On this Rule Breakers podcast segment, Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner brings back a pair of his favorite guest Fools -- Chief Learning Officer Kara Chambers and Chief People Officer Lee Burbage -- to talk about a subject near and dear to his heart: how to get your corporate culture right. They speak from a place of authority, given that the company has been routinely recognized as one of the country's best places to work on a number of fronts.
So this week, Kara and Lee call out eight of the items in the Fool's cultural toolbox. At least once a month, they make a point to do something fun that gets as many people involved as they can.
A full transcript follows the video.
This video was recorded on Aug. 2, 2017.
Lee Burbage: So No. 8 builds a little bit on my holiday-party point. Just not forgetting the fun and building into the fun. It can be so easy and, again, to use your word, sappy. We're like, "Hey, we should have another activity, or another fun event!" So we do still try to have at least some sort of fun company event that's organized once a month.
And the one I wanted to highlight was one that we had from last month, because I'm particularly excited. We tried to think about how could we do something fun that also draws in our remote workforce. So we have a decent number of Fools that are working from around the United States and around the world. All different sorts of time zones. And that can make having a fun event difficult to pull off and maybe even makes them sad. So here we're doing something fun at the headquarters, and we've got someone in Singapore who's saddened because they can't participate.
So here's what we did -- a push-up challenge. We've come full circle to being the most athletic company here ...
David Gardner: Yeah. How could we not mention that in Washington, D.C., we are the reigning, most athletic company in the capital of maybe arguably the most powerful nation the world has ever known?
Burbage: I think our hope is they never give that award again, and then we're only the only one ever. But we did a push-up challenge, and it was very simple. You can do this in your company. We had a Google doc where you go and put your name in. I know that you both participated. And just on a daily basis you marked down how many push-ups you're doing and you have a goal. And there's actually some banter talking inside the Google doc, and we had some prizes.
Gardner: And some teams challenged some other teams with that.
Burbage: Absolutely. So if you're in Singapore, you're in Australia, or you're here in Washington, D.C., you can get in that Google doc. You can participate. It happened all month long. We had a super-fun time. We did, I think, 150,000 push-ups as a company. So we found a way for us to have fun as a company, which I think is easy to forget, especially in the busy world that we live in today. So adding some fun into your company and finding ways for everybody to participate is something I'm particularly excited about.
