Rethink Culture

[00:00:07.12 - 00:00:10.00] Good morning, good afternoon and good evening.
[00:00:10.00 - 00:00:13.18] Welcome to Rethink Culture, the podcast that shines a spotlight on business
[00:00:13.18 - 00:00:17.06] leaders who are creating intentional cultures.
[00:00:17.18 - 00:00:20.15] My name is Andreas Konstantinou and I'm your host.
[00:00:20.15 - 00:00:24.10] I'm the founder of Rethink Culture, a company that aims to help create one
[00:00:24.10 - 00:00:27.12] million healthier, more fulfilling work cultures.
[00:00:27.19 - 00:00:31.16] Today, I have the pleasure of welcoming Spencer Harrison, who's a professor of
[00:00:31.16 - 00:00:36.07] organizational behavior at INSEAD Business School and a TED speaker.
[00:00:36.22 - 00:00:39.00] His expertise and research are highly
[00:00:39.00 - 00:00:43.13] recognized in the field, and his work has been featured in Harvard Business Review,
[00:00:43.13 - 00:00:45.12] Fast Company, Money, and Inc.
[00:00:45.12 - 00:00:46.13] magazines.
[00:00:47.00 - 00:00:50.12] He co-founded the Creativity Collaboratorium, the world's largest
[00:00:50.12 - 00:00:54.09] working group of creativity researchers, and he has become a culture advisor to
[00:00:54.09 - 00:00:58.12] many of the fastest growing organizations, including Google, Salesforce, and
[00:00:58.12 - 00:00:59.12] Deloitte.
[00:00:59.18 - 00:01:03.19] So with that, Spencer, welcome to the Rethink Culture Podcast.
[00:01:04.07 - 00:01:05.13] Andreas, thank you for having me.
[00:01:05.13 - 00:01:06.15] It's a pleasure to be here.
[00:01:07.00 - 00:01:13.03] So I was recommended to you by Eric, who's been a guest on the previous podcast with
[00:01:13.03 - 00:01:20.03] highest accolades, and you have been studying organizational psychology and
[00:01:20.03 - 00:01:23.13] behavior for a long time.
[00:01:23.19 - 00:01:31.13] So walk us a bit into your current work, your areas of interest, and what does
[00:01:31.13 - 00:01:33.03] organizational behavior mean for you?
[00:01:34.06 - 00:01:39.21] So I think the major theme that you see across the work that I do, and I do
[00:01:39.21 - 00:01:45.10] research in a variety of some might say odd contexts for a business researcher.
[00:01:45.10 - 00:01:48.16] So I've studied people that are designing t-shirts.
[00:01:48.16 - 00:01:52.18] I've studied people that are making new products out of garbage.
[00:01:52.18 - 00:01:54.21] I've studied modern dance groups.
[00:01:54.21 - 00:01:57.10] I've studied popular music bands.
[00:01:57.19 - 00:02:04.02] And what is sort of similar across all of these different contexts, is this idea of
[00:02:04.15 - 00:02:07.15] How do you sustain transformation?
[00:02:08.06 - 00:02:12.18] And that's important because it's no longer enough for a business to come up
[00:02:12.18 - 00:02:17.21] with one really good strategy and then just rest on that for a really long period
[00:02:17.21 - 00:02:18.09] of time.
[00:02:18.09 - 00:02:24.10] There's a need to sort of constantly think about what are we doing today that's going
[00:02:24.10 - 00:02:27.01] to make us better tomorrow?
[00:02:27.01 - 00:02:29.16] And so this idea of thinking...
[00:02:29.19 - 00:02:33.09] How do we sustain transformation is important, rather than thinking about
[00:02:33.09 - 00:02:37.04] transformation as just sort of a one-time, discrete event.
[00:02:37.19 - 00:02:44.21] And what led you to being a professor at INSEAD, which is a highly claimed business
[00:02:44.21 - 00:02:45.12] school.
[00:02:45.12 - 00:02:46.09] Like, where did you start?
[00:02:46.09 - 00:02:50.03] Did you envisage becoming a professor as a child?
[00:02:50.03 - 00:02:52.09] Did you envisage becoming a researcher?
[00:02:53.04 - 00:02:58.09] Well, I did actually, but I did it through sort of a meandering story.
[00:02:58.09 - 00:03:01.15] So the short version is this.
[00:03:01.15 - 00:03:04.12] When I grew up, I wanted to be an animator for Disney.
[00:03:05.01 - 00:03:06.15] And I loved creating.
[00:03:06.15 - 00:03:07.10] I loved drawing.
[00:03:07.10 - 00:03:09.12] I loved coming up with characters.
[00:03:09.18 - 00:03:18.09] And then that love for creation led me to also love storytelling and writing and
[00:03:18.09 - 00:03:19.13] poetry.
[00:03:19.13 - 00:03:23.04] And I thought, what is a career that could subsidise
[00:03:23.04 - 00:03:28.04] me as a writer, especially as a poet, and the idea was, oh, I could be an English
[00:03:28.04 - 00:03:29.03] professor.
[00:03:29.03 - 00:03:33.00] So originally that was sort of the idea is I'm going to be an English professor.
[00:03:33.07 - 00:03:37.09] And at the same time, I happened to be working as a technical writer, just
[00:03:37.09 - 00:03:40.00] understand the business side of language.
[00:03:40.10 - 00:03:47.22] And as that career began to expand, I realized I can still write and I can still
[00:03:47.22 - 00:03:51.00] create for myself on my own time.
[00:03:51.04 - 00:03:56.09] But there's this opportunity to help organizations and help other people
[00:03:56.09 - 00:03:58.13] sustain this sort of creation.
[00:03:58.16 - 00:04:03.15] And that led me to become more interested in sort of the business side of things.
[00:04:04.01 - 00:04:06.18] And that's how you get somebody that wanted to be a poet to become a business
[00:04:06.18 - 00:04:07.07] professor.
[00:04:07.07 - 00:04:10.09] And for some people, that might be sort of a very cynical story.
[00:04:10.09 - 00:04:16.12] For me, it's been a really fascinating journey because I get to apply this sort
[00:04:16.12 - 00:04:18.21] of humanistic lens that I learned.
