What Is Threads Culture?

Threads Culture is a core values driven method of leadership, where how you work is always equally important as what you accomplish.  

Threads is a powerful idea, but it’s more than something abstract.  Threads Culture provides a framework for a motivated person to practically implement leadership within their team.  This includes all the advice, tools and training you need to get maximum results from yourself and from your team.

We have worked with 1,000’s of leaders and seen it happen in every size company, industry, management style and type of culture. The leader with the courage to implement Threads in their own life and within their team is always wildly successful.  A Threads leader gets to write their own ticket in today’s world where real leadership is in short supply.  

Before we go further, a lot of people ask where the idea for Threads Culture came from.  To understand Threads, you need to hear this story.  

A Day Like Any Other

Threads Culture was born on a day like any other day, a day like you’ve had in the past as well.  A supervisor came and knocked on my door.  It was one of those quiet knocks that makes you cringe.  You know it’s a significant problem knocking.  “Can I come in?” he said. Followed by,  “Can I close the door?”

As much as I wished I had another meeting or a phone call to take, I told him to come in and we sat down to talk.  He said,

“I need to fire an employee.” 

How he made the request was pretty interesting.  He said he “needed” to fire the employee. 

He proceeded to explain to me that he had an employee that was very talented.  In fact, one of the best he had ever seen at this job.  But, he also had a shitty attitude.  This employee wouldn’t work and help to support others.  He was unwilling to accept any new change this supervisor needed to bring to his department and this person negatively impacted his ability to lead the team.

I asked the supervisor, “Have you talked with him, and does he know where he stands?” He said that he had, and had documented the issues in his last performance review. 

You Know, They Know, We All Know

(While it’s uncomfortable to admit, this is an important part of the story.)

As the leader of the organization, I already knew exactly what the supervisor was talking about. I knew this employee was a problem. He’d been a problem for years. I knew all the reasons why this employee was a problem and I had done nothing about the situation.  At this point, I was being dishonest with everyone, including myself.  I was pretending that this was all news to me. I was acting Presidential. I was pretending to lead. 

My Wake Up Call

The next step was to call human resources and ask for the employee file. You know, the place we hope (wink wink) to find documentation of wrongdoing to justify termination. I’m hoping those signed performance reviews are going to lead us out of this situation.  

As I thumbed through three to four pages of boilerplate language, superlatives and scored criteria, I knew that the documentation I was looking for didn’t exist. In fact, the documentation we had, provided the exact opposite of what I hoped to find: The employee in question had been “Meeting Expectations.”

In my best Bill Lumbergh, I asked the supervisor, 

“How do you think it’s fair to tell this employee that they are meeting expectations, then turn around and fire them no more than three weeks later? To me that sounds more like a failure to communicate on our part.”

The supervisor took the review from my hands and he gave me a very important lesson.  

He showed me in this document where he rated the employee a “1” in attitude, a “1” in teamwork, a “1” in willingness to implement continuous improvement projects and a “1” in training and helping to onboard new employees.  At the same time he’d rated the employee very high, “4’s” and “5’s”, in other areas like job knowledge and productivity.

He said, “What did I do wrong here? What do you want me to do differently?”  Then he sat back and waited for my response.

I didn’t know what to say.  The supervisor scored this employee correctly on the review form and appeared to be communicating the issues, but here’s the message we were sending: 

“If you are good at your job and treat people like crap, it all averages out to meeting expectations and an annual pay increase.  1’s and 2’s added to 4’s and 5’s, then averaged together = 3 “Meeting Expectations”.” 

Until that moment, I had just taken it for granted and never questioned it.  It had always been this way. It’s how I was reviewed.  It’s how my parents were reviewed.  Since people started reviewing performance in the 1950’s, success at work was this administrative calculation that averaged together what you accomplished and how you did it.  

Yet, we don’t view human beings like that anywhere else in life, do we?  Does it work like this with your spouse? Your friendships?  Your kids? Of course not.

A Better Way To Lead

Having no good answer for this supervisor’s question, I told him that we were not going to fire the employee that day.  We were going to find a better way to communicate what was important to us.  

