November 14, 2024 • 10 mins
Can a strongly aligned culture and focused financial performance drive sustainable growth at your organization?
In this episode of Leadership Levers, we explore this with Lindsay Guzowski, CEO and founder of The Crucible.
Lindsay highlights her journey from private equity deal-making to developing a leadership assessment tool tailored for the Private Equity (PE) sector, drawing on her background in quantitative sociology.
Her data-driven approach clarifies leadership strengths and gaps, meeting a crucial need in performance evaluation for PE-backed companies.
Lindsay shares the challenges of balancing cultural values with financial and performance goals at her company - where fostering curiosity, precision, and innovation can sometimes compete with the demands of a growing business.
She spotlights how her team navigates a 'double-edged sword' of prioritizing culture and research initiatives without sacrificing financial results by aligning their values with strategic objectives.
With practical advice and real-world examples, Lindsay emphasizes the power of intentional culture-building as a foundation for profitable, high-performing businesses.
Tune in to learn how proactive, balanced culture-building can drive organizational performance and financial success in a competitive landscape.
We'd love your feedback on how we can improve - send us a Text!!
Seeking to align your culture, boost performance & impact your bottom line? Let’s chat—no sales, just real talk about your challenges. Not ready? Join our PL3 Community for free insights & connections.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
William Gladhart (00:00):
Welcome to the Leadership L Podcast.
I'm your host, will Gladheart,cmo at the Culture Think Tank.
At the Culture Think Tank, weempower leaders with metrics
that strengthen culture, driveperformance and return.
We're here today to learn aboutthe actions leaders have taken
to address organizational change.
(00:21):
Our guest today is LindsayGazowski, ceo and founder of the
Crucible.
Thanks so much for taking timeto join us.
Lindsay Guzowski (00:31):
Well, thanks for having me on.
William Gladhart (00:33):
Excellent.
Well, let's start by having youshare with our audience a
little bit about yourself, yourbackground and your organization
.
Lindsay Guzowski (00:41):
Yeah, as noted , I'm the CEO of the Crucible,
which is a leadershipdevelopment tool designed to
assess and highlight strengths,opportunities for improvement
and synergies between C-suiteleaders in private equity and
venture capital-backedorganizations.
We came to The Crucible becauseI was working initially on the
(01:05):
deal side of private equity andthen in executive search,
finding leaders for theseorganizations, and discovered
that the tools that were beingused to understand who the
leaders were tended to beinaccurate, invalid or simply
just not measure what peoplewere hoping to find out about
their leaders.
(01:25):
And one day, after a somewhatfrustrating discussion with a
client where they were using atool that, frankly, just did not
help them, I said you know what?
I think I can do this bettermyself.
My academic background is inquantitative sociology, which
basically means you take a lotof big data and you put it
together and come out with,hopefully, predictive models.
(01:47):
And so, given that background,thought you know we could go
build something, and so I puttogether a team and spent
several years validating,testing and building what we
find to be a truly fantastictool.
William Gladhart (02:00):
Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that.
I love that.
I love the work that you do,because you really help identify
not only the traits but alsothe gaps in leadership.
But also it can work for anymarketplace, but it's a very
unique marketplace that has avery different demand on leaders
.
So we'll be discussing threequestions today.
As a warm-up to ourconversation, would you share
(02:22):
why you believe a healthyculture is critical?
Lindsay Guzowski (02:25):
Culture is going to emerge in any
organization, whether you'reintentional about it or not.
Creating and cultivating ahealthy culture helps to create
businesses that are not justsustainable and profitable and
places where you can see afuture, but also places that can
develop and foster the dreamsof those people working in those
(02:47):
companies.
A healthy culture is often anaspirational culture, a culture
where people see themselves andsee their organizations as
better than they currently are.
Having a healthy culture wherepeople feel connected and feel
like they can truly be a part ofthings can lead to not just
better business outcomes but abetter business environment and
(03:08):
to the point of intentionality.
