How Self-Awareness Led to a Healthy Culture Reset at Email on Acid
John Thies and his sister, Michelle Klann, decided to start their business, Email on Acid, after working with companies to ensure their emails looked correct in every inbox. They knew these companies wanted perfect-looking emails to land in their customer’s mailboxes, and they were determined to build a technological model to deliver perfectly formatted emails, every time. The challenge was to educate prospective customers that Email on Acid’s technology platform could help them do just that, deliver email perfection. Learning from early rejections, they were able to land large customers and build their business and their organization.
Taking on the role of CEO and growing the company was a new experience for John. Like many startup entrepreneurs, he did every job, including hiring new employees. His approach to hiring placed the most emphasis on technological and problem-solving skills. Being customer-focused and a perfectionist, John wanted his employees to deliver perfect solutions to his customers. His management style was demanding. He was impatient and critical of employees who fell short of his high expectations. The evolving culture of his fledgling company was filled with tension, with employees often complaining and leaving the organization for other opportunities.
John was not happy with this culture. He wanted employees to enjoy work, be challenged, grow, and excel individually. He considered himself a caring person, but his management style was yielding a different outcome. He knew he needed to change his approach to leadership; he just did not know how to do it.
John joined a local peer advisory group with the hope of finding answers to his organizational and management style challenges. He soon came to realize that it was he who needed to change if he wanted to grow his business. With the help of his advisory group chair, who acted as a coach and mentor, and group members who gave him candid feedback and support, John gained insight on what he needed to do to create a healthy, growth-oriented organization. He was ready for what he defined as a “cultural reset” for Email on Acid.
John adopted many changes in his desire for change. One was writing a five-minute journal entry in which he asked five questions of himself every day.
Each morning, he would respond to:
1. I am grateful for…
2. What would make today great?
3. Daily affirmations. I am…
Each night, he would answer:
1. What three amazing things happened today?
2. How could I have made today even better?
In thinking about his “Daily Affirmations,” John developed a phrase that he calls “The Four Cs for Today: Calm, Cool, Collected, and Confident.”
This exercise in mental awareness enabled John to reframe his leadership style and think about how he was presenting himself every day at home and at work. His challenge quickly changed to how to achieve a reset in his company culture. John decided to seek the help of the Gallup organization and administered its G12 engagement survey to all employees. The first survey was conducted in 2017, and Email on Acid scored in the 5th percentile. The disappointing findings revealed many problems the company was experiencing and clues as to what needed to change to improve culture. John was up to the challenge. He clearly articulated his vision and expectations for the company culture to all employees.
Here are a few of the expectations John communicated:
1. Hiring is based on culture in addition to technical expertise.
2. Conclude each all-hands company meeting by giving teammates the opportunity to give a shout-out to others who exemplified our company motto, “Be courageous, be humble, give a damn.”
3. Do not speak negatively about anyone; we deal with the “real issues” together.
Search for truth by asking how, what, and when: seek to understand.
4. Care about each other and our customers.
5. Exercise vulnerability: mistakes are learning opportunities.
6. Shared goals and shared fate: We are all in this together; we win together, and we lose together.
John realized many of his current employees were not living up to the culture changes he had envisioned and was implementing. Living up to his belief that the core values of a company are not those listed on the wall but rather what it would take for you to get fired, John set about communicating them. By providing clarity on “intolerables”--the behaviors John would not accept within the organization--many employees left the company on their own or were asked to leave.
This approach of articulating what not to do differs from identifying the values that employees are expected to live up to. One can have a philosophical debate over which is more effective, avoiding behaviors or striving to live them. Email on Acid uses both. By adding intolerables, the company has set a minimum threshold that employees cannot cross. There is little question that knowing what not to do sends a very clear message that works for Email on Acid.
One lesson learned was culture fit was essential to the health of the company. John personally interviews each job candidate and outlines his expectations for his teammates, including his intolerables, the value of trust in dealing with each other, how employees support each other and the company’s customers, how they show up every day, and how they hold each other accountable.
Two years after the initial administration of the Gallup G12 engagement survey, the company scored in the 95th percentile. Clearly, Email on Acid had made significant strides in realizing the healthy culture it had envisioned.
In January of 2020, just before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company decided to become a 100-percent remote working organization. Employees worked from home, and all newly hired workers remained in the geographical area they currently lived in. There was no longer a home base, headquarters, or company office space. This created a challenge for integrating new teammates within the workforce and maintaining open communication. Helped by teams and an intentional culture initiative to connect individuals to the business and socially, the company has maintained its connected culture. Examples of some ways they have maintained the connectedness within this culture is by incorporating Friday afternoon happy hours and lunches where food is brought in through a local delivery service. A culture task force continually looks for ways of improving the culture and social interaction.
John Thies views his company’s success in several dimensions. While proud of the results on the Gallup G12 survey, he views employee creativity, individual growth, team improvements in solving work challenges, and the effectiveness of its remote, autonomous workforce as major accomplishments. He views his role as setting strategic direction and defining the “what” while letting his teammates determine the “how” to get things done. He has created job security, never having a layoff, while maintaining a strong financial position with sales growth and profitability.
In summary, John and his sister, who remains an owner but left the company to start another business, launched a successful company in Email on Acid by learning how to match customer needs with their technological solutions. They created the economic engine that initially fueled company financial success. Realizing the culture of the company was negative and dysfunctional, John re-engineered it with the help of a peer advisory group that was knowledgeable and supportive of his effort to change. The result was a successful company with a healthy culture, one in which employees are highly engaged, energized, and appreciated.
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