The Happy at Work Podcast

The Heart of Building a Sustainable Family Business with Matthew Powell

The Happy at Work Podcast Season 6 Episode 23

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In creating a family-run company that will last 100 years, you have to have an adaptable skillset that gets evaluated quarterly. This is one of the great points that Matthew Powell, fourth-generation CEO of Century Companies, reveals on how to operate a business with a 100-year time horizon.

After starting his career in investment banking, Powell gained a unique appreciation for the power of patient capital and long-term thinking. He returned to his family's Midwest-based safety and security contracting business with a mission to "build for the next 100 years" – a perspective that shapes everything from hiring practices to leadership development.

Powell shares his company's unique approach to culture-building, starting with clear values (humble, hungry, and together) that are constantly reinforced through daily practices and meaningful recognition. What makes his approach particularly fascinating is his belief that "leadership is an inside job" – requiring leaders to heal their hearts, elevate their souls, galvanize their mindsets, and maintain physical health as prerequisites for organizational growth.

One of the most intriguing metrics Powell tracks is how many families are represented within the company. His reasoning is profound: if employees invite their family members to join, it demonstrates they truly believe in the environment they're helping create. This "family metric" serves as the ultimate net promoter score.

For any leader tired of the relentless pressure of short-term thinking, Powell offers a refreshing alternative that focuses on "being timeless rather than timely." His three pillars for building a century-spanning company – humanity, stewardship, and compounding – provide a framework for creating organizations with deeper purpose, stronger cultures, and more sustainable impact. Subscribe now to hear conversations with more innovative leaders who are reimagining the future of work.

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And don't forget to check out our previous episodes for more tips and strategies to boost your workplace happiness. You can find them on your favorite podcast platform or on our website.

If you have any questions, comments, or topic suggestions for future episodes, please reach out to us. We'd love to hear from you!

Stay inspired, stay motivated, and stay happy at work!

Speaker 1:

Welcome back for another episode of the Happy at Work podcast with Laura Tessa and Michael.

Speaker 2:

Each week we have thoughtful conversations with leaders, founders and authors about happiness at work.

Speaker 3:

Tune in each Thursday for a new conversation. Enjoy the show.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Happy at Work podcast Today. We're excited to have Matthew Powell, the CEO of Century Companies, joining us. Hi, matthew, thanks for being with us today. Hi, we're excited to have Matthew Powell, the CEO of Century Companies, joining us. Hi, Matthew, thanks for being with us today.

Speaker 4:

Hi Laura, it's great to be here Awesome. So, good, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 1:

So just get us going. Start us off by telling us about yourself. Tell us about your career, how you kind of got to where you are and what you're doing now.

Speaker 4:

Absolutely so. I am in a family business. Century Companies is based in the Midwest. We're a safety and security contracting business, and I am fourth generation Growing up.

Speaker 4:

I never had any plans of joining the family business, and right after college I got into investment banking and was helping sell family businesses, and while I did that, it made me appreciate that there's different time horizons to operate businesses, and I got to spend a lot of time with businesses that have a focus on being a financial instrument and flipping within five years, and as I was doing that, it wasn't quite fulfilling for me.

Speaker 4:

So I realized that my family was a part of a family business, and so I gave my grandfather a phone call and asked him if I could come join the family business, and he said absolutely, I've been waiting for this call, get married and come on up. So I married my high school sweetheart, we got into U-Haul and we moved to Milwaukee, wisconsin, and as I walked through the doors of the family business, I really didn't know what I was getting myself into, but I knew I was joining an organization that had been around for 100 years and that we had to build for the next 100 years, and so that's the time horizon that I get to play in now and I'm finding that it's very fruitful and look forward to sharing more with you about that journey and that time horizon.

Speaker 3:

So the world kind of works on minute by minute quote by quote, earnings report by earnings report. On minute by minute quote by quote, earnings report by earnings report. Why do you feel that having an incredibly longer term point of view timeframe is better?

