Inside Out Culture
Cath Bishop and Colin Ellis - two people who have been at the heart of workplace culture for over 3 decades host a regular podcast that offers an insider’s view on culture and provides tangible actions that you can take on the outside.
As best-selling authors and consultants who work with cultures around the world, they not only talk about what's happening in the world of work right now, but also provide evidence and commentary to help you change the way you do things too.
From kindness to toxicity, from values to high-performance, Cath and Colin discuss a breadth of topics relevant to the way work gets done. Both are keen to help leaders, managers and colleagues gain competence and confidence to contribute more positively and proactively to their workplace environments.
Please do send in your questions for Cath and Colin to answer. You can email them at insideoutculture@gmail.com or message them on LinkedIn.
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Inside Out Culture
Back to Culture in 2025
The Inside Out Culture podcast is back. In this week’s episode we talk about the changes that have occurred in the last 3 months including those brought on by changes in government.
Specifically we talk about:
- Burnout
- What we’ve seen in politics
- Management skills
- Productivity
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Join us as we reveal strategies to close the gap and craft a workplace where values are not just spoken, but lived and breathed, paving the way for a more authentic and engaging organisational culture.
Instagram: @insideoutculture
Email your questions to: insideoutculture@gmail.com
Receive the Culture Leaders Action Sheet: bit.ly/iocpmail
Welcome to the Inside Out Culture Podcast, where we look at insides of working culture and provide ideas, insights and actions for you to take on the outside. I'm Colin Ellis.
Cath:And I'm Cath Bishop, and in each episode we'll examine a different question or a different organization, and we'll use case studies, research and our own insights and experiences to help you change the way things get done in your world.
Colin:We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please like, subscribe and, of course, let us know what you think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Inside Out Culture Podcast. I'm a little bit rusty. I can't remember what we normally say at the top of the show. I should really have practiced that. How are you? Nice to see you again?
Cath:Yeah, happy New Year. Even though it's February, it is our first podcast recording of 2025, and we've been talking about it in January, so we haven't only just thought about it today. But, yeah, it's great to be back and there was just a lot that's happened since we last spoke and we've got a lot of plans about how we can continue to explore what culture looks like for us and the listeners.
Colin:So I think we should probably start with. Did you take a break over Christmas? I think one of the things that we talked about last year was burnout and just how tired everybody is, and obviously here in the UK you kind of get to. I always feel like you run really, really hard until Christmas because you know you've got a 10 day period of time where you can just go. Did that happen for you?
Cath:Yeah, it did and I needed it to happen, and I really packed the laptop away in a different room and refused to go and get it out for probably two and a half weeks. And, yeah, it was interesting. I felt much more conscious about doing that and being very deliberate about it and sort of also having a kind of complete don't touch it, and I noticed other people talking about doing the same. So, you know, feeling a bit frazzled coming into Christmas, you know that sort of overload and really kind of in the pit of your stomach knowing I've got to have a complete break, otherwise I just can't get going, it won't work like this. And so I thought that was very interesting because I just kept hearing that sort of time and time again people saying I absolutely had to switch off, otherwise I wouldn't be able to, you know, to survive, let alone thrive. How about you?
Colin:Yeah, no, I did the complete opposite of all of that. Yeah, you've had a crazy time, yeah, crazy time. I had a crazy end to last year anyway, with the book launch with Detox, your Culture book launch, and so that was a lot of traveling, a lot of moving about, and then my wife and I relocated the entire family back to the UK from Australia, so you couldn't really get any further away.
Colin:Just so we could record the podcast, just so we could, yeah, just so we could do this commitment in a studio um 100. So, yeah, that was, uh, it's been a. It's been a really, really stressful time. Uh, I've been on being very vulnerable here, but probably on the brink of exhaustion for a while. I need to take a break, but need to plan it in really because, as we know, it's straight back into speeches. You know, I had a culture workshop on the 3rd of January, so straight back into it.
Colin:I'm pretty good at managing stress. I can spot the signs of stress now, which is good, and I'm pretty good at managing it. But it's just when you add tiredness on top of tiredness on top of tiredness and everybody will know this is you just get to a point where your body will at some stage come to a grinding halt. So I'm taking, at the minute, the weekends is completely free where I'm literally doing nothing, which feels really good, because when you, I think when you work for yourself, you can never really switch it off. So I'm trying to do that. So I've been watching a lot of football. I've been reading a lot, which is good, great. So they're my ways of de-stressing.