For the next three days I questioned everything. I thought back on lessons from my Dad growing up and my time in the Marine Corps. How did I let a situation like this develop in an organization I was leading? How could I explain something intangible like HOW to my supervisors?

I began to create and develop the leadership method that became Threads Culture.  This forever changed the way I would lead and manage people. 

We stopped hiding behind a process and communicated what we all knew to be true.  We acknowledged for the first time that how we behaved and our core values are just as important as what we accomplish for our job.  One can never rule over the other and they will never be averaged together again.  

A New Message 

I took the exact same rating criteria, but this time divided them into two categories:  Core Values (behavioral) and Results (performance).  An employee had a separate score in each area.  Both scores had to be acceptable in order to be successful and receive a raise.

The review for the employee the supervisor needed to fire, was no longer “Meeting Expectations”.  The same criteria and scores presented differently, now said exactly what they needed to say.

I talked with the supervisor and he loved it.  

“The review now matches exactly with the message I need to communicate… You are the best I’ve ever seen at this job, but the way you are treating the people on our team needs to change.  This is honest and fair.” 

Our HR manager didn’t like the change and was skeptical, but said she would love to use it on her husband. 

“He thinks that if he brings home his paycheck, mows the lawn and washes the cars, he doesn’t have to take me out for dinner. You know, to do the things he used to do before he tricked me into marrying him.” 

I was sold.  We decided to try this.

A New Outcome 

The three of us brought the employee in and we communicated differently for the first time.  Remember, exact same review criteria and scores as before, presented in an honest way.  This was no longer meeting expectations and we needed him to work on these specific areas.  

His response wasn’t what we expected.  He was angry.  He said things to us like, 

“You don’t pay me to treat people nice.  You pay me to do my job!”

I stuck to my guns and said, 

“No, we are changing what those expectations are specifically.  You are required to do both things now.  It’s not one averaged with the other anymore.”

And he quit on the spot!  He pounded his fists down on the table and insisted that’s not for him.  He gave us the double bird and walked out the door.  We all looked around at each other with a little bit of shock.  

And I’ll never forget when the supervisor said this to me.  

“It worked.  For the first time you see what I saw every single day.  And what the employees who worked with this person saw 10 times per day.  And for the first time I think you can understand how someone like that can hurt my ability to lead this team.”

Business Takes Care Of Itself

And he was right.  From that day forward we focused on Threads.  We changed the way we viewed people, the way we measured performance, and the expectations we had for individuals on our team.

What happened next was to be easily expected. That supervisor's department went from worst performing in our company, to the best within a matter of months.

I changed my focus as a leader.  As I implemented Threads throughout our company in the areas of hiring, pay, performance and communication, the results were remarkable.  Recruiting, turnover, sales growth, profitability and opportunities for people on our team during the next 10 years were in the 99th percentile for companies in our industry.

Since this time, I’ve purchased companies and co-founded a successful software start-up with similar results.  I’ve also provided training on Threads Culture to hundreds of other organizations.  All of my success in these varied environments has been due to leading with the Threads method.

This Is Your 25 Year Head Start

Threads Culture is a balanced, core values driven method of leading people. As you read on, be mindful of this central idea.  It’s going to be the foundation of every tool and piece of advice we offer at Threads HQ.  

This site has all the information I wish I knew when I started and had to learn the hard way.  If you are a young manager or even a future leader, this is your 25 year head start.  Everything you need to find success and implement these ideas in your life and career is right here.

The posts on this site are organized by chapter if you have a specific area of focus, but also in the order we would proceed if you are starting from scratch.

Before you get started, we recommend that you read this post linked below.  While anyone can have a level of success with Threads, those who do the best truly understand why the “how you do it” part is what’s in danger of being neglected in their leadership.

Core Values + Results Everywhere In Life... Except At Work

Then move on to the rest.  Lay out a schedule and start systematically implementing these things one at a time over the next year.  Along the journey, enjoy the amazing things your leadership produces for yourself and others.  

If you don’t see one of your questions addressed, contact us here and we will add the content of this site.