Brendan P. Keegan of Merchants Fleet: “To create a fantastic work culture make sure your culture is part of the performance-management process”
Make sure your culture is part of the performance-management process: Are you measuring and reinforcing the attributes of your culture? If you say collaboration is important to your culture, but at no point during a performance review do you talk about collaboration, then you’re sending the message it’s actually not important to your culture because you’re not measuring it and talking about it. In our Merchants Fleet performance review process, we talk to our employees about important competencies. These competencies are specifically aligned to our strategic direction. Similarly, every person’s goals are directly connected to that strategic direction so they can see how their performance impacts the goals of the entire organization.
As a part of my series about how leaders can create a “fantastic work culture”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Brendan P. Keegan CEO of Merchants Fleet. Brendan has been involved with Merchants Fleet since 2009 — as a client, board member, and strategic advisor. His innovative leadership has fueled the company’s strategic direction and been the driving force behind its industry-leading growth.
Brendan is a six-time, transformational president and CEO of technology and financial services companies ranging from 500 to over 10,000 employees located in nearly 150 countries. He has led nearly 50,000 employees, and driven sales of over $100 billion. He has also authored more than 100 articles on leadership, strategy, and technology, and he has been quoted in multiple publications.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
In third grade, my youth football coach asked for someone to jump in front and be a captain. I started leading the team through jumping jacks, and I got my first experience at what it was like to be a leader. I really enjoyed that role, helping and coaching my teammates, and even if it meant filling water jugs for the coaches, I wanted that extra responsibility. Ever since then that’s what I wanted to do with my life and career. I knew I really wanted to lead companies. Fortunately, this is the sixth time I’ve had the opportunity to do that.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
I started a decade ago as Merchants Fleet’s largest client. After being a client for a number of years, I became a board member. Then I had a third role as a consultant to the company, advising the ownership group on strategic direction, transition planning, and interim management, and that led into being CEO. I don’t think there are many times when you go to work for a company and have had the chance to truly see things from three different perspectives before joining. Because of that, my experience with Merchants is the most unique in my career.
Are you working on any exciting projects now? How do you think that will help people?
We have lots of exciting projects going on, but I think the largest, most impactful project at the company is our INNOV8 theme for the year. It is about helping our employees, clients, and leaders be more innovative in everything they do. There are two concepts: “Big I” and “little i.” Big I is big innovation. These are disruptions in technology and competitive forces — things that most employees may not touch.
The part of the project that really excites me is what we call our little i’s, or little innovations. It’s helping every single employee to think and act differently in a useful way. Often times, innovation and creativity get mixed up in people’s minds, and I believe a lot of the population thinks “I’m not creative.” To be innovative, you don’t need to be creative. You just need to think about your everyday role and be willing to see if there is a different way to do it productively. If this project lights the fire in even just 40 percent of our employees and makes them realize they can be innovative by thinking and acting differently, that will be the jet fuel that propels our growth as a company.
Ok, lets jump to the main part of our interview. According to this study cited in Forbes, more than half of the US workforce is unhappy. Why do you think that number is so high?
I actually think that number is higher, and that more than 50 percent is unhappy, but I think unhappy also could be synonymous with unengaged. Somebody can be happy but unengaged in their work, and then ultimately their work isn’t satisfying.
More and more companies don’t have a clear strategic direction of where they are going, and if they don’t have that strategic direction it’s hard for employees to be connected. A company also needs to have a clear vision that employees can see themselves being a part of, and a core set of values. If an employee feels aligned on values and connected to the company’s vision, and if they understand how they impact the strategic direction, then they will be more connected to the company. If they are more connected to the company, they will be more engaged in their day-to-day work.
Most people wake up in the morning wanting to be successful. They want to feel like they are making an impact, but sometimes they don’t know if they truly are. At many companies, managers and company leaders have gotten so busy, they’ve become less effective at translating the company’s strategic direction, vision, and goals down to individual goals. If you know what your goals are, you feel you’re actually making an impact on the company’s goals and strategic direction. At Merchants, we have quarterly town halls where every employee can come to hear about what is going on in the company. The ultimate test is when we have that quarterly town hall, we want every single employee to be sitting in the audience going “Wow…I was a part of that.”
Based on your experience or research, how do you think an unhappy workforce will impact a) company productivity b) company profitability c) and employee health and wellbeing?
An unhappy workforce impacts all of these aspects negatively. At the end of the day, our employees are driving our service to our clients and to each other. Unhappy employees are not as productive, and productivity and profitability are almost synonymous. Unhappiness creates negativity, and I often say that negativity is one of the biggest recruiters I’ve ever seen. If an employee is feeling like they’re not being treated well, they’re going to try to recruit someone to validate why they’re unhappy. Then not only is that employee unhappy, but it can start to seep into an organization.