If a culture isn't consciouslycreated, a culture will emerge.
There are subcultures in everyorganization.
There are cultures, whetherpeople want them or not, and
because of that, leaders have tobe very thoughtful about
ensuring that they're not justdeveloping positive cultural
elements, but embracing thosethat emerge organically.
William Gladhart (03:30):
Yeah, I think that's really sage advice for
other leaders because, as youwell pointed out, you have a
culture, whether you intended tohave one or not, and sometimes
it can turn into a reallypositive force for your company.
Other times it can turn into anegative force and that's
impacting your bottom line aswell as the other elements from
recruitment, retention,attracting the right leaders,
(03:51):
etc.
This leads kind of into ournext question.
It's been our experience thatleaders tend to struggle in
three key areas people, processor profits.
In your role as CEO, could youidentify one of these three
areas that represented acultural challenge in your
organization or one of theclients that you've worked with?
Lindsay Guzowski (04:11):
Sure, I'd be happy to talk about clients, but
it's probably more interestingfor me to be self-reflective
here.
One of the things that theCrucible struggled with somewhat
early was that profit piece,because we are all very
passionate about the work, theresearch, the curiosity and
engagement.
Curiosity is actually one ofour core cultural values.
(04:32):
Everyone who works at theCrucible are great, big giant
nerds and we love that.
We get very passionate aboutdiving into the minutia and
understanding what theimplications are of various
elements of our model.
But when that gets taken toofar, then we're focused on the
research and the excitement ofwhat is a very academic part of
(04:52):
a business and not the businessitself.
We culturally had to thinkthrough that because everyone
wanted to see the businesssucceed and grow and become
honestly, a better version ofitself, which could facilitate
more products and more researchand engagement and items like
that.
That inspired people.
But on a day-to-day basis peopleweren't focused on how to
(05:15):
generate that profitablecomponent that would get us to
that place.
What we had to do was reallywork at two ends of the spectrum
.
I had to take a hard look atmyself and say how, as the CEO,
can I inspire a profit mentalitywithout destroying any of this
beautiful intellectualinspiration that people were
(05:37):
bringing to their day-to-dayjobs and, at the same time, work
from the people that, on aday-to-day basis, were diving
into this data and have themunderstand how what they did
connected to the profitabilityof the organization, and not
just the short-termprofitability but the long-term
vision and plans.
We created really aninformation flow and an ability
(06:01):
to talk about things and talkabout our goals, our profit
levels, what our even justrevenue targets were, and
sharing that broadly across theorganization and not just within
the small leadership group atthe top.
William Gladhart (06:15):
Yeah, I think that's a really great
observation, that sometimes thatinformation becomes siloed and
it doesn't become the vision ofthe entire organization, or
sometimes because you're reallyamazing at producing one
particular aspect or there's apiece you love, because none of
us love to sit down and be like,oh, it's the P&L this month.
We're all so excited, like youknow.
Let's do our happy dance.
(06:36):
But having that element and thatforward thinking process you
kind of touched on a little bit.
But obviously that was achallenge and obviously could
have negatively impacted yourorganization.
But what was the one thing thathelped you identify or move
that needle on that particularchallenge and then shift your
culture and performancepositively?
Lindsay Guzowski (06:56):
On that particular challenge and then
shift your culture andperformance positively.
We took a look at the fact thatwell, as a startup organization
, we were starting to run out ofmoney early on and had to take
a hard look at what did thatmean?
Where did we have to focus ourtime?
And all of our meetings werereally focused on what people
were finding in the data andwhat the exciting pieces were,
and there was no discussion ofmetrics or numbers outside of
(07:18):
the metrics that were inherentto our model, our algorithmic
model, not our financial model.
William Gladhart (07:23):
Right.
Lindsay Guzowski (07:24):
And so we had to start integrating those
components culturally into howpeople thought about things that
we could still celebrate thisresearch-based, this new
profitability target or this newmilestone in our ability to
(07:53):
have tested and sold X number ofcrucibles.
