Hi, everyone. Kumar Dattatreyan here with Agile Meridian. And today, we have a special guest with us: Dawn Schuler, the CEO of the Schuler Group. And I'm gonna let her introduce herself because I don't think I will do it justice as well as she will. So take it away, Dawn.
Thank you, Kumar. And thank you for having me on the show. As Kumar said, I am the CEO of the Schuler Group. We are an organizational development company. We do consulting and training, and we are the proud home of the Company Climate Inventory, which is, as we like to say, like getting a physical for your organization. So it discovers the strengths and challenges of an organization, and we provide a road map for here's what you can do to close the gaps and become an even better, more thriving, sustainable, successful organization.
That's wonderful. So I'm definitely gonna spend some time digging into the Climate Inventory. The first question really is, I'm gonna take you back to the formation of the Schuler Group. And I was reading up on your website. You and your husband, Mark, formed this company together. Correct?
We did 10 years ago.
Okay. So what inspired you and your husband to work together? How's that working?
For the most part, very well, not to say that there aren't challenges. But we do spend an inordinate amount of time together, and we're still married. So that says something right there. How that came about is, so I've had my own business since 2002, really running other businesses, other organizations. I started out teaching English. So I've been creating communication curriculum pretty much all my life. Mark's background is as a psychotherapist. He had his private clinical, psychotherapy practice for almost 30 years. And when we decided to join our personal lives, it gave us the opportunity to say, well, how can we take this collective background from both of us and put it together? And so we thought, you know, for a business that works well, communication, relationships, we can bring that to the corporate world and say, "Hey, your biggest asset is your people." There's a reason why they call it human resources, because you have this resource that is human. And so why don't you maximize it, make the best of it? So that is how we joined forces and formed the Schuler Group.
That's wonderful. I do have more questions, especially as it relates to psychotherapy and the creation of your Climate Inventory. I'm gonna get to that later, but I wanna ask you about this. This, I think, is really super interesting to me. So most of my career, I've spent, as you have, consulting, coaching my clients in agile and lean systems. And your company, on your website, I saw you take a systems approach to helping organizations, similar to family systems. I wanna sort of probe into that a little bit and have you explain what does that mean and how do you do that?
That is such a good question, and one that we actually don't get very often, but it really does form the basis of why we created the Schuler Group and all of the different aspects that both Mark and I bring to it. You'll go into an organization and some of them will say, you know, "This is our, we're like family. It's the, you know, it's the Schuler Group family," you know, insert the name of the organization. And so there's a natural, in some companies, feeling of that we're all in this together. It's a community. And the way that I look at it is, all of our lives are filled with various communities. We have our very small community of, say, our household and our family, our household. You might have a little bit larger community of the neighborhood in which we live, and then the city and organizations that we belong to, those kinds of things. And so the family systems is about how do we all work and then, in other realms, live together in a more supportive way where we're all valued and we all get to use our gifts and our strengths. And so that's where that idea of the family systems comes in. And then more, I guess, technically, and Mark could speak much more intelligently about this than I, then you have those psychological family dynamics. You know, you have some very hierarchical family systems, both in real families and then in organizations. And how does that work? So I'll stop there because that could be a very long conversation.
It's really fascinating. You know, there's a coaching technique called systemic coaching. And this, I forget his name - Peter Hawkins, I think he wrote a couple of books on that. And the notion, the idea of systemic coaching, is that every relationship is part of a larger system, whether it's relationships at home or relationship at work. And so as a coach, you wanna understand not just the person that you're coaching, but also the system that that person is a part of. So if you're in an organization and they are disengaged and they don't feel valued as much as they feel they should be valued, then as a coach, you should be asking yourself, "What is the system around them? How is the system helping them? And how's the environment helping them or not? And what are the dysfunctions in the environment that may be causing this person, this human, to feel this way?" And so that was what I got out of it. And I think it is the approach that you take. Would you agree?
