Joe Blackstone of Blackstone Consulting On How to Build a Purpose-Driven Culture That Attracts Top…

Joe Blackstone of Blackstone Consulting On How to Build a Purpose-Driven Culture That Attracts Top Talent

An Interview With Chad Silverstein

People must belong to a purpose-driven company instead of a place where work is a four-letter word. They must have a feeling that they are doing something special for the customer and in that work; that it’s a collective group effort where the whole is having fun doing it.

Purpose has become the new currency of success in today’s workplace, and leaders who prioritize mission-driven cultures are standing out in the war for talent. To explore this important topic, we are interviewing Joe Blackstone.

Joe Blackstone is the Founder, President, & CEO of Blackstone Consulting, Inc. Established in 1991, with its corporate office in Los Angeles, California, BCI is a $900 million managed-services provider of security, food, janitorial, facilities maintenance, grounds maintenance, and project management services. Clients include JPMorgan Chase, Apple Computer, Amazon, Goldman Sachs, Northrop Grumman, Kaiser Permanente, and State Farm.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?

I would say that I was fortunate as a young person to be exposed to entrepreneurial-type ventures. My father was a sales manager at a major Fortune 500 company, so I got to see him work with clients, watch how he would put together an entire opportunity and take it to fruition. I think seeing that made me believe that I could do something like that, too.

I was a mechanical engineering major and then I got an MBA afterwards, and then I went into sales with IBM. And you wonder how in the heck did I get into food service? We had a client who was looking at going from retail food service into something institutional, and the company was looking for some help to figure out how to do that. So, I started trying to solve the problem. And I looked at the issue: Here’s what we’ve got. Can we come up with a solution that fits for that organization? And then we looked at food service in the military, and that became something that could be a real business.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began working in leadership, culture building, or purpose-driven organizations?

I had an experience early when I was first starting BCI, where we were doing the food service pieces, but we also had a piece where we were responsible for directing and coordinating the L.A. Marathon. I think that leadership experience was probably the toughest thing that I’ve ever done professionally. It was also the most expansive. We had 15,000 volunteers on the day of the event. We had a small staff of about eight to 10 folks who were there year-round or close to year-round. And then you had a dozen to 25 contractors. The interesting part about that leadership is that you did all this work, and every day you were running out of time because there was a deadline.

The gun is going to go off at 7:45 on the first Tuesday in March in L.A., and if you are not ready, it’s going to be a problem. So, every day you’re working as a group. From a leadership perspective, you say to the team, we have gotten to this point together, but when we start tomorrow morning, if I tell you to do something, just do it.

You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

I would say that I am an exceptional generalist. By that, I mean I have a good understanding of almost all aspects of the business. For example, I’m a finance type person, I’m an operations understander, I am a marketing person. I’m comfortable with all of that. That’s my №1. №2 would be just a drive for competition. I want to win, and I want to compete. I’m going to outsmart you if I can. And the third one would be just an innate likability. I think people enjoy being around me. I’m positive in terms of life, first and foremost. It is a joy to have as much fortune as I personally have. And I think I’d share that with a lot of people.

A good example for me would be, we get into negotiations with some of our customers. And in those direct negotiations, we are talking through the operational side of what we do. We’re talking through the financial side, and we’re trying to convince them that our proposal is still a good and solid one. And so, I think that generalist piece can be one- or two-day sessions with a group of people, and we might have a group on our side and a group on their side, and you’re like a maestro in that mix, looking at what you can and can’t do operationally. And you have people on your shoulder who are part of your team who can give you further guidance, that are much more expert in it, but you know enough about it to be able to do that piece. For me, that works. And then there’s that likability factor of it, where we’re in the room and we’re trying to make sure that at the end of the day, we’re going to be partners because we’re going to be providing you this service. I think that’s a really great example of how, being in the room for X number of hours with teams on both sides, my generalist skills come out in a big way.

Let’s now jump into the focus of our interview. What does a “purpose-driven culture” mean to you personally, and why do you think it’s critical for attracting top talent?

