Decision Making in Business: How CEOs Build a Culture of Accountability

Speaker A: How we make the decisions is as important, I'm even going to say more important than the actual results of the decision. And that's easier said than done.

Speaker B: That's super fascinating. I love the analogy. This piece around winning 50% of the time, like, let's go into this. Like what? Because we spoke about you being interested in asking people what the process is.

Speaker A: I'll get to the result part, but I'm actually going to start with the part that leads into the decision. And it's really the human psychology of it. Are they removing the emotions, the biases? Are they gathering the most relevant, beneficial information to driving that decision?

Speaker B: So we speak really about kind of data collection, on basing your decision on a solid foundation. Data driven. Right.

Speaker A: Data and human. Um, I will use both.

Speaker B: To me, it's really about ownership.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And it's really about how can we include people maybe in the decision making process.

Speaker A: I think it's absolutely critical, uh, of what, what you just hit on. A lot of companies could do exactly that. It, it does take effort to build it.

Speaker B: Okay, talk me through the human part. Where, where, where does this guts, this instinct come in? Like, because entrepreneurship and business is a lot about. Welcome listeners. Uh, I'm Sepp Wichmann, your host of the Do Good Insider. Uh, where we dive deep into raw and meaningful conversations with visionary founders, CEOs and CHROs who see beyond profits, elevating the lives of employees and vendors and the planets we call home. Today we are joined by Paul Wrights, CEO of Titan International, a company operating across six business units and over 8,000 employees worldwide in the agriculture, mining and construction sector. But this episode isn't about the company's products or public profile. It's about the real work behind the scenes, leading through complexity, maintaining nimbleness at scale, and building a culture where trust, clarity and tough conversations are normalized. Paul stepped into the CEO role following the founder and has spent over 15 years helping reshape Titan's leadership culture, not by controlling outcomes, but by empowering better decision making across the board. If you are a CEO, um, Chro, or people leader, looking to lead with more integrity, accountability and resilience, especially in a high stakes environment, then this conversation is for you. Paul, welcome. As always, I'm, um, very inspired to bring you on today. I remember when I was a little boy growing up in Germany. I was playing around with my yellow truck that had huge tires that looked almost like a mining truck. And looking at Titan International, I know that the product you build is a huge motivation for what you guys do and building culture around this huge tires that I believe are, uh, I don't know, twice as tall as I am as a six foot German guy. Um, so that's really kind of where I'm like, wow, that is so cool. Right? So I would love to talk about this a little bit. How this, you know, how culture has shaped or how you shape culture through the products you are, um, manufacturing. But let's start with this most important piece. You are a CEO leading 8,000 people across six business units. And you said something really struck me and what you said, Paul, was that you don't really pay too much attention on kind of what decisions your uh, leaders make. You spoke about that. For you it is much more important and drives much more kind of results and culture and this leadership by you asking the question, tell me about the process of how you came up with this decision. And I thought that's a super smart distinction and I would love to hear your thoughts on this. So let's start there.

Speaker A: Yeah, it is a, it's a great starting point because it's something that is very inherent in our culture where how we make the decisions is as important, I'm even going to say more important than the actual results of the decision. And that's easier said than done. And I want to, I'm going to refer back to sports. I like talking about sports. It forms a framework of who I am as a person. It's really led into a lot of decisions I've made as a leader. But you look at Roger Freder, he arguably is the greatest tennis player of all time. I may offend a few people with that comment, but he was, he was so smooth.

Speaker B: He's, I love him. I'm a tennis player.

