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
What great cultures do that bad ones don’t
In this episode of the Inside Out Culture podcast we talk through the things that vibrant cultures do, that others don’t. These are the things that ensure that the culture is not only a great one to work in, but that it continually evolves to meet the changing nature of work.
Specifically we talk about:
- Taking the time to agree your culture
- Why human connection is key
- The power of subcultures
- Why you have agency over the daily micro-experiences
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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
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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.
Cath:Hi, welcome to another episode of the Inside Out Culture Podcast, and this week we're going to look broadly at the question of what is it that great cultures do that bad cultures don't? So let's you know. Again, we're thinking about how we can help be really proactive about culture to help us feel it's around us, it's real, we're contributing to it all the time. And what should we be looking out for? What should we be amplifying? What are the things that great cultures do? That's what we're exploring, colin, and I know you've got some experiences, stories, companies to talk about. It's the good news, isn't it? There is lots of stuff out there to help us. We can often feel we're looking at the cultures where it goes wrong and the crises and the reviews, but there's good stuff happening out there and that's what we want to kind of implement and amplify.
Colin:Something we talk about all the time is the fact that it's only bad culture stories that make it into the media. Cath, it's never. Here's an organization doing really, really great things.
Cath:People are thriving here Wow.
Colin:Who'd have thought that was possible in the workplace.
Cath:Here's the blueprint.
Colin:Look at this, look what you can achieve. But it's something that we get asked all of the time. I mean it's interspersed within our presentations anyway. I know the work that you've been doing around the long wind for me around. Detox your culture. Here's how you avoid the conditions for toxic culture. Here's all the great stuff that you can do, and people are often surprised at just how straightforward it can be.
Colin:I'm shying away from using the word easy, because obviously nothing's really easy. That's worthwhile, but it is relatively straightforward to achieve these things. So we wanted to give you just kind of a snapshot of what those things look like. Obviously, it's impossible to do it in 25 minutes, but we'll give it a crack anyway.
Colin:But I thought I'd start by just basically reminding everyone that you get the culture that you choose to build and I'll come back to that at the end because when you put time, thought, effort and money into giving people agency to proactively build the culture based on not only some of the issues that they see at that time, but also building on the good stuff that they do, then you generally get a great place to work where people want to contribute, they feel a sense of ownership, they feel a sense of belonging. They want to nurture it themselves. So you know, that's, that's where to start is that you know, if you're really serious about culture, then you do have to put time, thought, money and effort into actually doing it. And when you do that, you you've kind of you've created momentum that you know people find it easy to get behind.
Cath:Yeah, I always say we are all culture shapers and whether you're doing it intentionally or not, you're shaping the culture around you. So let's get a bit more intentional about shaping it the way we want it to be, the way that works for us and for our colleagues, and to take that seriously. It's also everyone's job, swek being a culture shaper, and I wish we could perhaps make that a bit more explicit so that we can all realize we have a lot of autonomy here. We don't have to wait to be told what the latest sort of acronym values might be. Actually, make sure you're kind of aware of what's important for you, for your team. Hopefully you're connecting into the organization's values and they mean something beyond the poster on the wall, but it's bringing them alive. They're only as good as the last set of behaviors, the last meeting that we all turned up.
Cath:That's how we live the culture. That's how we either went in a different direction from what's on the wall or reinforced it and brought it to life and gave it meaning, and so I like to think of it in that very real way. It's not we sit in a room and plan what the culture will be. You're going to tell us how we do add some definition into that, and we must do that. But this idea that a certain part of our work time is kind of shaping culture and certain is bonkers We've got to understand. We're shaping it all the time and therefore we need to be aware of how we're shaping it for ourselves, for others around us, and to really be ambitious about that part of our role as well, because it's such a key area. That then enables us to do the tasks, the objectives, the other stuff that's on our job spec as well. So where are you going to take us? Are you going to take us to a book, to a company, to a story?
Colin:I'll start with some statistics, Cath. First, because I want to use one of the statistics to take us to something that organizations can do immediately. So some statistics. A recent one from Deloitte is 92% of CEOs said that they recognize that culture is the most important thing. They recognize it, and yet only 16% of them say that their culture is where it needs to be right now. So there's this kind of gap between you know, kind of intention and action. And the second one that I wanted to say is that only 3% of people leaders, so managers feel confident in building a culture.
Colin:So this is the first thing that you can learn of what vibrant cultures do, or what great cultures do the bad ones don't is they teach their managers how to build culture. Now, I'm not talking about a leadership program for a special few people. That's fine. You shouldn't lose that. Obviously, there needs to be a pathway for those high potential people that you see as the future of the organization.