[00:04:18.22 - 00:04:24.12] through my studies and through my childhood to a business world that often
[00:04:24.12 - 00:04:30.12] doesn't see that as important, but once they begin to understand where that has a
[00:04:30.12 - 00:04:34.03] huge impact on them, then it makes all the difference in the world.
[00:04:34.07 - 00:04:39.00] So yes, I did wanna be a professor, not necessarily a business professor, but I
[00:04:39.00 - 00:04:44.18] found that it's sort of this perfect blend for me of my talents and how I can have
[00:04:44.18 - 00:04:45.18] impact on the world.
[00:04:45.21 - 00:04:47.18] And what's the most fun part of your job?
[00:04:47.18 - 00:04:49.04] Is it research?
[00:04:49.04 - 00:04:51.01] Is it working with clients?
[00:04:51.19 - 00:04:53.16] Is it the innovation work?
[00:04:53.21 - 00:04:54.19] I think it's both.
[00:04:54.19 - 00:05:02.15] So I think that it's very often the case that professors sort of see teaching as
[00:05:02.15 - 00:05:05.09] one of the things that pulls them away from research.
[00:05:05.09 - 00:05:10.12] I think one of the really nice things about a school like INSEAD is we try to
[00:05:10.12 - 00:05:15.21] stay really close to the real world and the experience of executives.
[00:05:15.21 - 00:05:21.12] And as a result, some of my best research ideas actually come from conversations
[00:05:21.12 - 00:05:22.21] with executives.
[00:05:22.21 - 00:05:27.15] So there is this very nice exchange of, I learn a lot from the research, I present
[00:05:27.15 - 00:05:31.09] that to executives, they're extremely curious about it.
[00:05:31.09 - 00:05:34.15] They'll say, you know, could you come into my organization and help us?
[00:05:34.15 - 00:05:40.00] And then as a result, that helps me change the model that I was thinking of before or
[00:05:40.00 - 00:05:43.06] gain new insights, and then I can teach other executives.
[00:05:43.06 - 00:05:47.03] And so that virtuous loop tends to continue itself.
[00:05:47.03 - 00:05:48.09] And as a result,
[00:05:48.09 - 00:05:51.21] There's always more ideas that I can pursue and more opportunities that I have
[00:05:51.21 - 00:05:53.15] time to help with.
[00:05:53.15 - 00:05:58.21] And that's sort of the constant struggle of my day is how do I find the space to
[00:05:58.21 - 00:06:03.07] say no, or the willpower to say no to all these wonderful opportunities.
[00:06:03.16 - 00:06:06.09] What is some of the research you're most proud of producing?
[00:06:06.10 - 00:06:09.07] or some of the work you're most proud of, not just research.
[00:06:09.19 - 00:06:16.00] the thing that always goes through my mind is I'm most proud of the thing that I'm
[00:06:16.00 - 00:06:18.09] working on right now.
[00:06:18.09 - 00:06:24.03] So once something is already produced and it comes out, at that point, I'm sort of
[00:06:24.03 - 00:06:27.21] already past it and sort of moved on to the next thing.
[00:06:27.22 - 00:06:33.04] So if I were to sort of keep that as a truism for me, I think the thing that I'm
[00:06:33.04 - 00:06:36.04] really excited about right now is
[00:06:36.04 - 00:06:40.13] a set of research that I've done with a colleague, Professor Kristie Rogers at
[00:06:40.13 - 00:06:48.09] Marquette on how organizations connect their, what we call big C culture to their
[00:06:48.09 - 00:06:49.10] small C culture.
[00:06:49.10 - 00:06:54.12] And we have some research coming out in the near future on that topic that I think
[00:06:54.12 - 00:06:55.09] is really exciting.
[00:06:55.12 - 00:06:57.19] So tell us more, what is big C and small C culture?
[00:06:58.09 - 00:07:01.21] Well, this insight comes from two places.
[00:07:02.04 - 00:07:09.09] So the first place is, Kristie and I were working with a extremely famous
[00:07:09.09 - 00:07:15.03] organization that had seen a spike in turnover and they were very concerned
[00:07:15.03 - 00:07:15.13] about it.
[00:07:15.13 - 00:07:20.10] And so they wanted somebody that was independent to come in and talk to the
[00:07:20.10 - 00:07:24.13] employees that had left to see if they could understand what was going on.
[00:07:24.13 - 00:07:25.18] And it was sort of...
[00:07:26.00 - 00:07:29.03] you know, the Hamlet version of there's something rotten in the state of Denmark.
[00:07:29.03 - 00:07:32.06] So the question that they were basically asking is, is there something rotten with
[00:07:32.06 - 00:07:33.09] our culture?
[00:07:33.18 - 00:07:36.16] And we did about a hundred interviews.
[00:07:36.16 - 00:07:39.06] We discovered some really interesting things that were going on in this
[00:07:39.06 - 00:07:40.15] organization.
[00:07:40.18 - 00:07:45.04] And basically what was happening is this organization was scaling itself so quickly
[00:07:45.15 - 00:07:50.04] that they became a little bit less focused on who are we bringing into the
[00:07:50.04 - 00:07:53.09] organization and how many of those people are bringing into the organization.
[00:07:53.09 - 00:07:54.09] So as a result,
[00:07:54.09 - 00:07:57.15] they were hiring almost entire divisions of their company away from other
[00:07:57.15 - 00:07:58.19] organizations.
[00:07:58.19 - 00:08:03.09] And what that meant is people were sort of coming in with a blueprint for the culture
[00:08:03.09 - 00:08:07.06] from the former organization and just pasting it into this new company.
[00:08:07.09 - 00:08:12.18] So that led to a lot of what we called shadow cultures.
[00:08:12.18 - 00:08:16.15] So sort of these cultures that are creeping up in the shadows that are not
[00:08:16.15 - 00:08:22.00] following the culture that's supposed to be in place in this organization.
[00:08:22.03 - 00:08:25.09] but they're allowed to persist because the organization is just growing so fast, they
[00:08:25.09 - 00:08:27.19] don't have time to pay attention to it.
[00:08:27.19 - 00:08:31.22] And what we found is these people were in some cases actively leaving the
[00:08:31.22 - 00:08:37.07] organization because it was easier to boomerang back into the company and find a
[00:08:37.07 - 00:08:40.10] manager that actually managed for the culture.
[00:08:40.15 - 00:08:43.19] So there was this interesting moment where we were presenting these results and the
[00:08:43.19 - 00:08:47.03] CEO looked at me and he said, Spencer, what are you going to do to fix this?
