The One With The Culture Shock Absorber - Eric Stone E219

How do you actually build a culture that sticks — one that survives chaos, grows talent, and actually gets results?

Eric Stone has spent nearly 30 years leading through culture. From building the “think tank” inside Enterprise Rent-A-Car to crafting his own hourglass framework, Eric takes us through real-world stories that show culture is more than posters and values. It’s behaviors in action.

CHAPTERS
0:00 Welcome Eric Stone
1:15 The family road trip that inspired a book
2:46 Culture isn’t a poster — it’s action
3:38 Building a real culture with the “think tank”
5:54 Trust starts at interview, not orientation
8:38 Johnny the Bagger and culture ripple effects
12:54 Seeing the real frontline experience
14:05 The Hourglass approach
16:12 First Class Lounge
18:54 Culture turnaround — what it really takes
24:28 Why execution depends on culture

Guest links:
📘 Book: ericdstone.com
💼 LinkedIn: Eric Stone
🎤 Speaking: clearpathventures.com

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I'm Rick Denton and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport.

Transcript

Eric Stone: 0:00

You must provide the right material, equipment and information in order to achieve the desired outcome. You must develop deep personal and professional relationships, and you must

Rick Denton: 0:10

customer experience wisdom, a dash of travel talk. We've been cleared for takeoff. The

CX Passport Band: 0:15

best meals are served outside and require passport

Rick Denton: 0:20

on the road again. Just Can't Wait. No, no, I'm not going to sing it, and I certainly do not have the budget for the rights to play it. So you'll just have to imagine. Today's guest is Eric stone, a leader in building high performance workplace cultures after nearly 30 years at one of North America's largest private companies, a company that helps others get on the road again, Eric chose a new mission, helping organizations transform their culture from the inside out. So why am I thinking and singing Willie Nelson songs? Eric's book, jumpstart your workplace culture takes readers on a road trip, guiding them to better leadership, creating workplaces where people, well, actually want to work that great dream of an unfettered, wide open road trip. Tank is full. Snacks are in the seat. Top is down. Eric, welcome to CX

Eric Stone: 1:15

passport. Rick, what a great opening. Pleasure to be here. I got to give you a funny story with your intro. When I first became a branch manager within the company I was with, they had you sing a song when you got promoted and and you know what my song was, I think I got a yes on the road again, but I made my own words to match my career trajectory at the time. What a small world. Pretty funny, brilliant. I love that. Well, let's, let's, let's just start right there. So if your book is built around this concept of a road trip, and I want to get into the meat of the book, but there has to have been something in your history that really inspired that. What's a great road trip that you've taken before? Why? Why did that theme really inspire the book's theme so interesting, so, so great road trip would only be what I always say is the most important thing, two words, family first, and it's a family road trip. We used to go to the Cape just Cape Cod in our old pop up camper called the Rockwood, I think, at the time, and the three of us would be in the backseat. This is in the days of the walk man, and you only had a certain set aside mount of space in a car, and you're elbowing everybody. So that's the road trip that always rings a bell for me. I really wanted something that would be easy to follow, a good metaphor. I always felt the story of culture is a journey, and it's a bit of a road trip. I felt that would be a good metaphor throughout the book that would help visualize and let people really follow and resonate points

Rick Denton: 2:46

for the journey that. And I like that and it it takes folks, you know, there's a beginning, there's an end. I hope that, and I know that inside the book there's a little more space than the, you know, we could carry, what, four or five cassettes, because that's about all you could fit inside of your little carrying case for your Walkman there in the back seat. I came to know some of those cassettes really well on some of those long trips. Yeah, in the book, it's obviously focused on culture. And culture is one of those things that it's this esoteric theme. It's discussed. It often is the kind of thing that is designed. It's created, it's thought about in the boardroom, but the actual living of it is on the front line. How can companies make sure they're creating something real, something that sticks, and not just another corporate initiative that goes on a poster on the wall?

