How to fix a toxic culture

Are you holding meetings where no one speaks up? Dealing with employees who don’t take ownership? This company was too until they flipped their fear-based culture into a high-trust, high-performance workplace. And in 5 years, they’ve grown revenue by 56%. Come onsite with us as we take you inside OC Tanner—a global leader in lean manufacturing and workplace culture—where Executive Vice President Gary Peterson shares exactly how they made that shift.

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How to fix a toxic culture

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McKinlay Otterson: The way things worked was clear from the start. Gary Peterson: Just do what you're told. Do what you're told and everything will be fine. The only time you get in trouble is when you don't do what you're told. McKinlay Otterson: As the new leader over supply chain and manufacturing at OC Tanner, Gary was confronted with a culture where there was no real ownership or accountability for the results. Gary Peterson: When I first moved to manufacturing, I found that that we had very bright, capable people on the floor, but they were not being invited to participate in any way whatsoever. The supervisors, the team leaders, and the directors were just very controlling. When I would talk to people about the output, they were like, well, I don't have anything to do with the output. It's the manager owns everything, safety, quality, efficiency. I'm not involved. I was like, are you kidding me? You're touching every piece. Right. You own it all. McKinlay Otterson: So how do you change a culture like that? That's what we're talking about today. The kind of change required to take an environment that's dominated by fear, where employees feel like cogs in a machine, and turn it into a culture where each person is a meaningful contributor who takes ownership and drives innovation. Welcome to Leading Outward, the Arbinger Institute's podcast, where we explore the tools and ideas we've used for over forty five years to help people solve their toughest leadership and organizational challenges by leading with an outward mindset, seeing people as people. I'm McKinley Otterson. Gary Peterson: First thing we're gonna do, let's go out on the floor. I want you to go talk to people. McKinlay Otterson: Today, I'm speaking with Gary Peterson who's been at OC Tanner for twenty years. OC Tanner is a powerhouse in the world of lean manufacturing. They've grown their revenue by fifty six percent in the past five years, and they're a showcase for Toyota and a Go and See site for McKinsey. But this has not always been the case. When Gary first stepped into his role managing supply chain and manufacturing, he inherited a culture where employees operated in silence, afraid to take any initiative. Gary Peterson: We have team meetings. I'd have eight people sitting in front of me, and and we were collecting data, you know. So I'd say, okay. Well, let's let's see what the data shows for this week. You guys did this. You did that. Can we talk about, you know, what happened? Not a word. The team meetings at that time were fifteen minutes long because that's about all the silence I could take in in one go. I mean, they wouldn't even look at me. Wow. There's just fear. A lot of fear. Yeah. It took literally months before people started to open up a little bit. And the very first comment that somebody made, you know, you got your quality, your team's quality is the worst of all the teams. You've got to know what's going on. Woman slams her head, you wanna know what's wrong with our quality? Katie's work looks like crap. But she didn't say crap. I'm like, oh, that's not what I wanted. Right. McKinlay Otterson: Which is exactly why no one was saying anything. Gary Peterson: Exactly right. It's not safe. It's not safe. McKinlay Otterson: But this is not at all what their culture looks like now. I actually got to go meet Gary in person at OC Tanner, and he took me on a tour of their production floor. And their space is beautiful, full of natural light and organized into aisles where each aisle has the machines the team needs to do their work. And as we walked around, Gary kept pointing out improvement after improvement. Machines that used to be filthy to work with are now totally clean to operate. All machines are height adjustable and movable, so they can be adapted to whatever project the team is working on and the specific person using the machine. Even the machine setup process has been dropped from minutes to seconds. And I ask Gary, who comes up with all these ideas? And he immediately walks me over to a whiteboard that was covered in writing. And then at the bottom of the board, there are these small holders packed with slips of paper. Gary Peterson: We've got these idea cards, improvement cards. And anytime a team member has something they want to improve, they write down the problem. Mhmm. They they answer some questions about it. They turn it over how much money would be saved if, you know, we'd cut out three seconds here, how many times a year. They do the math. Mhmm. Like, wow. You