Speaker A: Uh, yeah. So let's, let's go ahead and call him the best for, for the sake of you and I here in this discussion. But you look at the, over his career, he won 80% of the matches he played. So one of the greatest players of all time in his profession, in his Sport still lost 20% of the time. But then when you break it down even further, he won only 58% of the games he played. So now you're talking about 42% of the actual games he played. Uh, he was on the losing side at the point level. He only won 54% of the points he played. So now he's barely winning one out of every two points he plays. But yet he is one of the greatest players of all time. And I look at that as a Good example. In business where we're all judged by our results, especially as a CEO, you have to be held accountable, and you are accountable for results that involve, in our case, the inputs of over 8,000 people. But where I'm going with this and how we've built our culture is that if we can apply that same theory to Roger Frederick, where I'm going to lose one out of every two points, but it's how I handle those losses and how quickly I can put that behind me and get that edge from being, uh, 50% of the points, 1 to 54, I could be the greatest player of all time. Four percentage points can make the difference between being purely average to being the best, one of the, arguably the best of all time. And that it's that little differential that comes down to how do you handle the losses business. There's going to be crap that goes wrong every single day. Uh, you're not going to prevent it, you're not going to stop it. So how do you handle it? And that's where we've really built the culture around. How do we make decisions? How do we go about the process of making the best decision we possibly can? Now, I hope we do better than Roger Federer and win More than 54% of the decisions we make. But in reality, if you win, if 80% of your decisions are good, 20% of them are going to struggle. And so with that approach, it's how do we go about making those decisions so that we can do the best we possibly can, um, with the information, the resources we have with, you know, whether it be equipment, capital or human, within the constraints that everybody operates in, understanding there's going to be actions in the marketplace that could, uh, be good or bad. And if by chance those decisions don't add up to being the result we wanted, how do we deal with those losses? Just like Roger Frederick, I lost a point, big deal. I lost a game. What am I going to do? And so you are going to lose. It's how do you bounce back? And so that's where we built our culture. So if we built it around, how do we make those decisions? Now what it means different for me as a leader is spending enough time close to those, the folks on our team that are making those decisions, um, creating an environment where the decisions are not top down. Sometimes they are, they need to be, but you have to have the ability to really judge them by the process of how they're making their decisions. And that's what I spent a lot of my time doing. Is get involved with their business units, their operations, their departments, really, uh, listen, watch, learn, and then look for those signals where maybe that decision making process isn't going the direction you would think it needs to go. Um, and try to course correct as quickly as you possibly can.

Speaker B: That is fascinating.

Speaker A: It's the foundation for it. Um, and I think it's taken a period of time to get there. I can't tell you that we snapped our fingers and this all fell into place. But it's, I would say that's a graph of how we, we, we lead our organization today.

Speaker B: Yeah, so that's, that's super fascinating. Um, love the analogy. This piece round winning 50% of the time, you spoke about kind of, um, and hopefully we do better decisions than 50%. But like, you know, what's, what's happened in my brain when you said this is what constitutes a good decision to you. Like, let's go into this. Like what? Like, because we spoke about you being interested in asking people what the process is and we go into this in a second. But tell me, like when you speak about 50% of the time winning or uh, 54% as Roger Federer and hopefully 99% as Titan, but like, what in your mind is a good decision? Is this based on the result? Is this based on the process? Is this based on the mix in between?

Speaker A: I'll get to the result part, but I'm actually going to start with the part that leads into the decision. And it's really the human psychology of it. Are they removing the emotions, the biases? Are they gathering the most relevant beneficial information to driving that decision? And so, um, if you're making your decision based upon what's best for the customer, um, meeting the needs of the customer, what's best for, uh, our fellow colleagues, obviously our shareholders, our investors, uh, and really the intentions you have behind it. If you can pass the smell test around that, and again, you've done the due diligence and the effort behind that decision, taking the emotions out of it. Um, we can then look at the results from the angle of if they, if we don't get the result that we desire to achieve, let's analyze what went wrong. And you can do that process much more effectively when you know that the emotions and the biases were taken out of the how that led to the result. When you get the result that's flooded with emotions and bias and your own self interests, then you run into the conflicts of really understanding why did the result fail. So in this instance, the better you can get on the how and the front end. Then it makes it clear on the back end if there is not a desired result that's achieved and you can analyze it and diagnose it. And really if you're going to fail, fail fast and understand why you fail to move and course correct and do something different. And so um, it's really, it's, it's following those principles. And that's why the how is so incredibly important because it creates a better process on the front end, but also a much better process on the back end. When you do need to go through that diagnosis of improving the result that you or trying to get to the desired result that you had initially. And then you got to decide can we still get there or do we need to really take, despite our best efforts, everything we thought would happen didn't happen. Do we just need to throw the whole thing away? And, and if you, that's why if you have emotions involved, it's very difficult for any human being to go say, to say that I completely screwed up so bad that we gotta throw away everything I did. But if they, if they do go through the how with the, the right mindset and involve enough people in that collective decision making process, again, not bureaucracy and slowing it down, but getting enough inputs into that how, that decision, then again, um, you really get more efficient on the back end.

