Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Pure pressure. We all know the influence it can have. So, why does a teenager ignore her dad’s advice on what to wear, but instantly changes her outfit when a friend tells her the exact same thing? The secret to changing your company’s culture actually lies in pure pressure. Today, culture expert Larry Chatterton (Guest) explains why top-down leadership directives fail and how peer-to-peer training shifts organizations. So, welcome, Larry. We’re so excited for the conversation today.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Hello. I’m excited to be here. Thank you for having

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah, of course.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): me.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And Matt’s gonna head on with what Larry has done up to this point. Here’s a little bit about Larry. Based in Salt Lake City, Larry Chatterton (Guest) is a global speaker, coach, and veteran trainer who has spent nearly 30 years cultivating thriving organizational cultures with insights from Dell Carnegie and the Disney Institute. through his signature final three feet philosophy and we’re excited to hear more about that and upcoming book.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): He teaches that exceptional customer experience is a repeatable skill rooted in supporting frontline employees first. Ultimately, Larry transforms big brand experience into actionable training focusing on mastering face-to-face human to human connection. So there’s a lot to unpack there and we’re excited to get into it. So yeah, I’m gonna let you kind of introduce yourself because I I might get the order wrong, but I know you started out as a massage therapist and Matt is doing Oh,

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Yeah.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Wow. I didn’t know that. He’s doing Loja this fall.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Yeah.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): He he’s signed up and everything and it’s for those who don’t know,

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Hey

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): It’s a bike race, a cycling race from Logan to Jackson Hole. It’s about 206 miles. And Larry actually used to work on the people when they finished that race with massage therapy. And so and as of course he kind of figured out that massage therapy is not just the hands, it’s also therapy. So where do you go from there and how did you end up now being a leadership consultant?

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Yeah. Well, growing up, my parents were always running different businesses and we talked about my dad being an entrepreneur and so I’d always been exposed to many businesses and I thought, well, I kind of want a stable career. So, I thought I was going to become a physical therapist or chiropractor and that’s how I got into massage. And then I found massage kind of filled my healing need just that touch and connecting with people and I did a lot of sports and rehab. uh got to work with the uh US Olympic swim team and Janet Evans, four-time gold medalist and got to do a lot of rehab on them. So, I had some fun experiences as well as sponsoring the cycling team and spending time at races and events

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Wow.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): and working on people. And during my time as a massage therapist, I had a client come in and start telling me about the Dale Carnegie course, which is uh if you’re unfamiliar with Dale Carnegie wrote a book called How to Win Friends and Influence People. I guarantee your grandparents have it on their bookshelf.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): It’s one of the top selling books of all time. But, uh so I thought I needed something positive in my life at the time. So, I signed up, went to the course, and session one, I just watched what was going on, and I watched the instructor. I thought, that’s what I want to do. And so, um, through a series of events, I had to go back to college and get my degree so I could become a Dale Carne instructor. Spent time in Portugal on a study abroad and met the Dale Carnegie guy there. And Alcino Mendula, the Dale Carnegie franchisee in Portugal, was getting ready to retire, nobody to take over, and he offered me his business. So literally within a year of me taking the Dale Carnegie course,

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Whoa.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): I was off to Portugal and running a Dale Carnegie over there and uh has a new family.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): I had a daughter who was born in Portugal at the time and we were there almost three years and she was about 11 months old and they called us up and said, “Hey, would you like to come back and take over Utah?” So we did that,