know, I just saved eight hundred dollars. That's fantastic. McKinlay Otterson: That's really cool. Gary Peterson: They write down their idea. They put it on the board here. And then in the weekly team meeting, the team pulls the ideas off the board and they talk about them. McKinlay Otterson: Cool. Gary Peterson: And the team decides which ones to implement. McKinlay Otterson: The team decides which ones to implement. And being here on the floor, it's obvious why that's key. If they came up with the ideas, but someone else had the final say, it would be so easy for things to get misaligned and people to end up working in silos. But instead, they own it. They track the impact. They make the decisions because they're the ones who feel the effects firsthand, and they're the ones who know exactly when and how to roll out these changes in practical and sustainable ways. Gary Peterson: That's how everything changes. Like, if a team member were to say to me when I'm walking through, hey, Gary. We gotta fix this. I'm like, cool. McKinlay Otterson: Right. Right. Gary Peterson: Actually, no one ever says that to me. They just do. They just come and they just come and write it down. McKinlay Otterson: Okay. This seems critical too. The team isn't just throwing ideas into the void, hoping that Gary or someone else in leadership takes notice. They put things into motion themselves. No waiting around, no passing of ownership, no bottleneck of a leader because empowerment at OC Tanner means action from everyone all the time. Gary Peterson: We give them all the data they need so they can make the best decision. They know what their profitability is or what it was yesterday and what it is now. And this whole group is working on a profit margin for their product. And we doing something. We it's on our our six month bonus. They can hit their goals. But this way, they are actually chasing value to the client as opposed to, you know, pieces per hour or something like that. McKinlay Otterson: This seems like the third key ingredient. It's not just, hey. What ideas do you have? It's what ideas do you have that will improve the business? And the team is empowered to make those changes because they have full access to the data. They see how their ideas impact the bottom line, and they care about that not just in theory, but because they have real stakes in the results. Their work directly ties to the company's success, and they share in that success. That's what kept standing out to me as I walked the floor with Gary. Real change is driven by the people closest to the work. They own it. They feel responsible for making things better. And that creates an environment where ideas aren't just encouraged, they're expected. This mindset doesn't just exist on a few teams at OC Tanner. It's across the board. Even the busiest teams make time to discuss new ideas, test them, and make improvements quickly. Gary Peterson: Let's go visit the team that is the busiest. McKinlay Otterson: I would love to. Gary Peterson: Lot of pressure on them. More than any other team in the factory right now. Mary: Good. Hi. Gary Peterson: We're over in Jade, and everybody was laughing and smiling. And I say, hey. Let's go to the busiest team in the factory. Mary: I know. Crystal says, everybody's talking about you guys how much you laugh. Gary Peterson: Why not? You're under too much pressure. You shouldn't be smiling at laughing. McKinlay Otterson: What's your name? Mary. Mary, I'm McKinlay. Mary: Nice to meet you. McKinlay Otterson: Nice to meet you. Can I ask you, Mary? You're so busy. You have so much to do. And you're still I'm laughing. Mary: Giving comments about how much you're laughing. How? Oh, I have a great team. And I believe in them, and they work hard, and they're easy to work with. When you have the team, no problem. Gary Peterson: How do you think about them individually? Every person is different. How do you approach your work in terms of person by person knowing how to help each one? Mary: Oh, that's a good question, Gary. Gary Peterson: I'm sure you do that. Mary: Of course. Because, you know, I have a Jennifer, extremely quiet Gary Peterson: Yeah. Mary: But really, really hard worker. So I have to be really careful how I approach her so that she doesn't think I'm the yelling on her. Oh. Well, then I have a… Gary Peterson: Who do you yell at? Mary: Christina. Christina is from Mexico. She we have kind of same personality. So we can laugh and yell and stuff like that. So, yes, I try to learn who they are, how they like to be approached, how they're taking my feedback. And then we don't put our names on any defects or catches. McKinlay Otterson: As I'm listening to Mary, I'm thinking, wait, I thought the whole point was to celebrate catching the inefficiencies and defects so that they can be fixed and improved. But Mary explained that recognizing the individual who finds the problem shifts the focus away from what actually matters. Because at the end of the day, it's not about who caught the issue, it's about how the team solves the issue. Problems matter because they shine a light on where things can be