Speaker B: So we speak really about kind of data collection on basing your decision on a solid foundation, data driven. Right.

Speaker A: Data and human, um, I will use both.

Speaker B: Talk me through the human part. Where does this gut this instinct come in? Like, because entrepreneurship and business is a lot about this as well, right?

Speaker A: M. Trust you got to have a team that you trust each other, that we're all, we're all collectively in it to get the best result for our customers, um, and for each other. And that's where it goes a step beyond data. Data is obviously important, but information can be market, market relevant information, um, but it also can be heavily reliant on human information. And that's where you got to take the emotions out of it and you got to learn, you gotta figure out how you're gonna trust each other. And so I think the level of communication we have across some departments that, in, in at other companies that would struggle to have departments that communicate as well as they do at ours, um, is really based upon that human side of the information and just repeating that process over and over again. The more they interact, the better they, they get at ah, getting information from each other, not just data, not just Market relevant information. And you know, Sev, I'm gonna go back to what you said in the beginning. I think part of what inherently helps us in our culture is what we make goes on some really cool equipment. Um, it's visible, it's not buried in the transmission of an engine. It's not buried in the interior guts of some product. It is right on your face. It's huge. Like you said, I mean, we got, we got tires that are £11,000 big. We got, we got steel tracks that go on giant bulldozers. We got uh, we got these uh, equipment that our customer really operates operating on what we do, every single piece of equipment, everything we make, that interface between these giant pieces of equipment and the ground and the application rests on something that Titan does. And so I think that helps inherently in our culture because people really like what we do and the products that are, uh, you know, what we make goes on. And so it, it helps a lot. I think it would be more difficult to have this culture certainly if we didn't, as you're talking about as a kid, if we didn't have something that was pretty cool to start.

Speaker B: Mhm. Mhm. Yeah. I would love to get into this in a second. Before we do. So let's dive a little deeper around, you know, for listeners, um, CEOs, CHROs, people, leaders, uh, CMOs. What are some of the questions you ask when you assess the process of your leaders, how they arrive at a certain decisions?

Speaker A: Listen, you gotta be a good listener and that, that's hard for CEOs to do. I mean the reality is every room any CEO walks in, they can take control. Um, it's really not that hard to do. Uh, you know, you can be the center of attention. You can control the airspace, you can, you can control the flow of the agenda, the discussion. Absolutely everything that goes on can be controlled by, uh, I would say anybody with the CEO title. That's really easy to do. Ah. And I think as you get into the job and you build experience, you realize I'm not here to do the easy things, to check the box and feel good about myself because I walked in the room and I took control. Um, so you have to learn how to ask the right questions. That creates the dialogue that you can listen. And what I'm looking for is just any inconsistencies with their thought patterns of what they're doing, how they're going about it. At the end of the day, as CEO, um, there's some topics where I would consider myself the expert. There's many topics that we talk about. I am nowhere near the expert. I do not know how to engineer a tire. Um, I can barely draw one on a piece of paper. So, uh, but at the same time I will ask the right, I will make sure that I'm asking the right questions and driving the right discussions that I'm very comfortable with the decisions they're making because at the end of the day I'm accountable for it. Um, the tires, the wheels, the steel tracks that are designed, put in the marketplace and performing correctly are, I'm accountable for how they're designed, how they're built, and how they go out of the field and operate. But I, at the end of the day, I'm nowhere near the expert on any of those conversations that take place. So it's walking into the room, creating the right dialogue, um, asking the right questions and putting away any thought that you had of controlling the discussion and listening and, and it's not always the easiest human attribute for, for all of us, we, we want to feel like we're, we're the main center attraction. And again, I think that's come a lot through experience, but it's also come from the fact I wanted to create a culture built upon everything we talked about earlier. In order to do that, they gotta trust me that I'm gonna be there with them. Um, I think everybody at our company knows they're not gonna run off and just make decisions that uh, I'm not comfortable with. So there's a lot of information that gets fed to me just naturally. I don't have to go necessarily seek it and pull it. A lot of communication comes to me where people tell me this is what we're doing, this is why we're doing it, this is how we're doing it. How do you feel about it? Um, and so, uh, there's a lot of moving pieces to that. It's, I would say it's definitely a lot harder than just walking in the room and taking control. I, I know how to take control when I need to. Um, I'll be. So, yeah, that's the easiest thing to do. Um, I, I, I've been doing this job long enough that if I need to take control of a situation, a moment and drive action, absolutely, I could do that in a snap of a finger. But that's not what I want to do. It's not what the company needs me to do to drive the best result.

