Fostering Ownership, Engagement, and Growth in the Workplace

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here another episode of High Velocity Radio and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have leadership expert and author of the book People Matter at Work. Josh Block, welcome.

Josh Block: Thanks so much for having me. Lee. Great to be with you.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about the book People Matter at Work. What was the kind of genesis of the idea?

Josh Block: Yeah. So I have a bit of a unique story of being promoted unexpectedly. So I was a sales rep in 2011 at our family business, and my dad made the decision to step down from his role, named me president on Monday morning. So 72 hours from sales rep to president, 29 years old, $30 million business. And that really led to me asking some questions and seeking to create a culture where people thrive at work. And then 15 years later, launched the book telling stories and sharing principles and lessons, lessons learned on our way to creating a really uncommon culture.

Lee Kantor: So how has your working life always been in family owned businesses, or have you worked in kind of traditional businesses as well?

Josh Block: Yeah, so I own my own business in my 20s, joined our family business, led it in the second generation for the last 15 years. And then we developed a partnership with Siemens, Healthineers and Commonspirit Health. And so we were acquired. So I’ve done a little bit of everything where I’ve been part of a family owned startup, second generation, and then also gotten to, to work together with some pretty big organizations.

Lee Kantor: So now for the book People Matter at work. Is that what makes it kind of unique is that you are have a lens of all of the variety of ways that business kind of operates, and you’ve kind of learned the good and the bad of all of them.

Josh Block: Well, some somewhat and also just this idea of there’s, there’s such a focus on short run performance right now, quarterly earnings. And the shorter our lens gets, the less we focus on people. We start to really focus on, on day to day operations, which is important. And then people matter at work. I talk a lot about if people matter, performance matters. I mean, this is not a ooey gooey, cushy, just focused on free yogurt and granola. We’re really talking about how do we invest deeply in people, have them take ownership and ultimately carry the company and, and really shape them into people that they never dreamed of. And so this idea that people and performance matter, but it really starts with this belief in investment in the people we lead.

Lee Kantor: Now, over the years, I’ve interviewed lots of people. We used to have a family business show. And, and something struck me about family business. That tends to be the kind of the lens they look at business through is that there are people are important because a lot of times it starts with their family members and they know their family’s important. So it kind of trickles out to the rest of the team. So I’ve seen that kind of thought pattern in people that have come from family businesses. When you’re working with an organization that isn’t like that, especially, you’re talking about large enterprise businesses, how do you see the culture in those kind of get a buy in when it comes to really, truly not walking the walk when it comes to investing in their people? Because in enterprise, a lot of times it’s kind of all about the math of business more than the people of business.

Josh Block: Yeah, it’s focused on shareholder wealth. And so in, in large companies, you, you have people who get there by using and cannibalizing people. And then you have others who who develop right as is within any large organization. You have people who say, man, the this leader is the best leader I’ve ever followed. And they’ve believed in me and they’ve shaped me and they’ve developed me and they’ve cared about me as a person beyond the workplace. And then you have others who are more on the tyrant scale. And so big companies have lots of great leaders and some that aren’t so great. And you’re our job in leading any company that’s substantial is how do we and generally family businesses that are smaller, how do we eventually get other leaders to carry our values and to embody what’s important to us, which is really easy when you have an organization of six, a little harder when it’s 400 and really difficult when it’s 70 or 100,000.

Lee Kantor: I mean, the larger the organization, then you have levels of bureaucracy, and the politics of any large organization comes into play, and then people are being rewarded just because they’re good at playing that game, which may not be the ultimate game of the organization and, you know, helping them get towards their mission. Um, what did you learn when you were that new boss, a young person? Um, you know, leading a large organization or a successful organization. Um, how did you kind of get your sea legs, uh, in that circumstance?

Josh Block: Yeah. I just wrote an article that was published, and it’s just this idea that a fast transition actually served to be a real benefit. It’s not how anyone would have drawn it up, but even think of like a Tom Brady story, right? Where he was thrown in unexpectedly was a late draft pick and ends up being maybe one of the best quarterbacks of all time, is that it was an interesting journey in that I didn’t have to act like I knew everything. And so I had I had to or got to rely on the strengths that other people carried. And so being thrown into the deep end, what looked like a disadvantage really turned out to be an advantage of not knowing at all, but really relying on other people’s knowledge and galvanizing around really casting vision, but galvanizing around the strengths that others carry.