[00:08:47.03 - 00:08:49.04] And I thought, Oh my gosh, you know,
[00:08:49.12 - 00:08:52.00] I was hired to just diagnose the problem.
[00:08:52.00 - 00:08:55.06] I wasn't hired to be the surgeon to fix this for you.
[00:08:55.09 - 00:09:01.13] But what I said was, the solution for this problem already exists here inside the
[00:09:01.13 - 00:09:02.06] organization.
[00:09:02.06 - 00:09:05.15] And this is true, I think, of most organizations and they don't realize it.
[00:09:05.22 - 00:09:10.18] I said, what you need to do is not figure out where these bad managers are.
[00:09:10.18 - 00:09:15.09] You need to figure out who are the most excellent managers that people are wanting
[00:09:15.09 - 00:09:19.15] to boomerang back into and ask them what they're doing.
[00:09:19.18 - 00:09:24.00] If you can find those practices and spread those through the organization, then
[00:09:24.00 - 00:09:26.21] you're going to make the entire organization that much more resilient and
[00:09:26.21 - 00:09:28.13] improve the culture.
[00:09:28.13 - 00:09:33.03] What we did is we took their performance management data and we used that to
[00:09:33.03 - 00:09:38.12] isolate who are the leaders that were able to have the highest retention rates with
[00:09:38.12 - 00:09:41.19] their employees, but we're also pushing them to get the highest level of
[00:09:41.19 - 00:09:42.21] performance.
[00:09:42.21 - 00:09:47.12] If they're doing both those things, then that means I'm pushing you in a way where
[00:09:47.12 - 00:09:49.15] you're not feeling so burned out.
[00:09:50.01 - 00:09:51.09] that you want to leave.
[00:09:51.09 - 00:09:54.15] And so there's something else going on there culturally that allows people to
[00:09:54.15 - 00:09:55.18] want to stay.
[00:09:55.18 - 00:10:00.18] And that's where we found this really fun link between what we call the big C
[00:10:00.18 - 00:10:01.07] culture.
[00:10:01.07 - 00:10:06.18] So these are the official culture documents, the official expressions, our
[00:10:06.18 - 00:10:14.15] mission, our values, our vision, the official selection criteria, onboarding,
[00:10:14.15 - 00:10:18.16] leadership development and rewards policies, and the official measurement
[00:10:18.16 - 00:10:19.18] systems.
[00:10:20.01 - 00:10:23.09] And so we have those things sort of at the top level where we can point to, we can
[00:10:23.09 - 00:10:26.04] say, that's our culture, this is how we manage it.
[00:10:26.15 - 00:10:31.12] But what we found is that these leaders were actively building culture within
[00:10:31.12 - 00:10:32.18] their sphere of influence.
[00:10:32.18 - 00:10:35.09] And we grew to call that the small C culture.
[00:10:35.12 - 00:10:40.00] And the idea is basically that even though we can point at big C culture, we actually
[00:10:40.00 - 00:10:45.15] experience small C culture in day-to-day life in business.
[00:10:45.15 - 00:10:48.01] And so it's really up to those leaders that have
[00:10:48.01 - 00:10:54.01] the biggest control or influence on that small C sphere to bring the big C culture
[00:10:54.01 - 00:10:54.13] to life.
[00:10:54.13 - 00:10:57.00] And that was sort of the real exciting part.
[00:10:57.00 - 00:11:02.18] I think that the second part to that is at the same time, I'm doing all this work
[00:11:02.18 - 00:11:07.09] with executives and we would start talking about the culture.
[00:11:07.09 - 00:11:12.03] And I had a participant in a class once that raised his hand and he said, so
[00:11:12.03 - 00:11:16.09] Spencer, I don't understand why we're talking about culture, our CEO
[00:11:16.10 - 00:11:19.13] has already articulated what the mission and the values are.
[00:11:19.13 - 00:11:21.03] Like at this point, it's set in stone.
[00:11:21.03 - 00:11:22.09] There's no way to change it.
[00:11:22.09 - 00:11:24.18] So why are we talking about culture?
[00:11:24.21 - 00:11:30.07] And at that point, it became very clear to me that for a lot of leaders, and this is
[00:11:30.07 - 00:11:34.18] also true in the popular business press, when you look at books that are written
[00:11:34.18 - 00:11:41.06] about culture, we glorify the writing of the culture as though that's the magical
[00:11:41.06 - 00:11:44.09] moment where culture takes its meaning.
[00:11:44.09 - 00:11:45.19] It's almost as though
[00:11:45.19 - 00:11:50.12] we describe this moment of sort of coming up with the values and the mission
[00:11:50.12 - 00:11:55.16] statement, like Moses walking down the mountain and he's got these tablets and
[00:11:55.18 - 00:12:00.09] there's sunlight behind his hair and God speaking from the mountain.
[00:12:00.12 - 00:12:04.19] And if we just get those tablets, if we just get the culture written right,
[00:12:04.19 - 00:12:06.22] everything will fall into place.
[00:12:07.03 - 00:12:10.01] And I found that a lot of leaders were sort of paralyzed by that notion because
[00:12:10.01 - 00:12:13.13] if the culture is already written, then what do I do?
[00:12:13.18 - 00:12:14.18] And that...
[00:12:14.18 - 00:12:20.03] became an opportunity for us to realize there is a set of activities that leaders
[00:12:20.03 - 00:12:26.10] can engage in that allow them to build cultural capacity throughout the entire
[00:12:26.10 - 00:12:27.18] organization.
[00:12:27.18 - 00:12:31.15] And what's important is these behaviors are completely scalable.
[00:12:31.15 - 00:12:34.09] Anybody at any level of the organization can do them.
[00:12:34.15 - 00:12:40.19] And most importantly, the behaviors themselves really don't require
[00:12:40.19 - 00:12:41.21] permission.
[00:12:41.22 - 00:12:43.03] Because I'm not.
[00:12:43.06 - 00:12:47.04] going about changing the culture, not just doing things on my own.
[00:12:47.04 - 00:12:51.12] I'm actually doing things that further connect what happens at the small c
[00:12:51.12 - 00:12:53.03] level with what happens at the big c level.