Colin:I'm talking about basic management training and this is very simple skills. Give them the language to talk about culture. I did one of these at the start of the year. Give them a language to talk about culture so that they can kind of spot where they are right now and understand where they need to be. Make sure you've got modules around things like setting expectations, which is a skill in and of itself, providing feedback, having courageous conversations, particularly around behavior. I think Cath mentioned it.
Colin:Behavior is often the thing that undermines a culture, and when we allow one person to behave in a specific way, what it does, it undermines the safety within the culture and it erodes it for everybody else. But there's this assumption that when you reach a particular position within the hierarchy, you automatically know what to do to create a thriving environment where people just want to bring their best self to work. I don't know what you've seen, kat, but I do a lot of these kind of two-day programs where I teach managers. We call it a culture makers program. It's how do we teach managers to build great culture, and then there's measurement afterwards. But for me that's a great start point is give managers the skills to be able to talk about it and to actively build it.
Cath:Yeah, it is. It's built through conversations, through collaborative conversations, courageous conversations, different conversations. Sometimes they're areas we're not used to talking about, so we feel inexperienced, but I often use the trio of mindset, behaviors and relationships. Those are our brilliant human performance tools and you know we want to optimize the work we do. We've got all these challenging targets, usually that our organization's giving us, our leaders are setting for us. So let's optimize what we bring as humans, which is the way we think and mindset, our attitudes, our beliefs, the way we behave, the way we show up, the way we react to stuff, the way we connect with others, and the relationships, the interactions, the conversations. Those are our very human tools that help us then really go about all of the tasks that we're set. So thinking about how and leaning into that and conversations are a huge part. So often I find what I'm doing is just helping people have conversations they haven't had before, and that in itself unlocks quite a lot of things.
Cath:I think one of the areas that's really important in culture is we can't give you a template. We can't say, here's your values, live those. It'd be a nonsense. Or say, look, just tick these things off and you're done, and then you go back to your tasks. Yeah, it is a different way of thinking to appreciate the culture around us.
Cath:I'm reminded of that joke about the goldfish in the bowl and one of them says you know, asks about the, you know what do you think of the water? And one says you know what you know. Asks about the you know what do you think of the water? And one says you know what water sort of thing like. Are we even aware of the culture around us? I don't think I told that very well, but anyway we'll put a version in the notes. It was still funny. Are we even noticing this stuff? So that's the first thing. Often also, we do. You know, I get people just to notice behaviours, just to notice things that are going on. They notice reactions, notice the language that's used around us and actually from that then we start to adjust, adapt, change what we're doing and that has an impact on others. So there are so many kind of lovely ripples it's. Are we really rippling the ones that we want to be sort of sending out into the organization around us?
Cath:So the very simple framework I use often for setting around this from the long win is around the three Cs of clarity, constant learning and connection. And I find these take us out of an automatic pilot mode of just churning through tasks like a machine to clarifying what matters. What else matters, yeah, and then we get to sort of well, it actually matters how it feels in the working environment, it matters how we work, it matters how we talk to each other. So really clarifying how we do things, not just what and when, clarifying why we do things, then to really focus on this learning, adapting, constantly growing piece, so that we're constantly evolving the culture it's not one stuck thing and, of course, seeing the relationships, the connections, as absolutely fundamental. So I find those three thought processes, the connections, as absolutely fundamental. So I find those three thought processes it's not a template, it's not a tick, tick, tick. It's a means of getting back into a mindset where we're noticing and shaping culture in a really helpful way.
Colin:Yeah, when I wrote Culture Fix in 2019, I was really, really keen. This was kind of very early on. I'd been researching what we then call teamwork since probably about 2015, when I decided I wanted to go out and work for myself, and so the Culture Fix was. This book that I had in mind for a long time is what do the great cultures do and what can other people copy? What are some exercises they can do? Anyway, I won't paraphrase the entire book, but the six pillars were vision and purpose. That's the first pillar. The second one was values. Then there was personality and communication. So how do we connect humans, exactly as Cath was just talking about, and I pretty much said that was the most important one, because that was the way into any culture. Then it was behavior, collaboration and innovation. These were the six right, the six things that everyone did. But one of the things that great cultures did and when I did all of my research and I hadn't really thought about it in this way, even though, as a manager myself, I'd done it was what great cultures do is they recognize that they can't have a mono culture. So Cath just alluded to this is you can't say at a, let's say, a senior leadership level. This is our culture, and expect everybody to do the same things in exactly the same way Is that great cultures are made up of great subcultures, and so what great cultures have is kind of a cultural backbone, and that's vision, purpose and set of values. Right, and these things are consistent throughout every team, but the way that each team operationalizes those values can be completely different.