Larry Chatterton (Guest): came back to Utah and ran here for about eight more years. So a total of about 11 years with Dale Carnegie. but I wanted to spread my wings. So I decided I’d leave Carnegie and go out and start my own speaking training coaching company. In the interim uh my largest client in the area here in Utah was a called Associated Food Stores.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Oh, wow.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): They have about 600 g. They have 600 grocery stores in eight states and a couple billion dollar company and they were just building an internal university. So I had a two-year competition with Carnegie. I thought well that’s a safe place to hide. So I went in and uh helped with the internal building university that was able to attend the Disney leadership institute got certified in Franklin Cubby 7 habits for managers and uh but always still had that itch that wanted to travel and wanted to speak and train. So back in April 1st, ironically, of 2010, I got back out and started training and coaching and through many different connections, which is all life’s about, I made a lot of friends in different organizations and jumped into some contract training work where I’ve done projects literally around the world.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Uh eight years with BMW at about 125 different BMW stores in the country and 500 visits. I’ve done a project with Ford Cadillac. I went to Dubai and trained Cadillac dealers in Dubai. Spent five weeks in the Sey Shell Islands helping a five-star resort open up.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Whoa.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Trained the staff at Mass and Square Garden. So, I’ve been to Brazil on a project and actually virtually trained a team with Black & Decker in Brazil because of my Portuguese language. And so, it’s taken me a lot of places. And the majority of my work right now is a lot of mid Midwest and small rural communities working with rural health care organizations helping them change their cultures and develop and grow. So that’s a little bit of my

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah,

Larry Chatterton (Guest): background.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I would say that’s that’s the real bio right there. So, I when I spoke to you earlier,

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Yeah.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Larry, uh you mentioned that you’re writing a book. Matt wrote a book.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): It took him five years. This is kind of the four and a half. Don’t add the extra on there. There there was a This is kind of the pre- AI and we talked about how there’s AI now,

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Yeah.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): But you don’t have a release date for your book because you’re using it the right way. You’re people first, human first, and then you’re going to use AI to help you edit. So, tell us about this book that you’ve been working on and about your service acronym.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Great. Well, the philosophy I have developed which I call the final three feet, which is that human to human connection. It’s interesting how that came about. I was actually out on a bike ride one day, and you know how meditative that is, right, Matt? So, I’m out on my bike ride one day and I’m listening to a book by Frank Luntz called Words That Work. It’s not what you say, it’s what they hear. And I’m just pondering and all a sudden I remembered a time I was listening to uh the CEO of the World Trade Center Utah was speaking and somebody asked him the question, you know, why do you spend so much money traveling overseas and going to all these places when you can do so much work

Larry Chatterton (Guest): virtually? He says, listen, we do all we can virtually, but what truly matters most are those final three feet, that human to human connection. And it just hit me hard. So I actually sat down right in my brain at that time.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Wow.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): I designed a logo and uh it has an F and the number three and a feet tick mark in it and it’s a kind of a Superman fake looking logo. And so from that final three feet because I realized and having been around businesses my whole life, you know, we work hard to bring people in, we market, we try and get them through the doors and it’s those last three feet that human connection that can either

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah

Larry Chatterton (Guest): make it amazing or destroy it. And so over time as I’ve worked with many organizations, I found there’s about seven stages in that customer journey, but also in the employee journey as well. So if you’re talking about building culture, they’re the same principles for leadership. And I use the word service as the acronym for this.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): And so the S in service stands for the sincere welcome. If I’m a leader, do I walk in and greet my team members every morning? Do I make them feel like they’re appreciated? Do I uh do things that really allow them to feel like this is home for them? So that sincere welcome. Then E is enthusiastically engaged. And as you know, it takes at least two people to engage. And so it gauges a two-way street. Do I get feedback from my team? Do I give them a voice and allow them? And I don’t just use the word empowerment as a buzzword. It actually is something you create an environment of empowerment. You can’t just give somebody empowerment. So, do I create that environment so they’re engaged and willing to participate? Then R is a reliable delivery. Meaning, am I consistent in my product? Am I consistent in my actions? Do I make sure that, you know, the quality is there all the time for every customer or every employee?

Larry Chatterton (Guest): The V is value challenges. Something’s going to go wrong. So, how do we handle those challenges? In customer service, the single biggest opportunity you have to convert just a customer into a fan is how you handle challenges. What’s your service recovery policy?

