Great Core Values are more than just words on a page. They are more than just cliches. They are the roots from which the Corporate Culture grows.

The more the Core Values of a company come to life off of the page or plaque, the more they will be lived in the real day-to-day life of the people who make a company go.

Mike Petsalis is the CEO of Vircom, a tech company based in Montreal, Canada, which has been in operation for over two decades now. Vircom is a company which specializes in email security. Email is an all-too-important component of business in today’s digital world, and that fact leads to security risks of all kinds. The hackers know this, as well, so security is more important than ever.

Will Scott welcomes Mike Petsalis to the show this week, as they discuss the importance of culture in a company. They discuss the Culture of Vircom, how they recognize employees who are living the Core Values, how they bring their Core Values to life through the personification of Star Trek characters, and Mike gives advice on the importance of Culture in any business.

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In this episode, you will learn:

[01:02] Background on Mike and his company Vircom
[02:22] What is Corporate Culture?
[04:19] The Core Values and culture at Vircom
[06:45] Mike details how Vircom chose the Core Values, and how they are implemented in the daily operations of the company
[11:08] Where Culture should fit in the priorities of a company
[15:30] How Mike and Vircom brought their Core Values to “life”
[21:10] Updating the visual metaphors of Core Values without changing the Core Values
[23:30] Mike gives examples of Vircom’s Core Values in action
[28:20] Advice from Mike about Corporate Culture

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Episode Transcript:

Speaker 1: From core values to valued culture here is your host Will Scott interviewing another CEO about leading culture in their company.

Will Scott: Welcome everybody to another Culture Czars interview where we interview CEOs that care about their corporate culture. As you know we encourage companies not just to have core values, but to truly have a valued culture. And we've got a series of steps we like to go through for that. And you'll hear about some steps that Mike has taken today.

Will Scott: In fact, I'd like to introduce Mike. He's a definite culture czar. And Mike tell us a little bit about Vircom.

Mike Petsalis: Hey, hi and thanks for having me. I wouldn't go as far as calling me a culture czar. I'd say we care a lot about culture. So a person who cares about culture.

Mike Petsalis: Vircom is really all about bringing together motivated technologists to solve the complex problem of protecting business email for customers all over the world. And protecting it against viruses, against phishing attempts, against ransomware. Email is the number one vehicle for the entry of some pretty, pretty bad stuff and we spend pretty much all our time trying to protect businesses around the world.

Will Scott: Gosh, well we all need that. And increasingly so, right?

Mike Petsalis: Yes, absolutely.

Will Scott: So Mike, Mike Petsalis, what is your role there at Vircom?

Mike Petsalis: I am the CEO/President, whatever you like to call it, kind of keep things moving along on a daily basis, make sure everybody's happy and doing the right things.

Will Scott: Okay. Well what do you think of, Mike, when we talk about corporate culture? What does it mean in your company?

Mike Petsalis: I spent a lot of time on thinking about this. It makes me think about really what's best about our company and our people. What makes us distinct and hopefully remarkable. It's about the things that we do or we try very hard to do and try to do them consistently on a daily basis. It makes me think of stories and examples and of the people involved in those stories. So culture is kind of like just the continuing narrative of the company and its people.

Will Scott: Good. I heard some great things there that we like to talk about a lot. One is that you're using them every day in your business and secondly, the stories are a big part of culture.

Will Scott: How would you describe the culture at Vircom?

Mike Petsalis: We are definitely techies to the point of ultra geekiness. Even the salespeople, they understand tech and they care deeply about technology, they use technology. And so they can go toe to toe with the engineers. It's about going the extra mile. That's definitely a common theme. I mean I have to force people to go on vacation and cut off their communications at times. It's like you can't check email, you know, it's, there's definitely that. There's extreme teamwork. People care very much about the success of their teammates and obviously the customer. And just problem solving to the nth degree. The attitude of problem solving is, "Oh, great! Another problem. We get to show how brilliant we are," kind of thing. Instead of, "Oh darn, another problem. I hate those!"

Will Scott: That's awesome. It sounds like you've got some tremendous buy in and a really great, great culture there. And I know you've defined your culture using core values. What are a couple of those core values?

Mike Petsalis: Yeah, so we've got it down to four. And I think it's important, you know, those aren't the only things we care about. We obviously care about many, many things. But these are the things we care about kind of above all. These really, really trump everything.

