Episode Three - High-Performing Toxic Cultures vs. Low-Performing Healthy Ones: Navigating Nepotism, Politics, and the Importance of Values in Hiring

In this conversation, Katie and Mary discuss the concept of performance and culture in the workplace. They explore the different types of cultures, including high-performing toxic cultures, low-performing healthy cultures, and high-performing healthy cultures. They also touch on the importance of self-knowledge and finding a work environment that aligns with one's values and goals. In this part of the conversation, Katie and Mary discuss the importance of establishing values and cultural fit in the hiring process. They also touch on the challenges of nepotism and politics in organizations. They emphasize the need for accountability and responsibility in a high-performing culture. They conclude the conversation by discussing the importance of evaluating one's own values and priorities when considering a work environment.

Takeaways

• High-performing cultures can be vague and often lack clear definitions.
• Toxic cultures may prioritize revenue and attract politically savvy individuals, but they can be detrimental to mental and physical health.
• Low-performing healthy cultures, like Dunder Mifflin from The Office, can provide a comfortable and enjoyable work environment.
• High-performing healthy cultures are innovative and competitive, but they may not be suitable for everyone.
• Finding a work environment that aligns with one's values and goals is crucial for long-term satisfaction and success. Establishing values and cultural fit is crucial in the hiring process
• Nepotism and politics can be challenges in organizations
• Accountability and responsibility are key in a high-performing culture
• Evaluate your own values and priorities when considering a work environment

Keywords
performance, culture, workplace, high-performing, toxic, healthy, self-knowledge, values, values, cultural fit, hiring process, soft skills, nepotism, politics, high-performing culture, accountability, responsibility

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 8:00 High-Performing Toxic Cultures
• 11:00 High-Performing Healthy Cultures
• 18:00 The Importance of Self-Knowledge
• 19:00 Establishing Values and Cultural Fit in Hiring
• 21:00 Navigating Nepotism and Politics in Organizations
• 22:00 Accountability and Responsibility in a High-Performing Culture
• 23:00 Evaluating Your Values and Priorities in the Workplace

Transcript

Katie (00:02.986)
All right, so welcome. I'm Katie Bickford.

Mary (00:06.81)
And I'm Mary Schaub.

Katie (00:08.986)
We are the business psychos So this is where oh my gosh. I have the wrong thing here

Mary (00:22.043)
performance and culture.

Katie (00:26.738)
I'm after...

Mary (00:28.626)
You want me to find the drop box?

Katie (00:31.506)
No, I actually have a reworked script. You know what I'm gonna do? I'm actually gonna keep in this and I'm just gonna cut this whole thing.

Mary (00:33.979)
Yeah, that's what I do.

Mary (00:38.81)
Yeah, of course.

Take it from the top.

Katie (09:41.93)
,I'm Katie Bickford. And we are the business psychos. So these are candid conversations out in the open about the promise, possibility, and privilege of professional life, while also managing the sometimes

Mary (09:54.598)
and I'm Mary Schaub.

Katie (10:11.334)
Well, oftentimes dehumanizing downsides. This is where we're either making it work, making a plan and, or we're having a laugh. So this is our third episode and I am loving this. As friends, yeah, as friends, we have this connection, but it has been amazing to find how complimentary we are working together.

Mary (10:28.894)
Woo hoo! Loving it.

Katie (10:41.422)
And Mary, you are a masterclass in operational excellence and strategy. So, you know, on a scale of one to 10, it's, you know, it's like, it's a, it's a wow. So, so, so how are you?

Mary (10:52.69)
Thank you.

Mary (10:56.898)
I'm good, I also am just, I'm loving this process. There's lots to learn, I'm enjoying it. I love talking to you, I love talking about the kinds of things that we're sharing here. So it's all good. Personally, I went, I took myself, my partner and I went out for a night in New York City last weekend. We went to see a comedy show. I'm a big fan of standup comedy. My favorite, one of my favorite comedians is Anthony Jesselnik.

sure if you know him or if our audience knows him but it was a great show I highly recommend it and you know Katie it's nice to get out still a little bit after the COVID times it's super easy to stay at home Netflix has everything you want to see or some streaming service has something you want to see it's nice to get out with humanity see something live

Katie (11:45.234)
Yeah, that is fun. Where did you see him?

Mary (11:47.694)
at the Beacon Theater in New York City.