Speaker B: One follow up question on that. With subject matters that you're not the expert in, right? How do you listen out for your team, having done, you know, the due diligence of what kind of data points there have been based their decision on, how do you go about, I guess asking the right questions in, you know, on a topic that you're not the expert in and when, when you may have to trust decision or point of view of somebody where you don't know where it will end.

Speaker A: I do try to make sure that it's, if we're going down that path, where I'm going to be involved with that, that I'm, I know enough to be dangerous, that I'm not completely naive

Speaker B: and novels, I don't have to be dangerous. I like that.

Speaker A: So I look at it this way is a lot of what the job entails to drive this culture that we've been discussing is you have to prepare for running a marathon, to run a lot of 400 yard dashes. Um, in order to do that I spent a lot of time preparing, making sure I am enough to again be dangerous, have an idea what's going on and then look for the inconsistencies. Um, you know, I, I have a general framework that I think they all understand of how I think they should go about the decision. But obviously there's a lot of elements that, quite frankly, you're right. I, I, I don't know exactly how to, they, they, they should be doing that. So I don't try to critique them in the expertise part that they, they're really good at and that's what they're paid to do and they have a lot of responsibility to do that well and, and create a team that does it well. But by knowing enough about what's being discussed, I can look for the inconsistency where I see some of those human nature elements that I believe don't belong in the decision making process. Um, I can detect those. I drive my wife nuts. I, I could, I could pick up on it when she does it with me. I mean if you do this every day for a long time, even in your personal life, you start realizing okay,

Speaker B: I, you're like oh, damn, there we go again.

Speaker A: So yeah, it's, it's a lot of, it's the human side of it, you know, being able to detect when you feel like they're going down a direction that just doesn't, they're operating a little too much in their own self interest and not the interests of, of their colleagues and the customer.

Speaker B: Mhm. Yeah. Self interest is another big topic that I really liked when we had the, the pre chat. But let's talk a little bit about culture now. Um, like one question I have for you is like given the, given the, I guess the dynamics that builds culture, uh, in relation to the products. Huge tires, very visible. You know, it's just this, this raw energy that I feel just flooding through my body when I'm thinking about, you know, Titan International. Looking at your website at least like how, how critical is, are your products for having shaped the culture the way it is now. Like, you know, if you think about having different products, how would that have changed the whole game for yourself?

Speaker A: Culture specifically, it's shapes our culture in a way that I would say gives us a head start. Culture and people dynamics are never easy. Uh, but we certainly I feel do have a head start. You know, I look back about 10 years ago, we looked to do an acquisition of a company that made more components that go on the, the interior of the operations of a piece of equipment. And I looked at the culture of the company and went, this doesn't really fit this, this isn't us. It's. We are exterior visible. Which also brings a higher level of accountability as well. Uh, if something goes wrong with our products, it's gonna, that means a piece of equipment is not going to work. Um, and it's highly visible when we have failures. And so it drives a higher degree of accountability amongst our culture and our team. Um, but at the end of the day there's just a strong sense of pride that goes along with what we do. Being visible and being important to the operations of a piece of equipment. Um, and it's, it operates on incredibly difficult applications on large piece of equipment or on smaller high speed piece of equipment. It's doing a lot of things that are really important and at the same time what we make is cool. But what it does is important to society. Um, it goes into the. Helping protect the food, population of the world, the agriculture, economy, construction, building, infrastructure, earth moving, what it does to get minerals out of, into the right locations. And so with COVID hit back in 2000, you know, our, our government in, in many countries said, you know Titan, you have to stay open. Um, you know, your employees, we, we can't have your employees staying home, um, because of the COVID related issues. So I look back and it's hard to remember 2020, it's kind of a blur. But um, now I look back through the period of 2020, I bet our plants were not closed. I count on both hands. You know, our 25 locations were closed during that Period. We came in, we operated, because if we didn't, um, the activities related to our products would not be able to function. And now you're talking about an important part of society. So I think it's all that tied together. Does give us a head start with. With who we are.