Speaker 4:

From what I've, seen in my life. All great things take time and I think that time is actually a great filter and it's unlocking that power of compounding is something I'm really obsessed with and Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger talk about it a lot and it's something that I'm starting to see come to fruition and my goal is to compound trust and if I can do that through relationships with all stakeholders in a business with our customers, with our teammates, with our vendors, with the community that we could be the greatest force for good. If we look at business with that time horizon because all great things take time and we live in a world where everything's about being timely Well, what if we focus on being timeless? Awesome.

Speaker 1:

So what does that mean? What are some of the trade-offs focusing like that? In practical terms, what are some of the trade-offs that means that you have to make or the things that you do differently compared to, maybe, working in a company that's much more quarterly focused?

Speaker 4:

that can align around our values and our vision of having time arbitrage that we can then make longer term plays and we can really build people for the long term, because people are best when they can think about things in decades rather than quarters, and if you can create a space where there's psychological safety, it creates discretionary effort where people want to build with you.

Speaker 3:

I'm curious to hear more about your culture and how the employees are actually treated. Specifically, what do you feel you do in your company that is tangibly different than what's going to be happening if I'm working somewhere else, like Amazon or McDonald's? How many Big Macs did you make? What do you actually do?

Speaker 4:

That's a great question, michael. I have had the opportunity to work in organizations where what do you actually do? Can come inspired, be safe throughout the day and go home fulfilled. Mother Teresa said that if you want to change the world, go home and love your family. I can't think of a better mission for a company than to send people home better than when they arrived and we can change the world.

Speaker 4:

It's a bit grandiose, but that's what I'm aspiring to do here at Century and find the long-term players to play that long-term game, and some of the ways that we're doing that is through building real teams, real teams. A lot of organizations don't take the time, at least from my experience, to really build teams, and we're on this journey. I've been in the first chair for about three years and we put values in place, and values are behaviors and you tolerate what you get. So we've had very tough situations where the standard has been set by people. We've had to let go, and that's what makes it real is, when you make those tough decisions, that someone might be really good at output, but they're not a good locker room player, they're not cohesive, and so we have taken the time to make sure we have the right people on the bus.

Speaker 1:

So I'm super interested in this. Culture is something I talk about a lot and study a lot and really dig into, and I love where you're going with this. So the thing that's so hard about this sometimes I mean sometimes when you get the foundation built, it's such a clarifying construct, right, when you're super clear about what you stand for and you, you know very much, recognize the people who are doing those things and then the people who aren't, maybe you try to course correct, but then you change like they need to leave right If they're not consistently being part of what you're trying to create. There's so many layers to this, as you know. There's so many things that can make this really tricky, especially if you have maybe there's an account manager who has a particularly good relationship with your biggest customer, for example, and it ends up that that person there's something about the way they're acting that goes against the values, right, there's these hard decisions that you have to make.

Speaker 1:

So I think that's where you know the rubber hits the road and everybody else around can see that, right, they can see when that isn't happening, when the people aren't living the values, and we have to make decisions about that. So I mean that's probably the pretty most obvious kind of version of how you can make decisions about culture, but there's also a lot of other things that are in the, I guess, like the day-to-day practices. You know a lot of the things that we do at work that we sort of take for granted of maybe how we do budgeting or how we do our team meeting, or the CEO does something the same or different from everybody else, and so I'm just curious how have you taken these values and I think I believe I believe I saw your values on your website but how do you take your values and make them so just kind of natural and everywhere that people look, you know in in maybe ways that people wouldn't expect?

Speaker 4:

We try to make it a part of our daily rhythm and a part of our language, with our values are being humble, hungry and together and we try to build it into conversation. Some of the ways I try to do it is starting our. We have leadership, weekly leadership team meetings and starting with a values moment and just going around the leadership table and highlighting moments that people have represented one of our three values. And then we have monthly town halls. I don't think any company can over-communicate, so we have lots of different vehicles for communication and we always start with our values and we share stories and moments that are throughout the organization and we celebrate those people through positive reinforcement and give rewards and celebrate when people are being humble and hungry and together, because for us that creates a deep sense of belonging and I believe we're social creatures and that's we want belonging at the end of the day, and that's what we're trying to build with our values and highlighting it.