[00:12:53.13 - 00:13:01.15] And these managers that were the ones that led their teams to the highest performing
[00:13:02.06 - 00:13:08.18] results, did they have different systems or did they have different behaviors?
[00:13:09.16 - 00:13:11.13] So they existed in the same system.
[00:13:11.13 - 00:13:15.06] What was different is their behaviors and their approach to the system.
[00:13:16.00 - 00:13:21.18] In a lot of cases, leaders feel like their job is to be a steward of the system.
[00:13:21.18 - 00:13:28.01] So I'm just here to keep the system moving, to oil the parts and sort of keep
[00:13:28.01 - 00:13:32.15] people performing the way that they're already expected to perform.
[00:13:32.18 - 00:13:35.15] And what we found with this group of leaders that were high performers is
[00:13:35.15 - 00:13:36.16] number one,
[00:13:36.21 - 00:13:41.01] they did not see themselves as the best leaders in the company, even though
[00:13:41.01 - 00:13:44.18] quantitatively speaking, there was all the evidence in the world to say that they
[00:13:44.18 - 00:13:45.15] were.
[00:13:45.16 - 00:13:50.06] So what was interesting about them is they were actively learning from other leaders
[00:13:50.06 - 00:13:51.09] how to be better leaders.
[00:13:51.09 - 00:13:56.09] And they probably had the best network of, here's an idea I learned from this person,
[00:13:56.09 - 00:13:59.22] here's an idea I learned from this other person.
[00:14:00.00 - 00:14:04.15] And what that learning allowed them to do is to really think about what does the big
[00:14:04.15 - 00:14:06.04] C culture mean.
[00:14:06.06 - 00:14:07.21] for other people in the organization.
[00:14:07.21 - 00:14:12.16] I know we say these values, but how are they putting those things into action?
[00:14:12.18 - 00:14:17.06] So there's this curiosity about what's happening at the official level and how do
[00:14:17.06 - 00:14:18.22] I translate that?
[00:14:19.06 - 00:14:23.22] And then there's this curiosity about what can we do within my sphere of influence,
[00:14:23.22 - 00:14:27.07] within my small C culture to bring that to life.
[00:14:27.07 - 00:14:32.15] And what they do then is they begin to cultivate experiments with the culture
[00:14:32.15 - 00:14:33.13] where they...
[00:14:33.16 - 00:14:38.07] encourage themselves and the people around them to try new things.
[00:14:38.07 - 00:14:42.15] So sort of the easiest way of thinking about this is there's a lot of data that
[00:14:42.15 - 00:14:46.00] shows that most people don't like meetings.
[00:14:46.00 - 00:14:48.03] We see it as a waste of our time.
[00:14:48.03 - 00:14:50.10] We think that they could be improved.
[00:14:50.10 - 00:14:53.18] We feel like most of them should actually just be cut from our agenda.
[00:14:54.06 - 00:14:58.12] But meetings are actually really important because those are cultural moments.
[00:14:58.12 - 00:15:02.00] We see culture come to life because people come together.
[00:15:02.01 - 00:15:03.18] and we see how we behave with each other.
[00:15:03.18 - 00:15:05.22] We see what's permitted, what's not permitted.
[00:15:05.22 - 00:15:08.15] What does it mean to bring values to life?
[00:15:08.15 - 00:15:15.09] So for example, with these high performing leaders, meetings become a laboratory.
[00:15:15.12 - 00:15:20.22] How can I take this half hour or this hour where I have people together and use it as
[00:15:20.22 - 00:15:27.13] an opportunity to bring our values to life based on what we choose to talk about, how
[00:15:27.13 - 00:15:31.09] we choose to interact with each other, how long the meeting takes.
[00:15:31.09 - 00:15:33.21] what the emotional tone of the meeting is.
[00:15:33.21 - 00:15:39.06] And so they're using these moments, not in a taken for granted way, like, yeah, we
[00:15:39.06 - 00:15:44.07] have meetings every day, it doesn't matter, but in like a very precious
[00:15:44.07 - 00:15:49.15] cultivating way where they're thinking, how can I bring seeds of our values to
[00:15:49.15 - 00:15:54.12] life and behavior so that the people in my small C culture can point to that meeting
[00:15:54.12 - 00:15:59.13] and say, that's an example of us living our values because we did X or because we
[00:15:59.13 - 00:16:00.06] did Y.
[00:16:00.15 - 00:16:03.19] And what happens then is that these moments, and it doesn't just happen with
[00:16:03.19 - 00:16:07.06] meetings, but that's sort of a low-hanging fruit just because we can all point to
[00:16:07.06 - 00:16:10.18] them and say, meetings are horrible, they're a waste of time.
[00:16:10.21 - 00:16:14.00] If all of a sudden you're changing something that most people agree is a
[00:16:14.00 - 00:16:17.19] waste of time to something that's engaging and energizing and nobody wants to miss
[00:16:17.19 - 00:16:21.09] it, that ripples through the organization pretty quickly.
[00:16:21.09 - 00:16:25.03] And people start saying, oh, we should run meetings like this group and this other
[00:16:25.03 - 00:16:26.18] unit because...
[00:16:26.18 - 00:16:30.07] they're all standing up or they have a pizza every meeting or they start their
[00:16:30.07 - 00:16:36.03] meeting by having a safety announcement or they start their meeting by doing a
[00:16:36.03 - 00:16:41.03] relationship building exercise, whatever it is, they're using that opportunity as a
[00:16:41.03 - 00:16:43.18] way to bring the organization to life.
[00:16:44.10 - 00:16:54.09] That's a great point because at least I was only thinking of major events like
[00:16:54.09 - 00:17:00.06] firing someone or a crisis as opportunities to...
[00:17:00.07 - 00:17:09.21] communicate big C culture and convey messages and, you know, whatever you need
[00:17:09.21 - 00:17:11.13] to convey to the workforce.
[00:17:11.13 - 00:17:17.21] But actually, it is the everyday meetings of these, you know, daily opportunities
[00:17:17.22 - 00:17:19.07] and we learn through.
[00:17:21.07 - 00:17:29.16] through the tens or hundreds or thousands of small opportunities at every part of
[00:17:29.16 - 00:17:31.18] our life, work or personal.
[00:17:32.18 - 00:17:34.18] And yeah, it's refreshing.
[00:17:35.00 - 00:17:42.10] Yeah, and what becomes interesting then is those daily opportunities are data.