better. But the win is greater efficiency, smoother processes, and a team that works together to make that happen. And talking with Mary, it became clear that this approach of a total lack of blame is a huge reason why these teams are able to take ownership and make improvements quickly. Mary: So I don't blame ever any team member or myself for something wrong. We have a processes that we can always make better McKinlay Otterson: Right. For us. Mary: We talk and what can we do? How can we change? Why somebody get confused? McKinlay Otterson: We need to improve it. You need to talk about it. Good. But you need to make it safe to talk about it. Gary Peterson: You know what? I was here one day for the huddle after launch. They had a bad their first two time buckets, they missed them. And Mary was like, hey. What's what's going on? What what happened here? And her two most senior people, one of them said, my fault. I read the diet number wrong. I worked the wrong diet for, like, the whole fifteen minutes. Wasted everybody's time. I can't remember if Connie said that or Emma said that. Mary: Emma, Emma was. Gary Peterson: But but Connie said, no. No. No. Not your fault. I took it from you and I didn't double check it. I just kept it working. It's my fault. In front of the executive vice president, these two senior team members were trying to take the blame from each other for this problem Yeah. Instead of looking for excuses. Right. Nobody worries about, well, whose fault is it? Right? Let's just figure it out. Mary: No. Exactly. Right. We don't want anybody to be scared to say, hey, I make this thing. No. We wanna help to be better and do better. McKinlay Otterson: Thanks for sharing. Mary: Thank you. Thank you for stopping by, buddy. Best team member. Yeah. Gary Peterson: Mary is a team leader. McKinlay Otterson: Uh-huh. Gary Peterson: But she's not in the team. The team is making Right. Hip hop shots. McKinlay Otterson: There it is again. Mary is the team lead, but the team doesn't wait on her to step in. They are fully empowered to take action on their own. And that's what leadership looks like at OC Tanner. It's not about catching every issue or making every call. It's about building a team that can do that themselves. What was the beginning of this journey? Gary Peterson: Well, you know, maybe your listeners won't believe this is true. And you you don't even know this is You didn't know this before you came here, I don't think. But we, everybody read Leadership and Self Deception. McKinlay Otterson: I did not know that. Gary Peterson: My rings manager, Dustin Knott, brought it to me one day. It was still pretty hot off the press, so a couple decades ago. And he says, hey, I'm not giving you this book because I think you have a problem. You know, that's the standard. Yeah. I'd give it because I think you really like it. McKinlay Otterson: Leadership in Self Deception was first published by the Arbinger Institute over twenty years ago. And it talks about how when we're self deceived, we don't see people as people with their own needs and concerns. And how when that happens, we end up working against the very results we're trying to achieve. Gary Peterson: And I read it. It's like, holy cow. It changed my life, literally. How so? You know, you're reading and it's interesting until it connects. Mhmm. Once it connects, then all of a sudden it becomes very real to me. I have six children. And as I was reading the book and they were talking about, not getting up at night with the wife and kind of abandoning her to it, guilty. And here I had all these reasons why I needed to do it. I had to go to work. I had to be productive. I mean, I could justify myself, all day long. But in the end, I was treating my wife as an object. And and I knew it. It was just like a ton of bricks, you know, falling on me, a good ton of bricks. Yeah. It didn't smash me. Right. It woke me up and said, you know, Gary, you use people. You know, you treat people as an object. So I believed it. I could see its application, and so the rest of the book made sense to me. We gave everybody a copy in the factory, and it was powerful. I was so delighted that over the course of the next several months during the weekly team meeting, I was seeing teams in conference rooms reading the book together. And then they put down the book and they talk. So at the same time that we were, I was starting to teach these teams about how to be a team together, how to talk about issues. I was also sitting down with the management and retraining them on, you know, being more of a coach and more of a teacher, more of a mentor, which they had no interest in doing. I think a lot of the production managers and supervisors thought, I can outlast this guy. He's not gonna last. I I'm a survivor. Eventually, he'll just go away, and I can go back to how I was. Right. There was fear on both sides. You know, management thinking, I don't know how to succeed in this environment that you're describing. I'm not sure I believe this environment you're describing is actually good. There wasn't a clear message from the top that this is what we're doing. There