Katie (11:50.09)
Yeah, when I was in New York, I loved going to Comedy Cellar.

Mary (11:57.782)
Oh yeah, and a lot of good comics will just turn up. You just have no idea.

Katie (12:03.346)
It was magic. So yeah, it was, and Aziz Ansari was the one that was the most memorable to me at the time, but yeah, just the magic of that. So, and it's so exciting because it's like being starstruck. If you're a comedy fan being down there, eating your piece of frozen cheesecake for $23 is a real, yeah, a real great, great ride there, but well, you know, so my new hobby.

Mary (12:22.874)
two drink minimums and yeah.

Katie (12:30.318)
is your cross to bear. You know, my new hobby is making memes, which has meant your burden is receiving an onslaught of memes.

Mary (12:34.994)
Ha ha!

Mary (12:38.878)
They are amazing. You are so funny and creative. And they just like, I mean, it is a new art form. It is a thing. And you are just tapped into the zeitgeist with them. They make me laugh all the time. And our audience is loving them already. We're already starting to send them out of our socials.

Katie (12:53.934)
That makes me incredibly happy. Indeed.

Mary (12:59.742)
So today, Katie, we're gonna talk about performance and culture. There's no shortage of cute articles about high performing cultures. It's something that's spoken about out there a lot. And this is an example of a topic where I wonder to myself, if people are saying what they mean and meaning what they say. And I'm not trying to talk in riddles here. I just am genuinely often confused and

sort of strike that. And I'm not trying to talk in riddles here. I just find a lot of what is written on this topic to be very vague.

Katie (13:40.794)
Yeah, like high performing in air quotes is it's a safe notion to hang your hat on because at face value it means nothing. It's one of those professional beige spaces where you can say something that postures as elite while you're saying nothing. And you know, in performing is relative to standards. And you know, for that matter, who's going to disagree with you?

on a statement about the importance of a high performing culture. I mean, what's the position I'm pro low performing culture, you know, and, and like, what does like, and what does high performance even mean, you know, any dynamism and description have been banged out of it, leaving a, you know, beige husk of corporate speak.

Mary (14:12.71)
Right, yeah, absolutely.

Mary (14:28.006)
I love it. And everyone is, everyone's co-opting it, right? Like everyone's recycling it through LinkedIn. And then in companies, everyone has their thumb on it. So you have your strategy folks, your marketing and comms people, and of course HR and whoever's engaged with your employees. But what are we really talking about when we say high performing? And should employees even care? When we come back, we're gonna unpack it here on Business Psychos.

Mary (15:00.826)
Okay.

Katie (15:01.612)
Okay, fade back in.

Mary (15:04.082)
Today on Business Psychos, we're discussing performance and culture and whether you should care about it. Katie, this is a fun one.

Katie (15:12.222)
Yeah, the perfect topic for our no spin zone.

Mary (15:17.266)
Well, maybe we should start with a definition. I wasn't surprised that there are quite a few definitions online, most of them vague. The gist being, and I'm gonna read here, a high performing culture is where employees perform well because they are engaged, valued, and continually learning. This gives their work a greater purpose, instilling in a continuous improvement mindset and a dedication to the organization's mission.

Blah, blah, blah. Katie, what do you think?

Katie (15:50.014)
Yeah, I'm hearing the corporate beige talk track and, you know, what we were talking about producing, you know, like, what are we talking about producing when we're talking about being productive? You know, are we talking about producing income products and services for the market? Are we talking about fulfillment of human potential?

Mary (15:54.078)
Hahaha!

Mary (16:13.826)
I mean, I agree, I don't love this definition. I would even argue that there are plenty of places where employees perform well regardless of their engagement or whether they're continuously learning for that matter. I think greater purpose, again, the air quotes is vague. And I don't think dedication to an organization's mission is necessarily critical for every role either. And to be honest, many organizations struggle to link their mission to most or many of the roles.

So what are we really talking about here? I mean, senior execs want people to perform well consistently, meaning in terms of productivity and the quality of work. They want people ultimately who are gonna take personal responsibility for the company exceeding its objectives. Well, it's obviously, sorry. Well, it's obvious why an organization would want that.

