Kris Malkoski on Transforming Culture: Winning as One Team

0:00 Bold leaders, no buzzwords, no BS. This is Mastering Workplace Culture. Real talk on crafting workplace cultures that deliver results. Each episode, we go beyond corporate speak and talk with leaders who've actually done it. Those who faced breakdowns, made bold moves, and built organizations where respect and results carry equal weight. If you're ready to challenge assumptions, gain actionable inspiration from proven mentors, and build a workplace culture that actually works, this podcast is for you.

0:31 >> Hello and welcome to Mastering Workplace Culture, the podcast that Mark Babot and I get to host. Our guest today is the fabulous and longtime friend Chris Malikausski. Let me give you a little background on Chris. she's been an international business leader for more than 20 years. CEO, COO, president, vice president, and general manager in both public and private branded consumer packaged goods and hardlines. We're going to learn what that means.

1:06 And has been a strategic change leader, culture champion. you've grown and transformed or integrated brands and companies to drive really good meaningful revenue resulting in profits which makes your your bosses really really happy. Currently, Chris is CEO at learning and development at New Brands, managing some iconic brands including Graco, Sharpie, Papermate, Es Expo, Nook or Nuke >> Nook. Nook and Elmer's Glue. I don't Elmer's glue. I don't think I'm familiar with Nuke, but she'll help us with that.

1:46 And she's on the new executive team. You oversee over a thousand employees and over three billion in annual revenues. >> That's right. >> That is pretty cool. Her experience goes from way back when she was VP at World Kitchen. That company's gone through some transition since you left. very interesting. you were president COO at that time, which is where we met. you also served as CEO for Ark International.

2:26 and again, you have served on a number of boards. You really do give back to the community. And you've you've won some pretty cool awards as well, which we may get the chance to talk about. Welld deserved. And you're married. You have three children and two grandchildren, which we will definitely talk about. So, Chris, welcome. Thank you for joining us. Well, thank you for letting me come on the podcast. I'm excited to share some of my experiences with everyone who's listening.

3:02 >> Well, and and we have talked a bit about how what we want to do is really let you celebrate your learnings about culture over the years. You were most apparently hired when you were a teen, which is fine. But what's critical is to have you be able to share some of your insights and some of the things that you have been able to take with you. Have you gotten different roles and larger spans of control and people etc. So let's start with our our world kitchen experience if you don't mind and tell us a bit more about that. That was an interesting environment at the time and you had VCs, you know, sniffing around and and that puts some some different spin on virtually everything operational and profit generating. So, so if you don't mind, let's start with World Kitchen and and we'll dig in.

4:09 >> Sure. Sure. So, World Kitchen was a $700 million global company. We operated in about 40 different countries. we had two private equity owners and that was interesting because one had been in ownership for 10 years and the other one was relatively new into ownership and so their expectations about exit strategies and growth strategies were quite different. we operated brands both in the kitchen wear area as well as in cutting tools for industrial use and we had about a hundred stores across the globe that we sold retail at. So it was an interesting and dynamic organization.

5:01 we had private equity owners who put people on the board who became dysfunctional for us. Those people later had to be removed. we had half of our leadership team was new and some of them did not embrace any need to affect the culture but the culture definitely needed some improvement if we were going to come together as a team to start growing the business. Because the last thing I'll say about World Kitchen is in the seven years prior to me joining with the other new leadership, we had lost sales and profitability every year for seven years. Not a good spot to be in when you're private equity owned.

5:46 >> No, no, no. That that raised some questions, I'm I'm sure. Well, as as you speak to the culture opportunity, what did you and some of the aligned executive team members really see as the primary goals of getting the culture quote healthy and god forbid even vibrant in the first couple of years? Well, there's a lot of data out there that consumer engagement in a company drives your business results. And we being new leaders on the team really felt that if we could bring our teams together building a really strong culture as the foundation, we could start to grow topline and sales and profitability. So, we had a vision that united as one team, we could drive success for World Kitchen.