Absolutely. 100%. And, you know, our motto, if you will, is "Helping teams work better together tomorrow than they do today." And one of our colleagues, Dr. Ryan Gottfredson, who probably would be a great guest for your show, in a recent blog post, he talked about the culture curve and the financial curve in organizations, and that the majority, sadly, of leaders don't even acknowledge, because they're not consciously aware, that there's even a culture curve, and they only focus on the financial curve. And some of those leaders who might even understand and realize that there is such a thing as a culture curve, say, "Well, we've gotta be profitable first. We have to focus on the bottom line, and then we can focus on culture." And the research that Dr. Gottfredson shows is that those organizations that actually start working on that culture curve first, they are more successful, i.e., more profitable, than when they address the financial curve. And I've been thinking about that in preparation for our conversation today, knowing that a lot of the work that you do is on that profit side, that financial side. And so what I see is that culture and that financial piece are two very important facets of any organization. And so if the culture is off, it's going to affect the financial side, and that culture being off, like you said - disengagement, the wrong people in the wrong seats - all of that, it all affects, nothing is in a silo or in a vacuum. It all affects one another.
Yeah. Everything is interconnected, isn't it? And you're right. You know, a lot of the work that I've done in the past, especially with Agile Meridian, the company that I'm a co-founder of, and now with Profit Sensei, has been focused on helping companies become more efficient, become more productive, become more profitable, and so on and so forth. And usually that's what attracts leaders to hire consultants, because they're interested in those things. However, that to me is just sort of the shoe-in, if you will, to the organization so that the real work can be done, right? And the real work being helping their culture change, their climate change. And maybe you don't change the culture all at once. You can't. But you can change climates. And those micro-climates, if you will, in different divisions and departments in the company, are gonna start to coalesce into a culture, whatever that becomes, hopefully better than, to your point, better than what it is today, right? The way your teams work today, tomorrow is gonna be better than they work today, which brings me to my next question. In the organizations that you've worked with, what would you say are some of the most common issues or dysfunctions that you've seen? And how have you helped your clients overcome them?
So another good question, and maybe it's not just because, you know, we have a hammer, so everything looks like a nail. I don't think that's the case, but in almost every organization, communication is an issue. And that is one of our areas of expertise - communication. My husband Mark has a program called "Dysfunctional Communication Styles in the Workplace." And that is an issue. But again, I don't think it's just because it looks like a nail because we are hammers, because some of the things that we uncover in our consulting and our discovery through the Company Climate Inventory could be things like frustrations with outdated systems and tools, dissatisfaction with compensation and benefits. Some of our clients and organizations, I'll ask questions very real-time. So in the middle of COVID, it was about "How can we support you better?" because we had a client that went from 100% in-person to 100% remote. So we were asking very specific questions. "What do you need from your manager? How, you know, what are you doing to take care of yourself both work-wise and home-wise?" But again, very specific to the time. And I'm trying to think of some of the other things. So IT, technology systems, and we're talking about kind of the negatives, right? The challenges. Communication. We had one organization that had eight offices, six of which were in other countries. Four, which were in other countries. And so they went from two offices in the United States to, four years later, eight offices, four of which were international. And so their huge challenge was, "How do we be more connected? How do we be more of that family to where their people don't feel disconnected even if they're in Australia?" So these are some of the challenges that they've had.
And then some of the ways that we've helped them is, sometimes we can help them personally, right? Meaning we have our consulting programs, our training programs, coaching, etcetera. And sometimes we have what I call my "Superhero Rolodex." And depending on how young your audience is, they may or may not know what a Rolodex is. It's actually virtual. It's an Excel spreadsheet. So it's not even like the old-fashioned Rolodex, but I'm able to make recommendations. So a client needs a compensation survey - we don't do that, but I'm lucky enough to have a rich, robust network where I can reach out, be that superhero to our clients, and make really good referrals. So I think that was a really long answer and a wide answer to your question.
No, it's a good answer as well. And because you're right, it's contextual. Every company is gonna be different, and their challenges are gonna be different. And I'd say that communication, to your point, is at the heart of it. We have an informal assessment, we call it the Collaboration Maturity Index, and it measures the level of collaboration between people, between teams, between departments, between divisions. And of course, the lower the score, the lower the level of communication, collaboration, all those things. And so even though we may lead with a financial bent with our coaching and consulting, we have these tools that, when they're ready, you know, let's talk about what the real problem is here. You know, beyond the numbers, let's talk about the real problem.
Exactly. And I love that idea of the Collaboration Maturity Index. And so my question to you would be, where do you find organizations are typically falling on that collaboration scale?