Katie (17:08.386)
Yeah, I have so I have a lot of pride that I mask under nonchalance pride in the results that occurred under my tenure, but

You know, there's, there's great work that receives no market validation and vice versa. And this gets back to recognizing the game we're playing in professional life. So factors outside of our control shape our destiny. So timing for a product or service, you know, positioning of the product or service relative to other available offerings. You've got macro market conditions, luck.

or to as a catch all for all the other factors and other talented people or the lack of them, you know, in the contrary version of this. But so the constructive focus here is to consider that we pick companies if we can that are doing something interesting where there's a large addressable market and where there are other smart people, preferably smarter than we are. And

just get smart about how we position ourselves. Stop taking it personally, play the game, read the room. When I started out in my career, there was this guy and I'm gonna rename him, I'm gonna call him Paul Papadopoulos. Yeah.

Mary (18:45.007)
There's a real Paul Papadopoulos out there. This is not you. There's going to be someone out there.

Katie (18:47.602)
Yeah, please. I've never, I've never, yeah. But there was this guy and I remember that we would go to, you know, we didn't see, I didn't see him a lot. Like he was probably regional, uh, is, you know, in, in a pier, but a regional pier. This was very, very large company. And I was working and working and working and, you know, every single second of the day working.

And, you know, I'd show up at these regional meetings and there'd be Paul Papadopoulos who would, you know, who would say like, listen, you only have to work two hours a day and he had all these principles. And so we'll call them the Paul Papadopoulos principles, which he said, look, you just, you kind of play where you can win. You've got to realize a lot of this job is just a lot is a bunch of fluff.

Mary (19:36.856)
Yeah.

Katie (19:46.206)
And so you don't do the fluff, you play the game well. And then when it would become his time to speak, he would get up and when it's time to present and be seen from leadership, he would present and he would stand up and he would just put on a show. Like he would just, I mean, just excellence in execution and working as a team and using strategy. And then he'd be kind of like, like give the big old wink.

Mary (20:12.242)
Hahaha

Katie (20:15.026)
And just, and like, and, and because he would bring, you know, us in our little inner circle in on the joke, it was, you know, you could kind of laugh about it. But at the time I remember finding it improbable. And honestly, I didn't learn the lesson for quite a long time because he kept doing really well. He kept performing really well. And he kept being recognized as somebody who was, um, you know, a great culture fit, a great representative.

a great representative of the culture. There are even outrageous times where it would be recommended to people who are working really hard in their territories to do a ride along with Papadopoulos. And they were absolutely exploding. But, you know, as you can imagine. But back to the thing about performance, you know, it's like a lot of this, a lot of this is there are factors that are outside of our control.

It's playing a game and also just as far as what we're talking about in this podcast is being really just constructive about the fact that these are dynamics that are crazy making for people if you get played by them. But what we're talking about is like, let's become aware of them and actually be better at playing them and choosing our battles and working effectively and constructively as possible. So.

You know, of course, so here I'm talking about factors that have to do with like, okay, this is the stuff that's outside of your control. So there's an aspect of performance for high performing people. Just give yourself a break to realize that great work can ultimately sometimes yield no actual like measurable output and vice versa. You know, I think that's one of the things you find in your career. But then of course, of course there's also the aspect that has to do with performance.

which is that, you know, the success involves bright people who are going to not just solve today's problems, but anticipate the challenges that are coming up, you know, in tomorrow and innovate ahead of competitors.

Mary (22:26.082)
And I think that hits on exactly what employers are looking for. I wonder whether employees should care whether a culture is high performing or not. And what does that feel like to be in a high performing culture? So let's take a culture which is so-called high performing but toxic, right? Because I think...

what something feels like, it's hard high performing how that feels. So like, let's look at that with this dimension of toxicness. Katie, you and I have both seen these types of companies before.

Katie (23:03.494)
Indeed. So in the high performing, like in a high performing toxic culture, these are usually places where revenue is the absolute focus. And these companies, they attract and they pay for not only smart people, but very politically savvy people. And so who know how to make money for the company.

and also know how to play the game. And these are highly competitive jobs. So like investment banking and sales, these jobs are demanding intellectually, emotionally, and physically, you know, late hours, colleagues that have sharp elbows, probably lots of competition, which keeps type A people on their toes and can you continuously producing. If you have the constitution for this kind of environment and you're smart enough to compete.

You know, I say, go for it. The money is great. And, you know, and, and you'll. The company, so the money is great. It's very likely that experience in terms of its hyper acceleration will really support your professional growth. But I think there's a lot of other considerations such as the impact on, you know, being, looking, looking out for the impact on physical deterioration.

