The Busch School community had the pleasure of hearing Dan Cellucci, CEO of the Catholic Leadership Institute, speak to the students in Prof. Tracy Phillips's Human Resources class last week. Dan spoke on building a strong corporate culture in a growing organization.
Here are his ten key points:
-
Define the culture you are willing to promise your employees (so that you, and prospective employees, can make the right hiring decisions)
-
The small stuff is the big stuff (identify the small characteristics that distinguish your corporate culture, and are non-negotiables, which you will never compromise on; example from CLI: they spend 15 min in prayer at the same time each day, all together)
-
Hire for virtue
-
Remove toxic individuals from the organization immediately
-
Solicit and give feedback regularly (and close the loop: show what you did about the feedback you received)
-
Don't ignore narratives, even if they seem ridiculous (this is what Dan is discussing in the video clip)
-
Expect everyone to be a culture champion: everyone should strive to be living the organizations values; reward people who are exemplars, regularly
-
Principles first, relationships second (never let a strong relationship lead you to violate one of your organizational principles)
-
You can never emphasize the "why" enough, for everything (especially those small non-negotiables: no-one, if asked why they are expected to do something, should have to respond "because we have to." They should always know the reasons for what is asked of them)
-
As a leader (especially), be a learner not a knower
About Dan Cellucci
Dan Cellucci is CEO of Catholic Leadership Institute, an apostolate providing leadership training and consulting to more than 300 bishops, 6,000 priests, and over 39,000 deacons, religious and lay leaders in more than 120 dioceses. Prior to his election as CEO, Dan served as Senior Vice President for the Catholic Leadership Institute, working as the primary liaison with bishops and overseeing the apostolate’s marketing and services. Dan is a sought-after advisor, consultant, and presenter for the Church, playing a lead role in projects in the Archdioceses of Miami and Boston as well as the Diocese of Pittsburgh and at the North American College. Dan served for two years as a member of the National Advisory Council for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Dan oversees research associated with Catholic Leadership Institute's Disciple Maker Index, a parish survey tool that seeks to help pastors and pastoral leaders focus their efforts toward evangelization. Since its inception, the Disciple Maker Index has reached over 3,600 parishes and 690,000 Catholics. Working with this incredible data and more than 30 years of field experience, Dan and the team have embarked on an ambitious plan to define what the Next Generation Parish and Diocese looks like in the next 10 years. Dan and his wife Tricia are the proud parents of four children and live in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.