were questions at the top. Is this the right thing to do? Are you sure about this? And even our CEO at the time, I got called into his office a couple of times, explain empowerment to me because it sounds like everybody's just putting off the solution until someone in the corner is forced, you know, to call it. So I was always a little bit off guard. I was a little bit afraid. I I was running a lot on fear, like, you know, I'm is my job really safe? You know, if I take this next step, am I gonna be okay? So that's what we had. So, it took a long time, but we've turned it upside down. McKinlay Otterson: If this episode was sent to you, thanks for being here. That means someone in your life listened to this and thought of you, which is such a gift to have relationships like that. And if someone has come to mind while you've been listening, it's probably because what you're hearing could help them solve points of friction in their life. So care enough about them to share this episode. How did you go from this uncertainty and resistance to where you are now? Gary Peterson: At one point, we decided that we had to do something to get team members to realize they do control quality. They do control efficiency, they do own safety, they can work together. Those were like the four things we were trying to teach them to do. But we changed our compensation system so that as a team, you had to meet certain goals each week and you qualified for the week, and you had to put together like thirteen out of sixteen good weeks to get a raise. So if you miss like four weeks in a twelve week period, you're basically starting over. So it's like consistency in hitting your targets, efficiency, quality, safety, and so forth. But I'll tell you the thing that made the biggest difference was they had to sit down with their manager every week, one on one. McKinlay Otterson: OC Tanner has team leads, like Mary, who we heard from earlier, whose job it is to improve processes. Then there are also team managers, which is the role Gary is talking about right now, and their job is to coach and develop their people. Gary Peterson: You had to sit down. The manager had to walk through your data with you. Had never happened. And the span of control was too big at the time. So we were only asking the manager to spend five, seven minutes with a person. McKinlay Otterson: Okay. Gary Peterson: But it was magical. You know, that one on one time where we're talking and all of a sudden you're more real to me. I'm more real to you. It's no longer this, you know, you're up there, you're the boss, I'm down here. It's more like we're just sitting here talking to each other and actually you're a pretty decent person, you know? And, oh, and you see how smart I am, you know? It's like, all of a sudden, I think I think a lot of things start a lot of doors start to open up. And I'm not kidding you, within six weeks of just weekly interactions one on one with everybody, I was feeling some pretty big icebergs melt. You know, some distance between people, some struggles. Everything was changing as people were seeing each other more as real people. So the change in pay, the structure that worked, within a year, all the team members were like, we can do this. We took that system away. We didn't need that anymore, but we kept the coaching. We kept the one on ones. We're saying to every manager, You're going to sit down with every team member for twenty to thirty minutes every other week. You're going to talk about how you can help them and what matters to them and how work is going. Just be there with them. McKinlay Otterson: Right. Gary Peterson: And a lot of them, they wanna do it despite, you know, they've been having good experience. A lot of them were like, oh, I'm too busy. You know, I I don't have time for that. What do you want me to drop? And I said repeatedly, I don't care what you drop. I don't care. Drop whatever you want. Yeah. Because, this is what matters the most. McKinlay Otterson: Right. Gary Peterson: And to this day, this coaching system is one of our most important systems because it brings people together. I would say now that coaching capability is probably what we value the most in our management. Right. Oh, yeah. Managers are now coaches and teachers and mentors. They're very good at it, and they genuinely care about their people, and their people know that they care. Mhmm. So if I sit you down and talk through an issue with you, it's from a place of safety. McKinlay Otterson: Mhmm. Gary Peterson: You know I have your best interest at heart, so let's talk candidly. Let's fix this issue. Crystal, who came walking by, she's the manager. K. And she is spending thirty to sixty minutes now is our standard. McKinlay Otterson: Mhmm. Gary Peterson: Once a month though. Thirty to sixty minutes. Once a month with every team member. She has about twenty team members on average. K. So that means every day McKinlay: Mhmm. Gary Peterson: She's spending thirty to sixty minutes of her day Mhmm. With a member of her team. Mary: Wow. Gary Peterson: It's a big demand. McKinlay Otterson: So, Gary, talk more about this