Eric Stone: 3:38

I think a few keys. First of all, any initiative has to stick and stay, and you can't constantly recycle or you never get traction. We ended up developing something called the think tank, and what the think tank was was just a group of managers at the time of the brick and mortar stores at Enterprise rent a car, and they were nominated by their peers, because we wanted them to make sure that the right people are having a chance to voice in a conversation with myself and my HR partner. And so we would meet every other month, nominated by their peers. Two rules, got to be a top performers. You got to have polite disagreement. You can disagree, just don't be disagreeable all the time, right? And we would meet to really formulate where we wanted to go as a team. And I would say most of the initiatives, maybe it was 60, 70% of the ideas truly came from these select group of managers who would cycle in and out from a developmental standpoint, because I wanted to spend time with my leaders, and so that allows them to what I call be my culture carriers. So those are the individuals who really are going to get the message out from our strategic thinking in those meetings and what we really are trying to do. And in those meetings, it was all about, what are the three to five initiatives we are going to amplify the message all the time? What are we committed our non negotiables that we're not going to just recycle things constantly until it is. Mastered. And I think the think tank, the culture carriers the ability to take these three to five key priorities and ensure that it is reflective in our training modules. So whatever we really want to drive, we have to be coaching and developing our team to do

Rick Denton: 5:16

Hey there, CX Passport travelers. I want to let you know about CX Passport Live. CX Passport Live helps brands amplify their event's impact with the power of live in-person, podcasting. Brands partner with CX Passport Live at their on-site event to help excite attendees, reward high value customers and convert potential customers. Bring a new level of energy and excitement to your event and amplify your brand's impact with CX Passport Live. Learn more at cxpassportlive.com Now back to the show. There's a couple threads in there that I want to put when I'm thinking of this, this, this think tank, this, this culture carriers. There's I've been a part of ones that sure that that body existed, that structure existed, but the trust wasn't there, and so it still became a little bit of sort of this empty, vacuous discussion group that really wasn't contributing to advancing a real culture. And a lot of that came down to trust, how and what you're describing, either in your actual experiences or the ones that you've helped other companies design. Where does trust play into that? And how do you create a real, not verbal, but real sense of trust?

Eric Stone: 6:34

For me, it was all about, how do we create strong relationships from jump? So when I would get into a new role from day one, what am I doing to create this strong relationship? And that's where trust is built. I went out to the field and picked my spots to meet with as many people as I could, to just listen, observe and learn. That's the key to the trust part. I can't just come in like a wild man, and I'm not saying you couldn't be effective doing it. I didn't feel it was the right way to just start blasting things. You have to get that real feel from what's going on. So the biggest thing is, you just got to develop a relationship. Look at your interview process. How are relationships being built? Is it fast? Is it efficient? How when you make your what questions are they the right Are they fair questions when you make the offer, Rick, is it just you doing it, or do four people reach out to this individual and make a special relationship and welcome you to the team when onboarding begins? Is there a sought out Mentor Program? Is there a scavenger hunt that their goal is to reach out to five people who they can start to meet and greet outside of their four walls that they might have that goes into throughout every part of the employee journey. That's just the interview process. That's where it starts. Behaviors in action is my definition of culture. They've that's got to happen. I can't just list values. I've got to live them.

Rick Denton: 8:00

Yeah. Okay. You keep giving me new threads that I want to pull out here because you describe something that it is this embedding of trust. And I suspect it's not, hey, we are going to get people to trust us. Therefore we do. But rather, more just a well, like a culture, but you're describing the onboarding process, you're talking the interview process, you're talking about the training. These are all often different silos inside of an organization. What was consciously done to make sure that that thread wove through all of those silos, so that culture wasn't just something embedded inside of silo A versus C, but it was