6:44 >> Well, first of all, let me add my thanks for joining our podcast. We're we're we're we're very new to this outlet and to have somebody of your stature joining us is is just just wonderful for us to have have a conversation with you is we're we're incredibly grateful. You had already mentioned that all the challenges you were facing at World Kitchen. What was it like when you when you first said, "Okay, well, we're going to we know there's a direct link between employee engagement and and success."

7:20 And I believe that it goes one step beyond that that we have to change the culture so people are actually engaged which is a much different approach than many executives take where now we become manipulative or or we try to have have faux employee engagement instead of genuine engagement instead of you know two-way communication. What was it like when you said, "Okay, well, we know employment engagement is a problem, but we have to fix the culture before we can expect people to sincerely engage."

7:53 >> We faced a lot of different points of view. There were people on the executive committee who didn't believe at all in doing culture activities. They thought it was a waste of money and a waste of time. We had people who wanted to have a better culture but didn't believe it was possible because they had been at World Kitchen for a number of years and saw some of the dysfunctionality. we had country leaders who actually preferred their FFTs that they had created and they didn't trust that building culture would allow them to continue to have the FFTs and ownership that they had in these fdoms. So, and then there were people who really were excited and ready to jump in on building culture, but we didn't know how to. And that's how we met Chris because Chris came in and helped us with a very specific directed plan to grow culture. Well, and if I remember right, you had at that time about 3,000 global employees and you had operations, you had plants globally.

9:06 You had again a hundred stores you were working with, but you were also operating some retail stores, which if I remember, you were in charge of building that kind of up from what might have been a bit more casual almost. >> Yes. >> And and there's just you had such iconic brands, Pyrex, Corell, Corningware at the time. And so what what is interesting is that you all seem to have a a challenge across the leadership team to say, "No, this is important. No, this is going to help us." And and I I think again some of you that were aligned on on the leadership committee said, "We're going to do this." And there was no way for some of those folks that were a bit more on the sidelines to stay on the sidelines. And so would you say that over the course of the we we were working for two two and a half years plus and and gain traction reasonably quickly? Did that traction help the leadership team as a whole realize this is the right direction to go?

10:20 >> Absolutely. I mean the punchline in all of this is we ended up having a successful sale of the business about six years after we did all the cultural training. And not only were engagement scores up 45% versus where they had been before we started the culture training, we also had clipped along with a five-year growth rate on both topline and profitability that was meaningful. that set us up for a good sale.

10:51 >> Well, that's that's wild. You talked a bit about the thiefs and and when you're in a global organization, again, you Zoom calls might help do a whole bunch of things, but it might not align in culture. and and what what I remember was that you all did leaders across the global organization got culture training within the first two years of the initiative starting and that that really helped at least generate a common vision, common language. Is that true?

11:32 >> That that is true. We picked about 50 of our top leaders, which would include the country leaders, to go through the training first. And the training wasn't like, you know, sit at a computer and watch something for an hour. It was inperson. You had to share what's important to you. You had to share what you don't respect in others and how they operate and really align to common goals for this culture creation for the organization.

12:04 And then importantly, we had transparency. So if you saw people reinforcing the culture that you talked about, you acknowledge them publicly for it. And if you saw somebody not reinforcing the culture, you also called them out. You can do that in a respectful way. And the final thing we said is there would probably be somebody in this group of 50 leaders who just didn't want to be part of it. And we said it's okay. You can lovingly let them go.

12:34 >> Sorry, I'm laughing with you. >> You're you're laughing at your own at your own jokes, Chris. We we know you love that phrase. So Chris, as you started down this path, what tools other I'm sure you guys did surveys and you talked about the training, but as you really dove into this, were there were there days where you just said, you know what, here's what's working about culture change to help us drive real culture change, sustainable culture change, and here's what's not working. Can you share both what worked and what didn't work with our with our audience?