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): check.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Do my frontline team members know they can up to what point they can do something on service recovery or, you know, give somebody a free drink or a you know, whatever it is that allows them to feel they participate in helping recover that service from the person. But also as a leader, my team members, what do I do when something’s going wrong? How do we step in and make things right and move things forward as a learning experience? I instill confidence and that’s uh what we do through our teamwork. Um from the customer service side, if you’ve ever been to a business where you walk in and your favorite waiter or waitress is there, so you know you’re going to get great service, but then one day you walk in and they’re not there and the next person comes up and it’s not quite as good.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): That’s customer service roulette. And we don’t like to gamble with our customer service. So, do we create an environment that’s consistent and we instill confidence in our employees and our team members through our continuous actions? The C stands for champion relationships. Do I, as we talked about earlier, Matt, remember names? Do I engage with my team? Do I know what I know about my team members that’s not in their file? You know, do I understand them as a person? Uh, do I send out notes? Do I give appreciation and recognition? And so how do you champion those relationships? And the last E is the endearing departure. Meaning when somebody’s done for the day, do they feel like I appreciated their work? As a leader, do I make a genuine concerted effort to make them feel like uh they’ve done something today that’s moved us all forward. And so the way they leave, because that’s the last thing on their mind, will they be able to have the desire to come back to work the next day and give a little more effort?

Larry Chatterton (Guest): And as a customer, do people leave thinking that was a great experience? I’m gonna go tell others about it because it was great or I’m gonna tell others about it because it was horrible. And so what’s that very last thing on people’s mind? So that’s the service acronym and it’s for leading a team and customer service, employee engagement. So if you think of a venn diagram, all three of those employee engagement, customer service, and leadership, they come together right in the middle of the human connection. And you know today’s virtual world where we are hundreds of miles away from each or 100 miles away from each other but virtually we’re connecting so there’s a human element there. I have friends all over the world from my training. And so through virtual ways I can still have that human to human connection and that’s personalizing a message to him. Um I think Chris we talked about my father passed away you know almost two years ago now and when I posted on Facebook he passed away about the first five messages came from people internationally.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): One was my Uber driver in Calgary, Canada that on a 20-minute Uber ride, we became friends and the uh he was on my uh became a Facebook friend as well. And soon as I posted, he sent me a nice little message of condolences. So, you know, those are the kind of relationships that

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Wow. That’s very impactful.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): matter.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And honestly, I totally agree with you about the overlap between those principles with employees, leaders, customers. It’s not just a silo of hey these things work for customers and um frontline employees to keep your um patrons happy at a restaurant or something like that. It definitely these principles do spill over to the culture side of things within a company. Do you want to maybe go a little deeper and tell us more about how you’ve seen those principles apply for culture change?

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Yeah. Well, we are training our employees all the time on how to treat people and it’s the way they get treated and that’s why they’re the same uh principles through leadership as well as customer service because they’re understanding by the way we’re treating them how they should treat the customer.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Um if you take a famous example in customer service is when I ask organic people what organization do you think of when you think of great customer service? Chick-fil-A tends to come to mind pretty quickly. And just that phrase Yeah. You know, just that phrase, my pleasure, that wasn’t an overnight thing that actually started because the CEO was on a trip.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): my

Larry Chatterton (Guest): He was in a nice resort and they kept saying my pleasure. He’s like, well, why can’t we do that at Chick-fil-A? And it was a multi-year process to make sure that became part of the culture. So, it isn’t just sending out a memo, hey, we’re all going to start saying my pleasure now. Um because uh you know, that’s what we do. It’s actually they mean it and the way they get treated. You know, there’s many organizations that have a reputation for great customer service, but they also coincide with their employee experience. Um, organizations like Zapos.com, In-N-Out Burger, uh, there’s so many out there, the Ritz Carlton, you know, there’s so many different organizations that it’s the way they treat their people that really matters and rolls out to the customer ultimately.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): That’s how I grew up. I watched my mom and dad in business greeting people. I watched my grandpa,

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): You know, be friendly. And so, that’s really where training comes. It’s not just in the formal stuff, which needs to be there because you need to build the structure, but also in the day-to-day operation of how I’m treating my team members. So, if I’m expecting a nice warm welcome when somebody comes into my business, I better be warm welcoming my team members as well. So, that’s why leadership’s hard because it’s different from management, just checking boxes. It’s making sure you’re living principles and inspiring and motivating people through that.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah. It’s like you’re on stage a little bit. You know, everyone’s observing your behaviors and even a few minutes of informal conversation in an elevator going somewhere with um a frontline staff member, a leader can have kind of this superpower influence that can make a pretty um lasting impression on um how an employee feels about the company and the brand and the team they

