Josh Block, President of Block Imaging, Founder of Cube Mobile Imaging, and author of People Matter at Work, is on a mission to restore work as a positive force in people’s lives. After unexpectedly stepping into the presidency of his family business at just 29 years old, Josh began asking a bold question: What if we could create a place where people love to work — and become someone they never dreamed of because of it?

We explore Josh’s “Me Cycle” to “We Cycle” Framework (3Ts) — Work Together, Make Thoughtful Decisions, and Be Transparent — a leadership model designed to build trust, ownership, and thriving team cultures. Josh explains how slowing down sharpens decisions, why empathy must shape executive choices, and how radical transparency strengthens accountability. He also shares how defining a clear organizational identity — including mission, values, and thriving mindsets — creates a culture that attracts the right people and repels the wrong ones.

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3 Ways to Forge an Identity for Your Business with Josh Block

Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here, the Founder of the Summit OS Group, and my guest today is Josh Block, who’s been President of Block Imaging for the last 15 years. He is also the Founder of Cube Mobile Imaging and the author of People Matter at Work. Josh, welcome to the show. 

Thank you so much for having me, Steve. It’s good to be with you. 

I’m excited to have you because you’ve taken over a company as president and CEO, then changed the culture, and written a book about it. So we’re going to dive into all this. But before we go there, I’m curious: what is your personal “Why,” and how are you manifesting it in Block Imaging, Cube Mobile Imaging, and your new company?

Yeah, I grew up in a home that work was a positive thing. I never heard my dad complain about work. And yet as I went to college and then moved into my twenties, I recognized that work had become kind of a four-letter word in our day—more of a “have to” than a “get to.” So at 29, when I became president of our family business, the collision of my own experience and the world’s experience led me to ask the question: What if we could create a place where people love to work? Culture often gets labeled as soft stuff, but not just love to work, but become someone they never dreamed of because they’re challenged, they’re connected to a mission, they respect their leader, and go home as better people?

And so, over the last 15 years, we’ve sought to create that kind of place—where kids would grow up in homes and say, “I want to work at a place like Mommy and Daddy work.” And they’d actually experienced what I experienced as a young person. 

That’s great that you had such a positive experience, and I agree. I mean, that’s what we want as entrepreneurs. We want to create this experience for our people as well. So how do you actually do that? How do you create this experience? Do you have a framework that will help people? Perhaps you write about it in your book to get that. I think you call it going from the “me cycle” to the “we cycle.” What does that mean, and how do you get there? 

Yeah. In most organizations, “me” is the driver. Bosses are extracting from people. They’re focused on themselves, or maybe they’re focused exclusively on performance. But in the “me cycle”, bosses look out for themselves, and then employees return the favor. And really nobody wins because it’s more of a cannibalistic approach. And so 322: 3 Ways to Forge an Identity for Your Business with Josh Block Share on X Leaders set the tone. They’re the ones who go first, and they create a culture where people are cared for.

In the book, I talk about the “three Ts.” I didn’t have them at the beginning — I kind of stumbled upon upon them over the last 15 years. And really, these three Ts allow us to create a culture where people feel safe, seen, and successful. And when they do that, they feel safe, seen, and successful, they give back in incredible ways. They take ownership of the business, and ultimately, trust builds. And when that happens, it shares the burden across the leaders and the team. Everything gets easier. Everyone wins. Performance blossoms. And so that’s really what I highlight along with sharing my story into becoming president is the shift from “me” to “we”.

I loved it. So when did you recognize that this was something that needed to happen, and how did you create the vision of what it would look like if you wanted to create it? So when you came into the business, was it more of a “me” culture, and did you change it, or did you pick it up, recognize it, and articulate it even though it was already there?