Mike Petsalis: So the number one is, we try to give them nice names, get it done. It's about accountability. It's about making commitments and delivering, being results oriented. And we actually write this down, no excuses, no bullshit. That's get it done.

Mike Petsalis: Find a better way is really about always solving and improving on the status quo, overcoming obstacles and being undaunted by failure or rejection, which happens. Failure happens.

Mike Petsalis: Delight your customer is about exceeding your expectations, listening, understanding and acting, respecting and empathizing.

Mike Petsalis: And finally, always keep learning. In tech, things change so fast. Your head spins. So we care very much about being enthusiastic, life long learners, sharing information, teaching others, respecting the learning curve and seeking feedback. Not being afraid to say, "How am I doing?"

Mike Petsalis: So get it done, find a better way, delight your customer, always keep learning. Those are the anchors for us.

Will Scott: Those are awesome. You know I'm a great fan of your core values, Mike. They catch so many of the things that we like to talk about at Culture Czars.

Will Scott: First of all, you've got four. I always think four's a great number because people never seem to be able to remember when there's more than four. It's like they can remember one for each finger, but as soon as you bring the thumb in, now, what was that fifth one? So four's a great number. You've made them memorable. And then you've, apart from just a short core value you've actually gone and put what I call a descriptive behaviors or some little ... Explain what those core values mean with some additional wording. But it's short, it's sweet and it's really, yeah, great job and it's clearly working for you.

Will Scott: What process did you use to arrive at these values, by the way?

Mike Petsalis: Yes, so I remember reading about a process called Mission to Mars. And we tried to follow the steps described in that. So I might butcher it completely, but basically we, as we worked with a group. And we kind of chose the people that we felt best represented what is best about the company. Who do we admire in the company? Who do we think is doing awesome things? Who do we want to be like? Who do we want everybody to be like? That kind of stuff. And then once we chose those people we kind of put the columns down. We said okay, what is it that makes them special? What is it that we really think is awesome about them? And then we had the, you know, a lot of awesomeness down. And then we kind of started comparing, okay, what's common? And starting to group things. And then from there, really, okay, do things belong together? And trying to see patterns. I'm over simplifying. It actually was long. And it didn't all come out in one sitting. It was a fairly deep exercise, but that's what we did.

Will Scott: Yeah, yeah, I get it. So what's it called? Mission to Mars?

Mike Petsalis: I had heard that term. Am I misquoting it? Is it Mission to Mars? You're, I think, much more knowledgeable in this than I am.

Will Scott: Yeah, I believe, no, I think you're right. Absolutely. And certainly a common practice and one we like to use in helping people discern their core values is definitely looking at your great employees and what values are they representing. And yet, it doesn't happen on the first sitting. It takes a little while. And definitely it takes, it's worthwhile to put some effort into that.

Will Scott: So okay, you went through the process of discerning your core values. You made them public. What would you say in terms of your employees ability to recall these? Are they, if I stopped them in the hallway would they all be able to talk about them?

Mike Petsalis: So I'm chuckling as you're asking that question because I can be annoying repetitive about things. And I mean we make an effort to make sure that the values are commonly used. Even the phrases in just daily discourse in the company. So I daresay the employees are very aware. I mean they're visible on the walls with boards where employees can spontaneously enter stories about teammates as they're happening and they're exhibiting the values. We bring them up at our monthly All Hangs Meeting and we give out goofy awards and statuettes that I've mentioned to you in the past. They come up in daily discourse where employees among themselves, teammates will say, "Oh man! Let's totally find a better way. Oh man! That's a Scottie." Who's the metaphor for find a better way. Or sometimes they'll say, "Oh, that's a bit get it done and a bit delight your customer." And for me that's just music to my ears when I hear them use ... I mean I'm always scared a little bit. Is it too goofy? But I do think that helps in the awareness with the staff.

Will Scott: I love it. I love that you have a method for what I call catching people committing a core value.

Mike Petsalis: Committing a core value.

Will Scott: And they can catch that story right away and then use it in your monthly meeting to actually give awards. And it sounds like people are just, yeah, using them in the every day business conversations. So I think when that's happening you know that you definitely brought your culture alive and it's thriving. And I don't think there's anything goofy about it. I think it makes it fun, too. And what's wrong with that, you know? A little fun in the workplace.