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Mhm.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): work for and the mission. So it’s yeah leaders have they need to lead by example literally. So yeah and it’s it it wouldn’t make sense to think that you could treat your employees horribly but then the employees are going to treat their customers amazing. It just knows you absorb every interaction that you have and you know Chick-fil-A they’re not hiring actors and actresses. They’re hiring real people who who feel and you genuinely feel connected

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Mhm.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And like you genuinely feel like you’re appreciated as a customer when you go there and that it really is their pleasure to serve you.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Yep.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): It’s I mean they could be saying my pleasure, but it could come out like my pleasure, you know, or something, but they you genuinely do feel that and that does come back to the way that they’re treated and the way that their culture is there.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Absolutely. You know, and this kind of goes into what we’re all faced with right now.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): You brought up AI. Yeah. It’s a tool. It does stuff. It it,

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So,

Larry Chatterton (Guest): You know, I can word things perfectly, but it’s that human element that’s always going to be missing unless we really embrace it. So using it as a tool while having your human element there is what matters. And authenticity is one of the highest vibrating words there is. It’s , are you genuine? Are you sincere? Because we’ve all walked into those businesses where um you know you walk through the door and you hear a welcome and you know in fact a friend reminded me of this story the other day. I was in an airport and I was standing by a gift shop and I’m waiting for my plane to board. And as I’m standing there, every time you walk through the door of the gift shop, a buzzer would go off, dinged. And there was a lady setting up stuff on a shelf. And so somebody walked in and she just went, “Welcome.” And somebody else walked in and said to go,

Larry Chatterton (Guest): “Welcome. And so I just got curious. So I walked over and I wiped my hand back and forth and it went ding ding ding. And she was like, “Well, well, well.” Until she looked up at me and it was like Pavlov’s dog. She was just repeating words when she heard the bell. And uh she just looked at me and shook her head and I’m like, “Sorry.” You know, just because I noticed what was going on. But you know, you lose that sincerity and

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah,

Larry Chatterton (Guest): authenticity.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): That’s just repeating after the beep.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Yeah. Yeah.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): That’s really interesting.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): So you mentioned my daughter and that because I think also one of the keys to building a culture is who gets involved in building that culture. Number one, it has to be clearly defined what you want the culture to be and it can’t necessarily be top down, right? The front line needs to be involved with what is our culture because they’re the ones that’s driving the culture.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): We always like to say that what is your company culture? Well, it’s the meeting after the meeting. It’s what happens when the boss is not around. And so building that culture has to come from the ground up. And uh when we’re taught peer-to-peer uh we learn better. We actually there’s statistics that show that people learn better when they learn from their peers. And I use the example of my daughter. She walked out of her room one day and she came out of her room and as a teenager I’d look at her and go, “You’re not going to wear that out of this house.” And she kind of walks right past me out the door and her friend’s coming up the sidewalk and just says, “Are you going to wear that?” And she goes, “No, I’ll go change.” And so who delivered the message, right? The same message, but when it comes peer-to-peer. So, uh, one of my projects I’m on right now, one of the cool things is we help the front line identify what is the culture you want.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): And then we pick out some of the best of the best. Who’s your best and brightest, the ones that are naturally in, you know, positive attitudes and smile and greet people and work hard, all those things. and so selecting from that group and then we train them to deliver a workshop to the entire organization. So they’re learning presentation skills, leadership skills, and communication skills as well. So they’re getting some additional future training, but then they’re turning around and teaching a couple hour workshop to their peers and now it holds them accountable at the higher level because they’re just teaching them, you know, you need to smile and greet people. Well, they better be smiling and greet people coming down the hallway. So it really has an impact when you get that front line involved. And uh organizations that open the doors for that uh type of feedback tend to thrive. I love Zappos as an example. If you remember Tony Shay that helped start Zapos years ago. Unfortunately Tony passed away in a fire a few years ago.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): And this is probably top of mind because my Facebook memory yesterday was a picture of me and Tony down in Las Vegas.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Oh,