Cath:Any book recommendations.
Colin:I'm actually reading a book called SPQR at the minute which is about it's about the history of Rome. Is that Mary Beard? Yeah, mary Beard, which it's a Christmas book, so it's a big thick thing, but I'm absolutely loving it and, interestingly, of course, always finding the relevance to my work and to culture in kind of Roman times and going back to the Greeks. It is absolutely fascinating. Oh, my goodness an antiquities episode.
Cath:maybe in the future we should totally do that. Yeah, because we all think we're reinventing culture, workplace culture, which nobody talked about until sort of 20 years ago, but of course it's nothing new. Nothing new, and we do talk about that being maybe the cradle of civilization and all of that sort of thing which various ancient civilizations claim to be. Um, and that is really where it all comes from.
Colin:Yeah, and, and so there was a lot that I was reading about in the book about Cicero and his ideas and how he influenced kind of working culture. At the same time, I was reading these kind of end of year reviews of the Labour government here in the UK and what have they achieved in their first whatever? It was six months and everyone's slightly underwhelmed. But of course and that's maybe one of the things that we can talk about now is kind of the politics and how it affects culture, because as we sit here now in February 2025, culture is front and center in the news. So we should start with the UK before we kind of tacitly mentioned the US.
Colin:But I did an interview last night for ABC radio in Australia and talking about kind of how politics affects culture and they was like, oh, is this a new phenomenon? I was like, well, not really culture. And they was like, oh, is this a new phenomenon? I was like, well, not really, because we've always talked about taxation and how we'd be better off. But it feels like we're talking about culture more and more. Politicians are talking about culture more and more Certainly what we've seen.
Cath:Yeah, I think it's a really interesting trend, isn't it?
Cath:There are stories now that hit the headlines that are around how people are treated at work, failings within the NHS, failings within our major institutions, the culture of the civil service, the impact of that and, of course, how our politicians behave.
Cath:We've already got one that's punched somebody and there's a by-election coming up, and those sorts of things have happened in the past without such a reaction. So there is a shift in social views on behaviour that's acceptable and what we expect of people. We probably also have a much greater insight into what really happens, because most things are now videoed. So where you might say, oh, nothing really happened, well, there's usually now some video evidence, and that kind of changes things rapidly as well. It means the whole world sees what happens in that particular event or restaurant or moment or argument, and so, yeah, the US president is putting culture on the front pages too. So culture is political. It probably always has been but I think the sort of media view of it, and therefore all of us having a view on it, has never been as front and center that I can remember in my lifetime as now.
Colin:Yeah, 100% agree, and obviously, as an electorate, politicians are playing that back to us. A great example would be hybrid working. Now, hybrid working, as I always remind people, is only really available to about between 17% to 20% of the global working population. So it's been a bit of a political football between the right and the left side of politics, where the right are more like let's bring people back and the left are like let's increase flexibility. I mean, the obvious answer is let's provide flexible working for people that need it. Let's not get people to come into the office if they don't have to. This flexibility is a really good thing.
Colin:Obviously, as the electorate, our views are very much influenced by which side of the fence that we generally sit on, so we're more likely to vote for the person who reflects our views. And so you're absolutely right, as the social culture influences how we feel. Then our politicians pick up on it and say, okay, well, this is an issue that I'm hearing all of the time. Why aren't people back in the office? I'm a farmer out in the fields. Why aren't people working like I'm working? It's like, well, they are. They're just not working in the field, and so you're right.
Colin:It's never been more front and center in the news and we get sent lots of things, which is great, and if you've got an article that you think would be of interest to us, you can drop us a note inside our culture at gmailcom. Somebody sent me an article from New Zealand about high income workers. So people who earn over a certain threshold under the new government are losing the rights to unfair dismissal because they earn over a certain amount, and again it's an example of how the politics is responding to, maybe, what a minority might be thinking about those who earn high income. Yeah, it's fascinating.
Cath:The difficulty is, I think, on the return to work question, that because once it becomes political, it becomes either you're on this side or that side and, as you say, it's really difficult. Some people their work is outdoors. For teachers it's clearly very difficult to be working from home all the time. It doesn't mean you can't create some kind of flexibility. But what we're not looking at is almost what would help us to do our jobs well, what might help us to get greater productivity or just effectiveness, a better experience at work. We're sort of saying either it's this or it's that. Are you on the side of everyone should be back or are you on the side of flexibility? And of course we lose that nuance about actually what makes sense and people themselves having perhaps a bit more of a say in that because we're in one camp or the other. And that's the danger that an increased politicization of this topic brings. We get less sensible outcomes and that's not good for anyone.