13:14 >> Sure. I would say what worked most was having the mindset that you were a collegiate coach and you trained your team during the week for the big game that was on the weekend, but then you put the team out on the field and let them call all the audles. So there was this inherent level of developing and training people on what good looked like but then trusting for them to deliver the good. And so that mindset really helped jumpstart because everyone wanted to be the good coach, the winning coach and it instilled a winning mindset.

13:56 the things that didn't work is if you did the training in isolation with your own group of people because every subgroup in an organization has their own culture and if they aren't mixing and and interacting with people from other cultures, you don't get to see the whole vision of what's possible. And we very quickly learned that we couldn't just have an a training session that involved only finance people or a training session that only involved the China team. It had to be cross functional and cross cultural.

14:40 Well, if I can if I can interject, one of the things that I I loved about you all coming together with the basic vision of win as one team and that was underscored, coached, it was expected, it was measured and and what I think caused and I remember my memory is not great. I remember a division in Southern California that had a remarkable culture and I think it was an acquisition that had happened some years previously but everybody went I'd love to work for them right and so I think there was some you know degree of people being willing to consider this because they really did have an inhouse house. Maybe it was just little kind of separate plant. But but they loved working together. The customers loved them. they were very proactive in developing innovative solutions, containers as I remember that that hit the market and and so there was a bit of that if you can move people from maybe not all the FFTs moved in but the win as as one team really seemed to help you gain momentum.

16:07 That is correct. And yes, that team in Southern California had engagement scores before we did all the cultural training that was 40 to 50% higher than the rest of the organization. And the really great news is at the end they still had high engagement scores, but the rest of us had caught up. >> Yeah. Yeah. Thank God for that. >> That is that that's actually quite remarkable. I mean, you had this little contagious pocket of excellence that you could you could bring on, but you were already in the and Chris, you know this already. This is the your work at World Kitchen with Chris was before I you and I started working together. So, I'm learning just as much as everybody else listening is. So you had this culture change initiative and then you had an acquisition and the acquisition happened to have very high engagement scores and a wonderful subculture.

17:04 Did they look at what you were doing from a a culture change initiative and go, "Yeah, we don't need that. We're good." >> No, actually they looked at it and considering their interactions with the rest of the organization at World Kitchen, they said, "This is absolutely what you need." And they were champions. they were very involved in the workshops that we did and the offsites. and then the one other thing that we did is we were able to take a few of the leaders from that group and put them into other locations which kind of helped set the tone too for effectively disseminating what greatness looks like.

17:44 And by doing that you by by integrating people in other divisions and other plants in other operations you didn't have to deal with oh that's not the way we do things here or that that's that's sorry that's not the way we we've always done it because you had people that were had this came from this wonderful subculture that could say well may be able to answer to those people yes but we are in the middle of a culture change initiative and let me show you what worked for us. Is that is that a fair statement?

18:17 >> That is a fair statement for sure. and the the transferring to other locations like the head of our manufacturing site in California to go to New York where we had another site really allowed us to show quickly what strong leadership looks like in a strong culture world. and I come back again, when the culture is great, when people feel like winning teams, they don't show up to quote work. They show up to be part of something dynamic that is actually often fun to be at. And it's definitely fun to win awards. and and we did win awards. We won awards for best employer in a region. We won awards for being the best supplier with really important customers like Target.

19:14 Well, and if I can add, one of the the big important customers you had internally were the VC owners and and they're always interested in results and they may not have been quite as thrilled with the investment and time required to do a culture change, but you caused me to remember that in 18 months you tripled your profitability refolds.

19:44 >> Well, that that was at a different company where we did that. Gotcha. >> We had doubledigit revenue and profit growth and it went it happened every year for five years before we actually sold the business. Well, and I'm I'm cheating and and moving on to ARC International, which might be very appropriate, which is where you have those tremendous gains in profitability. So, tell us about ARC because you got into that organization.