Larry Chatterton (Guest): But uh you know the organization Zapos and their they have a great Tony wrote a great book called Delivering

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Wow.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Happiness because that’s what their goal is to deliver happiness. So they deliver happiness. If you’re ever in Vegas and need something to do uh out of heat. Uh, go take a tour of the Zappos organization because it’s fascinating. Each department has its own kind of personality. Never seen more alcohol in an HR department than Zapos. And there’s a faux fireplace in the corner. It’s got all these liquor bottles on top. There’s a mullet wig hanging from the ceiling and a sign that says HR at Zappos is like this mullet. We’re business up front, but we’re partying in the back. So, it’s really fun. But,

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): That’s hilarious.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): uh, yeah. So, you know, when you think about the front line taking that ownership, I’ll give you a quick story of a really great friend Todd and he loves shoes.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): So, he was ordering some shoes from Zapos. If you’re unfamiliar with them, they are basically a shoe store online and uh so he’s ordering some shoes and he had to do a return. So, he calls up and he’s speaking to a customer service representative. This is a giant call center, right? So, he’s talking to this young representative girl and they’re working through stuff and she just simply says, “So, what are you doing this weekend?” and he’s like, ‘Oh, it’s a big football weekend. She says, ‘Well, who are your teams?’ He says, ‘The Titans and the Bulls. He’s from Tennessee,

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Oh,

Larry Chatterton (Guest): So he’s a Tennessee Titans and a Tennessee Bulls fan. So,

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): What?

Larry Chatterton (Guest): he uh so that’s all he says. They go about their business, take care of his return, everything. Well, Monday morning, he gets up, opens up his email, and there’s an email from this call center customer service representative, and all it said was, “Sorry about the losses.” And I’m like,

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Well, of course you’re a Tennessee fan. They’re going to lose. But uh but he thought,

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Wow.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): You know, think about that. There are a thousand people working in this call center. And this young girl took time to deliver happiness. Now, it was a condolences. So it was the opposite end of that. But uh but for her to reach out on her own,

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Right.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): nobody was checking a box and that’s ownership. And that’s why the organization has this reputation to build a culture.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Well, that is one of those little magic moments of, you know, spreading happiness. Even though Yeah. and to have a frontline worker feel the autonomy to do that

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Yeah.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): and the motivation to do that. It speaks to the um institutionalization that that culture has had in in

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Mhm.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Zappos and um that people are bought into it which is pretty neat. I I did want to mention one thing how I was really intrigued about you talking about like the frontline workers being the delivery um trainers of training material and we’ve seen that same principle in our business with mob and employee reviews how you know the recruiter the the executive team they can say um the company’s awesome all day long but people

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Mhm.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): don’t believe that as much as if another employee or former employee is telling them about their experience right that peer-to-peer influence is like influence arbitrage There’s so much more impact that comes depending on who’s the the person sending that message. And that’s why we’ve seen it’s so powerful for companies when they let their employees be the voice of recruiting and employer branding in those reviews and in testimonials and videos and things like that. There’s way more influence that happens um to attract the right people to join a company for the right reason than if it’s you know a CEO saying that you should still have that as part of the equation but that influence comes from the peer-to-peer

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Absolutely. Yeah. It’s so critical.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): connection

Larry Chatterton (Guest): And then once you create that culture where the peers want to be around each other and they’re driving it and they’re holding each other accountable, you know, every organization’s made up of a group of superstars, those that are, you know, going forward, moving ahead. Then you have a group that might we call one organization I work with, we call them the winners because they’re heavily influenced by the superstars.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): If you think of the Ritz Carlton, their motto is ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen and it’s the

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yes.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): way they get treated internally. And I won’t go into that story, but I have a fairly funny story from uh the Ritz Carlton in Denver, Colorado one time, just a but a hotel maintenance man was fixing a light fixture. I got off the ladder, came down, I was setting up a room for the next day’s training, and he walked over and asked me, “Can I do anything for you?” I’m like, “Oh, I see some tea service on the back wall, but there’s no hot water. I have to speak a lot tomorrow. My throat’s a little sore.” He goes, “Okay.” And he walks out of the room. Five minutes later, he comes in with a silver platter, all new tea service. Sets it on a table, lays everything out, and he says, “Mr. Chatterton, you mentioned you have kind of a sore throat. I found if you steep these two teas together, put a little lemon and honey in there, it’ll coat your throat, and you’ll be good to go tomorrow.” I’m thinking,

Larry Chatterton (Guest): “How does hotel maintenance become five-star food and beverage?