There's a corrosive effect on of hedonism, replacing joy, and other things like killing off the quality of connections and relationships because these environments, they tend to be like hyper masculine, very intense, and they can be really fun. They can be. They can be scary.

And also incredibly rewarding and exciting. So.

Mary (25:01.598)
Absolutely. I have found these places might refer to their culture as work hard, play hard. They often say that in the interview process, which is very attractive to type A talent. They love the prestigious name, the salary. I'm thinking of Oliver Stone's movie Wall Street as an example here. In my mind, these places are great when you're starting out in your career. They're going to encourage continuous learning because it's pretty much required to compete in these places.

Katie (25:22.107)
Yeah.

Mary (25:31.538)
You'll be surrounded by a lot of the super smart people. And if you're lucky, you might find yourself in an apprenticeship type role with a senior leader who takes you under their wing. And if you're smart, self-driven and can tolerate challenging environments, I think this is a great place to work, at least for a little while. In my experience, at some point in your life, you may start to evaluate whether the trade-offs are worth it anymore.

Maybe you wanna start a family in the long hours and travel conflict with that, or the stress and its effect on your physical and mental health aren't sustainable. Or frankly, you might just get burned by the toxic side of things, like Bud Fox, the character in the movie, Wall Street, and just flame out.

Katie (26:17.621)
Yeah.

Yeah, I say have an exit strategy long in advance because the odds are you'll reach a point where the trade-offs no longer work for you anymore. And, you know, I had.

I had a high flying, uber wealthy mentor. Like I'm kind of, I'm like sort of think Gordon Gekko. I wish I really, I really want to, I really wish I could offer more color commentary because it's really satisfying for this anecdote. But, you know, so this mentor took an interest in me and I remember we had this

sit down, we'd had actually we'd had a dinner and we had a moment, this was somebody who didn't really like kind of do a lot of mentorship, so there was this kind of sense of gravity that he was taking time and they're like very strong Chuck Norris vibes by the way not a lot of like emotional quotient, very intense. And I remember we had this moment where we're sitting at the dinner

Mary (27:26.054)
Hehe.

Katie (27:31.638)
And he's like, listen.

I've got something he's like, listen, he didn't even sit like qualified. It's just like, listen. And it was like the clouds part, you know, it's like, okay, you know, where it's, you know, if I were a meme, I'd be like a cat, you know, with a notepad waiting. And, and he said to me with like the greater, this extraordinary amount of gravity, he looks at me straight in the eye and he says, you can never have enough money.

Mary (27:45.81)
Hahaha.

Mary (28:01.458)
Wow.

Katie (28:02.562)
And here was somebody, and this is where the details would make the story a lot more satisfying. So there's that. But I remember in that moment.

How I presented was, yeah, I was like, right, right. But inside, it was a moment of reckoning because I thought, uh-oh, like, this is a bridge to nowhere. If this is somebody who doesn't have enough money and still believes that they still need to be making money, I'm like, this is this thing that never satisfies itself and has an endless appetite that will just consume your life. So.

you know, the thing about like performance in these high performing, high grind environments, it's like, that's the bridge is this like, it's never enough and it never ends and you're always gonna wanna keep getting more. So, you know, so with that said, you know, let's, you know, I think we've covered the topic of these high performing toxic cultures, at least for this episode. So now with that in mind, you know, if it's toxic,

Let's consider like if it's toxic and low performing, then I think we're both of the position that, you know, it's like a stay away. And I can't imagine anyone listening to this podcast is like vibing in this type of environment, but let's discuss it anyway.

Mary (29:26.766)
Yeah, I mean, unless you're masochistic, in my mind, this is like the fictitious company Waystar in the amazing show, Succession. So many great scenes in that show and a lot of absurdly stupid decisions. It felt to me like a lot of the characters in the show were almost playing work, especially the Nepo babies and their hangers-on, like the great character Cousin Greg and Tom Whomgans.

Katie (29:52.366)
Oh my god. Cousin Greg. Oh my god. Yeah.

Mary (29:54.746)
It's an environment which values political acumen, specifically how to stay in the good graces of psychopath Logan Roy and his power deputies. Now I do think Logan was smart, but I'd argue he valued loyalty over intelligence because he used everyone, including his own children, and his Machiavellian plans. For me, these are the most dangerous places to work. Even if the money is good, they're likely to burn you out at some point.