Speaker B: Uh-huh. Give me. Give us some anecdotes for the listeners as well. Like how. Like, I have two questions. How does your. How does this actually specifically reflect back into your culture in terms of how are people really motivated by the products you are, um, you are producing? And, like, give us some insights into. Into people's lives, why that motivates them. And second question. How can companies that don't have as sexy products. I don't know if that's a term, or as powerful products. How can they, you know, kind of reshape the narrative around using their products still to motivate culture? Yeah, I probably forget both of these questions in a second.

Speaker A: So there's a good tie in. You're right, because we take our products being cool. Right. Um, and where we go from that is what it makes our company tick. And why we were founded back in 1984 and why we, you know, we're still here today and thriving is because our products require a high degree of specialized production, because of the number of SKUs that are involved with the pieces of equipment that we serve. Meaning there's like, a dozen passenger tires that could take care of, like, 80% of the market. We don't have a single plant that builds less than 25 SKUs a day. Um, so our market and what we do is highly sports, uh, product. Different products. Different products. Sku. So different products, um, every single day because there's different applications or different sizes. And then each piece of equipment has a different hub or axle that requires a different wheel interface. And so, um, it's that. Exactly. Exactly. So what happens at the plant level then is there's. There's this. I think any company can do this. Part of it is our products are cool. We. We can attract people because of that. But then when we bring them into this, I, uh, refer to it as a playground. We bring engineers into a playground that has this large interface of complex SKUs, and we give them a large roadmap to operate. Meaning you're not confined to a limited space where you're designing something that barely changes a little bit over a period of time. We make so many different SKUs that you can have a big impact and create entirely new products, um, on a consistent, regular basis that your job doesn't get stale. It's cool, it's, it's got a high degree of variety. It changes constantly, which adds to the challenges and complexity of our job. Um, but that's why we're here. It's why we're good at what we're doing because handling that complexity. So I think it's that additional element. I think a lot of companies could do that. It's, it's creating an environment that people look at and they have something to talk about. They're engaged when they go back home and they can say, well, they're again, it helps because our products are big and they go on cool equipment but at the same time you could talk about all the different things you did. I didn't just design one little thing that had an iteration that took four months and um, it went into some component that nobody sees. I designed a whole new product. Hey, look at this. I did this. It's going to be carrying, you know, a 4,000, you know, 4,000 ton piece of equipment down, down the roadway. Um, so I think that, that a lot of companies can do that. It says how do you, how do you create that environment? You got to do a little creative. You know, all this doesn't just happen naturally. You got to kind of build it

Speaker B: and I want to throw something at you, um, and piggyback, I guess more so it's probably the better way of saying it of what you said. You know, if I think about right now from a cultural aspect about a company that may produces products that are invisible. Right. We still can shape the narrative around how people feel proud about themselves having been part of a certain ideation process. Or to me it's really about ownership. Right. And it's really about how can we include people maybe in the decision making process. How can we create ownership and accountability therefore, uh, as a subsequent step, so to speak. And by us creating this ownership that somebody feels to have somebody say, and go back to his wife or whatever, um, husband or children or dog and talk about, hey, I was part of the solution here. How do you think, how important is that in your culture or in other companies, cultures do you think?

Speaker A: I think it's absolutely critical. Um, and what you just hit on a lot of companies could do exactly that. It does take effort to build it because what we have a tendency to do certainly in manufacturing, but I think generally, just as humans, is you start at the back end with accountability. Um, I'm going to have a metric, I'm going to hold you Accountable for this metric. You have to hit this, you have to do that. This is what you're going to do. Oh, you didn't do this. Uh, I need to go talk to you. Why didn't you do this? Yeah, we certainly have that. Um, but we don't focus on that. Um, we focus on all the other elements and it's easy to get wrapped up in saying it's the softer side of things. Um, it's really not. It's human nature. How do I get the most out of. If you look at the end of the day, you have constraints wrapped around human capital, financial capital and natural, natural resources. So, okay, how do you get the best out of them? And why this is kind of built at, uh, Titan is we do operate highly cyclical markets. You mentioned at the beginning, it's agriculture, construction, earth moving. There is nothing about those segments that is a straight line. It's up and down all the time. And so as our culture that we've discussed has been built, part of it is out of necessity. We, we can't necessarily be hiring and firing up people all the time because the market's up, the market's down. We know our markets are going to go up or down. That's what they do. That's what they've done historically for decades. It's not going to change. So how do we take the human capital that we have and get the most out of them and where we're building the trust that this is going to be a great company to work for regardless of where the. Michael, the market's at, up or down. And this comes back to all these elements where we've been discussing. And for us, I think it's not just important. It's critical as a cyclical company and very cyclical end markets, um, it's critical that we have a culture that can really ride through the emotions that go along with that. And I think all these elements together are important, important. Um, some of them have been built by design, some of them have built by necessity, and some of them built quite frankly by, by them that this culture that we have has been built by them. But you know, taking some of the, these, these, these elements and what started off in one direction, they, they built it into something even better than where it even started. Um, and that's what's, that's what's great to see. For me, um, that's the best thing is what, what starts small and ends up big and the people have the buy in and they have this, that, that's Incredible feeling as a leader. Um, but, you know, it's not what a lot of leaders do. A lot of leaders want to start. Start at the end. We got to do this. We gotta hit this.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Ah. I. I just want to sit in a, uh, manufacturing site and see how these tires are being built, to be honest. Not being manufactured. That's just my secret wish.