Yeah. I mean, to your point, since COVID, it's gotten worse, not better. You know, people are disconnected. They were disconnected before, even though they were all in the office, it was still better. You know, people could have conversations with others in the hallways and the coffee room and the water cooler. You know, these days, everyone is remote, and it's hard to have meaningful conversations with people that you work with. And that's causing issues with communication, collaboration. It needs to be intentional, right? And I'm sure you'll agree with this, that cadence provides a mechanism for intentionality so that, okay, we're gonna meet every week for an hour or 30 minutes, and we're gonna talk about these things. And informally, please, you know, we're gonna use our Slack or whatever we're using to communicate informally. In these networks, people can't hold as many conversations as we need to. The teams seem to be getting bigger and bigger when they need to be getting smaller and smaller. And large teams are especially thorny, and we try to, I'm sure you do too, try to solve that by helping clients understand the power of small teams, of six-person, eight-person teams that can do so much more than a twenty-person team. But that's probably beyond the scope of the conversation. I'm getting on a soapbox here. What are your thoughts on that? Small teams versus large teams?
Yeah. Let's, you and I, take that offline at some point because, you know, you and I, we serve, we have our similarities and our differences, right? But we approach things differently. We have different insights. And so, I would definitely be very interested in having a separate conversation to delve more into that.
Yeah. That sounds great. So next question then for you is, I got so many good questions. Let's see what I wanna talk to you about. I wanna start hitting on the Climate Inventory survey. And so maybe you can spend a few minutes talking about that and how you use that as a way to orient your client to whatever it is that you're orienting them to.
Absolutely. So as I mentioned before, you know, we liken it to getting an annual physical for your organization. We have clients who take it every year, which then that first year is a baseline and a benchmark, and then we can see progress and, or sometimes decline, year after year. So I really do think of it in that term. One of our partners who has brought the CCI (it's what we call the Company Climate Inventory) into their signature programs and processes said, "You know, if a doctor needs to diagnose before he or she prescribes, otherwise, it's called malpractice." And I thought, that is brilliant. And so it really is. We call it a diagnostic tool because, yeah, sure, as consultants, without some of our assessments and our other tools, we spend a lot of time talking to our clients. Nothing wrong with that. But what if we could get to the heart of the issues so much quicker? That means we're actually more effective for our clients and giving them information, good information, more quickly, which then enables them to do what they are required to do, which is make good strategic decisions. Because now they have good, solid information that perhaps they didn't have before, or it reinforces what they already knew or suspected, and it gives them a vehicle by which to get everybody rowing the boat in the same direction.
I love that. I think assessments are great. Diagnostics are great. You know, it's something we're all used to in every other facet of our lives. Why not the workplace, right? We get in our vehicles and the first thing we do is check the level of the fuel in the tank and make sure that we have enough to get to where we're going. Or if you're in an electric vehicle, it's the same thing. You check the level of charge in your car to see where you're going. And you check your instrumentation to make sure you're not speeding or things like that. Right? So why not organizational assessments that measure the health of the organization? Can you tell us a little bit more about some of the dimensions that are part of this assessment? What do you diagnose? And how does it help your clients gain more insight and more awareness of the challenges that they're facing?
Great question. So some people, when they are talking to me, they say, "It's a culture assessment," or "It's an employee engagement survey." And it's actually more than that. It really, I think of it more as that holistic health assessment. So there are five main areas. There's leadership, there's communication, there's coworkers, job satisfaction, HR, and benefits. And so we've got these five main areas. And then, for lack of a better way to say it, there can be a score in each of those five areas and then an overall score, which is more cumulative. And the CCI is made up of your typical Likert scale - you know, strongly agree, agree, neutral, blah, blah, blah. But then there are also the open text statements and questions where they write their responses. And that's what makes our tool a little bit different, because we have that ability to ask these questions and the expertise to analyze the answers and see patterns and trends.
One of the things I love about our Company Climate Inventory is clients can customize questions. So perhaps there's an initiative that they want to get some feedback on, or they want to start measuring and tracking how some projects are going. We have the ability to filter. So for example, the client that I mentioned that had the eight different offices, and they've been around for 30 years, we were then able to deep dive into the responses and filter by department, by home office versus the other seven regional offices, by tenure at the company, by role level - you know, were they a director or were they a manager, etcetera. And so they got insights which were fascinating.
Of course, I don't think of myself as a data nerd, but when it tells stories, that's what gets me excited. And so when you see, okay, so here's this - so when you think about the tenure in the company, and you can't relate it exactly to age, but we're pretty sure that somebody who's been there 30 years is not in their twenties. Pretty sure that we can make that statement. Right? You know, somebody that's been there for one to three years versus somebody who's been there 15 to 20 - we could see what was important to them, and it was