[00:17:42.19 - 00:17:52.06] And in most organizations, we are really excited about sales data or inventory
[00:17:52.06 - 00:17:57.09] turnover in our operation system or how we're spending our marketing dollars and
[00:17:57.09 - 00:18:01.18] how that leads to stronger market growth and market penetration.
[00:18:01.21 - 00:18:09.06] And what's interesting is we're a little bit less fluent in reading culture data.
[00:18:09.16 - 00:18:14.18] So most organizations have some sort of culture instrument or they outsource it to
[00:18:14.18 - 00:18:16.07] another organization.
[00:18:16.09 - 00:18:20.12] And this is great because it gives them sort of a baseline at different levels
[00:18:20.12 - 00:18:24.18] about what's going on, but that's sort of a big C baseline.
[00:18:24.18 - 00:18:28.03] I don't understand the daily interactions.
[00:18:28.03 - 00:18:32.16] that actually make that come to life, unless I have people gathering that data.
[00:18:32.16 - 00:18:36.19] And that data is usually not gonna show up in a report that comes across my desk as a
[00:18:36.19 - 00:18:40.13] leader, because that data is encoded in stories.
[00:18:40.13 - 00:18:46.03] So if you think back through sort of the evolution of the human species, long
[00:18:46.03 - 00:18:52.15] before we invented numbers, we actually had stories as literally the survival
[00:18:52.15 - 00:18:54.00] guide of the human species.
[00:18:54.00 - 00:18:55.15] I would tell a story.
[00:18:56.10 - 00:19:01.10] to a young member of my group to help them understand where to hunt, what is safe,
[00:19:01.10 - 00:19:04.16] what is not safe, what does it mean to be a part of our group?
[00:19:04.21 - 00:19:10.06] So there's this fabulous research that was conducted by a set of anthropologists,
[00:19:10.09 - 00:19:17.07] where they went into tribes in Southeast Asia, and they offered them a sack of
[00:19:17.07 - 00:19:18.06] rice.
[00:19:18.13 - 00:19:23.15] And the sack of rice was a fairly significant offering because it meant...
[00:19:23.15 - 00:19:28.00] basically the equivalent of a month's worth of food for people in this tribe.
[00:19:28.01 - 00:19:29.15] And all they did was ask them one question.
[00:19:29.15 - 00:19:36.01] They said, who else in the tribe would you want to share this rice with?
[00:19:36.15 - 00:19:38.15] And then they tracked where the rice got shared.
[00:19:38.15 - 00:19:42.21] So basically the people that were getting the rice, and this is not surprising, they
[00:19:42.21 - 00:19:45.15] would keep the majority of it for them and their family.
[00:19:45.18 - 00:19:48.22] But then they would share it with other members of the tribe, and then the
[00:19:48.22 - 00:19:52.03] researchers would go and give that portion to other members of the tribe.
[00:19:53.09 - 00:19:58.03] The people in the tribe that were most likely to get shares from other members of
[00:19:58.03 - 00:20:01.09] the tribe were the storytellers.
[00:20:01.13 - 00:20:06.13] So what that does is it shows that this physical resource that sustains human
[00:20:06.13 - 00:20:12.04] life, in this case, it's rice, is actually going to these individuals that provide a
[00:20:12.04 - 00:20:14.04] different resource for the rest of the group.
[00:20:14.04 - 00:20:18.12] It's something that isn't physical, and yet it still has this sustaining function
[00:20:18.12 - 00:20:22.18] because it tells the rest of the group, what is it?
[00:20:22.18 - 00:20:25.03] that we do to belong together?
[00:20:25.03 - 00:20:29.21] Or what are the patterns that we use in order to work together as a group?
[00:20:30.01 - 00:20:35.00] Now, here's the most fascinating part of this study, is that when they asked the
[00:20:35.00 - 00:20:40.10] storytellers what they would do with their rice, they were the ones that were most
[00:20:40.10 - 00:20:43.00] likely to redistribute it to everybody else.
[00:20:43.12 - 00:20:48.07] So the storytellers actually shared the resources with everybody else.
[00:20:48.07 - 00:20:51.18] And that meant that the more storytellers you had in a tribe,
[00:20:51.18 - 00:20:56.06] the more equally the rice was spread among the entire group.
[00:20:56.09 - 00:21:02.12] Now there's a key learning there then for managers, which is you need to be a story
[00:21:02.12 - 00:21:03.18] gatherer.
[00:21:03.21 - 00:21:08.09] So you understand the daily data that's leading people to have their best
[00:21:08.09 - 00:21:10.06] experiences with the culture.
[00:21:10.06 - 00:21:15.06] And then you need to be telling those stories to other people, both below you
[00:21:15.06 - 00:21:19.21] and above you, so that they understand what brings the culture to life.
[00:21:19.21 - 00:21:23.12] And when you do that, you're sharing this key cultural resource.
[00:21:23.12 - 00:21:28.01] This is the data that allows us to understand how we actually manage culture
[00:21:28.01 - 00:21:28.13] day to day.
[00:21:29.06 - 00:21:37.12] And stories, listening to the study you just recounted, to me sounds like
[00:21:37.12 - 00:21:44.15] inspiration, a higher purpose, a story that tells us about the world that we are
[00:21:44.15 - 00:21:50.04] part of and reaffirms that we're a very small part of this bigger world.
[00:21:50.04 - 00:21:54.22] So it's in a sense a driving purpose, which gives meaning.
[00:21:55.15 - 00:21:58.21] So how does a manager practically
[00:21:59.09 - 00:22:01.19] give meaning to their team through stories.
[00:22:01.19 - 00:22:07.19] Like if there was a manual, a short manual for managers who want to become story
[00:22:07.19 - 00:22:11.18] gatherers and storytellers, what would be in page one of that manual?
[00:22:12.12 - 00:22:20.00] So I think page one of the manual is to realize that culture is built on values.
[00:22:20.00 - 00:22:24.04] And by values, I don't just mean nice sounding words that we want to have on our
[00:22:24.04 - 00:22:25.03] walls.
[00:22:25.10 - 00:22:31.06] I mean values are patterns of human engagement that are meant to foster
[00:22:31.06 - 00:22:32.06] success.
[00:22:32.06 - 00:22:37.03] So when I espouse loyalty as a value, I'm not just saying that's a nice sounding
[00:22:37.03 - 00:22:39.13] word and it's something that we aspire to.