Will Scott: But on the serious side of things, where does managing culture rank in sort of the priorities for you because as CEO of the company you've got to care about sales and customer relationships and the health of the business, profits of course. Where does managing culture fit amongst those strategic priorities?

Mike Petsalis: So it's very significant in what I call the softer areas, like more the qualitative areas. So I put culture right up there with vision and core purpose in terms of that level of importance. Especially when a cultural failure is catastrophic for a company. You wonder why things are going wrong? Why everything's going wrong and it turns on this, just one thing. It's the culture. So it can have an unbelievable negative impact when it's wrong. So we put it right up there, believe it or not, with the main things, the main kind of qualitative things about the company like vision and core purpose.

Will Scott: And you're bringing these into your strategic planning annually, quarterly? Do you do that sort of thing?

Mike Petsalis: Absolutely. I mean it's something we found a way to track so we basically because it's not just about just managers noticing the behaviors. But it's also about teammates being engaged enough to notice when other teammates are exhibiting core values or being role models. So we actually measure those instances in our weekly management meeting. It's a metric that we know and track. And we track all the stories. Who, which value and everything. So it's an important KPI for us that we track pretty closely. It was hard to think of another one, but just the number of instances. So it's not about the volume. It's just about the number. It's not about the quality of each mention. Just the volume.

Will Scott: Just the fact-

Mike Petsalis: That's what we track.

Will Scott: Yeah. I love how you mention that managing the softer side of business. I think some CEOs shy away from that because it gets to talking about feelings, which of course as humans, you know we're all feeling based animals. And yeah, measure it.

Mike Petsalis: Will, I didn't mention it's also integrated into our performance management system. So we do quarterly performance updates and annual performance reviews. Employees have quarterly objectives. But a significant part of the evaluation is adherence to core values. And adherence is not a subjective thing. It's objective and it's really about stories, examples of getting it done, examples of find a better way. And one thing this turns out nice at performance review is when teammates, employees have forgotten about things they did and the manager says, "Hey, there was this one. There was that one." I mean there's nothing better for developing trust when you're actually saying, "you know what? I was paying attention that time you were being awesome. And I appreciate it."

Will Scott: Music to my ears! Absolutely, that trust is also a big part of what comes from having a great culture. Of course, it's a trusting environment. People feel safer and they're going to perform better for you. That's so cool that you found at least two ways there of measuring culture. So it's not just a soft, immeasurable. You can actually measure your culture. So, that's awesome. Congratulations for that as well.

Will Scott: And I know that you've taken your ... In terms of bringing the core values alive, you've taken them to another level in terms of, you know, I think you used the word metaphor. Tell us about how you used a metaphor and characters and sort of made the words visual and gave like a characterization to your values.

Mike Petsalis: Right. So some of the original technologists of the company are in the late 40s and maybe even early 50s. And so the original Star Trek show was a major, major cultural phenomenon for us. And we're very familiar with those characters. There was the rebirth of the series with the movies and we were hoping very much that those would take off and capture the imagination of the younger generation. So we choose the characters from the Star Trek series that most represent the four values. And it turned out the four key characters actually exemplified those values. Captain Kirk, get it done. Scotty, find a better way. Dr. McCoy for delight your customer. And Spock for always keep learning. So we created the imagery. We created the little statuettes from collectibles of the characters and that's kind of what we award. And people get to just keep them and display them for a month as we rotate. They get to display them on having achieved one or two core values, significant stories, during the month.

Will Scott: And you said earlier that people will say those names to, in a very quickly, exemplify a core value.

Mike Petsalis: Absolutely. That's a Spock. That's a ... Scotty's the favorite. I got to say, for a bunch of engineers. So I mean it's just crazy. Folks will get the Captain Kirk and it's like, "Damn! I want the Scotty!" Honestly that kind of discourse is good.

Will Scott: Absolutely.

Mike Petsalis: It means that we've got our own language around and that makes me feel very good.

Will Scott: And again, a picture or image tells a thousand words. You've found a way for somebody to sort of capture the meaning of words very quickly with an image and a characterization.