20:19 What did you face there? >> Yeah, that was interesting. the company Arc had been acquired by a private investor about 18 months before I came on board. this investor happens to also own a big private equity company, but this was his personal investment. and he decided he was going to terminate the CEO after a year primarily because the CEO kind of dealt transactionally with each of his leaders without having a cohesive leadership team. And so and and at the facility where we were based, we had our distribution center, we had our manufacturing site that service the Western Hemisphere. and the people pretty much came to work, put their heads down, did their jobs and left. And so there was not a community that existed at all. So the first thing that I did was I got my leadership team together, my direct reports, and we started meeting on a regular basis. And again, we followed your model, Chris, and we went into offsites where all we focused on was culture growth.

21:40 and this was really important because the company had not performed well over the previous couple of years, which is why they were available for sale. and they were very long on inability to deliver the kind of cash flow they needed to not break banking covenants, which is a big deal. You do not want to break bank covenants. And so it was really imperative that we create this strong culture quickly so we could get to winning. the other thing was because nobody ever listened to employees, some of the systems and processes were quite antiquated and we started doing something called Kaizen events which is where the employees identify the problems and then help provide the solutions. And boy did we progress the business. We set a three-year goal to triple the profit and we got to the tripling of profits in 18 months.

22:45 >> Well, and and I remember talking to you during this time that the win is one team ideal kind of flowed in and you guys called it better together and everybody had t-shirts made with the logo so it seemed to take hold. Yes, it did. Better together was the way to frame this was a whole new way of operating. We all brought value to the business whether you were a line worker or you were the CFO of the company and the visual that we had for better together was people with their arms linked around each other and they were in a continuous circle. So everybody was a pure and an equal, but they all were part of this this thing that could be unpenetrable, could move forward and build the business. and I remember when we were handing out the t-shirts to some of the line workers, they were like, "Nobody's ever given me anything else." And they were so proud to wear their t-shirt to work every day. We we ended up getting like threefold the number of t-shirts we needed. so that people could wash their t-shirts. That's right.

24:01 >> Still wear their better together to work. >> That's that's a huge commitment. Mark, what are you thinking? >> Chris, I'm I'm wondering how especially coming in into ARC and seeing how different the culture was from your previous successes, how did that impact you personally? I mean, did you go home every day going, "What the hell did I just get myself into?" >> Yes, I did. because not only that, I found out the town that I was moving to had a 10 time higher crime rate than the average for the state of New Jersey.

24:38 and so I ended up commuting 30 miles each way to be able to live in a place that where I felt safe because I was my husband was still running a business back in Chicago when I took this job. but the good news is I grew up on a farm and had kind of humble beginnings and maybe that's why culture is so important to me because I know that every employee can bring value to the organization if you let them. And it was humbling to just see how a little bit of walking around the plant every day, walking around the DC and saying hi to people made a difference in how they would show up for work and made a difference in how they reacted to their employees. We had a a lady in our DC who was known as not being kind or nice to anybody. And every day I would stop by and talk to her and smile a little bit and talk about the expectations of the facility, the DC, and she totally changed. It was amazing. And employees were complimenting her on how much better she was to work with. So I could tell I was making a personal difference in the lives of these people versus their previous experience. And that just felt so rewarding.

26:06 >> Oh, absolutely. Recharge as you >> Yeah. Chris Chris and I talk a lot and we talked a lot in good comes first about the need for the the kinds of random acts of leadership that you just described and and in the book we talk about one very intimidating manager, a male who didn't people didn't know how to deal with him. He he was physically intimidating. His voice was loud and yet when he would go in in the evening and just sit down and talk to people, they go, you know, he's he's not scary at all. He actually listened. He actually tried. And that built what we all three of us know is such a huge component of culture change and that is demonstrating respect >> and and actually sitting down to this one woman who had this very interesting reputation. But you actually sat down with her and said, "Let's just chat.

27:03 Let's just, you know, what's going on in your world?" Did that become contagious? And did it did those random acts of leadership help generate that respect in a in a culture that maybe wasn't that respectable before? >> I I thought I saw it happening. Absolutely. it was interesting because I left the company to take the role that I'm in right now. thought it was a great opportunity and literally everybody was crying the day it was announced that I was leaving.