[00:22:39.13 - 00:22:41.12] I'm actually saying we're going to interact.
[00:22:41.12 - 00:22:44.12] in a particular way that brings loyalty to life.
[00:22:44.12 - 00:22:49.03] And there's some hope for positive outcome that we're trying to drive to from that
[00:22:49.03 - 00:22:49.13] value.
[00:22:49.13 - 00:22:56.06] And those outcomes can be financial things like ROI or EBITDA, but they can also be
[00:22:56.06 - 00:23:03.13] more subjective things like employee satisfaction or sense of inclusion or some
[00:23:03.13 - 00:23:05.01] sort of triple bottom line measure.
[00:23:05.01 - 00:23:07.09] It can be any number of things.
[00:23:07.12 - 00:23:08.18] The reason why
[00:23:09.09 - 00:23:12.19] values are important and understanding that values are the building blocks of
[00:23:12.19 - 00:23:17.15] culture is important is because when we understand that values are patterns of
[00:23:17.15 - 00:23:20.21] human engagement that are meant to foster success, we realize that values always
[00:23:20.21 - 00:23:23.09] have a positive bias to them.
[00:23:23.09 - 00:23:30.01] Organizations never espouse a value that is negative like we aim to be the most
[00:23:30.01 - 00:23:32.07] lazy company in the world.
[00:23:32.22 - 00:23:34.10] Nobody's going to want to be a part of that.
[00:23:34.10 - 00:23:37.05] Well, I mean, some people might want to become a part of that organization
[00:23:37.05 - 00:23:39.10] but nobody is going to want to invest in that company.
[00:23:39.16 - 00:23:47.21] Um, so because values always have this positive bias to them, we see values in
[00:23:47.21 - 00:23:54.00] action by asking for stories where people experience the positive moments at work.
[00:23:54.06 - 00:23:58.03] So one of the keys then is if we're going to be good storytellers and good story
[00:23:58.03 - 00:24:02.19] gatherers as leaders, we need to ask for specific stories that point to the values.
[00:24:02.19 - 00:24:08.21] And the easiest one to ask for is tell me about a moment when you were at your best.
[00:24:09.19 - 00:24:15.09] And if every leader just started with that one behavior, you would see a dramatic
[00:24:15.09 - 00:24:19.18] difference in how organizations operate around the world.
[00:24:19.18 - 00:24:25.09] And notice, as I said earlier, that sort of behavior is non-controversial.
[00:24:25.13 - 00:24:31.10] No senior leader is going to get mad at middle managers because, Hey, I heard that
[00:24:31.10 - 00:24:34.12] you're asking people about, you know, when are they at their best in their
[00:24:34.12 - 00:24:35.03] organization?
[00:24:35.03 - 00:24:35.21] Stop doing that.
[00:24:35.21 - 00:24:38.01] We don't want people to be at their best here.
[00:24:38.09 - 00:24:39.12] nobody's going to say that.
[00:24:39.12 - 00:24:42.00] So what's great about it is it's completely scalable.
[00:24:42.00 - 00:24:43.10] Anybody can do it.
[00:24:43.13 - 00:24:50.00] And what's important is when I gather a story like that, I know the story as the
[00:24:50.00 - 00:24:54.16] leader, but the employee that shared it with me knows that I know the story as
[00:24:54.16 - 00:24:55.06] well.
[00:24:55.06 - 00:24:57.07] And they know that I'm gathering those stories.
[00:24:57.07 - 00:25:02.10] So now I've sort of authorized them to share that story with others.
[00:25:02.18 - 00:25:07.12] And now it creates this sense of expectation and shared understanding
[00:25:07.12 - 00:25:08.07] around
[00:25:09.00 - 00:25:11.09] What does it mean when we're talking about culture?
[00:25:11.12 - 00:25:17.09] So when you think about how do you make leaders good storytellers, and this is
[00:25:17.09 - 00:25:20.18] something, this is one of those skills that more and more organizations are
[00:25:20.18 - 00:25:25.12] spending millions of dollars on trainings for their leaders to help them become
[00:25:25.12 - 00:25:30.18] better storytellers because they realize this is a skill that we need in the same
[00:25:30.18 - 00:25:33.16] way that we need leaders that can read financial statements.
[00:25:34.22 - 00:25:38.15] I can give you any number of tactics and certainly I've looked at the research on
[00:25:38.15 - 00:25:43.21] what is the most effective structure of stories, how do you write those stories.
[00:25:43.21 - 00:25:47.03] Clearly as somebody that studied poetry, like this is something that I'm extremely
[00:25:47.03 - 00:25:52.03] interested in just individually, but the best stories are the ones that are the
[00:25:52.03 - 00:25:53.03] most authentic.
[00:25:53.03 - 00:25:58.12] And so if I'm able to actually say, here's a story about Andreas and his most
[00:25:58.12 - 00:26:01.16] meaningful experience and Andreas is actually in the room and he's nodding his
[00:26:01.16 - 00:26:04.03] head and everybody knows that's real.
[00:26:04.03 - 00:26:08.03] and I'm explaining a value coming to life, like that's the golden moment for me as a
[00:26:08.03 - 00:26:08.13] leader.
[00:26:08.13 - 00:26:12.10] It's not me sort of trying to craft a perfect story and using an exact
[00:26:12.10 - 00:26:13.09] structure.
[00:26:13.09 - 00:26:17.09] That can help people, but if the underlying story isn't true and it didn't
[00:26:17.09 - 00:26:20.22] really happen in the organization, it's not gonna inspire people.
[00:26:20.22 - 00:26:26.03] And so this is why, you know, leaders need to be gathering these stories on a daily,
[00:26:26.03 - 00:26:27.12] weekly basis.
[00:26:27.21 - 00:26:31.04] because that gives them sort of this constant flow of, oh, have you heard
[00:26:31.04 - 00:26:32.01] what's going on here?
[00:26:32.01 - 00:26:34.06] Do you know about this great idea here?
[00:26:34.07 - 00:26:38.12] And they're energized, the people around them are energized in sharing them, and it
[00:26:38.12 - 00:26:40.09] just begins to take on a life of its own.