Lee Kantor: So on that first day where they’re like, okay, heads up, you’re in charge now what? How did you kind of, um, manage those first days? What did you like take the I’m gonna listen. Or did you have kind of a vision of how you wanted things to be? Like, how did you kind of just manage that initial? I would imagine it was a shock in some ways of, hey, uh, it’s your show now.

Josh Block: Yeah, it was a shock for me. It was a shock for them. And so the first step was to just assess, to listen. You have a kind of 30 to 60 days, maybe even 3 to 6 months, where there’s a little bit of a pass and you’re assessing the team and the organization and, and they’re assessing you and your leadership style. And so I felt like there was kind of an assessment and through that assessment, expressing care at every step of the way that, hey, we’re in it together. This isn’t me versus you. We’re not playing chess against each other, but we’re really putting a puzzle together like a family would do over Christmas holiday.

Lee Kantor: Now, was there any, um. And this is one of the things I noticed with family run businesses where you have people that aren’t members of the family, but they have some of them have leadership roles and then they kind of in the back of their head know that they’ll never get the, the, the top seats, uh, because they’re not a member of the family. Did you have any of that going on that you had to manage the maybe ego and status of some of the other folks in the organization that you kind of leapt, leaped over?

Josh Block: Yeah. So we, we navigated as careful as we could in trying to have last names not be predominant in the way that people are promoted. Um, but of course, I know that I was in many ways given the job because of my last name and yet had to work every day to earn it. So we had, we had co-presidents, myself and, and Jason Crawford, who today is the CEO of Block Imaging. And so we really tried to, number one, keep family in the seats that they were best at working strengths and, and position people regardless of their last name, and then also create opportunities for everybody else that, yeah, there isn’t this, this glass ceiling. If you can’t move beyond the family, at least one of my hopes was to grab the baton of leadership and then develop people and ultimately release it into the role today that I am as just an advisor at the company.

Lee Kantor: So now in the book, how do you translate that to kind of an action plan for somebody who is leading an organization?

Josh Block: Yeah. So I talk about a shift from the me cycle to the we cycle is in lots of organizations, people are focused on me bosses trying to get what they want, get what they need from their people, employees returning their favor, returning the favor. And then when we shift from the me cycle to the we cycle, even the language changes. Bosses become leaders. Employees become team members, and I tripped across three T’s on my way to leading over the last 15 years that really drive a Wii cycle forward. When leaders work together to sharpen decisions, they make thoughtful decisions. They. They use careful consideration of the needs of other people, and then they’re transparent. When we put those three T’s together, it eventually leads to an organization where people feel safe, they feel seen, they feel successful. And when people feel safe, seen, and successful, they tend to reciprocate in a number of ways. They trust deepens, ownership grows, generosity starts to become the norm. And so there’s this Wii cycle that when we lead with the three T’s day in and day out, and we walk out our care for people through the together, the thoughtful and the transparent, we’ve just seen some pretty extraordinary results, both in the lives of people and in our growth and performance, and moving from 30 million to more than 200 million.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you kind of lean into your people, at what, at what point do you stop leaning in? Like, does it go all the way where you tell your customers, look, my first priority is my people. I’m going to take care of them. And if I do a good job there, then that’s going to trickle down to you and you’re going to get exemplary service. Or do you have to tell your people, look, the customer is the most important stakeholder we have. And that’s what we’re focused in on. And everything we do is to serve them.

Josh Block: Yeah. So our mission is that because people matter, we seek to create a thriving team culture that provides a second chance at life for medical equipment so that healthcare providers can provide a second chance at life for patients. And so it’s definitely a trickle down. It starts with the team. When we take great care of the team, the team takes great pride and care in customers. And when we help take great care of customers, then they ultimately serve millions and millions of patients around the world with MRI, CT scan, X-ray, and all the equipment and service that we provide.

Lee Kantor: So when you say that and to prevent it from just being lip service, how do you tell your customer that, hey, our priority is our people? So how do you kind of have that conversation with them where they’re like, hey, I’m paying you. So your priority should be me.

Josh Block: Yeah, we really just talk about people matter. That’s the core of our mission. We don’t spend all I mean, we of course, emphasize that our culture matters. And we believe that a thriving team culture will be significant for customers. But we’ve never had an issue where a customer said, oh, I want you to care for me, not your people, that most people see it as a pretty synergistic endeavor. And most people know, whether it be chick fil A or lots of other companies that when when people are happy, they take far better care of customers, right?

