Trust & Transformation: A CEO's Journey with William Roche

Dive into a riveting tale with William Roche, CEO of S. Clyde Weaver, as he unfolds the challenges and triumphs of steering a 104-year-old family business through modernization. Discover how defining core values, fostering innovation, and crafting a culture of ownership transformed internal dynamics and customer relations. This episode is a must-listen for leaders wrestling with change and tradition!

Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Better People Podcast:

• First non-family CEO in 104 years.
• Opened books for transparent trust-building.
• Created actionable core values.
• Performance reviews aligned with core values.
• Emphasis on hiring for cultural fit.

Resources:

• S. Clyde Weaver
• MidAtlantic Employers’ Association (MEA)

Connect with William Roche:

• LinkedIn

Connect with our hosts:

• Holly DePalma - LinkedIn
• Margaret Uhrich - LinkedIn

Quotables:

• 11:14 - Take ownership. It's not just ownership generally, it's take ownership. You need to act like an owner. You need to honor your commitments. You need to own up to y your failures. You need to act with integrity. So those are just some examples of how we, we took this idea of values, core values and found a way to apply it or to make it actionable.
• 18:02 - That might be the most important thing is avoid hiring the wrong people because it's so much more work and energy if you hire the wrong person. But if you do happen to do, so having a set of core values as a framework to course correct makes it so much easier than saying like, I don't know if we hired the right person. On the other hand, if ahead of time you, you go into, in an interview with somebody and you can, you can identify that they're kind of matching, and meeting all of these kind of core values or most of them you can feel good about making the hire to fit even if they don't have the best skillset you can hire for fit and train to skill.
• 26:06 - We did, we had some turnover over the years with change. And you're going to have that with any organization. There's gonna be those that just don't wanna participate. You've chosen to go different directions. The thing is, once you define the direction you're going, you define who you are, you define those values. If you've got somebody that says, well, I don't agree with it, then the entire team can be, can be accepting of that and say, okay, that's fine. It doesn't mean you're a bad person, but it means that we have to part ways here and we can all be okay with it.
• 27:15 - To really figure out what are your values and two, what it is so important to do. And it's so important that you really put thought into it. And I love that you took the approach of who are we now and who do we wanna be, right? What represents who we are and what's really important that is, is maybe always a part of who we are, but also let's think about who it is we need to become or where we wanna go and create values that address that as well and the impact that those values can really have.
• 31:12 - And I would just go back to kind of what I said at the beginning about communication. It is so important to communicate, build trust, to frequently be seen, and be connected with those that you're working with. Yeah, I mean, without trust, nobody's gonna wanna do anything for you. And the way you do that is being open, being there, connecting, and communicating well.