A new episode of The Winning Cultures Podcast is out. This one starts with four words a design firm said on a planning call several years ago, and a CEO who was paying close enough attention to keep them.
Doug Shapiro is Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at JSI, part of Jasper Group, a furniture maker in Jasper, Indiana, for 150 years. Before JSI, he spent about twenty years at OFS, starting in the factories and customer service before moving into project management and eventually product design and development. He has hosted podcasts since 2019, and now hosts Love What You Do, JSI’s show about the people who bring design to life. Full disclosure: Lauren Moss, a designer here at Revel who used to work at JSI, told me I needed to talk to Doug. She was right.
Four Words From Someone Else
Several years ago, JSI was working with an outside firm to design one of its showrooms. On a planning call, someone from the firm said, “You guys just love what you do.” JSI’s longtime CEO grabbed it on the spot and made it the company motto. Today it’s on the walls, the T-shirts, the hats, and the podcast.
What struck me was how Doug described it working in two directions. On the outside, people see it and either recognize themselves or wish they had it. On the inside, it has become a promise coworkers make to each other: I’ll do my part so you can love your work. Nobody ever wrote that promise down. Everybody understands it anyway. That’s the difference between a tagline and a culture.
How You Know It’s Real
I asked Doug how he knew Jasper Group’s culture was real before he signed on. His answer was that he has always felt safe being a little ridiculous there. On the last day before the holidays, the executive team heads out to the factories in elf costumes to hand out gift cards. Doug admits he hasn’t made it to one yet. The company’s VP of manufacturing is a 6’9″ guy who hugs and high-fives people on factory tours and tears up when he talks about what leadership did for him and how he pays it forward. As Doug put it, those aren’t fake tears.
His point was that when people don’t have to sanitize themselves to show up at work, they start sharing ideas. Silliness and care send the same signal.
A Penny Worth Keeping
When I asked what a small-town manufacturer knows about keeping people that bigger organizations miss, Doug said it was easy. JSI’s purpose is to pass the business to the next generation, in a community that has watched other businesses sell, shrink, or close.
He explained it with a penny. Hand someone a penny, and they’ll flip it away. Tell them it was your great-grandfather’s lucky penny, carried in his pocket and passed down from father to son, and suddenly they’d feel terrible if they lost it. That’s what purpose does to a job. It stops being just a company. It becomes something you’re responsible for handing off. That one landed with me, since my family has been saving lucky pennies since my son was crawling under cash registers looking for them.
The Bedtime Story Test
I closed by asking Doug for the one story that shows what a winning culture looks like. He went to bedtime. When his three kids were little, they’d pile into one bed, and he’d tell them stories, the wilder the better. One involved Taylor Swift flying down in a spaceship to collect fireflies for her concert.
He realized it was the most creative he had ever been, and he figured out why. He felt safe, and there was no reward for playing it safe. Compare that to the typical boardroom, where every word and every slide gets judged, and caution gets rewarded. Safe doesn’t differentiate you, Doug said, and safe doesn’t make magic happen. A great culture gives people that bedtime-story kind of room. JSI is the closest he has seen.
Listen, Watch, and Subscribe
Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or watch the full conversation on YouTube. Every episode is on The Winning Cultures Podcast page. If you know someone who could use a reminder of why they love what they do, send this one their way.