[00:26:41.00 - 00:26:47.04] So what I hear you say is that the unit of culture should not be values which are
[00:26:47.04 - 00:26:55.07] abstract or behaviors which are maybe impersonal, but stories which are
[00:26:55.07 - 00:27:01.00] personal, they are relatable and they are every day, they happen every day.
[00:27:01.18 - 00:27:07.13] And managers should gather these stories from individuals in their team or anywhere
[00:27:07.13 - 00:27:11.07] in the organization, or their own. And recount them
[00:27:11.07 - 00:27:17.04] as affirmation of what the culture is and how it's lived, which I find really
[00:27:17.04 - 00:27:18.01] powerful.
[00:27:18.09 - 00:27:19.09] Exactly.
[00:27:20.03 - 00:27:26.18] And Spencer, before we move on, there's this game I like to play with guests,
[00:27:26.21 - 00:27:28.15] which we talked about this.
[00:27:28.15 - 00:27:35.07] So I think you already have in mind two truths and one lie, in no particular order,
[00:27:35.07 - 00:27:38.00] just so we can get to know you a little better.
[00:27:38.13 - 00:27:41.15] So we're all ears.
[00:27:41.21 - 00:27:42.12] here we go.
[00:27:42.12 - 00:27:45.19] So this will just sort of give you a sense of who I am.
[00:27:45.19 - 00:27:50.15] Here are my two truths and a lie.
[00:27:50.15 - 00:27:56.04] Number one, I broke my jaw on April Fool's Day and the neighbor we asked for help
[00:27:56.04 - 00:27:57.06] thought it was a prank.
[00:28:00.12 - 00:28:02.12] That must have been a painful prank.
[00:28:03.09 - 00:28:06.21] Number two, I own a pet iguana.
[00:28:07.09 - 00:28:11.03] And number three, my favorite poet is Pablo Neruda.
[00:28:13.22 - 00:28:15.01] That’s a tough one.
[00:28:16.00 - 00:28:18.13] There could be a lot of false positives there.
[00:28:18.13 - 00:28:20.10] All right, let's leave it to the end.
[00:28:22.18 - 00:28:24.12] So, moving on.
[00:28:25.13 - 00:28:32.09] You also talk about culture needs to meet strategy, not just for breakfast but also
[00:28:32.09 - 00:28:35.06] lunch, dinner and the after party.
[00:28:35.06 - 00:28:36.00] What does that mean?
[00:28:36.06 - 00:28:40.00] Well, the most common quote when people are talking about culture is that culture
[00:28:40.00 - 00:28:41.13] eats strategy for breakfast.
[00:28:41.13 - 00:28:45.21] And what I was trying to do there was be a little bit cheeky and turn that quote on
[00:28:45.21 - 00:28:50.12] its head and say, well, how could culture meet strategy for breakfast?
[00:28:50.12 - 00:28:53.06] And then as I was sort of building it out, I thought, you know, you don't, you don't
[00:28:53.06 - 00:28:57.16] just want to have the meal in the morning, you want to have culture sort of be the
[00:28:57.16 - 00:29:00.09] entire part of the organization.
[00:29:00.09 - 00:29:03.01] So then it was, and lunch and dinner.
[00:29:03.06 - 00:29:05.00] And then because.
[00:29:05.06 - 00:29:10.03] you want to have celebrations for success, it should be at the after party as well.
[00:29:10.03 - 00:29:14.06] So, very often I'll introduce the culture eats strategy for breakfast quote.
[00:29:14.15 - 00:29:17.15] And what's funny about that quote, and I'll leave it to listeners to do this on
[00:29:17.15 - 00:29:23.13] their own, but it's really interesting to go Google who actually said that quote
[00:29:23.13 - 00:29:25.22] because it's been misattributed a lot.
[00:29:25.22 - 00:29:30.00] And it has this, it's one of those quotes as this winding history where everybody
[00:29:30.00 - 00:29:33.04] thinks one person said it, but it actually comes from.
[00:29:33.15 - 00:29:35.09] a more obscure source.
[00:29:36.07 - 00:29:42.04] But it was sort of taking that quote and saying, when that quote is real, when
[00:29:42.04 - 00:29:48.09] culture eats strategy for breakfast, it's usually because the organization has made
[00:29:48.09 - 00:29:49.21] a dire mistake.
[00:29:49.22 - 00:29:54.09] It's usually because we committed to an acquisition, and all of a sudden we
[00:29:54.09 - 00:29:57.19] realize this is not going to work.
[00:29:58.07 - 00:30:02.07] Our culture doesn't mix with their culture, or we've committed to a new.
[00:30:02.09 - 00:30:08.03] strategic direction and we brought in consultants and they gave us some advice
[00:30:08.12 - 00:30:12.13] and we've announced it to everybody and we've announced it to our shareholders and
[00:30:12.13 - 00:30:17.00] so we have to go in this direction and yet we realized none of our people actually
[00:30:17.00 - 00:30:18.01] want to go in that direction.
[00:30:18.01 - 00:30:22.04] It looked great on a spreadsheet but it doesn't look good in action.
[00:30:22.09 - 00:30:26.18] And so usually I'll say, you know, who said this and down below the quote it will
[00:30:26.18 - 00:30:29.18] say somebody at a low-performing company.
[00:30:29.18 - 00:30:30.12] And then
[00:30:30.12 - 00:30:34.19] I'll show the other quote, how can we make culture meet strategy for breakfast,
[00:30:34.19 - 00:30:37.00] lunch, dinner, and the after party?
[00:30:37.00 - 00:30:41.15] And it will say somebody at a high performing company because that person is
[00:30:41.15 - 00:30:44.03] not thinking about strategy, absent culture.
[00:30:44.03 - 00:30:48.09] They're not making these huge organizational decisions without thinking.
[00:30:48.09 - 00:30:55.10] What is the shared values about the way that we work that allow us to do what it
[00:30:55.10 - 00:30:56.15] is we're doing?
[00:30:57.03 - 00:30:59.12] And, you know, that's where strategic leaders.
[00:30:59.12 - 00:31:05.06] get into problems is that they can become seduced by a new strategy, whether it's
[00:31:05.06 - 00:31:07.18] one they come up with on their own or whether it's one they see one of their
[00:31:07.18 - 00:31:12.18] competitors enacting, without asking themselves, is that actually something
[00:31:12.18 - 00:31:14.18] that fits with our culture?