It's not.
It wasn't enough to say, look,we've tested all these people
and look what a great data setwe have, which was our prior
cultural orientation.
We had to then combine thatwith okay, but we're also a
business cultural orientation.
We had to then combine thatwith okay, but we're also a
business.
And here's what that means forus as in terms of hitting our
(08:18):
profitability targets.
And so, culturally, it wasreally about starting to
integrate the business acumenthat a lot of us possessed, but
integrate that into theexcitement around the research
driven insights.
William Gladhart (08:30):
Yeah, I think that's an AHa.
That's an interesting kind ofrepositioning and rethinking
that you had to shift as aleader and think of how do we
celebrate the wins on the thingswe really love, but then how do
we celebrate the wins on thethings that actually help us do
what we really love, which isthe money side of things.
Lindsay Guzowski (08:48):
Exactly.
William Gladhart (08:48):
Yeah.
So, as we kind of wrap up today, lindsay, is there anything
else you'd like to share withfellow leaders?
Lindsay Guzowski (08:54):
Well, one of the items that made that
cultural shift sustainable wasthat it wasn't just coming from
me.
It's one thing to have you know, top down, your leader, say yep
.
This is why things areimportant and this is what I'm
excited about, and you allshould do it too.
We really got other members ofthe team to embrace this, in
part because I added a long-termprofit sharing element to their
(09:18):
compensation.
Not a short-term one Everyonealready had bonuses but the idea
that our long-term success canfacilitate their long-term
success, and that helped, Ithink, people anchor in that new
cultural mindset while notlosing any of the great things
that we cultivated over time.
Trying to think through how tocreate the appropriate
(09:39):
incentives to have a lasting andsticky component to any
cultural shift is reallyimportant when you're trying to
getting back to theintentionality thing.
Intentionally craft that changefrom what could be a phenomenal
culture into one that canaddress some of these people
process or profitabilityproblems.
William Gladhart (10:00):
Wow, that's really cool.
Thank you so much for sharingthat.
So, Lindsay, thank you forjoining us.
I've enjoyed having you on theLeadership Lovers podcast.
Really appreciate your insights.
Lindsay Guzowski (10:11):
Well, thank you very much.
William Gladhart (10:13):
Thank you for joining us on the Leadership
Levers podcast.
Find all our Leadership Leversepisodes on the Culture Think
Tank website at www.
theculturethinktank.
com or listen on your favoritestreaming platform.
We'd love to hear from youabout the challenges you have
faced as a leader.
Tune in weekly as we inviteleaders to share their
(10:36):
experiences in strengtheningculture and performance, one
action at a time.
Welcome to the Leadership L Podcast.
I'm your host, will Gladheart,cmo at the Culture Think Tank.
At the Culture Think Tank, weempower leaders with metrics
that strengthen culture, driveperformance and return.
We're here today to learn aboutthe actions leaders have taken
to address organizational change.
(00:21):
Our guest today is LindsayGazowski, ceo and founder of the
Crucible.
Thanks so much for taking timeto join us.
Lindsay Guzowski (00:31):
Well, thanks for having me on.
William Gladhart (00:33):
Excellent.
Well, let's start by having youshare with our audience a
little bit about yourself, yourbackground and your organization
.
Lindsay Guzowski (00:41):
Yeah, as noted , I'm the CEO of the Crucible,
which is a leadershipdevelopment tool designed to
assess and highlight strengths,opportunities for improvement
and synergies between C-suiteleaders in private equity and
venture capital-backedorganizations.
We came to The Crucible becauseI was working initially on the
(01:05):
deal side of private equity andthen in executive search,
finding leaders for theseorganizations, and discovered
that the tools that were beingused to understand who the
leaders were tended to beinaccurate, invalid or simply
just not measure what peoplewere hoping to find out about
their leaders.
(01:25):
And one day, after a somewhatfrustrating discussion with a
client where they were using atool that, frankly, just did not
help them, I said you know what?