Yeah, I think there were positives and negatives, and maybe I’d classify it as neutral. I wouldn’t say it was a thriving team culture, but I wouldn’t say it was toxic either. My care for people, my love for work, and my belief in the power of business—that really was what we were looking to embody. Share on X And so it started out just trying to be the answer to that “what if” question I shared. Little by little, because of my really quick transition from sales rep to president, the three Ts emerged. The first was together—we have to work together. It was born out of humility to sharpen decisions. Then it serendipitously became the second T: thoughtful decisions, which is careful consideration of the needs of others.

And then the last piece was really a T as well that was leading how I would like to be led, which is just with lots of transparency. So many leaders are keeping so much close to the vest, and it reduces trust. Yet, when we share openly and transparently with people, trust builds, and all sorts of really cool things start to happen. Those three Ts, I kind of stumbled across, and they’ve become the framework for embodying—not manipulating—people, but really embodying the care that we already have for people.  Share on X

Yeah, I love it. So working together, making thoughtful decisions, and being transparent. So let’s peel the onion here. What do you mean working together? How is it different from what most companies do? 

Yeah, so in lots of companies, leaders are overwhelmed. They have too much on their plate. They’re moving so fast, and it might be a big decision or a small decision that they make, and they think, “Oh, this isn’t that big a deal. In fact, this is like eight on my list of 20 priorities.”

And then they spend a lot of time clarifying, cleaning up, and fixing because they’ve moved too fast and they’ve moved thoughtlessly. And so this working together to sharpen decisions, whether it’s something that’s big or really, again, something that’s small. Sometimes the smaller decisions have an inordinate impact on people. So yeah, when I think about working together, I just think of using people in our organization—and even outside of our organization—to sharpen any decision of consequence. 

Yeah. Many leaders don’t recognize that just because they can come up with a decision themselves, if there is no buy-in, people can’t weigh in. And then they don’t realize that people don’t feel ownership of this decision. And they might not get the complete context of it, and they might have some concerns that they feel like it hasn’t been seen and heard, and that can create friction in an organization.

And a lot of leaders are thinking to themselves, “Well, I don’t have time to slow down. I have too much to do.” And I would say, you actually have so much to do sometimes because of moving too fast and having to clean up, fix, and address issues. I think “slow is smooth, smooth is fast.” If we actually took a bit more time in the decision, we would save time in the long run.

Yeah. What about being thoughtful? If you do that—if you work together and take input from other people—isn’t that going to create thoughtful decisions? Or is there another dimension that needs to be considered? 

It certainly is helpful. The more people you bring in, the broader our paradigm is in making a decision. Share on X But you have to stop and think: what is it like to be on the other side of this decision? And one of the story that comes to mind is Office Space. Right now, I’m in a corner office, and I’ve had an office for a long time. It can be easy to forget what it’s like to be in a cubicle, to work closely with 12 other people, or to deal with different lighting or temperature—whatever it is. Stopping and recognizing that there was a time when some things were important to me, but are not important anymore, and yet they’re still important to the people I lead—that’s thoughtful. This careful consideration of the needs of others asks: how does my decision impact them? And that requires knowing people and knowing what’s important to them. I also share in my book, People Matter at Work, that compensation and workspaces are two topics that are really sensitive when it comes to making thoughtful decisions. 

Can you give an example where you used this principle and you made a different decision because you wanted to be thoughtful and the outcome was positive?

Yeah, it is. It’s a daily endeavor. For me, oftentimes in my role today, it’s working with our leaders and asking them: how would you feel if the decision that we’ve just talked about that you’re getting to ready to roll out? How would you feel if you were 24 years old, or you were new in your role, or you were concerned about your next house payment, or your spouse was having health issues?

It’s very interesting to see people stop and say, “Yeah, I think my 25-year-old self would not have been happy with the 40-year-old decision I’m about to make.” That’s really important. There’s a danger in seeing everything through our own lenses and forgetting what was important to us 10 years ago. That’s where I find myself in this coaching season—working with leaders to ask: what would you be thinking if you were on the other side of this decision 10 years ago? 