because when you said, you know, that there was some resistance of what do you want me to drop? Like, I have a whole schedule of things to do, and you said I don't care what you drop because nothing is as important as these thirty minutes that you're spending with these group members. Right. That sends a really clear message. Gary Peterson: Yeah. McKinlay Otterson: Why? And did it take a minute for people to agree with you on that? Gary Peterson: It didn't take long. I was actually saying at least once a month, preferably every other week. And the ones who were doing it every other week were telling everybody else all of these issues I'm reacting to are are gone. They're disappearing. McKinlay Otterson: Interesting. Gary Peterson: There's nothing for me to solve. McKinlay Otterson: Leaders were experiencing this firsthand, that spending time with their people wasn't just meaningful, it was giving them time back in their day. And for leaders, time is one of the scarcest resources, so seeing that investment in team members pay off by clearing away issues before they even occur is an incredible return. And Gary believed in this process and structure because he was seeing it work. But then he became the executive vice president, and suddenly this idea that investing time in your people gives you time back wasn't as simple. Gary Peterson: When I became the executive vice president, the outgoing executive VP said to me, you're not gonna be able to spend as much time on the factory floor as you have been. You're gonna get sucked into strategy and the corporate things, and you just gotta set that aside. And I thought he was wrong. It turns out he was right. And then when I was getting to the floor, people were saying, Oh, we've missed you. Where have you been? And anyway, it was painful for me. And I thought, you know, I'm good at strategy, I'm good at corporate stuff, but I think my time on the floor with people matters. I think one of my gifts is best manifest by me talking to people and being with people on the floor. So how do I prioritize my day so that I can get to the floor? So I made a list of all the things, all the gifts that I have that I thought I had. This is what I'm good at. And then I shared it with my directors and vice presidents and they laughed me to scorn. But then they agreed, you know, this is true, this is true, you know, that sort of, I don't know about that. You think you're good at that. And then I listed all the stuff that I'm doing, I tried to match them up, and there were a bunch of things that didn't match up to what I brought to the table. So I went back to my team and I said, Hey, so I matched this up and I think these things don't fit. I think I'm gonna stop doing these. So whoever wants to do them, you can grab them. And two thirds of them, people grab. I'll take this. I'll take this. I'll take that. But there were like three or four things that nobody grabbed. And I was like, well, so I'm gonna stop doing that. And I was like, yeah. So I was like, oh gosh. That would have been good to know that nobody cares that I do that. So I was able to jettison things off of my plate and instead put on my leader standard work, my daily activities. These are the things I'm going to do that make me more valuable to the company. Yeah. And so we all have that. Every person from Mary up has leader standard work defining what matters and then tracking it. And you saw this. We don't spend hardly any time on interpersonal struggles on our factory floor. McKinlay Otterson: How much time do you think interpersonal issues was taking initially? Gary Peterson: Oh, I think it was taken all day. Maybe not dealing with it all day, but all day long dealing with the ramifications of these three people who were in turmoil. McKinlay Otterson: Yeah. Gary Peterson: And the hit that gives them productivity in a four person cell when three of them aren't getting along. McKinlay Otterson: Right. Gary Peterson: We believe that the people closest to the job are the ones best suited to make improvements to the job and to drive the job. And if you're not seeing eye to eye, then how do you do that together? Teams make better decisions than individuals do. You get a good group of people together, especially if they're diverse. You noticed on the floor, we're incredibly diverse, different backgrounds, different upbringings, different languages, whatever it is, they come with a different view. And that's, well, what are you thinking? You know, wow, it's different than me. How that's interesting. Say more about that. If I can get them talking like that, man, good decision making. I had never even thought of it that way. You know what I mean? McKinlay Otterson: Right. But there's not gonna be that desire to even communicate like that if you're really annoyed. Gary Peterson: That's right. That's right. I'm not talking to you. And now, oh, there's a problem here, but I I can't talk to you about it because we're not speaking. Yeah. Yeah. You know? So Yeah. I think it's a big deal. McKinlay Otterson: How do you, as the leader, actually ensure that people are working in this way? Gary Peterson: In