Happiness and unhappiness are states of mind. If someone is not happy, they carry that through their being. Happiness is a psyche, and it plays into who you are and your wellbeing as a person. This is why last year at Merchants we launched our ELEV8 initiative, where each person was challenged to elevate themselves both professionally and personally. By putting a focus on professional and personal success, we encouraged our employees to leverage the resources available at Merchants to be more successful in their jobs and in their lives. If employees feel that we value them and are investing in them, they are happier. And, if you’re happy and successful outside of work, you’re going to be happier and more successful inside of work. And the reverse is also true: if you’re not happy at work, you’re going to bring that home.
Can you share 5 things that managers and executives should be doing to improve their company work culture? Can you give a personal story or example for each?
- Define your culture. Whether or not you set it, your culture will define itself. The question is, did you unconsciously or consciously define it?
In 2018, we kicked off a rebrand initiative at Merchants Fleet. It gave us a great opportunity to review the Merchants culture and articulate it in a way that all employees could understand and rally around. We started with the core values that make Merchants great, and we also looked at the attributes that Merchants had developed over time that needed to be amplified. We defined our culture by looking at what it truly was — an award-winning place to work — and articulated it in a way that every employee could then easily describe.
2. Hire to your culture: For example, if you say your culture is collaborative, high-integrity, service-oriented, and innovative, as you look at candidates you should be asking, “Is this a collaborative, innovative, service-oriented person who has integrity?” Whatever you culture is, you need to be hiring the right employees for that culture.
Merchants Fleet has a well-defined and outlined strategic direction. A big part of this strategic direction is our FleetiQ Program, which includes bringing in the best talent in our industry. As a leading fleet management company, we make it a priority to hire the best in the industry.
3. Make sure your culture is part of the performance-management process: Are you measuring and reinforcing the attributes of your culture? If you say collaboration is important to your culture, but at no point during a performance review do you talk about collaboration, then you’re sending the message it’s actually not important to your culture because you’re not measuring it and talking about it.
In our Merchants Fleet performance review process, we talk to our employees about important competencies. These competencies are specifically aligned to our strategic direction. Similarly, every person’s goals are directly connected to that strategic direction so they can see how their performance impacts the goals of the entire organization.
4. Promote the right attributes of culture: If you say your culture is hard working, innovative, and collaborative, as you look for the next leaders in the company, hopefully those people fit that profile. If, all of a sudden, you promote someone who isn’t as innovative or hard working or a good team player, people in the organization are going to notice.
When I was involved in high-growth situations, I often had to hire people who had the attributes that aligned with a high-growth culture. If we had someone who wasn’t aligned to that culture, it could sometimes lead to challenges within teams and the company itself.
5. Separate yourself from the people who don’t fit your culture: It’s tough to build a culture — but it’s very easy to take away from your culture. It just takes a few people. Companies need to recognize if someone is not the right fit culturally and work with that employee to explore options. Organizations often find this hard to do, but sometimes it’s as simple as having a difficult conversation with that team member. Some people view that as conflict — I view that has having a conversation. If you’re not willing to have that conversation, then you’re not willing to help that person, and if you let that person continue their suboptimal performance, your culture is just a poster on the wall.
Having led a lot of people, I’ve recognized that when someone is struggling in their role, they often can see that they have challenges, and more often than not, they are aware of their own misalignment to the culture. Sometimes just having this difficult conversation brought the awareness to the individual that they probably should look for a different position, and it didn’t require me to take any action.
It’s very nice to suggest ideas, but it seems like we have to “change the culture regarding work culture”. What can we do as a society to make a broader change in the US workforce’s work culture?
As a society we’re very strong knowledge workers. To make a broader shift in work culture, companies need to ask, “What can we continually do to allow our employees to be more productive and get more done in a shorter time frame?” Technology is enabling positive changes to happen already. There is collaborative software, video conferencing, project management tools, and other technology that allows employees to work on various things in different modalities at different times. Changing work culture means embracing these tools to change the experience of work itself.
Connecting to that, as a society we need to be open to multiple definitions of work-life balance and what it means for each organization. We hear a lot about work-life balance, and I think it’s one of the least understood concepts. Some people think work-life balance is working eight hours, home for eight hours, sleep for eight hours, but it doesn’t necessarily mean how many hours you spend doing those things. It’s asking, do you have the right balance for the role that you are in and for the future you want to have? It’s what’s right for each employee and the company.