Colin:Yeah, and certainly what we've seen and especially seen this in the US recently is the reactionary nature to the corporate world, to the things that politicians say, and what's required is less of a reaction and more exactly, as you say, considered debate internally to say, okay, well, here's what the politicians think. What do we think? What's best for our company, what's best for our business? Where do we need to give our staff agency and where is it better that we have some tighter policies on certain things, and particularly with diversity and inclusion, is the thing that the new administration in the US have put on the front page. Is what's required, is some thought about.
Colin:Okay, well, where are we as an organization? What have we done? I mean all of the statistics around a more diverse workforce. They're all positive. So there's so many gains for organizations from a diverse workforce, but do you need a manager to oversee it? Again, this is a question that each individual leader needs to ask to sort of say well, if we haven't done enough work, we probably do need someone to coordinate it, but if it's part of our business as usual, which it really really should be, then maybe we need to think about well, what do we do next? How do we enhance further what we do rather than just reacting? Going well, they've said that, so we're stopping all of that, which is that black and white nature, Cath, that you mentioned.
Cath:Yeah. So it's interesting. Dei was something that kind of was about HR professionals being aware of a term that probably most of the population wouldn't have heard of, but now everyone you know it's suddenly again it's on the front pages of the newspapers, but of course we're losing sight of what it really means. It's not about quotas. It's not about are you pro it or against it. It's always been about helping us understand what environments will really enable people to do their best work together, celebrating a wide range of human experiences and backgrounds and ensuring people have got the resources that will help them to succeed and overcome unfair barriers. And that's the conversation we want. So, I think, within organizations because it's thrown up and because therefore, people also maybe need a bit more of a chance to learn about it, to feel educated about it, there is an opportunity to say this is what it means for us in real language, human language, not just the acronym, not just the quotas, sort of you know, simple metrics that it perhaps has got you know associated with, but to have that conversation about what sort of work environments do we want? We're all part of those. What's going to help us to have a better work environment? Again, coming back to what helps us to do good work. Not are you pro this or against this, but actually what does it mean for you and me?
Cath:And so I hope that I think the proactive organizations are on the front foot to say, yeah, let's define this now for ourselves, how we're investing in it, what it looks like and I think at times you know, it has got parceled off and pushed to one side and somebody is a manager of this and nobody quite knows what they're doing and it's hard for them to do their job as well, because really this is about all of us, and so I wonder if there is a shift that almost DE&I initially was getting us more aware of these issues, of these questions, and there was a need to understand the different groups that might typically be affected, might might be women, it might be, again, different ethnic groups, minority groups.
Cath:But I think now maybe there's a chance to mature the conversation and say, okay, how do we help everyone in our organization to thrive and that doesn't mean that we do the same things with everyone but how do we make sure that our programs are serving us? And I think there is a chance to sort of move on now, and I hear that a little bit in the language from organizational leaders as well that are saying this isn't just about looking after this pocket or this pocket. You know, we've maybe done quite a lot of work to help bring you know, others into, to have some opportunities that they didn't have before, you know, to create more of an awareness amongst line managers, and so maybe we can get into a different phase where organizations are now thinking, yeah, what's that thriving environment for everyone? And so we don't need to call it D-E-N-I-B, it's about that thriving workplace for all of us.
Colin:Yeah, I agree. I think one of the episodes that we're going to record might even be the next episode around vibrant culture. What does that vibrancy look like? It's one word that we recognize is you're bringing together a group of human beings who are trying to do the best that they can with what they have, and how do we create the environment in order to enable them to do that? And we're not thinking about which box do we need to put them in in order for them to do that. It's about really how do we collectively create the environment to give us the best chance of success, and then putting in measures that actually measure the outcomes that we achieve, rather than the boxes that we tick, which is something that you alluded to.
Colin:One of the other interesting developments over, certainly over the end of the year and into this year, is the four-day working week. I don't know if you've seen much about that, Cath, but Spain legislate I read about this this morning that Spain have legislated a reduction in the legal working week from 40 hours to 37 and a half, and I think here in the UK there have been many companies trialing the four-day week to sort of say, well, how can we achieve what we currently achieve in five days, in four days, whilst paying people the same amount of money. So again, that's another thing.