Speaker 3:

I love that, and when I go into organizations to consult, usually it's because there's something wrong.

Speaker 3:

That's why they ask you in there. It's so many times it all comes down to wow, you hired the wrong person and now you're trying to like make it up and get them engaged and it's really like pushing the rock up the hill. So I'm curious when you're hiring people, what's it like? What are you looking for? Are there any unique things that you do in the interview process that some of our listeners could be like oh, I need to do a better job because I'm not really good at it. Can you tell us about how you? Yeah.

Speaker 4:

For me, and I'm focused on culture first, and then you can teach people skills. So for us I'm looking for stories and I'm not going to explicitly ask people what's an example of being humble, what's an example of being hungry, but I'm going to try to mine for stories where they are representing our values and if they've done their homework they might be able to do that. But then I'm going to really try to dig in to appreciate do they naturally sit at that intersection of values that align with the century? And I think it always comes back to the stories and the examples that people can provide.

Speaker 1:

What have you found in terms of people being surprised that you want to make a long-term commitment in them? It feels like that would be such a pleasant surprise but feel unusual to people Like so you want me to stay here for a long time. It just seems like nowadays, right, everybody's changing jobs all the time, and so how does that? Has that been kind of anything that you've had to do to kind of convince people that you're serious? No, like you really want them to be there for the long time.

Speaker 4:

It's been. It's been one of my favorite, my favorite parts of my job, of being a part of something that we want to build, that's worth passing on and I share with people. I want to work with you for decades. I don't want to work with you for months, and if we're optimizing for relationships, then you want to be with people for a long time because we spend so much time at work. We spend more time at work than we do with our family and friends, so we need to enjoy where we are and feel that deep sense of belonging, and I believe that it helps to align us, to be on a great team with a great locker room, so that we can create great work together.

Speaker 1:

Have you just to follow up on that, do you have any stories of people that you've had to kind of reassure them that you're serious about the long term?

Speaker 4:

Yeah, I think people at first are it's different, it's countercultural to be focused on the long term Right, but I think it's refreshing and it's word of mouth for us that it's not coming from me but coming from our team is most valuable and one of the key metrics that we measure at our company and I'd love your thoughts on this. It's a little controversial. We measure how many families are in the family business, because if you are willing to invite your child or your sibling or a cousin to the organization, that means you deeply care for them and you think that this is a place worthy of them spending their time, and it's a key metric that we share every month and we love celebrating as it climbs. And I'd love to know your thoughts. I mean, nepotism has a bad rap and what do you think about that with us building our organization around families and family business?

Speaker 3:

Laura, you want to start, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Well, first, it's sort of like the ultimate net promoter score, right? Like the idea of promoting this to people who you love and care for, that you want them to come and work there. That says a lot if that's the case. So you know, the recommending this place is a great place to work to my family is like the ultimate net promoter score, so I think that's really interesting. I would imagine, though, that it creates the need for a lot of clarity around some boundaries and being really clear about standards and expectations of performance. I mean, that's needed anyway, right, we need to be really clear about what expectations are period. So that's the next place I go to. Is does that make things complicated when your nephew is working in the same department that you're in, or something like that? So that's my reaction, michael. What would you?

Speaker 3:

I basically like it because I remember I was working somewhere and my boss she said to me you know we're looking for another professor.

Speaker 3:

Do you know who would fit in here? And I thought it was really a brilliant way to get a good candidate because I knew the culture, I knew my friend and I would know if there was a fit. So it really saved just a lot of time from getting people from LinkedIn or wherever. So I like the fact that the person who's doing the referring or the recommending already knows the culture, already usually pretty well know that family member more than just a stranger. So I could see it would be good on that end. I was curious if you also expand that to friends, because my family is well, they're old, most of them are dead, so I don't refer them. But I have a lot of friends and they share my value system and I wonder if you also expand that or give it the same weight as this is my relative versus this is my friend, if you also add that in there and if there's a different weight to it.

