Today My Heart Broke Into a Million Little Pieces…

Post written by Kat McDaniel, Chief Innovator at MEDiAHEAD | Marketing Portal Guru | Variable Data Promoter | Analytics Advocate | Explorer

“Today my heart broke into a million little pieces…”

When those words, that I’d written eight years ago, rolled across my Facebook feed memories recently, it almost stopped my heart.

I’d just come from the KC Chamber Top Ten lunch with my daughter Amy and Andy Rieger (who was Tom’s son).

Had it really been eight years since Tom Rieger passed?

Anyone who knew Tom Rieger will tell you that he was one of the nicest people, both professionally and personally, that they’d ever met.

Later in his career, after he left the banking world, Tom managed sports teams including the Blades, the Comets and the KC Explorers. He had an extraordinary ability to bring people from all walks of life together for a common cause.

Another name for what he was able to do, and the phrase we hear often today, is build great “corporate cultures”.

Corporate culture is made up of the beliefs and behaviors that determine how a company’s employees and management interact and handle outside business transactions.

Often, culture is implied and not expressly defined. Or it develops organically over time from the owners, management or the cumulative traits of the employees.

When you look at the overall job market today you’re likely not going to get very far without hearing people tossing the phrases “culture fit” and “company culture”, and assuming that everyone is talking about the same thing.

The whole conversation wouldn’t even matter if corporate culture had no impact on business success.

The reality is that it does.

A lot.

It’s a lesson every business owner should know, learn and live…take care of your employees first and they will take care of your clients.

And no one quite understood that like Tom Rieger.

I miss him every single day.