I think I can do this bettermyself.
My academic background is inquantitative sociology, which
basically means you take a lotof big data and you put it
together and come out with,hopefully, predictive models.
(01:47):
And so, given that background,thought you know we could go
build something, and so I puttogether a team and spent
several years validating,testing and building what we
find to be a truly fantastictool.
William Gladhart (02:00):
Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that.
I love that.
I love the work that you do,because you really help identify
not only the traits but alsothe gaps in leadership.
But also it can work for anymarketplace, but it's a very
unique marketplace that has avery different demand on leaders
.
So we'll be discussing threequestions today.
As a warm-up to ourconversation, would you share
(02:22):
why you believe a healthyculture is critical?
Lindsay Guzowski (02:25):
Culture is going to emerge in any
organization, whether you'reintentional about it or not.
Creating and cultivating ahealthy culture helps to create
businesses that are not justsustainable and profitable and
places where you can see afuture, but also places that can
develop and foster the dreamsof those people working in those
(02:47):
companies.
A healthy culture is often anaspirational culture, a culture
where people see themselves andsee their organizations as
better than they currently are.
Having a healthy culture wherepeople feel connected and feel
like they can truly be a part ofthings can lead to not just
better business outcomes but abetter business environment and
(03:08):
to the point of intentionality.
If a culture isn't consciouslycreated, a culture will emerge.
There are subcultures in everyorganization.
There are cultures, whetherpeople want them or not, and
because of that, leaders have tobe very thoughtful about
ensuring that they're not justdeveloping positive cultural
elements, but embracing thosethat emerge organically.
William Gladhart (03:30):
Yeah, I think that's really sage advice for
other leaders because, as youwell pointed out, you have a
culture, whether you intended tohave one or not, and sometimes
it can turn into a reallypositive force for your company.
Other times it can turn into anegative force and that's
impacting your bottom line aswell as the other elements from
recruitment, retention,attracting the right leaders,
(03:51):
etc.
This leads kind of into ournext question.
It's been our experience thatleaders tend to struggle in
three key areas people, processor profits.
In your role as CEO, could youidentify one of these three
areas that represented acultural challenge in your
organization or one of theclients that you've worked with?
Lindsay Guzowski (04:11):
Sure, I'd be happy to talk about clients, but
it's probably more interestingfor me to be self-reflective
here.
One of the things that theCrucible struggled with somewhat
early was that profit piece,because we are all very
passionate about the work, theresearch, the curiosity and
engagement.
Curiosity is actually one ofour core cultural values.
(04:32):
Everyone who works at theCrucible are great, big giant
nerds and we love that.
We get very passionate aboutdiving into the minutia and
understanding what theimplications are of various
elements of our model.
But when that gets taken toofar, then we're focused on the
research and the excitement ofwhat is a very academic part of
(04:52):
a business and not the businessitself.
We culturally had to thinkthrough that because everyone
wanted to see the businesssucceed and grow and become
honestly, a better version ofitself, which could facilitate
more products and more researchand engagement and items like
that.
That inspired people.
But on a day-to-day basis peopleweren't focused on how to
(05:15):
generate that profitablecomponent that would get us to
that place.
What we had to do was reallywork at two ends of the spectrum
.
I had to take a hard look atmyself and say how, as the CEO,
can I inspire a profit mentalitywithout destroying any of this
beautiful intellectualinspiration that people were
(05:37):
bringing to their day-to-dayjobs and, at the same time, work
from the people that, on aday-to-day basis, were diving
into this data and have themunderstand how what they did
connected to the profitabilityof the organization, and not
just the short-termprofitability but the long-term
vision and plans.
We created really aninformation flow and an ability
(06:01):
to talk about things and talkabout our goals, our profit
levels, what our even justrevenue targets were, and
sharing that broadly across theorganization and not just within
the small leadership group atthe top.