Colin:So I had a conversation with someone at the end of the year who I'm working with now and they were like oh, we want to create a one team culture. I was like how many people in the team? Is it like 15, 20? And they're like, oh, it's 250. I was like, okay, let me just break you out of this idea of one team. Oh, it's 250. I was like okay, let me just break you out of this idea of one team, because you're the sum of your parts. I think there's 14 teams. I was like you're 14 teams, but what we want is a kind of one backbone of which all of the 14 kind of center around, and I hadn't really thought about it in those terms before. And so this is this is where you kind of give agency to each team to design what the culture needs to be for them to achieve what they need to achieve, aligned to vision, purpose, values, whatever your backbone is. So again, that's just building up of what Cath says. There is that you know, great cultures are a combination of great subcultures.
Cath:And I like the agency word that you use there. So this is a very proactive space. It's a creative space. Yeah, we're not going. Oh, let me look up what this company over here does, let's do that. You know, we're not even saying across yeah, those 14 teams, let's all do one thing. It's just, it's a nonsense, it won't work. It is for us to step into that space and say what do we need, and to try it and to test it and adapt and explore. So again, culture doesn't just stay the same. We're shaping it with every experience and when we have a new challenge come that 2025 is going to be throwing many new challenges, I think, to all of us then we adapt and grow and deepen certain elements of our culture, maybe even develop some new elements as well.
Cath:I was lucky over Christmas actually to read, to get an advanced copy of the book by Kate Hayes called how we Win, and Kate is an incredibly brilliant progressive sports psychologist and she works now with the Lionesses. She was leading the Olympic and Paralympic sports psychology teams for many years. I worked with her years ago and she helped out with the Oxford Cambridge boat race and she was also she's worked very closely with Tom Daley for years. So she's absolutely brilliant, One of these women behind the scenes of some incredible performances, and she lays out some very similar themes. She has four building blocks to help teams create that environment where she talks about perform and flourish. Sure, there are people who win and have a really difficult time, but she's seen it with her own eyes. You cannot sustain success like that, and in fact it's even harder nowadays to succeed, even in the short term, because the standard in order to succeed is so high. You can't afford not to have things with you, and she was part of her. And the sports psychologist looked back after the Rio Games and said look, the medal table's great, but we're hearing lots of stories that people are struggling and suffering and we don't think that's necessary. Of course elite sport isn't easy, but we don think this level of of suffering is necessary and in fact is detrimental to performance. So they set up this project thrive with these dual ambitions for as many as possible to help every paralympic olympic athlete to perform and flourish. And that's been, you know, a journey, because we still see too many athletes that are struggling. And you know different sports. We've got sort of different cultures that push that away. But more and more that's coming through. And her work the Lionesses is brilliant most recently.
Cath:So her four building blocks are who are we? Yeah, it's the identity piece. You talked about that. What do we stand for, what are our strengths? How do we play to those? The second one is why are we here? The purpose piece Again, we've talked about that.
Cath:We've talked about purpose in quite a few episodes of questions. How do we play? Yeah, because we have to define that for ourselves. We're not the same as the England team before us or the work team or the marketing team or the sales team. Yeah, how do we play? How are we going to go about that and really then getting those rules, those behaviors, those frameworks that you talked about? And then the last one is that sense of can we really deliver under pressure? Have we got the skills to do that? Are we really able to have those difficult conversations, to make decisions, to challenge each other and manage the kind of pressure times when they come on? What are the skills we need to develop in order to be ready for that? So it's a kind of lovely book in this space that is just adding to what we believe that flourishing and performing are interlinked.
Colin:There's a great active case study that you can read about right now, and it's the Washington Commanders. So the Washington Commanders had a terrible, toxic culture. I remember writing about it about three years ago and they appointed a new head coach, a guy by the name of Dan Quinn, and Dan Quinn came in. I think there was a speech that he did that went viral I'm pretty sure there was a video. I vaguely remember that now and he said it's going to take time for us to rebuild the culture, but we're going to put the emphasis on togetherness, on collaboration. They came up with a new slogan, the Commander Standard, which was all about behavior and working together, and he made the point and this is another thing that great cultures do is it's not enough to talk about what it takes to create a great team. It's not enough. It's the start, but it's not enough. It's one thing having a code, but it's a whole other thing to write it down. We're talking before. We recorded this kind of Netflix, made the writing down as the standard in 2009 and 2017. Before then, there was a company called Valve who'd written theirs down, but everyone remembers the Netflix culture deck and me and my team we still produce culture decks for teams. So, yes, we talk about it, yes, we write it down. But then there's the accountability piece. Is it pointless writing it down if you're not going to hold each other to this?