Speaker 4:

We don't measure friends, but we certainly welcome and celebrate when we have referrals. Most of our positions now are filled through referrals.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, do you find, matthew? There's sort of the obvious. Also next question around if we are already kind of narrowing down to people who are within our family, does that mean we might not be open or thinking about people who aren't necessarily like us and that might have different perspectives or backgrounds, and it maybe doesn't open us up to new ideas or new ways of thinking or just people who are different from the people who are within our family systems? So I'm curious how you think about that.

Speaker 4:

Yes, I completely see that, and that's definitely something I need to be mindful of is we're celebrating this momentum with families and family business. We've also done some hiring outside of the business for positions instead of internal promotions and, from what I'm seeing and experiencing, I think it's very healthy to bring in people from the outside to bring fresh ideas that they've been through, things that Century maybe hasn't been through.

Speaker 1:

Right. It's to me like the combination I'm working with this company right now, where they sort of have something similar where they are hiring a lot of people who are really experienced. They have tons of industry experience and advanced degrees, similar, where they're hiring a lot of people who are really experienced. Like you know, they have tons of you know, industry experience and advanced degrees and so they're hiring a lot of people there, but they're also balancing that with people who are maybe new to career, who don't have as much experience, and so that kind of mixed model versus just one or the other, you know, it seems like it's a healthy, healthy thing to do.

Speaker 4:

With our accountability. Lauren, michael, I'd love to know your thoughts on this. Every week, we reflect on and remind ourselves at the leadership level of our purpose, and it's different than our purpose for the company. So our company's purpose is to help build safer communities, but then our leadership team purpose is to be a safety-first, values-driven company that delivers sustainable and profitable growth, and we write that as a team and then we have key metrics that go with that. So are we achieving our purpose? And that's been really critical for me for being a team, getting back to, like, that sense of belonging when you're on the basketball court, you know by the scoreboard, and so we're always trying to come back to our scoreboard. I just would love your thoughts that helps.

Speaker 1:

I think that's really great and I think this is one of the reasons why culture has gotten such a bad rap is that we have put culture in this kind of place over here, where it's an HR thing or it's the nice to have, versus, like, putting it really intertwined with the business results we're trying to achieve. Right, that we need to be this way together in order for us to achieve these business results, and to me, that weaving and making those things go hand in hand really closely is awesome. And the leadership team piece of this, too, like that's another thing I tend to see is the leadership team often isn't aligned. You know, they're the first ones who you can look at and say, gosh, they're not on the same page about what this company is trying to achieve and how we're going to do it, like how the culture needs to be designed in order for that to happen. So I'd love the focus on the leadership team. Michael, were you going to say something?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I would add in. I went to an online workshop that was from Harvard Business Review, one of their guest speakers I forgot his name, but he manages 250,000 people in India. It's multiple companies under one large umbrella and he had a metric that you might enjoy and it was basically called the helpful index. He may have called it something else. It was basically that when it came time for you know, let's say, your promotion or review, or hey, let's look at what happened last week People would rate me and say, well, how helpful was Michael to Matthew, how helpful was he to Laura, how helpful was he to other people?

Speaker 3:

And I kind of get like this little Yelp review and I think what's interesting about it is that it brings it into the culture that this isn't like this extra bonus. This is how you're supposed to be looking for opportunities to be helpful, and one of the difficult things with looking for these fuzzy things is to put a number on it with a metric, and I just thought I'd throw that out, that that was what this person was doing, and it's interesting that it can create a better culture, especially in a sales department where you say, oh, team player, work together, but all the money and the incentives are the exact opposite. So I'm curious if you think something like that would be useful in your organization.

Speaker 4:

I think it would be. I think that posture of how can I help is contagious. When we're starting to implement pulse surveys at our organization, I think that would be a key, a great question to put into our quarterly pulse for our values. So yeah, thank you for that suggestion.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, having your pulse surveys really align with all of what you have been saying, right.

Speaker 2:

Yes no-transcript high yeah.