That’s interesting. Alright, let’s go to the next one: being transparent. This is a big topic, and different CEOs have different sensitivities to it. Some are willing to be completely transparent with all their numbers, while others are very conservative. They don’t even want to show gross profit, let alone net profit numbers. Some even hesitate to show revenue because they feel that if people know it, they might get carried away or ask for a raise. So how are you thinking about transparency, and what is your experience with the pros and cons of transparency? 

Yeah, a lot of people start from the lens of, “How little can I share with my people?” And really we have tried to go with maximum transparency is what absolutely has to be kept transparent. So there’s performance assessments, owner’s box information, health, and sensitive HR situations. But other than that, what can we share with people? Ultimately, it comes down to: do you trust your people or not? It starts to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I trust our people with information and believe that information is power, the more I empower them, the more likely they are to make good decisions and take ownership. Personally, in our experience, this comes down to answering three questions over and over again. Every one-on-one and every all-team meeting asks: what’s going on?

And that ranges from the parking lot expansion that we’re working on to our relationship with Siemens, who acquired us two and a half years ago. What’s going on? What is the leader thinking about? What am I reading? What am I concerned about? What am I thinking about in the year ahead? And then the last—and perhaps most important—is: what am I thinking about them? There’s a veil that so many leaders are holding back, and our best people want to know more about what we’re thinking about them. And so this last piece is just a feedback loop. We keep short lists of items that haven’t been shared with team members, giving feedback early and often.

Yeah. I completely agree. The more you can share with people, the more context they have. They can expand the business, make better decisions, and they don’t have to nag you all the time because they can connect the dots themselves. Feedback—especially positive feedback—is always appreciated. Of course, negative feedback might be the “Breakfast of Champions,” but it’s not necessarily pleasant. Still, it helps. It’s better to get constructive feedback early in the year rather than waiting in your personal appraisal, right? 

Absolutely. 

That’s too late to do anything about it. One thing that really struck me in our pre-interview is the idea of the identity of the organization. And I have always thought at least the recent years that identity of the CEO is very important for them to be able to live the identity they want, whether inside or outside the company. It’s critical during transitions. But I haven’t thought about identity in relation to the organization, at least not in this context. So please tell me: what does organizational identity mean, and how can you create the right one? 

Yeah, so lots of organizations have some sort of mission, vision statement, and values. For us, it looks like what we call the Block Bullseye. At the center is our mission: because we believe that people matter most, we seek to create a thriving team culture that serves healthcare providers in offering a second chance at life for patients. Share on X The middle of the bullseye represents our best self—living out our belief that people matter. And then right outside of our bullseye, we have three different ways of looking at our values and our approaches, which I just shared. The three Ts represent our leadership approach, and the last piece is our thriving mindsets. This is really a way of like inviting people people in: this is who we are when we’re at our best. We’re imperfect. We don’t do any of this perfectly all the time, but that organizational identity becomes a roadmap or a compass of sorts for guiding our attitudes, actions, and behaviors. 

What does it mean thriving mindsets, and how do you get people into a thriving mindset? 

Yeah, so I was just sitting at my desk, maybe 10 years ago, and was just trying and looking at the hundreds and hundreds of people we had hired over the years. I was trying to reverse engineer success. What are those mindsets that tend to lead to people thriving, growing, and taking on more responsibility at our company? And what are the mindsets of those who haven’t done as well? I mapped them out, and they were on a spectrum. For example: one is scarcity and abundance, another is blame and responsibility. And then another one is stuck in the past and shapes the future. And so while none of us are to the right side all the time. Oftentimes, in companies, success becomes like a popularity contest: “Oh, they just get along,” or “he likes the way she does this,” or “she likes the way he communicates.”