Colin:And now, what the Washington commanders did is they didn't allow any individual to be bigger than the team. And again you'll hear organizations talk about this all the time no, no individual is bigger than the team. And then they allow one person to become bigger than the team. They don't challenge it or do anything about it, and that's it. The culture then gradually erodes. Cath mentioned at the top of the show everyone has an influence on the culture, good and bad, and it's true. So writing it down is another thing that great cultures do. But then holding each other to it.
Colin:Now, one of the things that I think Patty McCord wrote about this in her book Powerful. So Patty McCord, former chief talent officer at Netflix, and she said one of the things we do at Netflix is we don't tolerate brilliant jerks. It was either her or Reed Hastings, the founder, that said that we don't tolerate brilliant jerks, this sense that you can be great at what you do, just don't be a dick. Don't undermine the culture and the safety of the culture for everyone else, and what Netflix said. They have a three-strike rule.
Colin:I'm not sure if they still have it now, but basically, if you compromised the culture three times, you were gone, you were done, you were finished, you were out. And the same principle is applied to the Washington Commanders. They have not allowed anybody to compromise their commander standard and consequently, they made their first I think it was their first playoff game for 33 years and everyone was just like it's a miracle. Anybody who knows anything about culture. It's not a miracle. This is what great cultures do, and in the hands of Dan Quinn, he has completely turned it around.
Cath:Yeah, but I think sport's an interesting space because we don't have these things on the wall the living.
Cath:It is so real and if you are not living it you're so undermining it, it's so obvious you're undermining it. And I think it's more damaging to create a culture and then not do it, because you create this incongruence and everyone knows you signed up something you're not doing. So what does that say about what you really stand for and what your real values are? So you know, we absolutely have to lean into it and I'm finding in my work actually that one of the ways in which I think sometimes I can help most is by sort of coming and helping observations, noticing things, realizing when we might actually be not doing what we said, helping people to spot those moments, because we've got into a bit of a sort of blinkered state sometimes at work, focused on the task do, do, do, meeting, meeting, meeting and then we don't notice things. We don't mean to undermine the culture and these things that we agreed, because we agreed them in a room that was not where I'm working. You know I haven't quite transferred it across, but that transfer is critical and that's why I think it's important sometimes to get, you know independent perspective to come, you know a trusted friend, a trusted advisor, a trusted culture coach to come and help you figure that out and notice stuff, not in a judgmental way, in a purely learning way, because I think that's often the you know.
Cath:People say what skills do I need to be effective at leading culture, shaping culture? I just say it's noticing things, it's that mindfulness to notice things in your environment and think, oh, is that actually helping us or are we sort of now starting to cross a line that's really going to cause us problems later? And of course, if you look at the sports world again, you don't just only do culture when you're away on a way day. Yeah, it is there, it is real, it's happening in the changing rooms. It's brutal, feedback is given, accountability happens, otherwise, you know, in that game on Saturday it's all going to fall apart under pressure.
Cath:So I think often you see that much more sort of real tussling with bringing culture alive. It's not pretty, it's not easy, but it's lived. It's part of what you do, it's part of how you play and I think that's one of the things I try and bring in organizations that do. It's part of how you play and I think that's one of the things I try and bring in organizations that sense of it's what you're doing, not what you're saying. It's you know, let's not just see culture as something we only discuss every three months or something. No, no, let's actually reverse that and think about what's all the culture we've shaped today. What would we like to be doing tomorrow?
Colin:It's that old adage of Rome wasn't built in a day, but they were laying bricks every hour. That sense that cultures continually evolve all of the time and they're made up of a set of what I would call micro-experiences. Actually, Cath, when you mentioned that advisor, I remember doing a session with a leadership team of a big retail organization half a day so they're taking half a day out of their calendar and I remember doing. I recorded them a little video. Here's a little bit of pre-work, some things to think about. I said but I want you to put your out of office on, let people know that you're not going to be there. And no phones, right, no distractions. This is an open discussion about the things. It was based. It was on some feedback that they'd received from the engagement survey. So I'm there. Let's just say it started at nine. I think it did start at nine, and at nine o'clock people are still drifting into the room, and so the CEO eventually introduced me. It's a column in a book blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Seven minutes past line, I was like. So I got up and I said my first challenge to you is why is this starting at seven minutes past nine? There's crickets, just nothing. I was like okay, just with the person next to you, why is this? Starting at seven minutes past nine? You could people look around going, what's this? But again, it's straight away micro experiences. We said nine, but it's seven minutes past nine. Why does it stop? Anyway, they had this discussion and it was like, oh yeah, ill discipline and someone's transport was late, poor risk management, all these kinds of things.