27:35 >> Wow. Wow. That's heartfelt reaction right there. And you can't you can't invent that. That's pretty cool. Well, let's talk about the new job. How long have you been there? And your role has expanded quite a bit over the years at Newell. >> Yes. So, I joined in January of 2020. moved to frame my car to Atlanta, was in Chicago where my house still was when we went into shutdown. So, so and I had only met >> maybe 50 people on my team before we went into shutdown and now I wasn't even like in the same community. But I started out running our food business.

28:26 At the time we had eight different pretty much siloed business segments. where we ran our own manufacturing, our own distribution for the most part. very inefficient for a company the size and scale of new. and what I was seeing is because we were all in these siloed organizations, even the center team didn't interface much with the business units if they didn't have to, we actually ended up competing with ourselves. So, we had a center-led ecom business that would be the one of the first to undercut retail pricing on the same item that we had sold to Walmart or to Target or to Amazon. And so, >> so we needed to do a lot of trust building which is part of culture.

29:24 Plus, anybody who has followed New Brands over the past 10 years knew that the company had not performed very well in the second half from 2015 to 2020. And so there was a lot of leadership change that was happening to run the business. But that was also the unfortunate part is there was no continuity in leadership internally because with the poor business results we kept hiring on the outside. We weren't developing people on the inside to grow into bigger roles and greater leadership. so there was a lot of work to be done and the CFO at the time I started became the CEO a couple of years later and we rewrote our values. We had a set of values, but they really were not focused on things that we needed to see, such as having a passion for winning, proving strong leadership, showing ownership, having integrity, and being a good team player.

30:37 It sounds simple, but when you didn't have that as your core values within the company, people could, you know, ignore each other, not trust each other, not show respect to each other because there was no guiding light for the behaviors that you were looking for with employees. Well, and it sounds like maybe no consequences when those bad behaviors did erupt, but it erodess trust. It erodess performance. It erodess proactive problem solving. And and what is very interesting for me is to see the thread of the clarity that came to you and and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but once you saw that a culture could have such a tremendous impact at world kitchen, you implemented the same techniques at Ark and you started to implement the same techniques at Newell. Is that accurate?

31:34 >> That is accurate. with new it was a team of us again. It wasn't just me. >> the leadership team though has embraced the values and and >> what I love in the organization that I run today which is we call learning and development is we are promoting our employees. We set expectations on performance and accountability and culture. It's not just the what. We needed to get the what right, but it's the how. And we have been able to reward the employees that are there who have stood up to operating at a much higher level transforming the values within the organization.

32:22 with the ability to we we've been able to reward them with promotions. And that excites me because it reinforces that culture creation with a focus on delivering results can make such a difference. And and our regretted departures from the company are very very low right now. and particularly in learning and development where I have my team.

32:53 >> Yeah. Outstanding. Well, >> so you're using the term right there. Sorry, Chris. regretted departures. >> Yeah. >> Let me dive into that a little a bit. These are the people you wanted to keep but chose to leave anyway. They were aligned with culture and they were high performers but they chose to move on. Is that a fair assessment or definition? >> Yeah, sure. And often times they have an opportunity for a promotion externally. You know, our turnover rate of our high performers was pretty high five, six years ago. because nobody really felt anybody inside of new had was looking for leadership that promoted culture and promoted performance. in fact, it was really interesting when I first started. People talked about how all the good people left and all the people who just showed up for a job stayed. And somebody coined the word, if you put them on a a four-point scale, you have winners and you have losers.

34:02 And you have happy people and you have unhappy people. The people who were leaving were unhappy with the company and the organization and the happy losers were the ones who had stayed behind >> which which is unfortunate when you have that come from kind of the ranks and you realize that it's apparent to to everybody. >> Of course I I don't know about you but I am so stealing the phrase happy losers.