Think Shakespearean tragedy with everyone playing the part of both villain and victim at some point. Okay, we've covered high-performing healthy and high-performing toxic. When we come back, we're going to talk about performance in healthy environments. I think I have to fix my shade. Hopefully I don't have to re-record.

Katie (30:40.739)
Okay.

Mary (31:04.366)
Okay, hopefully I don't have to, that's not too terrible.

Katie (31:07.631)
Do you want to record anything?

Mary (31:09.966)
Um, do you want to just read it, like just read it and then do you cut, is it always side by side or I'm saying, do you want me to like, just read my bits really fast? Because it's just really, you were fine, but it's just like the sun was coming on, whatever you think is, if it's helpful to have it.

Katie (31:27.594)
Yeah, I can cut. I can cut like bits in so you can be responding to things. I've already said.

Mary (31:33.218)
Okay, so let me just read starting from these places might refer to their cultures as work hard, play hard. And I'm just going to read it and then break.

Katie (31:44.034)
Yep.

All right, let me just find it. There it is.

Katie (31:51.882)
Yep, I'm ready.

Mary (31:54.254)
right, these places might refer to their cultures as work hard, play hard, which attracts type A talent who will love the prestigious name and salary. I'm thinking of Oliver Stone's movie, Wall Street as an example. In my mind, these places are great when you're starting out in your career. They encourage continuous learning because it's pretty much required to compete in these places. You'll be surrounded by a lot of super smart people. And if you're lucky, you might find yourself in an apprenticeship type role.

with a senior leader who takes you under their wing. If you're smart, self-driven, and can tolerate challenging environments, this is a place to work, at least for a little while. At some point in your life, in my experience, you're gonna start to feel the need, I'm gonna change that. At some point in your life, you're likely to feel the trade-offs don't serve you anymore. Maybe you wanna start a family, and the long hours and travel conflict with that.

where the stress and its effect on your physical and mental health aren't sustainable. Or frankly, you just get burned by the toxic side of things like Bud Fox in the movie, Wall Street.

Mary (33:07.602)
Definitely. I'm thinking about the fictitious company Waystar and the amazing show's succession. So many great scenes in that show and a lot of absurdly stupid decisions. It felt to me like a lot of the characters in that show were playing work, especially the Nepo babies and their hangers-on, like the great character, Cousin Greg and Tom Whomgans. It's an environment which values political acumen, specifically...

how to stay in the good graces of psychopath Logan Roy and his power deputies. Now, I do think Logan was smart, but I'd argue he valued loyalty over intelligence because he used everyone, including his own children and his Machiavellian plans. For me, these are the most dangerous places to work. Even if the money is good, they're likely to burn you out at some point. Think.

Shakespearean tragedy with everyone playing the part of both villain and victim at some point. Okay, we've covered high-performing healthy and high-performing toxic. When we come back, we're going to talk about performance in healthy environments.

Katie (34:21.882)
I love that I'm able to watch that.

Mary (34:25.644)
It'll be a meme. It'll be a meme. It'll be somewhere out there.

Katie (34:25.738)
At least once. At least once that ne-n

Katie (34:35.042)
So we are back talking about cultures and performances and why employees should care. We've covered performance in high and low performing toxic cultures. Now, we're going to talk about performance in healthy environments. So by healthy, we mean no or minimal politics of backstabbing, abuse and mental stress. I mean, one thing I would say is I don't know that there's any

environment that lacks some of the dynamics that have to do with putting a bunch of people together. But what we're talking about are environments where we have a minimal amount of this and that people tend to actually care about each other. So, Mary, what do you think about a healthy environment which is also low performing?

Mary (35:30.418)
Dunder Mifflin, The Office. It's a great example here. My opinion and to note, please, I love the show and I love all the characters, but they are mediocre people doing mediocre jobs at a mediocre company. And I love that it's a paper company in an increasingly digital world and no one until the very end of the series talks about that or is particularly worried about it.

Katie (35:58.077)
I love how work isn't central to the plot. It's the interpersonal politics, but everyone, everyone on the show is doing okay and getting along for the most part.

Mary (36:10.542)
It's a comfortable place to work. No one's stretching themselves here. They have fun and generally like each other. I've worked at a Dunder Mifflin before. Everyone lives locally and hangs out after work. No one is making a ton of money or going anywhere. Your manager has probably been there in their role for about 15 years and their boss has been in their job for probably 15 years. You see long tenures and limited growth potential which makes everyone feel safe.