Eric Stone: 8:38

all the way through. So let me use an example. When you talk about culture, there's a sales culture, there's a customer service culture, there's high performance culture, but let's just go with a customer service culture. So how do you get not only your accounting team and your sales team and whoever else is there, but the mid level manager to the brand new hire, to understand why customer service is important, and so what we did is we identified a video called Johnny the bagger. Johnny the Bagger was this young man who had Down syndrome, but really wanted to make a difference within his organization. And what he did is he made a decision that he would go home every night and write a thought of the day. No one told him to do this, write a thought of the day, sign it on the back. Thank you for shopping. Well, what ended up happening is, as he brought that and executed it into the everyday life of this grocery store, his line was three times as long as everyone else's, so much so that the store manager got nervous. Why? Mrs. Jones, what are you doing? Go to this line. They're trying to open up extra lines lanes. And what ended up happening is the customers are saying, That's okay, Rick, we're waiting for Johnny's thought of the day. But it didn't stop there. Then all of a sudden, the floral department decides they want to contribute a little bit, because they saw what Johnny did to transform some. Things, so they now take a broken flower, unused corsage, walk around the store, pin it on a young child or an elderly individual, and thank them for shopping. And so what ends up happening is everyone understands what's going on and tries to one up each other, and all of a sudden, the store was transformed. We found that video Rick, we were heading into one of our busiest times, we then said, Wow, that's great. We are going to run everybody new hires, three months, nine months, yearly, everyone's going to witness Johnny the Bagger, because one of our values within the company is customer service was our way of life. Well, okay, let's live that. Let's truly represent it. Step one, talk it into the onboarding and training so people understand what behavior is needed and how to execute being a Johnny the Bagger, because it's part of the training. We didn't stop there. We had a weekly meeting, and we would nominate at every brick and mortar store the most valuable player and who represented Johnny the bagger. So it became the Johnny the Bagger award. All those stories would get sent up eventually to my regional manager, who would make a decision to recognize that story to a bi monthly awards ceremony. We didn't stop there. We then put, are you representing Johnny the Bagger in the Customer Service section of every employee review, every department division, who led a division would try to get out to the field and recognize moments of Johnny the Bagger, why it was a critical component of the success of our region, that is intentionality. It is taking something, it is threading it. It's not going away. It's recognize the repetition of what you're describing that you said at the very beginning. Forget the exact phrasing, but the culture is something that needs to be stick and not switching around all the time. This Johnny the bag or whatever it is, the label is less important than the this is what we are going to do, and the values associated with this. Eric, you said something a little while ago that caught my ear, and it was the idea of, hey, I want to get out in the field and understand what's going out in the field. And that's an important part of understanding what the actual experience is like. I would imagine, though you as an employee and as a manager kind of know that sometimes when air quotes here, for those that are listening, the boss shows up, the daily experience is slightly different, or maybe massively different, than when the boss isn't there. How are you able to discern this is what the real frontline experience is, versus, hey, this is just what the experience is when management shows up. So I think there's a lot of things to go into that. I think it starts with whatever opportunity you have. Listen if this ex CEO of Starbucks can visit their stores a half a day, a month little old, Eric stone can can be able to do that. I actually noticed when I was in the field, I actually really listen if they're not doing it. When I'm there, guess what? Rick, they're never doing it. And so I actually was able to at least see them at their best, if that's what it was and or what wasn't happening and what reality presents. And so the ability to to get reality was really important, because sometimes a branch would say, or in any organization, a bank, you go there and you're like, you know what? Rick, you're right. You do need more people, instead of me blasting them saying, you don't need people go figure it out, you know? So, so it was really important step when I've got to find that magic cadence, and that's what each individual leader or manager will have to do. We would have what we would call the stay interview my HR team talk about no silos allowed. HR team would rotate and talk and do a stay interview for people to make sure. Are we living up to our commitment? Are we doing all those things we've promised? I would pick spots in training classes, where I get 30 people who come to our administrative building, and I pick up that spot to say, Rick, how you guys doing? What can we do better? What's the initiative you love? And so these are just some small little ways that you can stay active, find the role, use others, like a teammate of an HR, to really check the pulse of an organization. Those are a few simple things outside of surveys.

Rick Denton: 14:05

Eric, when we talked earlier, you mentioned something called the hourglass approach. Could you tell me a little bit more about that? How does that actually help companies create stronger cultures?

Eric Stone: 14:17

Well, for those on the video, you can see above my shoulder a image of an hourglass when you want a simple process. Images, visuals are really important. And one thing I found is number one, it's called an hourglass. Within the word hourglass is the word hour. So that is something conceptually that together, not an eyeglass, that I have an hourglass. Togetherness was an approach. Now within an hourglass at the top, you have what we'll call the discovery phase. This is as we opened with listening, observing and learning through stakeholders, customers, clients, employees, board members, whoever they are, you're pulling information through the hourglass, discovering just like a legal term. You discover you eventually, as an hourglass comes out, you're gather so much stuff that you're gathering, sometimes too much, but you're trying to take and orchestrate all of this information to synthesize into a plan that's right where the plan is right where the sand goes through the hourglass. Those are those three to five key initiatives that your organization is really going to hone in on and focus on, okay, you got those. It now bows out. So now you got to think of the bottom hourglass. Now coming out, reinforcement rollout reviews. Let's talk about this stuff all the time, so we don't have a flavor of the week. Eventually sand hits the floor. That's the assessment period, you're going to now assess what's going on with your organization. Two critical components, we've talked a little bit about. It your mission, vision and value. Think of one pillar on one side of the hourglass, policies and procedures on the other. Those are your guiding light to decision making and how things go. It's a nice shell, a nice visual. A three month employee can digest that as well as a 30 year

Rick Denton: 16:12

Erica road trip doesn't often have what we call first class lounges, although those of us in Texas might disagree with that sentiment, thinking that buckies actually is a first class lounge. If you haven't been to a Bucha, you need to make your way to one, because they're awesome. Today, however, I want to invite you to join the CX passport first class lounge. We will move quickly here and have a little bit of fun. What is a dream travel location from your past

Eric Stone: 16:36

family trip to Italy? Ooh, world you hit. We went from Rome down to Sorrento to the amafi coast. It was spectacular in every way. You'd

Rick Denton: 16:47

think, oh, boy, that's got me thinking about Italy right now. I need to get my Wait. I need to get my head straight for a second dream travel location you've not been to yet.

