What Happens Behind Your Back?

I was so very proud of my monthly Tribe Meetings.

Gathering my financial planning clients in an emotionally safe space, with Zoom.

Then teaching them to coach each other.
So that they could work through each lesson of our 24-month programme… together.

They said it was uplifting… rewarding… unusual.

Until it wasn’t.

That was the day when an IFA did precisely what I hoped they would never do.
Deeply offending one of their peers.

The following morning when the emotional complaint landed in my Inbox.
Followed by a mystified phone conversation.

I couldn’t believe it.

I thought I’d taught this Tribe cohort carefully.
Month after month.
For three years.

I thought they’d read the document
‘Your Promise to The Tribe.
This Is How We Treat Each Other Here.’

Seems not.

I thought I’d actually built a culture.
One of those business aspects I prided myself in teaching others.

So, it was a shock to find this truth:
They were still looking at me as their Soul Millionaire Guru.

What I’d actually built was a group of bright people… who knew what I wanted.

On screen, I could see that they were energised and smiling and loving each lesson.
What I couldn’t see was what happened when they were in the Zoom Breakout Rooms.

And that was at least half of our 90 minutes together each month.

It took me weeks to process what I was learning.
Weeks to reach this understanding. This question.

“If my culture needs me to guard it…
have I really built a culture at all?”

I then started being more vocal about what culture definitely is NOT.

It certainly isn’t the words you’ve put up on the wall.

I’m sorry, but it isn’t the ‘Values Exercise’ either.

It isn’t what the founder says.

It isn’t even what folk do while the founder is around.

The more I carefully coached financial planning leaders… the more this emerged:

“Culture is what your people choose… when nobody important is in the room”

Many founders of boutique firms tell me: “We’ve got a really strong culture.”

What I discover they mean is:

“I’m still sufficiently present to keep everybody behaving in accordance with my preferences.”

As they talk things out with me, they hear themselves airing this thought:

They’re still indispensable.
And it’s that indispensability which is evidence of something they’ve failed to build.

Which is why something Warren Buffett wrote recently stopped me.

At 96, preparing Berkshire Hathaway for life beyond him, he described its culture and values as…

“worth more than anything on our balance sheet.”

Not the businesses.
Not the billions.

The culture.

One day…
Every founder leaves the room for the last time.

The conversations will continue.
The decisions will still be made.
The clients will continue walking through the door.
People will still decide how others in the team are treated.

Perhaps it’s at that moment that we will finally discover…
What we built.

Not while we were there.

But when we’re not.