34:32 >> >> Well, I want to I want to dig into that just a little bit more because you talked about lovingly setting people free in World Kitchen. I bet you did that at Ark. Have you had to engage in those same kinds of transitions where you've got high performers but really don't buy into the respectful culture? >> Yes. in a word. it's less and less as each year goes by because the people who are there have seen what great cultures can do to strong business results which then leads to all the other things better payments, better bonus payments, you know, salary increases, promotions.

35:18 but we did have to let people go. And it it was interesting because when I first was at New because New's business results had been so bad, if you were a performer, there were members of senior leadership who wanted to keep the performers just to help keep the business moving ahead. but we can see now as we go into 2026 that a transformed culture with clear business objectives is really putting new back on track for what we believe we can deliver to the to the consumers in the marketplace.

36:05 Chris, once once you were at NE, did you ever have any managers, bosses, supervisors who looked at you and said, "Look, I I'm being measured by results and that that person that that you want to put in the what Chris and I call the positive attrition category where they're not aligned with the culture that it really is better off that they go be successful somewhere else." Did you ever manager say, "Wait, we're taking this too far. He's really good at his job and I don't want to lose him."

36:39 Or was everybody completely aligned with this concept of you need to be both a high performer and and a high values alignment, too? >> Yeah. So, I was fortunate the business that I came to New to run started seeing some really strong results pretty quickly. And it was a big turnaround from where it had been the previous couple of years. And so people knew there was something about how I was trying to run the business and build the culture that seemed to be working. they didn't all understand it.

37:19 And so there were conversations like, well, you can't get rid of so and so. she delivers this for us or he delivers that for us. But for the most part, people celebrated the fact when you lovingly let a poor culture person go because you were setting a standard of expectation for how people should treat each other day in day out in the organization. And that provided much more momentum than you know the handful of people who would say oh we can't afford to get rid of that person.

37:58 Well and there's there's such fear if the only standard that had been valued was results and it didn't matter how you got them. Then then all of a sudden you're you're you're pulling my quote star players out and yet at the same time you're expecting our division, our plant, our function to improve profitability. You know, you're killing me here, you know. And and yet what's interesting is that and and you and I have stayed connected over the years with with your transitions, Chris. I love to see the Facebook posts of you out visiting some of your plants of the cool what was happening during the summer. It seemed like there were some consumeroriented conferences of of folks like Newell who were manufacturers and brand stars and the teams were having a ball and they really legitimately seemed like they were valued >> and they were excited about the work that that the business was doing. I remember a Graco group that was very excited about some new products coming out and it was just the coolest thing because in the old days and for some of our listeners maybe in your current days it's just about performance >> and the reality is if if performance is the only thing you measure you may have some real idiocy happening behind the scenes. So you've got cool teams.

39:39 >> Yes. And I will give you a real life example on Graco. Since you mentioned Graco for about five years in a row, the brand lost share of market. It it is the leading brand, but it significantly lost share, maybe 800 basis points of share as we have really nailed this. And I guess you never nail it, but I feel like we've come so long in getting to a transformative culture where you focus on big ideas, big business results, and you do it as one team. Graco's just been on fire.

40:20 And, our POS, which is how you measure share, is up over 20% in the back half of 2025. And that's a public number so I can talk about it. >> We're not going to be sworn to secrecy. >> Let's talk about your personal journey for a second because I again all this work that you did with Chris was was before my time and but you you you helped us with the book. We've had several great conversations over the years. I've come to know you as a as a wonderful person and executive. So I'm going to ask this. I'm going to put you on the spot. Can you imagine you perhaps as a female executive, would you have had the same level of success in your career had you not been so focused on this culture first environment that that you worked so hard at do at doing?

41:22 probably not. But it was it was important to me out of the gate to let people be themselves and to let people be good team players. So what what do I mean by that? When I started at Proctor and Gamble and I started in their brand management program, I did not fit the profile of what Proctor and Gamble hires. They hire MBAs from Harvard and Wharton and I was a bachelor with a journalism degree from the prestigious University of Nebraska.