While those things are important, instead of leaving it up to chance or every leader having a different perspective, we actually say, “Here’s what we’re after.” From our mission, to our values, to our approaches, to these thriving mindsets, it allows people to self-diagnose: “Hey, I’m thinking through a scarcity lens.” It also gives us a roadmap for performance assessments and one-on-ones—something consistent that doesn’t change. Brene Brown talks about clear is kind, and it’s incredibly kind to say, “This is what we’re after.” And then ultimately, that organizational identity that we just talked about becomes a magnet that it draws certain people who want to be a part of a culture like that. And then consequently, it also repels those who maybe don’t connect with the organizational identity that we’ve set forth. 

Yeah. Essentially, you help these personas understand what it looks like to be in abundance vs. scarcity, or shaping the future vs. stuck in the past. Then you coach people: “Hey, we are about shaping the future. We have a balanced mindset.” How do you coach people on this?

Yeah. So I mean, it becomes situational in nature, right? For example, we might have a difficult customer challenge, or we’re hiring someone, and we can stop and ask: did the interview answers that the person gave? Did that seem like someone who cares about people? Do they walk with integrity? Do they have a mindset for shaping the future? This allows us, on a situation-by-situation or day-by-day basis, to make better decisions. We had one example this morning: a vendor was disappointed with how we had handled a situation after an audit. I asked our team members, “What would it look like to honor this vendor?” We have a longstanding relationship with them, and so going back to that core value of honor actually allows us to grab onto something that’s tangible, that’s hung on the walls that we talk about often, and it ends up being much stickier than just picking our values on the fly. 

So these are part of your values? The shaping the future is a core value, or it’s a different dimension? 

I’m happy to share our organizational identity, and you can put it in the show notes. But around that people matter, our center mission, we have three pieces to the pie. One is values, the other is those approaches, those three Ts I talked about, and then the last piece is those thriving mindsets. Share on X So those three together allow us, and some people would say it’s too much, but for us it’s very clear and something you can grab onto when we’re looking to develop, or frankly, even hold ourselves accountable to the right thing to do in the moment, even when it’s uncomfortable or unpleasant.

I love it. So tell me about your book, Josh. Are all these concepts in your book, and have you essentially described how Block Imaging works in your book? Or what is the book, how did this come about, and what is your purpose with it? 

Yeah, so I became president over a weekend. I was a sales rep on a Friday and became president on a Monday. And so that is part of the story is kind of sharing the transition into leadership, which while many don’t face it as quickly, when they become leaders, they often feel like they weren’t trained the same way they were trained to be a technician or whatever job they were hired for. So this book is really my story of coming into leadership and then learning about the shift from the “me” to the “we” cycle. Share on X

The purpose of writing the book was the question: What if we could create a place? This was the question I was asking 15 years ago, and it has evolved into: What if we could share our story, the lessons learned, and the principles we’ve carried along the way to create the culture we have here? What if we could invite other leaders, and not just encourage and equip, but empower them to create cultures that are healthy, where people thrive and performance blossoms? 

Awesome. If the listeners would like to learn more, is the book available on Amazon? When is it coming out? 

Yeah, so the book is coming out on March 3rd. It will be available everywhere books are sold, including Amazon. If they’d like to know more about Block Imaging, they’re welcome to go to blockimaging.com. And if they’d like to know more or connect with me in any way, they can reach out to peoplematteratwork.com or email josh@peoplematteratwork.com.

Okay, well, if you’re listening to this and you want to improve the culture of your organization, make sure it has a robust identity that attracts the right people, perhaps repels the wrong people, and ensures people have the right thriving mindset. Also, make it a transparent, thoughtful culture where people work together. Then do check out Josh Block’s book, People Matter at Work. If you liked this conversation, keep coming back, because every week I have a thought leader, CEO, or business owner who shares frameworks that worked for them and their companies, which you can pick up and implement in your company to scale much faster.

So thanks for coming, Josh, and sharing your goodies, and thanks for listening. 

Thank you so much for having me, Steve.

Important Links:

• Josh’s LinkedIn:
•  Josh’s website:
•  Josh’s email: josh@peoplematteratwork.com