The first thing is you have to stand for something. You have to figure out what that is in advance. If you’ve got a driven group but you have no purpose, then you’re flat, you’re in the ocean, and you don’t have a compass, and you don’t know if you’re going north, south, east, or west. First and foremost, you have to say, what do you stand for in people and an organization? For us, that’s about diversity. It’s about good ethics, it’s about strong work, it’s about cohesion. Those things are our purpose. And my purpose is to basically be the air traffic controller for all of the things that our organization does. I don’t fly the plane, but I make sure that planes don’t hit each other. And so to do that piece requires that you know what planes are out there, and it also requires that you understand which ones are top priority in the moment. But it all goes back to a purpose.

How did you identify and define the mission or purpose for your organization? Was it inspired by a particular event, challenge, or insight?

We have had that mission for our entire 34-year existence. Additionally, we just had a group meeting with an outside consultant 13 months ago, and we crafted and fine-tuned a mission and a vision at that stage. We used outside folks and then we had 13 or 14 of our senior execs in the room for three days. And through that process, we literally laid out purpose, mission, vision, what we stand for, what are our differentiators in terms of what we do and how we do it.

What are the key steps leaders can take to embed purpose into the day-to-day operations and decision-making of their companies?

You need to say what it is that you do all the time. I remember when Pat Riley won his first title with the Lakers, and said, we’re going to repeat and then we’re going to three-peat. That was their thing. And then you can also take that same thing for a coach like Phil Jackson, who was the coach for the Chicago Bulls and their six titles. Phil was saying, “Look, this may be our last chance where all these pieces are in place and all the players are still here. And so, what we need to do is to make sure that we focus everything that we do for this season on that.” And I think the same type of focus can happen within a business.

What role does leadership play in championing and modeling a purpose-driven culture? Can you share an example of how you or another leader helped reinforce your organization’s purpose?

I think we’re at a moment right now. We’re a diverse-owned business. We’re a very diverse-led business, and we have a very diverse group of personnel and employees within our group serving customers who are also diverse. And so, diversity is everything within what we do. And today, that’s under attack. And so, when you see it under attack in an administration like it is now, you have a couple of choices. You stay neutral, you back away as they would prefer that you do, or you press forward with what your mission is. And so, I think leadership’s about taking a stand, and we’ve taken a stand and said, this is who we are. It makes us better; it makes us stronger. We do better work because of it. And quite frankly, it’s a better experience for individual people. I’ve lived this life around people of all colors, genders, sexual orientations, ages, and I think that’s why I smile a lot. I think it’s because you get that experience. If you were in one room with the same types of folks all the time, everybody would be telling the same lies, and suddenly, you’d say, I’m just in a cult and I don’t want to be. And I don’t think that that’s what we should be targeting as organizations and as a leader. Those are things that I believe in.

How do you handle skepticism or resistance from team members or stakeholders who may not immediately understand the value of focusing on purpose?

I’m a big proponent of time. Someone has an initiative that they want to do. People don’t necessarily react immediately. And so, I know with my team, a lot of them know if they bring an idea, I usually take a little bit of time to process that piece. And I think what that does for me is it gives me a sensitivity to, your question was about skepticism from others, whatever, etc. I give them time and look at both sides. Let’s stew on it. Think about the pros and cons and what’s the benefit or what’s the impact to going in one direction or the other direction or is there a middle ground that could make some sense.

Ok, let’s talk strategy. Based on your experience, can you share “5 Steps to Build a Purpose-Driven Culture That Attracts Top Talent”? If possible, please include examples or stories for each.

I think you want to attract top talent. The first thing is you must have a good leadership team.
You must reward people for what they do. That doesn’t necessarily mean compensation. It means accolades, it means benefits, it means comp, it means incentives. All those things fall into that: compensate them.
People must belong to a purpose-driven company instead of a place where work is a four-letter word. They must have a feeling that they are doing something special for the customer and in that work; that it’s a collective group effort where the whole is having fun doing it.
Do I believe in the mission of the organization?
Have a strategy for building a purpose-driven culture that attracts top talent. I was really focused on that top talent piece. I think you must have people within our group who are recruiting top talent. So, we’ve had a really great team on our food service side, which is primarily the military. We have a lot of retired military personnel who are in the upper echelons of our business, and they keep talking to all the folks who are about to retire that they worked with and telling them, this is the purpose of our group, this is how we do it. I’m really pleased with the direction that we are going. I get great opportunities within that. And when you get an opportunity to retire from the military, you should consider a group like ours. I think that brings great talent and like-minded thinking in terms of, hey, I’ve bought into what we’re doing as a culture. I think you would like this culture, too.

