up humanity and then your line here about, you know, success is money, power and position, right? Those are the things that you were taught. Those are the things that most MBA students, I've taught in an MBA program for 15 years taught economics and global business and that comes across very, very strongly that money power and position that's often why people do an MBA to begin with right.
Yeah. Jerry the best example is that CEO of a major American company who came up to me after I talked at a church in Dallas and said, 'I thought my job was to build the market leader in our industry.' He said, 'Which I did, but until I heard you speak, it never occurred to me to care for the 100,000 people that work in our organization.' Here's a man, a man of deep faith, incredible values, but it never occurred to him to care for the people he had the privilege of leading. He said, 'This has given me a whole new purpose in life.' And I want to add, I was interviewed by Washington University organizational development professors for an hour and a half. At the end of an hour and a half, they said to me, 'You're the first CEO we've ever talked to that never talked about your product.' And I said, 'I've been talking about a product for the last hour and a half. It's our people. I won't go to my grave proud of the machinery we build. I'll go to my grave proud of the people.' It caught him completely off guard. So the greatest act of charity in this world is not the checks we write. It is the way we treat people we have the privilege of leading. We need the charities to heal the brokenness in the world were created by management. Okay? Because the word management means in my opinion the word management means the manipulation of others for your success. And leadership is the stewardship of the lives you have the privilege of leading.
Yeah. Let's move on to the next slide because I think you've touched on some of this. The fact that we weren't taught to do this. People in business are not taught to do this. They're not taught to inspire. They're not taught how that they should care or even if they do, how to care. And we're going to get into some practical matters here pretty quickly just what this looks like. But I just, anything you want to say in this slide go ahead. But for those who are listening and participating, are you inspiring people? Are you demonstrating that you care for them? And again in the L&D world and in the HR world, you know, your responsibility is to give those in your span of care and people in learning and development people in HR have a very large span of care some grounded sense of hope for the future. What do you mean by grounded sense of hope for the future Bob?
Well, Donna Hicks of Harvard who wrote a book on dignity talks about when she interviews people, one of the greatest fears they have is safety. And she doesn't mean for their eyes and their fingers. And I think some of you read major corporations and I think there was an article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday about Southwest Airlines known for its culture of care just announced 15,000 people are going to be let go from Southwest Airlines to appease the shareholders to improve profitability. So they're going to sacrifice the lives of 15,000 people to improve the financial results. How does that make the people that are still there feel? Okay, you took a culture that Herb Kelleher built based on people and a unique culture and but why did, because the share price has not been going up. Okay. And so I say to you, how do the people that you invite into your organization, go home at night, decide to buy a home, get married, raise children when they can't count on you to give them a sense of the future so they can make those decisions? And so, how did those people who Southwest Airlines sent an email to that they were no longer going to be with the company, how did they feel? Okay. How did it impact them to finally join this prestigious company known for its culture and all of a sudden you're told you're not needed anymore? So again caring but I want to tell your listening audience you can't from this webinar go say we need to care more for our people because caring is a skill you can't, you got to teach people how to care so learning and development the foundational course at Barry-Wehmiller University the foundational course is empathetic listening and we have learned and Jerry you took the course we have learned it is the most powerful human skill anybody could have at home, at work, in your community and we see it in the political environment. We see it in the right and left argument is to listen without judgment to listen to validate because we are created uniquely differently and we see the world differently based on our personality type. So how to care for the people you lead is a skill we teach at Barry-Wehmiller University. So that, you can't ask people to care. You have to teach them how to care. You can't ask them to speak Chinese. We have to teach them to speak Chinese. You can't ask them to care. You have to teach them. And it begins with empathetic listening. And then of course recognition and celebration. How do you let people know they matter?
Yeah. I'll tell you, I took that listening course eight or 10 years ago and you know my wife Mary. I came home from that weekend and about 3 days after I got back, she looked at me and said, 'Okay, what are you doing?' What do you mean? She goes, 'You know, we've been married 39 years.' She's like, 'What's happening? What is this new you?' So, yeah, there's some really...
This should make you feel good. Remember what Mary said to me when I saw her after she took class? She said, 'Thank you for giving the husband back to me that I married.' That's what Mary told me.
Yeah. Yeah. That's not a great statement about me, but it's true. And the importance of learning how to lead. Yeah, there's some great comments in here. Susan, Donna Hicks's book, Leading with Dignity, is exceptional. Bob's book is great. Yeah, there's some really good... Do you find, Dirk asks an interesting question. How are you an empathetic listener in a hybrid team environment? You know, I think it was different when we sat across from one another and we were in the same places. Are you finding any challenges, Bob, applying these things in situations where people are talking the way you and I are talking today?
No. Remember 80% of communication is nonverbal. So, it's, we see because we're doing Zoom. I would say to you that the skill of listening does not have to be in person. And it could, you know, again, the young lady that worked for Simon Sinek who took the class said, you know, I called my mother every day because I care about her, but I took the class and I realized I never listened to my mother, I talked to my mother. And when I began listening to my mother, she changed for the good dramatically. So it, and these are phone calls. This is even before the video. So the skills of listening are the most profound personal skills you and all of you in learning development. It should be the first class we teach. This is a three-day class we teach. Okay. Three-day class we teach.
Universities don't teach this, right?
I know. I mean, we don't learn how to, you know, grade schools don't, middle schools don't, high school. I remember I went to a, I was invited to a school and they wanted because they wanted to embrace our leadership and they took me to a debate class and to listen to these kids and after listening to these four boys practice debate because they're going to go to a contest in Chicago. The teacher said to me, 'What do you think?' I said, 'I just saw what's wrong with this world. We teach speech and we teach debate, but we don't teach listening.' And when you see the brokenness we have in families and companies and the world, I remember Bill Ury who I mentioned earlier said when he talked to our people, they talked about this listening class and he now realized, and just think of the Ukrainian situation, the Middle East situation. Bill Ury said, 'I now realize I've been going to global peace talks for 30 years and I now realize that's exactly what they are. They're global peace talks. The problem is nobody knows how to listen. Listening is a skill that is teachable and it makes a profound impact on you and the people that you work with and live with and interact with in life.'