William Gladhart (06:15):
Yeah, I think that's a really great
observation, that sometimes thatinformation becomes siloed and
it doesn't become the vision ofthe entire organization, or
sometimes because you're reallyamazing at producing one
particular aspect or there's apiece you love, because none of
us love to sit down and be like,oh, it's the P&L this month.
We're all so excited, like youknow.
Let's do our happy dance.
(06:36):
But having that element and thatforward thinking process you
kind of touched on a little bit.
But obviously that was achallenge and obviously could
have negatively impacted yourorganization.
But what was the one thing thathelped you identify or move
that needle on that particularchallenge and then shift your
culture and performancepositively?
Lindsay Guzowski (06:56):
On that particular challenge and then
shift your culture andperformance positively.
We took a look at the fact thatwell, as a startup organization
, we were starting to run out ofmoney early on and had to take
a hard look at what did thatmean?
Where did we have to focus ourtime?
And all of our meetings werereally focused on what people
were finding in the data andwhat the exciting pieces were,
and there was no discussion ofmetrics or numbers outside of
(07:18):
the metrics that were inherentto our model, our algorithmic
model, not our financial model.
William Gladhart (07:23):
Right.
Lindsay Guzowski (07:24):
And so we had to start integrating those
components culturally into howpeople thought about things that
we could still celebrate thisresearch-based, this new
profitability target or this newmilestone in our ability to
(07:53):
have tested and sold X number ofcrucibles.
It's not.
It wasn't enough to say, look,we've tested all these people
and look what a great data setwe have, which was our prior
cultural orientation.
We had to then combine thatwith okay, but we're also a
business cultural orientation.
We had to then combine thatwith okay, but we're also a
business.
And here's what that means forus as in terms of hitting our
(08:18):
profitability targets.
And so, culturally, it wasreally about starting to
integrate the business acumenthat a lot of us possessed, but
integrate that into theexcitement around the research
driven insights.
William Gladhart (08:30):
Yeah, I think that's an AHa.
That's an interesting kind ofrepositioning and rethinking
that you had to shift as aleader and think of how do we
celebrate the wins on the thingswe really love, but then how do
we celebrate the wins on thethings that actually help us do
what we really love, which isthe money side of things.
Lindsay Guzowski (08:48):
Exactly.
William Gladhart (08:48):
Yeah.
So, as we kind of wrap up today, lindsay, is there anything
else you'd like to share withfellow leaders?
Lindsay Guzowski (08:54):
Well, one of the items that made that
cultural shift sustainable wasthat it wasn't just coming from
me.
It's one thing to have you know, top down, your leader, say yep
.
This is why things areimportant and this is what I'm
excited about, and you allshould do it too.
We really got other members ofthe team to embrace this, in
part because I added a long-termprofit sharing element to their
(09:18):
compensation.
Not a short-term one Everyonealready had bonuses but the idea
that our long-term success canfacilitate their long-term
success, and that helped, Ithink, people anchor in that new
cultural mindset while notlosing any of the great things
that we cultivated over time.
Trying to think through how tocreate the appropriate
(09:39):
incentives to have a lasting andsticky component to any
cultural shift is reallyimportant when you're trying to
getting back to theintentionality thing.
Intentionally craft that changefrom what could be a phenomenal
culture into one that canaddress some of these people
process or profitabilityproblems.
William Gladhart (10:00):
Wow, that's really cool.
Thank you so much for sharingthat.
So, Lindsay, thank you forjoining us.
I've enjoyed having you on theLeadership Lovers podcast.
Really appreciate your insights.
Lindsay Guzowski (10:11):
Well, thank you very much.
William Gladhart (10:13):
Thank you for joining us on the Leadership
Levers podcast.
Find all our Leadership Leversepisodes on the Culture Think
Tank website at www.
theculturethinktank.
com or listen on your favoritestreaming platform.
We'd love to hear from youabout the challenges you have
faced as a leader.
Tune in weekly as we inviteleaders to share their
(10:36):
experiences in strengtheningculture and performance, one
action at a time.
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