Colin:Anyway, about 10 minutes into the presentation the CFO we were sat on the front row to my left. There's like two rows of chairs. There was about I don't know 12 people in this. He took his phone out. It's like right there as I'm delivering a speech or talking about something, he took his phone out. So I just stopped. I just stopped and put my hands in my pocket. I remember they put my hands in the pocket. I was just looking at him and everyone was kind of looking around. You could see people just moving in their chairs, like what's happening here? And I just, and eventually he looked up. It must've been about 20 of the most uncomfortable seconds and I said is that something urgent that you need to deal with? Because if it is, if you can just apologize to the room and excuse yourself, and he was just like oh, no, no, no, no, I'm really sorry. Now, obviously, had this been a larger group of people, there's no way I would have been embarrassed.
Cath:Did you get invited back?
Colin:I did. I did. What happened after that? He put his phone in his pocket. The CEO just laughed. He CEO just laughed. He's like. He said honestly, put your hand up in this room If you'd have done that, if one of us pulled the phone out in a meeting. He's like no one and he's like Colin. Do you just want to tell us the reason that you did that? I was like culture is the behavior that you choose to walk past. I said we set the tone. We said no phone If we'd all have said, yeah, we're going to bring our phones check it that's your prerogative, you can do that but we agreed no phones If I'd have allowed that. What does it say about me, as well as what does it say about the culture? And the CEO just said it's the little things sometimes that make a big difference.
Cath:Yeah, that's a huge thing in culture, isn't it? It is absolutely the small things, the small steps. So that's why you don't have to be in a leadership role, although you need to be aware your little actions have an even greater impact, magnified rippling through the organization. But it is the small things, just the way we react, interact, welcome people into a meeting or make it feel very sterile, welcome people into a meeting or make it feel very sterile, and yeah, it is really the tone we take, all of these things that are so important.
Cath:And actually, once you start noticing it, it's also quite easy. At first it is a bit of a oh, let me just realize something, but your brain's seeing it all the time. You've just sort of let it filter it out, or taught it to filter it out because it wasn't thought to be important. So there's a resetting of your cultural filters. If you like to start noticing stuff. Once you do, then it's sort of, you know, you can get on a real positive spiral around. Oh, I can do this well, and if I just tweak this little thing that's completely within my power to do, because it's my meeting or it's even just how I speak in the meeting, then I think you really feel that agency to shape things. That is really part of the empowerment that comes from being positive, proactive about culture building.
Colin:Okay. So let's three things. We end every episode, just a reminder. We end every episode with three things for you to do to get curious about, maybe to uncover. So I think the first thing to do is just a reminder of what I said at the start you get the culture that maybe to uncover. So I think the first thing to do is just a reminder of what I said at the start you get the culture that you choose to build. So the thing to do is take the time to work with your team to proactively build your culture. Listen, it doesn't have to be a whole two-day workshop. It can literally be half an hour over a cup of coffee, agreeing the behaviors you'd like to see from each other, how you're going to work together, how you're going to use technology. Like to see from each other how are you going to work together, how are you going to use technology, how are you going to communicate, as Cath talked about? You know that communication is absolutely key, so that's the first thing to do.
Cath:And the second thing to get curious about where do we want that culture to go? So how are we going to bring it alive and how are we going to continually shape it? So it's that you know, once we've got a clearer definition of it, then it's all you know. Once we've got a clearer definition of it, then it's all about right. You know how do we bring that alive and constantly build that, deepen that, explore where else we might want to take it. So it's that let's be really curious about what that means in real life, today, tomorrow, the day after.
Colin:And then something to uncover is your contribution. You know we ended there just talking about the micro experiences. What can you do? What's one thing that you can do to positively positively, that's the important word here impact your culture so that everybody sees that you're a role model for what you want to become Great conversation, Fantastic Next time, Bye, Bye.
Cath:Thanks for listening to today's Inside Out Culture.
Colin:Podcast. Please remember to like, subscribe and, of course, share with others who you think may be interested.