Eric Stone: 16:59

I would say a few I'd go Africa would be amazing. Throw Egypt, tuck that in to see the pyramids, would be really cool too.

Rick Denton: 17:07

I like that is that on the horizon, Eric, anything, kind of really say

Eric Stone: 17:11

maybe a year or two out, I've got to still arm wrestle with my wife to feel safe traveling to destinations.

Rick Denton: 17:20

Well, having been to the only part of Africa I've been to is Egypt. And granted, it was a work trip, but it was spectacular. I would strongly encourage get there as soon as you possibly could. You mentioned Italy, and the reason why I got distracted is because when I think Italy, I think the beauty of Tuscany, and I think of food. What is a favorite thing of yours to eat?

Eric Stone: 17:41

Oh, that's such a hard cause. Like, there's so many. If I had to pick one, though, we got a state of the road right here. So if I had to pick one, my favorite would probably be lobster.

Rick Denton: 17:51

Ooh. And Spoken like a true New Englander, I didn't even mention that at the beginning, folks, Eric is coming to us from Massachusetts. So when you want to talk about access to good lobster, he's got the epicenter of it. What about the other direction? What is something you were forced to eat growing up, but you hated as a kid? Oh,

Eric Stone: 18:07

peas, that's an easy one. I was forced to eat peas, and had to do every trick in the book to hide it and tuck it into the napkin so my parents thought I was eating it. Oh,

Rick Denton: 18:19

I love how the difficulty of, oh, I don't know what to answer on the favorite food, but immediate. What were I forced peas? Bam, got it. Yeah, Eric, we're gonna have to leave the first class lounge. Our trip to buckies is ending. What is one travel item, not including your phone that you and not including your passport either, that you will not leave home without?

Eric Stone: 18:39

It'll probably tuck into the phone, but I got to have my charger because I can't have my phone not work. So I don't know if that's too easy.

Rick Denton: 18:54

We judges Yes, okay, yeah, we'll allow the charger. Eric back to the idea of culture, one of the things that it's one thing to come into a company and change it. It's another to startups get to build it from scratch. Those companies, though, that aren't a startup, a large company like you're describing, if they realize their culture is broken, how can a company go about a true, authentic turnaround? What does that culture turnaround really look like, oh,

Eric Stone: 19:23

I always talk about culture in the confines of either trying to grow your wealth or try to get in shape. And how do you do all the things slowly, it takes time. Especially Listen, when I had a team of four, I could move the needle and change culture fairly fast, especially a sales culture itself. When you're now leading hundreds or 1000s of individuals, it is like moving a battleship a little bit, and so it probably takes longer than many would like. I really honed in on, can we talk about the interview process and hiring process? How are we bringing in the best? Do we have the right questions? Who's interviewing me really sitting in on the interviews to make sure that that process is true, because you don't want to make too many hiring mistakes. So for me to turn I had to start with the hiring process. I'd also recommend to turn it quicker, you better look at your training process assessments of what's going on. Do the three to five key initiatives truly match what is being coached, guided and developed, but it's a long process. Those are just action items. I took from hiring to training field. Presence was gigantic, and I know it's hard for people. I had to truly digest, using the hourglass and all the stuff we've talked about, to try to truly understand what was going on within this culture, but those are some of the components I had in the book. It's actually in the final chapter is a six point inspection that helps you try to measure the health of your organization. Got it. I think that's really important to to not just take an engagement survey and live with that there is more to just engagement, even though it is a huge factor leading to business outcomes. But trying to configure, how do we check the health of our company and celebrate, as we all know, we were able to secure a couple early wins early to build that traction and snowball rolling down the hill? It starts with using your hourglass. Use an assessment approach. Look into some of these things. It will take longer than you may have liked

Rick Denton: 21:23

I I like that you started with the interview process as I think of my experience when I was in the corporate world, I don't know that I felt the even when I was a hiring manager, the most equipped to Even even interview. I wasn't necessarily given sort of a structure. Forget the structure. Part of it, some of that sounds HR, checkboxy, but more of hey, this is kind of the culture that we're looking for. It was very more functional, rather than cultural. Is my experience one that you see companies skewing towards, or is my experience one that is a little more unique, and if you're seeing companies skew more towards the the transactional over cultural interview, why is that, given how important it is to the actual culture existence inside of a company,

