This weekend the University of Notre Dame football team will play at North Carolina. I hope the Irish win. I have degrees from both places but my loyalty is to ND. (Maybe because I was the mascot my senior year has something to do with it).

Tonight there was Pep Rally with nearly 500 fans attending. I was the Master of Ceremonies. When I was the mascot I appeared in many of these things. As a professional speaker I regularly speak to audiences this size. But I have to tell you I got a little nervous before it started. It wasn’t the I feel sick kind of nervous, it was the “man this is exciting” kind of nervous. I know how to handle that but it caught me off guard. Failure to handle those nerves causes mistakes but that isn’t what I want to talk about. This is about culture and believing in the cause “what though the odds be great or small.” Notre Dame is a great place. It is so much more than a football school. In fact, it was just ranked as the number 18 undergraduate institution in America. It was exciting to reconnect in such a way with likeminded people. People who have experienced living at Notre Dame and being changed by it. We share a similar culture.

In the corporate world group culture derives from the person in charge of the group. Today as I was waiting for some friends for lunch I sat on a bench outside the restaurant. While I sat, two men exited the restaurant. One was some kind of manager and the other an hourly employee holding a garbage bag. As the manager walked to his car the hourly looked at me and said, “There goes a great man.” Excuse me? The employee went on (as he picked up trash on the ground), “I love working for that man. He treats us right and he is all about treating the customer right. I can’t see me working anywhere else.”

Wow. Culture. The guy talking to me was a minimum wage employee and he was committed to the cause. He believed in the place and he felt good about it. Notre Dame – I believe in the cause and I feel good about it. It was inspiring to lead those fans.

What inspires you? What inspires your employees? Are they inspired to come to work or are they more inspired when they leave at the end of the day?

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