Speaker 1:

And then I also understand that the they, they often don't go as many generations as yours, as yours is gone, right, like they ended the second generation. They don't, they don't keep going. So I'm curious about how you think, about what you've learned really about family businesses and the complexity of family business, I would imagine.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. So what I've come to believe at this moment is when we are building for centuries, there's three pillars to it and for a family to transcend generations it's very difficult. It requires a lot of intentionality. The first pillar for us at Century is humanity, and that's what we've been talking about with culture and values and building that belonging in the business. And then the second pillar is most critical for our family it's stewardship, that ownership is a trap and that we're only here for a brief moment and our job is to pass it on to those who come next.

Speaker 4:

And the visual I think of for the second pillar is ownership is like holding your fist and closing it, where stewardship is opening your hand and with that posture of how can I help? So that's the second pillar. And then the third pillar is compounding. It's the superpower of allowing. If you can build humanity and do it with stewardship, then you can allow non-linear returns to happen within the organization and you can be a regenerative force for good in your community. And I'm surrounded by investment firms that I compete with day to day and it just it feels a little more extractive than being regenerative in the communities that we serve and as a family business that the stewardship piece. Leadership is an inside job and we talk in my family just around. We need to heal our hearts, we need to elevate our souls, we need to galvanize our mindsets and we need to take care of our physical health. It's really that inside work that a lot of people don't spend a lot of time on, but that's where the growth starts for it to come into the business.

Speaker 1:

I love that you say that and that's interesting. The heal our hearts piece as well. That's like huh.

Speaker 4:

Family business is a gift wrapped in pain and you have to be okay to. It's gonna be painful, just like starting a business from scratch is painful Me joining a business that already is up and running. There's going to be pain and accepting that it's a part of the journey to be the best version of oneself.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, one of my, one of my students. He was the CEO of the largest, his family business. They're the largest red wine producers in Portugal and the family business, I think, is about 800 years old. Wow, amazing, wow. And he talks about, you know, yeah, the gift wrapped in pains. He has a lot to say about that and they have a ton of structure and just because you're born into the family, you're not guaranteed to get a job at the company and they have some of these almost like anti-nepotism rules in there. And I'm curious how do you handle the family culture? Is it we assume you're going to come into the family business or is it you can make that choice freely, without guilt? When you come in, are you treated like everybody else or do you get a leg up? How do you actually onboard relatives into the family business and how are they treated versus people who aren't related?

Speaker 4:

From my experience my grandfather did it in such a great way for me there was never any pressure and I actually was the one who made that phone call to come join the family business and at this point I'm the only family member in the business and I'm going to take a very similar approach with my kids and future family members is they have to express interest and they also have to go work outside the family business. You have to go add value in the marketplace and then come to the table and it's going to be a business case. We have to treat the business like a business or else there will be entropy and it just it wouldn't. It won't thrive if we're not bringing people in from a business perspective.

Speaker 1:

Right. So it's smart to get that outside, get that outside experience right, Get some other perspective. Yeah.

Speaker 4:

And, from my experience, a lot of family businesses don't have boards and I think taking that extra step of putting governance in place is so important to transcend generations. It can be fine when you have a majority owner and maybe children, but once you get multi-generational businesses, you need a third party to help mediate and get through the tough challenges of ownership successions and driving the business and making capital decisions. Is it going to the shareholders or is it going into the business? It's good to have the experts at the table.

Speaker 1:

So completely when you're thinking about so. Have you had a board in place for a while?

Speaker 4:

Yes, I've been very fortunate. My grandfather had a board in place before I ever joined the business, and it's people that I can lean on for a deeper understanding.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome, so good. Yes, so the pieces you were talking about around heal our hearts and that almost felt like a bit of a strategy, or like almost like an HR strategy or people strategy, right, some of the things that you were talking about. Yeah, can you say some more about that?

Speaker 4:

I was certainly certainly companies only grow to the capacity of their leaders. That's, from my experience, what I'm seeing. So I'm always mindful that I need to become better for tomorrow, for the company to be better tomorrow.

Speaker 2:

Right, right.