Nothing revolutionary is happening here, and that's okay. You work with people you like, you aren't challenged, but you aren't stressed either. And you know what? If the pay enables you to live the life you want, this is a great option, no shame. Maybe you're Pam, who's happy to be a receptionist at Dunder Mifflin because she can spend most of her day practicing her art, which is her real passion. Or you're Dwight and you own a local beet farm.

and the paper job helps pay the bills and gets you out of the house.

Katie (37:12.71)
Yeah, disillusionment with high performing and toxic environments has resulted in low pressure and zero growth cultures like Dunder Mifflin having more appeal to the younger generations like Gen Z. And even to like, even to a certain extent, some millennials, you know, about five years ago, I'd been working in high growth, really high pressure, intense

tech environments for maybe 15 years or so, after I'd spent time in corporate, I'd moved over to tech. And I have this memory of about maybe, it might be longer than five years ago, where I overheard someone say, I think I'm done with working in startups and growth companies, and I wanna work for a huge, I wanna work for a huge corporation where I'm just a number.

I remember this because working in tech had been this holy grail with the promise of the glory of lucrative exits, rationalizing extraordinarily punishing hours and pressure. It's another episode where we discuss the dilution of equity caused by VC funding and the perplexing lack of understanding employees have about this as they work themselves to burn out. But that's another episode. But Gen Z.

Gen Z haven't bought into the hustle culture like Boomers and Gen X did. And in general, the younger generations are valuing their time and mental health right at the beginning of their careers. They decided the hustling and grinding for the big paycheck wasn't worth it. I think it's great that they've already figured this out.

Mary (39:03.346)
Absolutely, self-knowledge is key. And we'll come back to that a little bit later. But I first wanna talk about high-performing and healthy. This is the employer we all say we wanna work for and what every company says it is. So I'm imagining the fictitious Stark Industries, Ironman Stark Industries here. These companies are gonna be highly innovative. They may even be disruptors.

They proactively compete for top talent and have data-driven incentive and reward programs aligned to their strategic metrics. So Katie, is this the holy grail of workplaces? Is this the kind of place everyone should try to get hired into?

Katie (39:46.971)
Well, look, to continue with your analogy, you're definitely not if you're a Dwight or a cousin Greg, which by the way has any entertainment ever captured that persona as accurately as secession did. It's so satisfying.

Mary (40:04.37)
because I almost want to do a podcast just on succession. We're going to continue to bring that example into the show because it's just brilliant.

Katie (40:14.19)
And the fact that he had Guile, but he was also, I mean, it was extraordinarily put. But like, so Dwight or cousin Greg, they wouldn't get past, in these environments that we're talking about, they wouldn't get hired, but let's talk about it. Would they want to work there? And I would say they do not want to work there. Maybe they would like the idea of working there.

but actually doing the job in that type of culture where there is accountability and responsibility that are highly valued. And politics are not tolerated or not the operating principles of the organization, not so much fun for a highly political people. And there are highly political people. Healthy cultures have healthy relationships with hierarchy and some folks don't like this.

Some folks want the power, but not the accountability and responsibility. And then I would say there's another facet here of disparities within a single organization when it comes to culture and standards. So if your standards as a leader for your organization are different than the surrounding organization, as a leader, you act as a retaining wall against

hostile forces and this is not a sustainable way to operate. So you know, keeping with the Dwight's, you know, keeping, you know, keeping and also, also I'll say as far as creating these types of cultures, you mentioned standards and it's really important to establish standards that are, that you're, that are clearly

invested in terms of articulating and creating rubrics around where they're defined values that are upheld across the board. So this has to do with hiring people and establishing what your cultural rubric is. Otherwise, a great culture can become a monoculture. So sometimes what you get is you just get a culture repeating itself, a great culture, and then it winds up losing its dynamism.