Speaker A: But I will say one thing about that. You would be shocked about all the manufacturing steps and elements that go into building a tire. It is not rubber poured into a mold. A tire is built to construct.

Speaker B: That's actually what I thought. It's like. I thought it's like an Elon Musk, like, huge machine where you just pour shit in and then just like. It's obviously not like that.

Speaker A: But you have to build the carcass, you have to build the beads, you have to build the, you know, the plies. You have to. It is an incredibly complex process. And again, it's that complexity wrapped around our culture that really helps. Helps us in tremendous ways to serve the customers we have, because they are some very complex, very important machines that the equipment goes on. But no. Go watch a video of a tire being built.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think I will do that. Yeah, it's probably very interesting. Um, the other part I'm really curious about, Paul, and let's see how far we can go into some details here around what really happens within Titan right now, or maybe what has happened over your 15 years, so to speak. When you think about culture at Titan, I think you are largely remote or as a company or not.

Speaker A: Um, we are not remote because our plants, we're very decentralized would be the right word. Plants have a lot of infrastructure because each one of our plants are large facilities and they built a discrete product, whether it's wheel, tire, undercarriage. But even when those within those classes, they build different discrete products at each tire plant. So our service a different geography. And so we're very decentralized where our corporate office doesn't contain a lot of functions. It's. It's some of your FPA legal tax. Um, so very.

Speaker B: So do people see each other on a regular basis or not? Like, face to face?

Speaker A: That. That's where the challenge has become, is that with the number we have two corporate offices, then we have over 20 plants around the world. So our ability to stay.

Speaker B: So there we go, right? Yeah.

Speaker A: Ah, so we're remote in that aspect that, um, really myself, our cfo, a couple others managed, you know, to spend a lot of Time traveling to be with people face to face. In fact, we do every week. So I'm in the hotel right now. Um, but, um. But it's not, it's not remote because. Because the plants. One of the key things is the plant is the people supporting the plant need to be there.

Speaker B: Yeah, but we have 20 different locations roughly. Right. I mean, the point I want to make is that people don't see each other on a regular basis. And the question I have for you, like, thinking about culture, what are some of your biggest kind of. Not concerns, but biggest challenges, present or past, that you either have overcome or that you're experiencing right now that you kind of can talk a little bit about that people can relate to? Because we're looking to create this raw, meaningful conversation where CEOs say, oh, my gosh, I can relate to this. Like, how is Paul going about this? Like, what. What can you dig out of your treasure? Treasure trove.

Speaker A: Yeah. It does take a lot of effort. Uh, there's. There's no easy way to do that. And so for us, we don't allow the corporate office to drive decisions. Um, they have a role. But even our FPA team that's in our corporate office, um, when myself or our CFO are out of location and there's some pretty important meetings going on, we bring the FP&A team. FP&A team with us. Um, so we're all sitting there together on their location. So to answer your question, we don't the easy way to do it. I mean, sure, it'd be great to sit in a corporate office and drive decisions and, you know, pick up the phone and tell people this and that and send an email and things happen. Could I do that? Absolutely. Um, there's no reason why I couldn't have been in this job for long enough. But that doesn't sustain our culture for the long term, and that doesn't build the culture that we've created. So I, I don't want to risk losing their culture. So, you know, every single week I'm on the road, I'm going somewhere, I'm face to face. So you're traveling around, Right, Every single week.