42:03 >> Now I think Nebraska is prestigious but clearly people who go to Stanford and might not think it is. and people and and I had three children in less than two years because I had twins and people didn't understand how I could be a mother and be a successful business person and there were standards assumed about me that were untrue.

42:35 So, I had to prove through being a good person that treated everybody valuable and somebody and and I had to show that I could get really great business results and I got really great business results. So, I think a lot of people early on in my career didn't understand how this person who was a square peg in a round hole could be so successful, but a lot of it was because of the way I built cultures and teams. And it was really funny at one point in time. I don't know if you'd call this funny or not, but if if good diversity people weren't being successful in one area of brand, they would go put them on my team. So when my team would meet, we look like the United Nations.

43:29 but but everybody if you treat them with value, if you train them, if you set the expectations that they treat others in a respectful way, you build a culture and people generally tend to be successful. Well, I want to I want to touch on something that you mentioned way back with the world kitchen culture transformation that you want people to be themselves and to kind of bring their unique passions, skills, ideas, and it sounds like you did that at PNG and you've kept that up through the companies that we've talked about so far. That seems to be a very strong passion of yours.

44:19 >> Well, I think it makes the brands that we run better if you have a more 360 view of the world because then you're getting inputs and insights from all of the angles, not just, you know, the people who have MBAs from one of the top 10 programs. Don't get me wrong, I was on my way to get my MBA at Harvard when I decided I would work a little bit first. so I do respect. >> You were going to go there? Yeah. Yeah.

44:52 >> That's pretty fun. Well, I want to I want to ask you about if with your next role you find a culture that isn't quite operating the way you'd like, is there any doubt in your mind that you'd engage just as you have with these last three companies we talked about that you would drive to create a respectful culture first? >> That would be the first thing that I would do wherever I would go next. It's also what I try to encourage from a governance standpoint on the boards that I have been on. be because I'll come back to what we said at the very beginning. Companies with good engagement scores generally have better business results.

45:40 >> Yep. Outperform those with the norm. Mark and I have have talked quite for years about the rather dismal US engagement numbers of roughly 33 34% engagement and yet we've got great companies. what you guys are doing at New is terrific. we were just on a podcast recording with Gary Ridge, former CEO at WD40 and and he's a huge culture champion and it's just gratifying to see that this work and it is work. It's not a simple let's do a training, let's give folks an hourong video, good, our training is all set for culture. It's a lot of work and it's literally and you've talked about it that it's holding people accountable for modeling your desired culture and you continue to do that.

46:40 >> Yeah. Today, this morning we had calibration sessions for your end performance reviews and there were a couple of people who were rated very high by their manager and they really did have good what but their how wasn't where it was supposed to be. And we discussed it crossf functionally as the leadership team and changed the rating from outstanding to meets expectations with the discussion that in the review process they would be explained why they did not get a higher rating and that it was the how.

47:19 >> It wasn't just the what. >> Yep. Yeah. Boy, that's great. >> Chris, let me ask you this. what I mean in the last 40 48 minutes or so we've been we've been chatting you have made culture change sound incredibly easy and we know it's not we know it's a lot of hard work but look at the success you've had do you ever do you ever wonder like you go on LinkedIn or you or or you go to a conference do you ever wonder why aren't other executives taking the same approach I mean I'm hearing them talk about the lack of respect perhaps a toxic culture, how they can't retain good people, how they don't have good employment. Do you ever want to like shake them by the shoulders and say, "Have you heard a word I said?"

48:06 Well, I don't I am lucky because I had the leadership whether it was at World Kitchen, whether it was the owner of ARC supporting what I was doing here at New Executive Committee is all committed to culture growth and development. And so, I've been lucky. So, I do believe it all starts with treating people the way you want to be treated. And you know when somebody says at a event that their company has been losing some of its top talent, you know, the question I'll ask without I guess you know upsetting people is how are people being treated in your company and are they being treated the way you would want to be treated? And if they aren't, you should check into it.