the terms of this coaching. I say to everybody, this is what you need to do. This is what you're going to do. And then I go do something else for a month. And I come back and two people have done it, which is probably your normal. Eighteen people have not done it. Mhmm. Because they were just waiting to see if it was really gonna be a thing. And when I never asked about it for a month, they just let it slip. But now I try to say, look, I really want you to do it this next month. It is harder to get it going. It is much less effort to say to everybody, look, you're gonna coach at least once a month, preferably every two weeks with everybody for thirty to sixty minutes. And then to come back two days later, circle around with everybody. You have twenty people, so you you should have already done two. How's that coming? McKinlay Otterson: Right. Gary Peterson: And then the ones who haven't done any circle back the next day. It sounds like a lot, but it it is a whole lot less effort than wait till the end of the month and trying to get it all Yeah. Going again. I think momentum Yeah. Is the most important thing. Once you start doing something, if it's really right, you gotta stick with it. McKinlay Otterson: Did this momentum get picked up by other people in the organization? Because I'm just thinking that this is way more than just one person can do. Gary Peterson: I found rather than trying to change the whole organization at once, it was better to go to a a group that was interested Yeah. And willing and who I could work with Gary Peterson: Start to do excellent things, and other people are like, that looks good. McKinlay Otterson: They're excited. Gary Peterson: Tell me about that. Yeah. You wanna do that? I can get them involved. And you're always gonna have your outliers, the cave dwellers. And I spent too much time in the early days trying to convince the cave dwellers to to get on the boat. I was in a big insurance company, Audi's, helping them with some of their continuous improvement ideas. And I was in a customer service huddle. There were about twenty some odd people, seventeen of them fully engaged. The manager or supervisor, I don't know who it was, was up there talking. Everyone was like, Yeah. And then there were three people at the back with their arms folded and they were grumpy and they were just like scowling. And I just kept looking at them because they were so different than the seventeen. Right. And the manager came down to me afterwards. I am sorry. I noticed you saw my three I said, no. No. Sorry. I I'm fascinated by them. They've lost. They used to control the narrative. They used to be the ones who, oh, come on. Everybody, yeah, what she says. And and they can't figure out how they lost it. How did this slip away from me? And now all of a sudden, there's seventeen people who don't care what they think. Yeah. They really only have two options at this point. They can either get on board, or they can go work for some other company who is fine with the scowling and the growling. Now I do think it's totally legit after that huddle to go to them individually and say, how are you doing? Do you want in? Can I get you in? How can I help you in? McKinlay Otterson: Right. Give them an invitation. Yeah. Gary Peterson: I think you gotta keep inviting. Then they get to choose. You know, I don't want in. And, the people who don't want in to something like that, I worry there's something wrong in their life. They need someone to pay attention to them and to show that they're interested in what's going on. Right. Sometimes they're not in a position to talk about it. You know, that's fair. Life's tough. But where you gotta spend time is these people who are like, let's try it. Yeah. Let's do it. I McKinlay Otterson: Love it. Gary Peterson: You know, let's talk about it. Because they build momentum and they attract people. McKinlay Otterson: Big changes do not happen because everybody gets on board right away. Those big changes happen from the work of a small group of highly influential people who create energy around the change, which invites people in, builds more momentum, and gradually invites more and more people into that process. But an important component of momentum is making sure that the right things are in motion. At the Arbinger Institute, we talk about that as measuring our impact and adjusting our efforts based on the impact we're having. Because without those elements of measuring and adjusting, it's really hard to innovate. So Gary talks about this in context of why it's important to have those consistent check ins while you're in the process of facilitating change. Gary Peterson: If you're not there and present and something's going wrong, like the instruction I've given isn't quite right. McKinlay Otterson: Okay. Gary Peterson: Alright. So it's it's it's not it's not hitting on all cylinders. It's a little bit uncomfortable. If I'm not right there, I can't see that. I can't hear that. People can't talk about it. We can't adjust it. McKinlay Otterson: Right. Gary Peterson: Instead, I leave them all month to struggle with this idea that really wasn't