Mike Petsalis: Absolutely. And you know what? You wouldn't believe how important the little statuettes are. One all staff meeting I mentioned the stories. We kind of applauded and the people for whom the stories were about, and I forgot to give the statuettes. I got feedback right after, like, "Hey! Where are they at? What happened? You forgot. I want my statuette." I was like, "What? Damn!" So we're more meticulous about giving them out.

Will Scott: That's awesome. So the small thing, actually is, that might seem silly to some people is actually a big deal and comes to be very meaningful. And you've achieved that at Vircom.

Mike Petsalis: And if I could just add to that, Will, I've been, you know it comes up every so often in the management meeting and stuff, should we add some kind of actual prize, gift, monetary, something? And I have honestly resisted that because there's no, you know you can't quantify the appreciation of your teammates for the special things that you do. And if you attach $50 or $100 or whatever dollars to it, it just, I find it ruins it. So it comes up maybe once a year, somebody mentions it in the management meeting. Hey maybe we should, and I've resisted it. It's got nothing to do with budget or money. It's got to do with possibly watering down the feeling and the vibe.

Will Scott: Yeah, super. The feeling. Yeah. No, I get monetary might work for some people for awards, but you've got something, you've created value there around these statuettes, which is great. And I understand that, you mentioned how this was for a certain age group who kind of know what Star Trek is. But I think you're considering maybe modernizing or appealing to a wider group now. Tell us that story.

Mike Petsalis: Yes. So as a, I mentioned that the re-launch of the movie series, the series of new movies on Star Trek has not proven to be, to have the longevity of the original series. So the younger generation, of which we're hiring quite a few in the under 30 demographic, it didn't, the metaphor itself, while the value spoke to them the metaphor did not as much. Also, we had hired a lot of techies from Eastern European countries who are absolutely brilliant technologists and engineers and very serious. And for them as well, they kind of chuckled at the Star Trek metaphor, which they didn't get very well. What is Scotty? Who is Scotty? I don't know who Scotty is. That kind of ... So we decided to do a rebirth, refresh of the metaphor. Not the values themselves. The values to us are, if not immutable I'd say fairly concrete and stable, but the metaphor could stand a bit of refresh. And that's what we're working on to do. Find the appropriate refresh.

Will Scott: That's awesome. And I did the same thing actually in one of my companies when I first ascertained the core values we used characters to bring them alive. Actually, we had internal designers mind, so we created our own characters. One of them, for example, was clients come first was our value and the character was Captain Client and he was a superhero with a cape and a mask and all of that. And a few years later the design team came to me and said, "Hey listen. These guys are looking a little dated now." And they came up with a new sort of fresh, modern look of the same characters. But for sure, we didn't change the words. But there's some appropriate stuff in there too, actually. We had, for our core value of passion and energy, we had a character called Passionista. And she was a rather scantily clad superhero. And this is, you know we found again a few years later perhaps we should put some more clothes on Passionista. So the new version of her was a little more modernized, again. But as you say, we did not change the words. Those stay kind of set in stone. But that's awesome. We look forward to learning what the next chapter's going to be.

Will Scott: With your permission, I don't know if you'd like to put the existing ones on the website alongside this interview so people could have that imagery that you described in front of them when they're listening to the video cast. But yeah, so look forward to when you get that new iteration, please forward those to us.

Mike Petsalis: Absolutely will do. Thank you.

Will Scott: I sort of put you on the spot with this, but you talked about stories. And I was wondering if there was one particular story that you could share with us that you remember that happened an exemplifies one of the core values?

Mike Petsalis: Gees, there, you know what? There's truly so many and we have, because we try to notice the little things because culture is a lot of little things that come together. It's not the great, the massive acts of selflessness and discovery. It's the sum total of the tiny little things. And I mean I'll haul through the recency effect. I mean just this weekend our IT manager was already planning to work the weekend to do a major upgrade across a number of servers. Late Friday, the engineering team came to him with a surprise requirement on a completely other project. That would mean that what would be already a big weekend for him could become a sleepless weekend for him. And so without as much as saying much and certainly without any complaint he just jumped in and did it. I'm quite, I feel kind of split on that because I'm like, aw, I feel bad for the fact that he did so much and probably got really tired and stuff. But I'm just so impressed with his saying, "You know what? I'm going to get that done for the R&D team." Certainly I hope to reward him a day or so off during the week for having done that, but that's an example of an absolute get it done. Somebody who just stepped up and said, "I'll take care of that." Instead of complaining, which would have been probably entirely justified.