Eric Stone: 22:13

it's a great question. And you are not alone. And I wonder if it's because we become so overwhelmed with constant putting out fires. And we can't stick to the three to five initiatives where there's clarity, you know, and the organization can truly become the distraction catcher and synthesize things. But I, matter of fact, probably not legal, I don't know, but I have people tape the interview. Well, I get to do two things, what is this person delivering in an interview, and what I want to work for them. How does that individual respond to align with how can we continue to proceed? And I find wrong questions, wrong clarifying questions. They rush the process. They're not trying to get to know the candidate. It becomes functional, where it really was like, Wow, do they care deeply about who they bring aboard. I think it is something that every organization should really circle back to. I think they become overwhelmed with other things, and they forget the importance of,

Rick Denton: 23:13

yeah, certainly I felt that. And hearing what you're describing, I get it like to me, it's so intuitive. And yet, when you're in the midst of it, you're probably thinking about, how do I get done with this interview? Like you said, because I got a meeting that I got to make sure I get to

Eric Stone: 23:26

jump on that in the beginning. I can't tell you how many great employees I probably just didn't have the capacity to interview in my earlier stage. I probably did that halo effect, or horn effect, where you either fall in love with someone because they're a Red Sox fan, and I am too, and they say one small thing, and I put all my chips there, and they're through. And so I really learned so much through my reps.

Rick Denton: 23:50

It takes a lot of practice to try to develop that. Boy, that's so true. Let's, let's talk about reps. I promised an operations and execution discussion, because longtime listeners know I talk about that all the bloom in time. Culture is often viewed as this sort of softer. It's the right brain. It's, it's, it's fluffy, it's that sort of thing. And process, execution, operations, process are the hard facts and the nuts and bolts of things, but you've described multiple times where, look, culture doesn't happen without that operations and execution. How can a company's operations really impact its ability to deliver on a great culture? Yeah, it

Eric Stone: 24:28

really goes into symbiosis. So when you think of strategy and culture, you know, you the culture, to me, was, was the catalyst to executing what we have desired. And game plan for it is the shock absorber for for really difficult times that push people through their limits that allow them to achieve what might have been unachievable at the time. And so I always laugh, because we listen in any organization, if you have brick and mortar stores throughout the world, everyone has. Similar challenges in that same industry. There are some uniquenesses, if you actually operate in Africa or wherever it may be, but there usually is some common threads of what we get ranked upon. And what I always felt is, if we get ranked upon the same things, doesn't it come down to execution? But how do you execute? Well, you've got to develop a culture, you've got to develop relationships. You've got to clearly communicate your goals and expectations. You must provide the right material, equipment and information in order to achieve the desired outcome. You must develop deep personal and professional relationships, and you must recognize effort, reward top performance. And so to me, you you can't do the plan if you don't have the right behaviors and action in order to align everything, to actually execute it.

Rick Denton: 25:48

That's it. We're ending there. That sentence is exactly where we need to end. Eric, I've enjoyed the ride, if you will. Today, if folks wanted to get to know a little bit more about you, your book, your approach to customer experience, your approach to culture. What's the best way for them to learn more? I would go right on LinkedIn. I will do some posts throughout the week. So LinkedIn, you can just go and view Eric D stone. You could always learn more about the book@ericdston.com

Eric Stone: 26:15

and that'll tell you all about the book. You can always go to ClearPath ventures.com which talks about some speaking engagements. I do coaching engagements, I do that probably do best.

Rick Denton: 26:26

I'll get all those links in the show notes. So listeners, you know the drill, scroll down, click those links. Eric, it has been with all sincerity and enjoyable ride. You've taken me into paths that I didn't expect. You've made me pull on. You've made me take detours that exposed a lot deeper, interesting parts of the country, the road trip, if you will. That was a lot a lot of fun. Eric, thank you for being on CX passport.

Eric Stone: 26:54

Rick, it was my pleasure. Really enjoyed it.

Rick Denton: 27:01

Thanks for joining us this week on CX Passport. If you liked today’s episode I have 3 quick next steps for you Click subscribe on the CX Passport youtube channel or your favorite podcast app Next leave a comment below the video or a review in your favorite podcast app so others can find and and enjoy CX Passport too Then, head over to cxpassport.com website for show notes and resources that can help you create tangible business results by delivering great customer experience. Until next time, I’m Rick Denton and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport.