The importance of improvement, a recap of Culture Couch Live

The link between great workplace culture and achieving business success was something that stood out to Andrew Deveson and Dave Caputo when they founded Kapitol over 4 years.

To improve as leaders and develop a positive workplace culture, Andrew and Dave sought the expertise and guidance of the leadership consulting firm Performance by Design, lead by AFL premiership-winning coach, Paul Roos.

Andrew and Dave recently appeared on The Culture Couch Live, Performance by Design’s weekly Q&A digital talk show hosted by Paul Roos, and industry-renowned senior business leader, Karly Leach.

Throughout the episode, the hosts discussed with Andrew and Dave how self-awareness and reflection on behaviour have helped improve the way our team members communicate with each other.

Learning from the past

Paul asked Andrew and Dave to articulate their earlier experiences of workplace culture within the construction industry, which is renowned for its often harsh and relentless culture.

“Dave and I have been in construction for over 20 years each. It’s one of the blokiest industries going around and one of the last bastions of a male-dominated industry,” Andrew said.

“Back when I was a grad, we would get called into a meeting at six in the evening and get screamed at for an hour, then drive home, wake up the next morning and do it all again. It was old school, if you could survive it, that’s what you got used to, and if not, you got out.”

Andrew and Dave realised, however, that the industry could not continue that behaviour path. They took it upon themselves to reinvent the industry’s standards to people management.

Evolving and reviewing

When asked by Karly what precipitated this perspective shift, Dave said that it was based around creating a healthier, more synchronised workplace for team members and their personalities.

“We’re a construction company. We don’t own plants, factories or any of that stuff. We’re invested in our people,” said Dave.

Both Andrew and Dave became aware that the default response of anger or frustration they experienced from their own former managers was not something they wanted to engender at Kapitol. For Kapitol to progress as an organisation, Andrew and Dave had to change for everyone else, not the other way around.

“Early on, we knew that we had to change and then begin to get into the behaviours and the behavioural analysis of our staff to then work out the balance needed to have a good culture in the business.

“Then we marry up, with the help of you guys (Performance by Design), the correct personalities in teams.”

Receptiveness to self-awareness

Paul noted the importance of self-awareness and a willingness to both give and receive feedback.

“The two biggest critics of each other are me and Dave. Neither of us probably enjoys the feedback when we give it to each other. I know that much. But it’s good stuff,” said Andrew with a grin.

“In those first sessions, we discussed the importance of having open discussions as a team about our behaviour and how we need to behave as a group.”

“I generally think self-awareness is very rare, regardless of what behaviours you show,” said Dave.

“I think the simplest way of doing the behavioural analysis is you start to understand where you sit and why, and you start to diagnose what your key drivers are and what aren’t your key drivers.

“When you both share the same behaviours, it’s not hard to tell each other the direct truth.”

Celebrating the wins, acknowledging the lessons

Karly then shifted the conversation towards the importance of recognising success and how, traditionally, the practice is not widespread within the industry. Andrew and Dave explained, “Being engineers and builders, we walk around looking for problems in the job. Our instincts mean that’s all we do. It can be relentless,” said Andrew.

When giving others feedback Andrew noted that “our default four-to-one position would be to go from negative to positive. We had to pull ourselves up and flip that ratio to be four to one, positive to negative instead.”

“Stopping to celebrate has been critical for our business. We hold an all-hands every month, over teams, which is pretty much a positive message.”

Dave quickly adds that a mix of conversation topics during the all-hands meetings is important.

“It’s a positive message, and we’ll do a quick snapshot. But then we’ll cover some truths, and we celebrate new people coming into the business, and we’ll also talk about people going out and how not everyone is the right cultural fit.

“There are things that we haven’t done right. Ultimately there shouldn’t be anything in the business, especially when people are our business, that we’re hiding. Good, bad, or indifferent.

“The whole business can’t be from the view of mine and Andrew’s lenses. We need the opinions of everyone and how they’re feeling, what we can do better, and what we can change.”

This acceptance of varied perspectives being present in the business directly led to the appointment of Alice Hanna as our People & Culture Manager. To support a workplace culture, it needs to be cared for and fostered over time.

“Two people can’t build and maintain the culture, but we can destroy it very quickly,” said Andrew.

“One of the things we did, is we’re big believers that we’re a talent business. The most talent wins, and I reckon construction is a lot like that.

“We can’t say that we really care about the culture, vision, and values and then not put our money where our mouth is. We brought Alice on board, and both she and her team have supercharged our culture.”

Concluding thoughts

Paul asked Andrew and Dave where they would like to see Kapitol and the wider-industry progress. Both are optimistic for the future and believe that the foundation for a positive industry-wide culture shift is being cemented.

“Everything we’ve done or worked out along our journey; we find ways to share it. If that can make an impact in one way or another, then great,” said Dave.

“We’re not about showing people how smart we are. What we’re about is that we help influence the industry, and the industry forces us to be better.”

“We say it all the time, young people training under us will be so much better than Dave and me,” said Andrew.

“It’s so exciting to know how good these people are going to be. They’re going to be so amazing. I look at that and think if that’s our legacy, how we spawned those leaders, that will be incredible.”

If you want to watch Andrew and Dave’s full episode of Culture Couch Live on Performance by Design’s YouTube channel, click

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