Speaker 4:

And so I look at it. I have a personal practice where I am working on those four empires healing my heart, because in a family business, if you haven't healed your heart, I'm still working on it. It's leaking energy so that you can't bring your best self if you have resentment in your heart or if you have envy. So I'm constantly being mindful so that I can come to the table healthy and then the mindset it's seeing everything as a growth opportunity and the obstacle is the way.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, the looking inside piece and saying this kind of starts with you, as the CEO, have work to do and that you're working on yourself and that you're looking inside, to me that sounds that sends such an amazing message with in culture, the culture space. I'm always surprised at how hesitant or resistant organizations are to do that work and I get that like healing your heart. Might not be the way they feel like they need to do it, but whatever it is, that's the work that we need to do. They want somebody to come in and give them a magic bullet and just like say just do the thing, the exact same thing that Netflix did, or do what you know whatever latest culture book there is that's out there. They're really resistant to roll up their sleeves and look and and look, you know, and say this is, this is what's going on.

Speaker 1:

I was on a call a couple of weeks ago. This woman I was, my mind was blown in a big company that you would all recognize, in a very senior role. She was basically saying I'm tired of all these complainers. I'm tired. Why don't people just get their work done? You know, on and on, and on, and on and on, and it was so apparent to me that it's like hello, you're the problem right, like, look in the mirror, you're talking to all these outside people to maybe help you and I can tell you what the answer is. Right now you need to do the work Right, and so, I love, I feel like there's so much integrity excuse me, integrity in the. I need to work on myself, you know. Piece.

Speaker 4:

I couldn't agree more and I always I try to look at complaining as passion and that if people are complaining and they're verbalizing it, that means that they actually care about what's going on in the organization. So let's reframe that and reposition it to be helpful, and what I have seen is that by being vulnerable and opening up and like, hey, I've got things to work on that, then that allows it. There's permission for all of us to get a little bit better for tomorrow.

Speaker 1:

Completely, and you are, they see, oh, you're a human being. You don't say that you have it all figured out, that you know what you know. Everything is in your world is all wrapped up with the bow. You know we're all just trying to learn and grow and get better and figure ourselves out.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, I have a dream that at Century, that it's a place for transformation and I think you have to permit there has to be vulnerability for it to go from a transactional culture to a transformational culture so that all of us can get there, love it.

Speaker 3:

I'm just going to squeeze in one last question before we wrap up today. It's the tension between I love this long-term vision. We're here for a century, and then we have Gen Z, who's coming and is in the workplace, and their tenure, even though the data isn't super long, is the shortest of any generation that we know. You wanted them to be a part and they've just never had any experience with something that's long term. Their entire experience has been very short. How do you handle that? How do you persuade them that, hey, this might be something that you'd like.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, the way I'm approaching it right now and I still have a lot to learn about it is that we are a patient company, but we're also hurrying. We're trying to evolve quickly. When you're here in 2025, we're going to be a patient company, but we're also hurrying. We're trying to evolve quickly. When you're here in 2025, we're going to be a different company in 2028. And we have skills matrix in place throughout our organization.

Speaker 4:

We have our HR department that's doing a phenomenal job because we want, on a quarterly basis, for people to understand where they need to go for the next quarter. We're not measuring in quarters, we're not on a short time horizon, but I appreciate the next generation wants the feedback and we need to give that to the team and let them know how. The metaphor we use at Century is building with brick and we talk about how are you going to lay brick this quarter and where you want to grow. So this is how you can lay brick better and this is how your compensation can continue to go up and to the right work better and this is how your compensation can continue to go up and to the right.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome, so good. Well, matthew, our time is up already in our conversation. Thank you so much for joining us today and for sharing what you're doing, and I just really appreciate this longer term view right, this different perspective on what work can be. So thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 4:

Thank you for allowing me to share.

Speaker 1:

Thank you Laura, thank you Michael, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 3:

We hope you've enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to hear future episodes, be sure to subscribe to the Happy at Work podcast and leave us a review with your thoughts.

Speaker 2:

Are you interested in speaking on a future episode or want to collaborate with us? Let us know. You can send us an email at admin at happyatworkpodcastcom.

Speaker 1:

And lastly, follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter for even more happiness. See you soon.

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