Cath:So that comes actually back to this productivity question, doesn't it Like? It's not just are you in the office, are you not in the office. It's like are you doing helpful work, work that matters, work that's actually going towards our objective, not just are you busy either at home or in the office? The danger is that this polarised debate moves us away from actually what helps us to do the best work that will help us to again thrive nationally through our economic growth, but also individually, and so I think those are very interesting because they also feel counterintuitive. We work less hours but we achieve more. But that's how stupid we've become. That our habits of working, the amount of distractions we have around us and this sense that we've got to be present in order to show commitment All of these things are actually reducing how effective we are and how fulfilling work life is. So I really welcome those.
Cath:I think it's so interesting because again, you see people sort of really struggling to get their heads around it because we have this more is better. You know that sort of drill through us. You know that work ethic that need to. Surely if I'm staying longer hours, I'm doing more, but of course our brains are overloaded. We make less good decisions. When we're tired, we're less able to reflect, see things from a perspective, understand, listen to others' views.
Cath:So I think that's a really exciting trend and I hope that that's one that really starts to gain better traction. And the more evidence there is around that, the more it pushes us to say actually, let's not think about just the number of hours, but the productivity element of it, even though productivity is not a word I'm totally comfortable with, because I feel it's sort of making us all feel like machines and we're producing stuff rather than human beings working together, creating in different ways, doing a. But for me, that's the question. We have not moved the dial on for decades. We work longer and longer hours in the UK, longer hours than the rest of Europe and our productivity is lower. That needs addressing for so many different reasons, and so, yeah, I think those are really kind of good offer of sort of way forward potentially for us.
Colin:I got asked the question at the start of January. Somebody said oh, if you could give us one piece of advice, what would it be? And I said be less busy. We naturally assume that incessant and constant action is a good thing, and it's not. It's a really, really bad thing because we think that that equals an enhanced sense of productivity and outcome delivery, or maybe even, I feel, more useful, or what we've seen in the corporate world. A lot is, I feel, more important and, of course, it's really important that action is taken, but just constantly working on stuff that doesn't actually link to an outcome that you're looking to achieve is absolutely stupid.
Cath:I mean it is gumming up Whitehall. It is gumming up massive corporates hugely. Where in the middle of the organization, what are people spending their time on? Is it stuff that's moving the dial or in a rowing world? Are you spending your time on stuff that's making the boat go faster? Another hour in the gym? Well, if it's not actually making you fitter or stronger because you've done your training for the day, it's pointless. And I think people don't always have that sense. They're so overloaded they do the last email that's come in or somebody that's just phoned them up. They do the urgent stuff, not the important stuff, and then you look back over six months and nothing's really moved forward. We've sort of answered gazillions of emails and actually that's you know.
Cath:Coming back to this term, productivity, it isn't busyness, it's actually doing stuff that shifts the dial in the really clear objectives that you have. That you know. Clarity is a huge part of this as well, and you know I love Oliver Berkman's writing on this. He's booked 4,000 weeks and meditations for mortals, which you know also kind of tell us not to get into the productivity tool trap. That. Oh, I'm just going to schedule things a bit more, I'm going to squeeze some more things in here, you know, because all of these extra tools we've had over the last few decades haven't actually made us more productive. So you've got to get away from quantity to quality.
Cath:That's a phrase actually that is ringing my ears, sort of from the last week working with a couple of leadership teams. You know the organization is going to move forward by people doing more stuff. We can't just add more actions, more tasks, it's actually doing the things that matter, and therefore they need to have the headspace and the clarity to be able to make those decisions, because you can't get inside their heads and tell them what to do, and so actually your role is much more clarifying so that people understand what it is they've got to do. But that's difficult because there's so much noise now coming in. We've got, you know, 20 windows open on our computer, and so unless we've got a really clear thought process, we're not spending our time on the stuff that matters.
Colin:Yeah, we're not. The response I had from one manager is like oh, it's easy to say that, but it's difficult to do. I was like well, I understand why you would say that, but actually, if you educated your managers in exactly the right way to do things, it only actually needs 15% of them statistically to actually stick to those new promises that they've made to each other Fewer emails, fewer meetings, more emphasis on doing meaningful work that actually aligns to an outcome that you're looking to achieve. You only need 15% to change the entire culture of the organization. Now, of course, depending on the size of the organization, 15% could be a lot of people, but how important is this to you?