fully formed and wasn't really thought through. Mhmm. So if you really believe in continuous improvement, you've gotta be willing to put something out there, and then the next day challenge it. Is that as best we can do? What did you find when you tried to apply it that is better than what I told you? Yeah. You know, hey, everybody. She said let's listen to this. This is what she learned yesterday. What do you think? You know, everyone's talking. Yeah. I found that too. Should we do that? You know, that's part of the momentum building. It's it's you gotta be in it if you really care about it. McKinlay Otterson: Mhmm. Have there been setbacks? Have there been things that are like, oh, we shouldn't have done it this way, or this has made things harder? Gary Peterson: Yeah. There have been a ton of setbacks. We made so many mistakes, so many errors. But, you know, I think that it also gave us a ton of growth. I made a huge mistake one time. I was in a tough spot. I ended up hurting a woman who was trying to challenge what we were doing, and I was too scared to acknowledge. And, in the end, I had to apologize. And she wouldn't make herself available to me. So when I apologized, I was really apologizing to her whole department. And the only thing that made sense by way of excuse was, I don't know what I'm doing. Mhmm. So here here I fought her initially because I felt vulnerable, and the only way out was to make myself more vulnerable. McKinlay Otterson: Yeah. Gary Peterson: I mean, I tried for days, literally for days to come up with a way to say it where I didn't become more vulnerable, and it just it wasn't real. It wasn't the truth. It didn't make any sense why I would behave the way I did if that was really the reason. You know? Yeah. So I go in there. I make myself completely vulnerable to these, people, and I thought blood in the water. You know, I was waiting for the pitchforks and torches, you know, to come and give me. And instead, the two most powerful team members on that team came to my office and they said, Hey, so I'm listening to you describe this problem you're trying to solve. What if And they came up with a possible solution. This was a couple years into our journey. And it was quite honestly the first time that people had tried to just, let me tell you what I think we should do. It was the first time. And, I said, well, are there people that you're working with who would like to try to help you implement that? Yeah, there were like five of them. Well, do you guys want to try it? And they went and did it. It didn't work. So they tried something else. And what are you guys doing? It was like an atomic explosion in the sense that everyone's seen, and everyone starts picking stuff up and running with stuff. Why? Because turns out Gary doesn't know what he's doing. McKinlay Otterson: So we might actually be able contribute here. Gary Peterson: Maybe maybe we ought to get involved. And, what I taught was I taught principles that we're trying to follow. What I didn't know how to do was how to actually apply, how to make the principle work. Me making myself vulnerable was the beginning of everybody taking ownership. And it spread like wildfire. And of course, a lot of preparation. It probably wouldn't have worked if I had done that three years earlier. Right. But now we've gotten to a critical place where we had solved a lot of other issues, we had taught a lot of problem solving methodologies, we built a lot of things, and the people were ready to take off. I think mistakes became a big part of what drove us to becoming better. McKinlay Otterson: Yeah. Though they maybe were setbacks initially, but then they actually helped the momentum. Gary Peterson: Yeah. I think so. McKinlay Otterson: It's so cool to learn about how all of this started and how mistakes were actually the origin of their change because you see a company like OC Tanner and you think, we will never get there. But they've been at this for a while. So for me, hearing how all of it started helps me remember that as rare as their culture is, it isn't impossible. You can replicate this. Gary Peterson: So everyone who comes in here on a tour, I have a timeline of all the things we've done over the last thirty years. Cool. And now seven years in, there's the arbiter training. And I say to them, you know, are you familiar with this? Howard mindset, leadership self deception, you know, and some people and there's usually a few people like, I know what you're talking about. And I said, this makes a big difference because people just know I'm supposed to treat people the right way. I'm supposed to see people the right way. And, man, it just makes everything easy. McKinlay Otterson: Leading Outward is produced by the Arbinger Institute. To have a conversation about how we can equip you to transform your leaders and organization, schedule a complimentary strategy session at arbinger dot com. And whatever came to mind for you while you were listening, a conversation you've been putting off or feedback that needs to be shared, action you need to take, don't wait. Take that action because that's how change starts.