49:00 and I give them Chris's name and your name and I'm like, "Hey, there's some culture development out there that really works, >> you know." But but I I can talk about it with them without being offensive, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. >> Yeah. Yeah. Because you can you can put people on the defensive when they're basically looking at something that is not been in their toolkit. they wouldn't know how to to begin to revise the culture. here's the one thing I want to do before we we talk about your your grandma success.

49:40 I would bet that over the years you have found some of the leaders that you helped thrive in these respectdriven, resultsdriven, both of those things happening in cultures that when they moved on to other roles, they took some of that with them. And and I'll bet you there are hundreds, if not thousands of leaders who still take that with them today. Have you got some experience of seeing that?

50:11 >> I have and in fact it's somebody who had worked for me at World Kitchen I brought to Newell. Now New's a big big company, you know, compared to World Kitchen. And so we don't interact or overlap on a daily basis, but she is now vice president of all of third-party procurement. >> Wow. renewal, which is a big big budget. And she defines great culture, too. And so, you know, it's fun to see her success. It's fun to to see people who have worked for me in the past see what they're doing in industry now. And the really good news is a lot of them have kept that culture mindset and used it to be successful in their careers.

51:07 That that may be the biggest compliment you can receive as a as a manager, as an executive. Chris, congratulations. >> Thank you. >> Yep. That's awesome. Tell us about the grandchild, the new grandchild that we saw a couple of weeks ago. And you have two grandchildren. You can speak about both of them. >> I will speak about both of them. So, my browneyed daughter and her husband gave birth to Goldie, about three months ago. And Goldie has blue eyes like her grandma, which I didn't think was possible. So, so I'm already in love with her. And then I have a three-year-old grandson who is so much fun and he calls me up. He loves to FaceTime. Of course, mom has to dial the number, of course, >> but he's he loves to check up on Grammy.

52:05 And at Halloween, he I said, "What's your Halloween costume, Rory?" And he told me he wanted to be an excavator, which we figured out how to make him an excavator. And then I went on to ask him like, "What's mom? What's dad? What's grandpa? What's >> grandma?" The other grandma. Yeah. >> And then I said, "So, what should I be, Rory?" and he said, "Well, you're going to be the other excavator and we're going to hold hands."

52:33 >> That's perfect. >> That says it all. >> Yeah. >> So sweet. >> That's absolutely perfect. >> So, you know, I will tell you as a as a grandfather, and maybe you can relate to this now, my wife, grandma, loves it when they're so small and you can just hold them and cuddle and listen to them coup. And I like it when they get Rory's age where you can actually have a conversation. >> And then I like them even better when they're old enough to throw a baseball.

53:00 So I have like three different tiers that that we look forward to in our house. >> Yes. >> Just being around them makes me happy. >> Well, Chris, we are so blessed by you engaging with us and our listeners today. you are absolutely a culture champion and it's a very unique skill and we hope that our listeners have learned from you and h some of the themes around win as much as one team could be the most brilliant takeaway from the day. U Mark what would you add sir? Well, again, I just want to thank you for being here and and thank you for being such a role model no matter where you go. It's your your passion for culture is obviously contagious and and we're just so happy with the work that you're do that you've done and continue to do.

53:55 >> Well, thank you very much. I enjoyed our conversation. >> Well, and speaking of more conversations, there's more episodes to come as good as this one with Chris Malcowski. We hope you'll keep your eye on the Mastering Workplace Culture podcast where you can listen, you can watch, and we'd love to hear what you think about what you learned today. Chris, again, thank you, Mark. Thank you. And listeners, we will see you next week.

54:27 >> This has been Mastering Workplace Culture. No jargon, no corporate fairy tales, just leaders who show their scars and celebrate their wins. Do something with what you heard today. Subscribe, share, take action. Creating a culture that equally values respect and results is your responsibility. Go own it. When you're ready to make that happen, we're here to help. We'll catch you in the next episode of Mastering Workplace Culture.