Colin:Often, I'll hear senior leaders saying we're just not productive enough. We need to think about ways that we can use AI. Well, it's still going to be humans working the AI and it's about input, output. So, actually, what you need to do and middle managers are still the biggest difference between success and failure within organizations and they are crying out for the skills to actually enable them to do the work that they want to do in less time.
Colin:They don't want to be sat in meetings hour after hour. They don't want to be on the train, like I saw this morning, people check the guy next to me. His inbox was just completely full. He had about 400 open emails. I didn't look at what they said, I just saw the unread mark and obviously it broke me out into hives. I'm like, oh my gosh, how can he do that? But that's what people don't want, that what they want is time to do the thing that they're paid to do, so they can go home at night and say I had a really good job, feel a sense of fulfillment at the end of the week, get paid to do that work so they can tell their friends I work for a really good organization that gives me the skills I need to do the job that I want to do.
Cath:Yeah, that clarity of thought I think is going to be a really big theme. What you know, for leaders, for managers, what can I do to help my team, you know, give them clarity and then re-clarify and help enable them to clarify for themselves and for their colleagues. If we bring that into the meetings, it means we stay on the stuff that matters and we question well, I'm not clear how this fits into something. We need more of that. Well, let me actually spend my time here, and those conversations aren't always happening and we need a bit of headspace to reflect on. Actually, I've got all these things, I've got a massive to-do list. I can't possibly do all that today, so how do I spend time? I've got to be able to think for myself. I've got to be able to kind of step back and do that, and I think sometimes we render ourselves stupid by just the volume meeting back to back, et cetera.
Cath:There's a lovely piece of work.
Cath:We'll put a link to it some research that's just starting by Megan Wright, who works at Holt and Ashridge, around spaciousness, which is just delicious to sort of lean into, and interviewing people about what spaciousness means and in itself.
Cath:Then suddenly people open up their minds to how we feel if we're out, maybe in a natural space, or just doing work that we love, or really connected to other.
Cath:We feel if we're out, maybe in a natural space or just doing work that we love, or really connected to other people, and we need that in order to be intelligent, in order to kind of unlock that ability to do the things that matter, stop and reflect and review and connect and thrive, rather than try and treat ourselves like robots, which we actually do very poorly then, because we're not and we get less and less effective at what we do. So there are some really thoughtful projects out there, research out there, that, because otherwise we're going to disappear up our backsides working like this, and I think that's going to be a really important aspect of how people bring that into the workplace. When the system pushing you to do more and more and more is so strong, we've got to have an equal and opposite force to do something differently. But of course, it's through leadership that that's your real opportunity to put different conversations in.
Colin:So, first podcast, back for 2025, we've laid down a few markers there. There's what we talked about DEI. We talked about burnout. We talked about productivity. We talked about burnout, we talked about productivity. We talked about middle manager skills.
Colin:We want to know what you want to hear about. You know your call to action for this podcast is to drop us a note. We literally love to hear from you. We respond to every email we get. If there's something that you want to share with us either a piece of research, please do. If you've got research that you feel that would you know, kind of give us something to talk about in the podcast. We'd love to read that. If you've got a question, of course we'll answer your questions, as we always do. If you've got a topic you'd like us to cover again, we're happy to consider that. Or if you want Cath and I to come and be part of your learning week, if you're doing a culture learning week, or if you want us to come to your organisation and answer questions on culture, we're more than happy to do that, aren't we, Cath? We are, aren't?
Cath:we. Yeah, definitely One of the things that we enjoyed so much last year and one of the things that we also got your feedback on was around the questions episodes that get into the but what about this, but what about that? And so, yeah, definitely keep those coming. We also kind of gather those sort of in the course of doing our work, but I think that's, you know, it's a really important part of making sure that this podcast stays relevant, in helping you and all of us in this space to increase our competence and confidence, to build thriving cultures and, if you think this other people would like this podcast.
Colin:Please do share it with them, and we'd be hugely grateful, as we have been today, for anybody who gives us a little review. That's the way that we build and grow the podcast is by people sharing it, people liking it, people leaving comments. So thank you for those that have done it and thank you in advance to everybody else who is going to do it.
Cath:And that's a wrap. Yeah, thanks for listening. Thanks, thanks for listening to today's Inside Out.
Colin:Culture Podcast. Please remember to like, subscribe and, of course, share with others who you think may be interested.