Lee Kantor: They’re not going to say it outright, but they’re gonna say it in terms of expectations. Like if I text you at 11:00 at night, I expect a reply. Like there are certain, you know, kind of ways of doing business that they might express it not by directly saying it.

Josh Block: Yeah. And they, they, I believe that a team member who’s thriving at work, the way that they handle a call or a text at 11:00 at night or a service event on a Saturday afternoon, is my hope is the customer never has to ask that question that they’re, they’re consistently blown away or through the lens of raving fans. They’re just, they’re so appreciative of the way we communicate, the way we show up, the way that, that, um, we get in the trenches with them, that they’re never asking for us to differentiate between whether we’re choosing to care for our people. It’s the same with people in performance. We, this whole idea of, well, what if you care for people and you release performance, or what if you care for your team and you don’t care for customers? I actually see them as complementary, not competition.

Lee Kantor: Now, if you were talking to a leader of an organization, what are some of the symptoms that they might have a people problem that kind of your philosophy might be able to fix?

Josh Block: Yeah. On one end of the spectrum you have a lack of laughter. So in place of laughter, there’s just pressure. Keep your head down. Don’t admit mistakes. Uh. Chase after perfection. Um. And then on the other end of the spectrum, you have people departing all the time that people don’t leave organizations. Oftentimes, they leave leaders. And so if you have either a lack of laughter or an inability to retain people, those are probably two tasks that, uh, that show that there’s a concern.

Lee Kantor: And then if there’s a concern, they get the book, they read it, where’s kind of the low hanging fruit of action that they can take to actually move the needle in this area?

Josh Block: Yeah. I think asking, what kind of leader do you want to be? What do you want the impact of your life to be? And that starts with your kids. It works all the way to team members is stopping and saying, what do you want your leadership obituary to be? What do you want people to say about you in five years? And then ideally, these three T’s flow through everything that we do that We’re not trying to do culture at the same time as we’re trying to do business, but business actually sits on top of the plate of culture.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you were at, uh, leading your organization, when did you kind of get a sign, a signal, a clue that you were kind of on the right track, that this is the, the beginning of a philosophy that would eventually turn into a book? Did you get some early wins or something happened that was like an aha moment of, okay, I got to do more of this.

Josh Block: Well, you have you have people start talking about it. You have people, you run into someone in the grocery store and they say, my grandson works at at your company. And thank you so much. It’s been an incredible experience. That’s, that’s one, uh, one step that was kind of significant. And then the other is people recommending their friends. Such a great test, right? Is that, hey, you got to come work here because it’s the best place I’ve ever worked. So whenever people are hiring the people they care for, that’s such a good litmus test for the type of culture you’re trying to create in the book was never an aspiration. The book was really driven out of people saying, when are you going to tell the story? When are you going to share the quote unquote, secret sauce? And so I started the process in 2020, and then People Matter at Work launched on Amazon on March of 2026.

Lee Kantor: Now when a company is, is kind of saying, okay, I, I believe what you’re saying, we’re going to do this, people matter. We’re going to kind of try to, to learn from your framework and try to implement it within our organization. When that happens, when that moment occurs, is there, do they announce it? Is there? Like what? What? I’m just trying to get a kind of a clear path for an individual that wants to be that leader you’re describing and is frustrated maybe by the culture that either they inherited or is there now? I mean, culture is a verb. It’s not a noun. It’s a living, breathing thing. So how can they start a process that improves a culture?

Josh Block: Yeah. So I think starting with vision is if we went from the last question was, who do you want to be? Who’s what’s my leadership identity? The next step is where are we going to go from here to there? Who do we want to be when we grow up? And then beginning to talk about that, if you’re the apex leader, you get to work together with your leaders to set the mission and, and the vision and the values. And if you’re not an apex leader and you’re, you’re leading a department, you still get to have, hey, you can still create a mission for your department that falls underneath the greater mission. You can still create values that are important and share the things that you like to see that you think make make you stronger and healthier as an organization or as a department. And then also the things that you’d like your department to be void of and really speaking with conviction and inviting people into that as opposed to it becoming a popularity contest and and guess and go leadership.