Mike Petsalis: And stuff like that happens all the time. That was a recent one.

Will Scott: Yeah, that's fantastic. So you're able to pull one from very recent times.

Mike Petsalis: Yup.

Will Scott: And so he's maybe going to get the Scotty statuette this month, huh?

Mike Petsalis: I already, I wrote it down. It's on the board. You could see the boards here. I always ask for details so I need to give details. And I gave examples of what ... I named the project that he was already working on, the other project that he found extra time to do to make sure that his teammates would show up on Monday morning and have what they needed. So it's already up on the board.

Will Scott: That's fantastic. So you caught him committing a core value. You named it. It's the get it done value. And it's represented by Scotty. So he's probably, he's now a nominee for the monthly award. That's just-

Mike Petsalis: Yeah, and it's not nominee. I mean he wins. Everybody wins. It's not even a nominee. We've got a lot of statues that we give out. So he's like, September just started, he's actually the first September Get It Done. So there's gonna be others. We're not shy about giving these out.

Will Scott: I see. So you don't necessarily have to pick a winner for the nominations?

Mike Petsalis: Oh, no.

Will Scott: If you're nominated, you get it.

Mike Petsalis: We try to measure these. We try, we don't want to get into debates, oh, how get it done was that? Was that really get it done? Was that a little bit of get it done? If Will says that Mike got it done or Mike says that Will found a better way, that's enough for us.

Will Scott: Love it. Okay. Okay. That's awesome. Well thanks a lot for sharing that story.

Will Scott: By the way, you mentioned, perhaps you're looking at the now, but do you have these up on the wall in the conference room?

Mike Petsalis: I do. I'm looking over now. They're actually not in the conference room. They're in a very visible area that people walk by.

Will Scott: I see. Okay.

Mike Petsalis: I can send you some pictures of ones that are more full and-

Will Scott: I'd love that.

Mike Petsalis: -they're a little bare because it's early in the month, but they get full by the end of the month.

Will Scott: Okay.

Mike Petsalis: So I can absolutely share some of those pictures.

Will Scott: Of course. I'll take a photo after to ask you for that towards the end of the month.

Will Scott: As a sort of, one of my final questions Mike, do you have any advice or, to people who perhaps have not taken it as far as you have? Why should they bother?

Mike Petsalis: Oh boy! Why should they bother? So the advice I have is ... That's a tough one. The advice I'd have is there's no on/off switch for culture in the sense that culture is always on and you kind of don't have a choice. What I mean by culture is always on is everything you say, everything you do has to be according to your values and culture because if it isn't, let me tell you, it stands out like a sore thumb. It's just incredible. And if all your actions, or as many as you possibly can, are according to your culture and values, it makes it a lot easier. It makes it a lot easier to make tough decisions because you're like, "Wait. Wait. Okay, wait. This is a tough one." And then you go back and you just kind of put it against the core value grid. And many times it could make a tough decision a little more clear. So, if I have some advice it would be kind of those things. I hope that makes sense.

Will Scott: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think you're saying too, then that as the leader of the company you have to set that standard for yourself. And you have to be the biggest champion of the values.

Mike Petsalis: Absolutely. And I'm speaking from experience when I kind of digressed and got it wrong. And let me tell you, the pain of that failure can be significant. And I mean in terms of ultimately people getting hurt and all of us feeling bad about things. So culture is a, if not done right, it can be, it can cause a lot of problems in the company.

Will Scott: Absolutely. Well at the beginning of this interview, Mike, I think you denied being a culture czar, but I'm gonna challenge you there. Of everything I've heard I for sure am gonna put that stamp on you as a, as being a culture czar.

Mike Petsalis: Well I mean I'm grateful for that. I just, you know we try hard. We hope we're on our way to getting it right. And certainly I'd love to hear from you in the future about others that are doing their best and having success with culture in their companies.

Will Scott: Yeah, I sure will. And of course the series of interviews are available on my website, www.cultureczars.com.

Will Scott: So thank you for the opportunity to give that little plug too, Mike.

Will Scott: All right. Well it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today. Fantastic. Congratulations on your success at Vircom. Not just for the company, but so clearly what you're doing there with the culture.

Mike Petsalis: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.

Will Scott: Okay. Well have a great rest of the week.