For me, work-life balance means being out on the field for my daughter’s lacrosse games on Wednesdays at 3:00 p.m., but logging back in at 8:00 p.m. or 9:00 p.m. to make up those lost hours. If this were 15 or 20 years ago, I might not have been able to do that as easily because I would have been unreachable. Now, with technology enablement, people can just email or follow up with me if they need to get in touch for some reason. For a broader change in work culture to occur, it is important for each company to discover what work life balance means for their employees, then going into the company culture and asking: “Do we have different parts of the company that work differently? Can people work remotely? Do we have different offices or flex schedules?” Thinking holistically about the employee experience will drive this change.
How would you describe your leadership or management style? Can you give us a few examples?
First, even though I am the CEO, I view my role as serving the employees, our clients, and our owners. I sign off on a lot of notes with “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve,” and I’ve chosen to work in service-oriented companies because I truly enjoy serving our employees and clients. I’ve found in my experience that If I could serve the employees, they would in turn serve the clients; then our clients did a good job for our profitability, which meant our owners had above-market financial results.
Along those lines, I find I also bring new ways of thinking and acting differently. I always try to be an innovative leader — my innovation is often simplifying what a company does. I’m also a systems builder. As you build a company you should build a system that allows the employees to perform at a higher level than then they would individually. This means having good processes, tools and technology, and making the right hires.
To me, collaboration is important, and I really try to bring teams together. At Merchants Fleet, we have specific meetings set up to drive this collaboration approach — leadership huddles, executive huddles, team leadership huddles, and more, focused on getting people sitting around a table talking about what are our greatest opportunities and how to pursue those, and what are our greatest challenges and how do we solve them. Sometimes companies let employees, leaders, and teams solve things on their own in siloes. I find that talking among peers accelerates performance.
Finally, I cultivate leadership, whether it be in an individual contributor or CFO and everyone in between. I debunk the theory that leadership means hierarchy and organizational charts. Leadership is showing up every day and having a willingness to accept responsibility and reach your maximum potential. Ultimately, great leaders cultivate great leaders.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
Bill, Val, John, and Gary were four of my mentors in my career, and I learned different things from each of them. Whenever I went to John with a challenge or opportunity, he would simplify it– if I walked in with a six-step process, I walked out with a two-step process. He taught me the power of simplicity. Val helped me understand sales and marketing. Bill helped me recognize that even though I was trained as a technical person, I could aspire to be a CEO someday. Gary served as my role model for the CEO I wanted to be. He was invested in employees and clients and was the face of a Fortune 100 company.
They each really invested in helping me be the best version of myself. When I look at my leadership style now, they were instrumental in forming me as a leader, whether it was helping me in my first leadership position, helping me see the sales person in me, or helping me understand strategy or simplicity.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
One of my big missions in life is to build one million leaders. My biggest joy is impacting other people, helping them see the leaders in themselves, and fostering a bigger trajectory in their life than before I met them. I also have a big sense of community. My wife and I started the Courage and Faith Foundation, which is based on having the courage to fail and the faith to succeed. The goal is to give $1 million back to at-risk youth. That’s where we put a lot of our charitable efforts, both time and money. If we build leaders, they’ll be better parents, better kids, better people, and if we can help at-risk youth who maybe don’t have those same opportunities as others, then we can help them find the leader in themselves.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
My favorite quote, which is in my office, is “Have the courage to fail and the faith to succeed.” Some of the previous CEO roles have been in turnaround companies — companies that were in some type of despair, and my job was to turn them around and sell them on behalf of private equity. When you go in day one knowing the company is failing and you have three to four months of cash, you must have some courage to go in, but you also need faith that you’re going to figure out how to do it.
I didn’t intentionally pick that path. I just continually was put in those types of roles, and at one point I asked my mentor, “Why do I always get put on the broken team?” He actually said to me, “You’re just good at fixing stuff.” He explained that I was really good at going in, building a system, and getting people to believe in it. That comment really turned me into a CEO. I realized I was good at fixing stuff, even though I had no mechanical ability. If you are going to choose a career path of fixing stuff and turning things around, the saying “Have the courage to fail and the faith to succeed” applies because you have to try a lot of things. You have to understand that you’re going to try 10 things, and if five of them work, that is great, but it’s highly likely the other five aren’t going to work.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
I want to create a leadership movement, where every person understands that they can be a leader. Once people understand they can be a leader, it opens doors. One of the sayings I have is “Leadership is freedom.” We often hear that education is freedom; if you’re educated it allows you to become an entrepreneur or go into different opportunities because you’ve expanded your mind. I think leadership is the same. Once somebody embraces their leadership potential, that opens up a lot of other doors.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We wish you continued success!