Speaker B: So how do you make sure that culture is consistency throughout all these locations? The.

Speaker A: I have a framework. I created, uh, a document. I use the word I. Um, it's interesting. We're actually going to be spending some time next week rewriting it, but it's called One Titan. I wrote it, uh, 2015, um, has a framework that literally, I, I sat by myself And I said, this is what I want. Our management team, the framework for our management team to operate by. Um, from there, I gave them some latitude. So if you think about the management team, let's call it 40 people, those 40 people touch 8,000. So I gave them latitude within their own department, their own business unit, to apply it in a way that they wanted to translate. But the framework, just look at it as a. Think of it as a box. You don't go outside that box. Um, you know, we've been very fortunate over the last.

Speaker B: Within the box you can play.

Speaker A: You say within the box you can play. Um, outside that box, you're done. You're absolutely done. I haven't had to do that. It's been, knock on wood, it's probably been six years since we've had really any turnover, um, that is significant of any sort. So this team has trust because of experience together. Um, but at the beginning, it was not easy. I mean, when I created that box, of course people went outside the box. And that's, that's human nature. Um, but I can tell you none of them were here, were here much longer. And so it became very clear that this box is a playground. You play within that playground, you can, you can have as much. You can go whatever direction you want. Um, I'll give you all that latitude. You go outside that framework is not up for discussion. And so we're actually going to spend some time next week rewriting it. I'm going to, actually, my team doesn't know this yet, um, but that's what we're going to. It's an exercise we're going be doing in our. We're going to be in person together.

Speaker B: Nice.

Speaker A: Um, but really, it's that one Titan framework and, and that, that helps keep that culture together, along with spending a lot of time with them. Um, face to face.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not sure if you can do that, but is there one little hint that you can give us? Um, just like that is a little, not conversion, but little, um, different to what you see other companies do in terms of. Because I think a lot of companies have leadership frameworks and that is nothing new. Right. But is that something you guys do different that you think works really well?

Speaker A: We don't just tape up BS on a wall. Uh, I think a lot of companies, you write statements, um, whether it's operating strategy, you put these statements on a wall. And yes, some of it's true, but you, you're more concerned about. I want to sound smart, sound like I'm checking all the right boxes. So if somebody walks in, uh, they'll look at it and go, wow. Yeah, this is great. Um, uh, we acquired a company recently. Uh, it was a pretty sizable company, a couple thousand employees, and, um, they had BS all over the walls. And for me, I said, that's the first thing we're going to take down. We're not doing that. Um, if we, we. If we put something on the wall, we're going to believe it, we're going to walk it, we're going to live in it. Starts with me. So this framework, that's why I created the framework, is because it starts with me. Whatever is there, I have to obviously live by. Um, but I think a lot of CEOs, a lot of leaders, they. They want to look smart versus looking real. They would rather be, um, you know, do the things that are easy to say. Yeah, this is why I did it as a fallback versus being authentic and transparent. Being authentic and transparent is not easy.

Speaker B: Um, do you see this a lot, Paul? Because in my world, I'm not sure if that's true. In my world, I see a lot of conscious being very, like, intentional CEOs and CHROs that would never just put stuff at the wall. Like, is this, Is this what you really see in your world, that companies do that?

Speaker A: Too much of it? Yeah. Yeah, too much. I think. I think the it's. Maybe it's, uh, of it is. I don't want to. I don't want to characterize that it's not intentional at the beginning. But if it's too complicated, if it's too wordy, if it's too many things, if I. If I'm going to live by this credo of 38 different things, um, it's too complicated. So, again, that's why I kind of say it sounds good at the beginning. And the attentions to your question may have been good at the beginning, but can you really live by it? I want my people to live by it. That's why I gave them also the opportunity if they wanted to redefine one titan in their own words. I didn't make one titan. Very complicated. That's why I use the word I. If I'm making it on my computer. This thing is not going to be a work of art. Brilliant. It's going to be kind of blocky, simple things to understand with me building it on my own. But that was the whole point. I wanted to be simple to understand. And I think where. Where we get trapped is it's it's. We, we do too much and I, um. And you're always disappointed. I could think of even my kids life. My kids are um, you know, they've been, been through college and just some of the disappointments they've experienced is when they, they've. Whether it's leaders or whether it's school, whatever it may be, there's a, there's a mission statement, there's a credo. There's something that you as a kid looking to adults, you think that is real meaning. Um, and I know something my son went to, through. I mean he really drove one of his decisions of why he chose to do something. And then he got there and he's

Speaker B: like, what, what, what is this thing on the wall?