Lee Kantor: Now how do you handle maybe the high performer that is not great for the culture.

Josh Block: Yeah. That there are three keys. So you have competence, you have character and you have chemistry competence, of course, the knowledge, the the character being integrity. They do what they say, they say what they mean, those sorts of things. And then the last is this chemistry. They work together with other people. And there is we were just in an executive team meeting this last hour and talking about the cost of toxicity is so much more significant than what they produce or even what they cost the organization from a payroll perspective. Is that toxicity really it demoralizes people, it creates, uh, it creates a disconnect. It reduces risk. And it really does a, it shows what you’ll tolerate as a leader. And it also sends your best people packing and it leaves you with everybody else.

Lee Kantor: Now how do you handle. Because I would imagine, like you mentioned, uh, being acquired when there’s a transition, like an acquisition, like, um, how do you kind of integrate two cultures in an elegant maybe, um, maybe one plus one equals three way rather than maybe a diminishing way.

Josh Block: Yeah. So our, our acquisition was through a joint venture. So there’s actually two companies at the helm, which means that you have a board with four and four. And so we did it structured that way because the, the thought that you would get acquired by a 7000 person company and retain any level of your identity or your culture is super unlikely. And so this allowed us to have some more autonomy. We worked closely with both organizations, but our leadership structure remained. And so it was not a merge, but it was really, uh, rather an investment and a synergistic endeavor between all three of our organizations. And so that’s how that’s how we decided to orchestrate it, to kind of retain our identity, try to continue to strengthen our culture, and yet grow in ways that we could not have grown autonomously.

Lee Kantor: Now, has your culture permeated the larger organization?

Josh Block: Um, I think permeated might be a stretch. So we’re, we were 200 when we got acquired and they’re 70,000. So do I think, uh, do I think infiltrated. No. Do I think that there have people who’ve seen, been inspired? Uh, and I would say that it’s gone in both directions. We’ve learned from some of the strengths and capabilities of Siemens and common spirit, and they’ve learned from us in just very different contexts, very different sizes and scopes. And so I think it’d be pretty mutually beneficial from a culture perspective.

Lee Kantor: Now, who is the ideal reader of this book?

Josh Block: It’s really any leader. So if you’re someone who’s a new leader, we’re just handed the baton because you’re responsible. You’re pretty competent. You’re a you were a high performing technician. You got tapped on the shoulder and moved into leadership. And you don’t feel like you have tools you need to be equipped. Uh, this is for you. And then if you’re someone who’s kind of been doing it for a while and just feel like you’re, you’re turning the, the, the, the screw the wrong way, or things aren’t working in the way that you’d like them to. And you need to be encouraged and empowered as a leader. You’re the disenchanted person who’s been leading for ten, 20, 30 years. You thought you liked people, and yet you’ve kind of become disenfranchized and feel like you’re working against them. It’d be for either end of the spectrum, but really, anyone who’s in leadership, this is this is a book that’s written for you.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there a story you can share about your own journey that you work with somebody and maybe inspired them to be a leader, maybe, uh, in more effective than they even thought possible?

Josh Block: Oh my, my, uh, my favorite story. Emily Jones I joined the organization before I was president, just a few months before, as my sales assistant, I was leading the Midwest region, became president. Unexpectedly, she moved into an executive assistant role. And just side by side, we were able to lead together and really gave her a ton of exposure into the business world. Um, and seeing her grow and courage and competence lead a number of areas in interim facets and then ultimately become the leader of our parts sales business today, leading a pretty significant team and a pretty substantial business. And so seeing she just crossed her 15 year mark, and man, there’s little more gratifying than seeing someone come in with all sorts of raw talent and, and, and strengths and seeing them brought into alignment with the needs of the business, a greater understanding of commerce, or in our case, health care. And seeing people grow and become someone they never dreamed of becoming is, is so incredibly gratifying.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to get a hold of the book or connect with you, uh, in your organization, what’s the website? What’s the best way to kind of connect?

Josh Block: Yeah. So they can pick up the book on Amazon books, a million Barnes and Noble anywhere books are sold, as well as an audible version just dropped about two weeks ago. And so people matter at works available there. And then they can reach out to me at Josh at people matter@work.com. And that suffix is also the website that they can connect with me. People matter@work.com.

Lee Kantor: Well, Josh, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you. All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll, uh, talk to you next time on High Velocity Radio.