Can you share a specific example of how embracing a purpose-driven culture helped your company attract exceptional talent or achieve a significant business goal?

We do a lot of contracting through an act in the federal government called the Randolph Shepherd Act, and it helps those who are visually impaired or blind. We’ve cultivated relationships with blind entrepreneurs in different states and state licensing agencies, state agency personnel who work on these contracts. We’ve bought into, and we support blindness. And so, we are major attendees at events like the National Association of Blind Merchants, the National Federation of the Blind. We are financial contributors, we are sponsors, we provide training. We do several things to cultivate that piece. We don’t do it because we know that we’ll get a specific contract. But we’ve gotten several contracts because of that.

What advice would you give to leaders of smaller companies or startups who want to build a purpose-driven culture but don’t know where to start?

The №1 thing that most businesses fail on is, they run out of capital. So, in a normal setting, if you start a hundred new businesses, 90 of those businesses fail in the first year. And eight of the remaining 10 fail in year two. Ninety-eight out of a hundred are gone. The №1 reason that they’re gone is not because they don’t work hard or that they don’t have a good idea or a good product or a good service, it’s because they run out of money. So as much as I like the concept of crypto driven and all those pieces, if you don’t have any capital, you’re screwed. So, my №1 objective in talking to any small business is to say, figure out a plan to ensure that you have enough capital to stay where you’re at or to grow.

What are some common mistakes leaders make when trying to create a purpose-driven culture, and how can they avoid them?

It’s that one day they stand for this and the next day they stand for something else. So, it makes it that much more important, how important it is to have taken the time to figure out what that purpose is in the first place. You’re not supposed to change it. You can pivot some.

During Covid, everybody vacated offices. That destroyed a lot of things there. So, you had to be purposeful about that connectivity and things that you were doing because you weren’t all coming to the same spot. And suddenly people were asking, what was our purpose again? And how do we still do that in a fashion that keeps everything going in the right direction?

What trends or shifts are you seeing in the workplace regarding purpose, and how do you think these will shape the future of business?

I think it’s getting tighter and tighter on wage compression. it’s getting tighter and more volatile on how employees are treated. I think there’s more and more financial profit pressures on major corporations, and all those things lead to a less than stellar organization in terms of how they treat their people. I think that’s a trend that is happening in a lot of the US economy and the world as a whole.

In your opinion, how does having a purpose-driven culture impact not just employees, but customers, clients, and the broader community?

The best example is, we do a lot of work with Kaiser Permanente, and we have a total health initiative that we do with them. And our focus on that is to be partners with them to say, you have hospitals and medical centers in locations across Southern California and seven or eight other states, and you have a diverse group of people that you serve. And as you do that, you want to be a part of your community. We want to do the same thing within Blackstone Consulting. And so, we have partnered with them to contribute monies to causes that are true and geared to Kaiser Permanente. At the same time, we think that those are things that we would want to be a part of ourselves.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people by building purpose-driven workplaces, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

We are in the process of doing it. We believe that we need to level the playing field for women. And so we are in the process of creating a nonprofit that would focus on making it such that we could get the next Sonia Sotomayor and that we can figure out how to provide, whether it’s books or tuition or child care, whether it is basics of food, housing, whatever those types of things are to young aspiring women, The goal is to break the chain of essentially white men controlling aspects associated with life, business, government. We’d love to make those kinds of changes.

How can our readers further follow you online?

You can follow us at our website, www.blackstoneconsulting.com. You could follow our nonprofit, a literacy foundation for kids at www.j3foundationla.org.

This was great. Thank you so much for the time you spent sharing with us.

About the Interviewer: Chad Silverstein is a seasoned entrepreneur with 25+ years of experience as a Founder and CEO. While attending Ohio State University, he launched his first company, Choice Recovery, Inc., a nationally recognized healthcare collection agency — twice ranked the #1 workplace in Ohio. In 2013, he founded [re]start, helping thousands of people find meaningful career opportunities. After selling both companies, Chad shifted his focus to his true passion — leadership. Today, he coaches founders and CEOs at Built to Lead, advises Authority Magazine’s Thought Leader Incubator.

Joe Blackstone of Blackstone Consulting On How to Build a Purpose-Driven Culture That Attracts Top… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.