Speaker A: Like you guys don't even, you're not even close to this. And you know, I said yeah, it's disappointing Jake, but that's, that's reality, you know, that, that's. They, they, they did it. It felt good at the time. Their intentions were good, but over time the culture just didn't live up to, to what, what that statement said.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I can relate. It does resonate. You know, sometimes I see companies having kind of this every five year, uh, type values, mission thing that once felt right. But it's like brushing teeth. You know, if you brush your teeth every five years, you know, good luck with that one.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So I think it's what my team

Speaker A: doesn't know next week is actually I'm going to walk in there and say the one Titan that I wrote, you know, we're going 10 years ago, we're going to rewrite it together as a team and I'm going to step back and listen to them.

Speaker B: I would love to be part of.

Speaker A: Yeah, they don't even know this yet, but it's good. I, I'm going to tell them the

Speaker B: first thing I said.

Speaker A: We are working here today, guys. This is not a meeting of presentations. And sit back and just listen. Um, so it's going to be a pretty intense, you know, that's going to be the first half of the day just doing that.

Speaker B: So, so you're rewriting One Titan value? I don't know. Right.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: And like who, like what leaders do you get into one room, all 40 that affect 8,000 or just the core or who do you get into the room to actually work on those?

Speaker A: Yeah, primary the core. So all the different functions, uh, business segments, everything that goes into a business will, will be there in the room and amazing at the end of the day I, you know, obviously I will be involved with their, but I'm going to divide them into teams so they all get a chance to express themselves.

Speaker B: Love that.

Speaker A: Um, it's not going to be a group think it's going to be broken into teams and I, I crazy rules of how they do it. Again, they don't know this yet, but it's really going to force them to think, it's going to force them to interact. Um, yeah. And, and we are going to rewrite One Titan that day. Now I don't, I can't tell you exactly if it's going to deviate a lot from what we already have. I think there's some values that'll, that'll still live on. But I think the, the point I want to have as we walk out of there that everybody feels like these are values that they can uphold, they could live by. And it's not done by a, a no, uh, offense to really smart people that do HR functions and legal functions. And it's um, But I don't want to feel like they, they because I, I, I actually been doing that. I'm sorry I'm getting off topic here, but I was trying to rewrite One Titan with my, my, my chro. Um, and I pulled in marketing and I was trying to do it with what I thought was the right people and I just, I just didn't feel comfortable. I've been doing this for six months. So that's why this, this next week, Tuesday, we're going to say okay, no, we're doing this as a team.

Speaker B: I mean, you know, it's really, what are the right words here? It's, it's um, this is what I live for, right? This whole piece around collaboration, this whole piece around. I really believe, Paul, that companies that really place the emphasis on, in the right way to uh, me on culture. What's the business? The business is nothing more but a bunch of people with a bunch of brains. And if we don't have alignment around personal values and company values, uh, uh, it's a dog fight. And for us to become clear about who we are as a company and by what values you want to, what values want to stand behind and how we want to conduct ourselves from a collaborative aspect. I love that. So, you know, if you need a co facilitator, you know you're all yours.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: Spotlight. Amazing. Amazing. Paul, thank you so much for your time. Um, I really loved that conversation. You know, starting with this piece around that it isn't the most important thing, what decisions we make, but really digging deep on the process, being data driven and not kind of not forgetting the gut and the instinct. Right. And then the conversation about culture. Right. How products kind of motivate people and to think about how people actually how we can empower people to own the process, to own the ideas, to be part of the solution. Um, and to making sure that values are not being done decentralized, but actually to include your leadership teams or CEOs leadership teams. And probably more than less, so to speak, I would argue, to bringing them together, to put them into breakout rooms and actually let them do the work.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Um, would that be a good summary or did I forget anything?

Speaker A: No, absolutely, completely agree. That's spot on.

Speaker B: Amazing. Paul, thank you so much.

Speaker A: Thank you so much. Appreciate it.