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Wow.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): It’s the culture, right? It’s a culture. Ladies and gentlemen, serve these ladies and gentlemen. The way you address me, you talk to me, there’s just mutual respect all around. So, there’s no position that’s more important than another. You’re all engaging with the the

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Wow, that is pretty cool. I could listen to your stories all day, Larry. Like seriously,

Larry Chatterton (Guest): customer.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): You really have been all over the world and have had some incredible experiences. Um, I was curious because to me, this all makes so much sense, the peer-to-peer interactions and influence. And but I do feel like maybe this is something that not everybody buys into that I I don’t know if you face this when you’ve when you’ve interacted with organizations that they’re like well why are we why are we training our frontline workers to be presenters they’re not presenters or you know I don’t know if you get any resistance about that but I’d be curious to know you’ve obviously done this many times of convincing those sealed or the ones who are making the big decisions for the to do this to to implement this training and invest in their people.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And how do you go about

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Well, I think um you mentioned and stories stories are marketing right and so I have so many stories of

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): That?

Larry Chatterton (Guest): success stories that u I can share with them they see that value and I think that’s it is they’ve a seed level’s got to understand what’s the ROI because really I’m going to take some team members that I’m paying hourly to do their work and they’re going to pull them out and do a couple day training and that’s going to cost me I got to cover for them and so they they do identify that when they see the value of it and how it really makes in the long run their job a lot easier. Um, but it doesn’t hand off ownership to that front line. It just shares ownership because management and leadership has to be involved and support it. And um, when they’re not, that’s really challenging because that’s where a lot of organizations fail in training. They think, okay, we throw training at them, things are going to work out there, but we’re going to do something different.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Or if you um abandon the training, it becomes flavor of the month. And then the team members learn, oh, don’t put your time and energy into this. it’s going to go away eventually. So that’s why a lot of times when I work with an organization, we let them know it’ll probably take three years to fully shift your culture into what you want and really hardwire it in because it’s like any garden you’d grow, right? You got to continually weed it and put the right stuff in and the right nutrients and pull out some stuff that’s not working. And so you’ve got to work at it and it’s not just an overnight night thing to do.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So bottom line, someone can just send this podcast to the CEO and they’ll be convinced.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Let’s hope if they are, come on, reach out to me. Love to love to visit with you. And that’s the thing. I’ve seen it work in all different size organizations as well. Um, a lot of the work I mentioned I do right now is in rural health care and these small critical access hospitals.

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Uh, those, it’s very interesting, but it works there. I’ve seen it work in automobile dealerships across the country and manufacturing uh that I’ve worked with, airlines, I’ve done projects with. So, you see the key pieces really coming together and that’s where I’ve developed all my content from is all those many years of experience and observation and how it’s going to identify the principles and then how do you get it so it becomes ingrained into the culture.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah, thank you so much. Everything you shared today honestly was amazing and very insightful to me personally. And for everyone listening, please share this podcast especially to those in your organization. If you see this need in your organization to change that influence, not from the top down, but from peer-to-peer, um, yeah, share this podcast because I think this is the way to go. This is the way to change culture and institutionalize culture. And so again, thanks Larry for your time today. And everyone, we will link to his website, his LinkedIn, um, that book he mentioned that changed his life and headed towards Dell Carnegie. Um, and any other resources he has to share, we’ll put them all in the highlight article and stay tuned for our next episode. Thanks everybody. Yeah,

Larry Chatterton (Guest): Thank you. I appreciate it.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Thanks Larry.