Katie (42:32.178)
So when you establish the values, like say curiosity, and then you test for that in the interview process, like your testing, like what are the actual soft skills, the cultural skills that you want to, you know, teamwork, you know, putting the organization over the individual, whatever it is, that you're establishing what those things are. And so when we're hiring people, we're looking at the skills,

separately, and then we're assessing the culture, but not in terms of this thing of like, it's a culture fit because that's where a lot of bias hides. Because it's just like, these are the people that, uh, you know, that we're comfortable with that wind up being culture fits for us. And I will say having been a scene, having been a sales leader, um, in an organization that is typically, you know, you want to talk about NEPO babies. Uh, you know, when.

the, you know, when the CEO is, uh, you know, on, on vacation and meet someone that they just like, or they have, or they're someone in their family that really needs a job, uh, you know, sales being considered the, you know, kind of the lowest, you know, hard skill, uh, you know, facet of an organization. I can tell you that I have been on the front lines of fending off those types of situations.

and then keeping nepos out of the organization. But also, but there's also the part of, you know, sales, being a place where if you have someone who is, you know, has some kind of elite credentials or like political alignments that is not working in their given department, sales is absolutely the place.

where they try to push that person to avoid having to manage them out and take the fall for whatever's going to happen for creating any bad blood with this person. So yeah, as far as nepo babies and politics are concerned, I just have to give a shout out for having won some and lost some in the great war against unmerited nepotism and actually caveat, which will get cut, is I've also hired some nepos that wound up being really great.

Mary (44:32.23)
Hahaha

Mary (44:56.37)
Hehehe

Katie (44:57.994)
So we've got that. So, but yeah, so look, you know, so as far as the, you know, like a high performing culture and who wants to, who fits in it, it's that, you know, the standards are high, but probably one of the most important things is the relationship with accountability and responsibility. And that I think in a healthy culture, one of the things is that everyone is.

really eager to do their part in that and they're less interested in the politics to the extent as possible in the organization. So yeah, that's all I've got for that.

Mary (45:37.458)
When we come back, we're going to wrap up and offer our closing thoughts on performance and culture.

Katie (45:47.39)
I'm glad we talked about high performing cultures from an employee perspective today. It feels like it's often assumed that everyone should aspire to work in these places and that's not necessarily true.

Mary (46:00.134)
Yes, and also including the toxic to healthy dimensionality, I think is a key part of the puzzle because there are trade-offs. The saying nature of the beast comes to mind here.

Katie (46:12.526)
Yeah. You need to, you need to do your research to figure out what kind of performance culture or your organization may be and determine if it's a match for your values and priorities. And once again, to the point that Mary's brought up is that there's no shame in this, it's really a professional success is so tied to aligning yourself appropriately with the situations and the environments that you're into the best of your ability.

And so even low performing toxic cultures have people that fit in there. No judgment. Like, no judgment.

Mary (46:45.83)
And it's worth noting that cultures change too. When I was online researching this topic, I tried to find real companies, which were known for being both healthy and high performing. A few well-known tech players came up. These were places which used to have reputations for being amazing places to work. Think free food, unlimited vacation, bring your dog to work. But over the years they've grown and their cultures have evolved.

For example, one tech company on the list used to have a reputation for being a great place to work, but now is being called out for their dehumanizing way of firing people by email.

Katie (47:21.906)
Yeah, and as times change, I think the what is tolerated is also something that is, you know, an ever evolving notion about what we believe is acceptable as far as you know, the standards of a working culture. But that's also another episode. So look, it's important to evaluate where you are in your life. That might mean the level of experience you have, but also the kind of trade offs you are willing to make.

So this might be working in high pressure situations, political environments, working long hours, and even weekends, but there will definitely be expectations from employees on travel and work in the office. And so know yourself first. What are your values when regarding, what are your values when negotiating, prioritizing title, money, lifestyle? I know for me,

that I prioritize money and some people prioritize title. So even learning how to actually to trade by asking and wanting all of it, but making concessions in the places that you care less about. Just a little freebie in there.

Mary (48:39.558)
Yeah, either you know yourself and then you commit and you stay firm to what you signed up for. So don't join Waystar and get upset that everyone there is mean and horrible. And to be clear, I am not at all condoning this kind of corporate culture. My recommendation is to be honest and sign up for what you can cope with today and then reevaluate yourself and your employer over time because both are likely to change.

For example, I know some folks who are now empty nesters and they're now looking for jobs that do have travel and they want to be in the office because it suits them now that their kids are out of the house. So things change.

Katie (49:20.174)
Yeah, this was fun today.

Mary (49:23.218)
Culture is a great topic that I think we could talk all day about. I think we will come back to it again and again. It's a pretty key facet to the workplace.

Katie (49:32.662)
Well, we'll wrap up the show for today and remind you all to hit us up. We want to hear from you.

Mary (49:42.126)
If you liked what you heard today, please like, share, and subscribe. Bye for now.