[00:31:14.18 - 00:31:18.15] And if the answer is no, that doesn't mean that you can't enact the strategy, but it
[00:31:18.15 - 00:31:21.15] means you need to be a lot more thoughtful about what your next step is.
[00:31:21.15 - 00:31:25.19] It can't just be announcing the strategy, or I can guarantee you that it's going to
[00:31:25.19 - 00:31:26.12] fail.
[00:31:26.15 - 00:31:28.09] This reminds me of this...
[00:31:31.18 - 00:31:38.16] the talk about work-life balance, which in recent times is more referred to as
[00:31:38.16 - 00:31:40.06] work-life integration.
[00:31:40.21 - 00:31:48.09] And so you could say the same applies to culture strategy balance, how much we
[00:31:48.09 - 00:31:54.03] consider strategy versus culture, into one of culture strategy integration, where the
[00:31:54.03 - 00:31:57.02] two need to consider each other.
[00:31:57.02 - 00:32:00.06] culture needs to consider where the company is going and what
[00:32:00.06 - 00:32:03.06] types of clients it works with in one environment and so on.
[00:32:03.15 - 00:32:09.21] And strategy needs to consider what is the small C culture, to use your analogy, in
[00:32:09.21 - 00:32:13.06] order to be essentially executable.
[00:32:13.06 - 00:32:15.07] Otherwise, it will just be on paper.
[00:32:15.10 - 00:32:16.09] Exactly.
[00:32:16.10 - 00:32:25.19] I think what is really comforting about strategy is it can be numerical.
[00:32:26.00 - 00:32:31.04] And as a result, it provides this veneer of this is objective, this is achievable,
[00:32:31.04 - 00:32:32.15] we can do this.
[00:32:33.06 - 00:32:36.01] And I love strategy making.
[00:32:36.01 - 00:32:37.21] I think it's extremely creative.
[00:32:37.21 - 00:32:38.21] It's a lot of fun.
[00:32:38.21 - 00:32:43.21] So I'm not degenerating strategy making.
[00:32:43.21 - 00:32:50.19] But when it's done in the absence of strong information about the culture, then
[00:32:50.19 - 00:32:54.04] it's basically an exercise in fantasy.
[00:32:54.09 - 00:32:57.21] As much as those numbers make it seem real, those numbers are completely
[00:32:57.21 - 00:33:02.18] meaningless if you don't actually have a sense of culturally, what will this
[00:33:02.18 - 00:33:07.13] translate to in people's behaviors and the stories that they're gonna be telling and
[00:33:07.13 - 00:33:09.22] the stories that I'm gonna be gathering now as a leader.
[00:33:09.22 - 00:33:13.16] And so if that story gathering and storytelling hasn't happened,
[00:33:13.18 - 00:33:18.12] before executives go on a strategic retreat and articulate what they're gonna
[00:33:18.12 - 00:33:22.21] do for the next five years, it's almost guaranteed that the next six months after
[00:33:22.21 - 00:33:26.03] they come back and they launch that strategy, there's gonna be a lot of
[00:33:26.03 - 00:33:31.19] heartburn, a lot of rewriting the strategy because that's the moment that, you know,
[00:33:32.03 - 00:33:37.09] that plan is going to come face to face with reality and it's going to be proven
[00:33:37.09 - 00:33:38.15] that it doesn't fit.
[00:33:40.01 - 00:33:46.12] Moving forward, Spencer, what are some of the topics or projects you would really
[00:33:46.12 - 00:33:48.22] love to sink your teeth in?
[00:33:49.06 - 00:33:54.10] Like what projects in the next couple of years do you think are really worth
[00:33:54.13 - 00:33:55.06] exploring?
[00:33:56.21 - 00:34:07.10] So I think one of the sort of golden keys to organizational performance and the
[00:34:07.10 - 00:34:11.09] first companies that figure this out, I think, are going to have a massive
[00:34:11.09 - 00:34:18.19] advantage in terms of talent, much the same way you saw companies like Google had
[00:34:19.04 - 00:34:26.15] 20 years ago, is figuring out, how can I create a culture
[00:34:27.04 - 00:34:32.07] that allows people to be at their best at work while saving enough of their energy
[00:34:32.07 - 00:34:35.03] so that they can be at their best in their life.
[00:34:35.03 - 00:34:42.15] So you can either see this as sort of a sad reality of life or you can see it as
[00:34:42.15 - 00:34:47.15] something really powerful about how we choose to spend our time.
[00:34:47.15 - 00:34:53.00] But the reality is, is that the average working, or the average working adult will
[00:34:53.00 - 00:34:57.00] spend the majority of their life at work than in any other activity.
[00:34:57.18 - 00:35:03.07] And so if we aren't finding meaning from the work that we're doing, and if that
[00:35:03.07 - 00:35:09.15] work is not preserving enough of our human energy so that we can provide meaningful
[00:35:09.19 - 00:35:14.09] input in the other avenues of our life, then we're really missing out on something
[00:35:14.09 - 00:35:16.09] collectively as human beings.
[00:35:16.12 - 00:35:20.00] So organizations that are able to figure that out and whether that's a four day
[00:35:20.00 - 00:35:25.07] work week or whether that's, you know, more frequent sabbaticals,
[00:35:25.07 - 00:35:29.13] I think that there are going to be organizations that realize that working 40
[00:35:29.13 - 00:35:34.16] hours a week is actually not in their best interest or their employees' best
[00:35:34.16 - 00:35:39.12] interest, and there's better ways of making this all happen.
[00:35:39.18 - 00:35:44.15] And right now, we're just so focused on, this is how we've always done things that
[00:35:44.15 - 00:35:45.21] we haven't really changed it.
[00:35:45.21 - 00:35:50.07] But I think that the organization that figures out that balance between, I can
[00:35:50.07 - 00:35:52.09] allow you to be at your best here at work.
[00:35:52.18 - 00:35:56.22] and then that preserves enough energy for you to be at your best at home and in
[00:35:56.22 - 00:36:01.13] other areas of your life, everybody's going to want to work for those companies
[00:36:01.13 - 00:36:02.12] that can figure that out.
[00:36:02.22 - 00:36:07.22] Do you think it's a question of structure like in the Holacracy movement or the
[00:36:07.22 - 00:36:09.21] self-management movement?
[00:36:10.09 - 00:36:12.22] Or is it softer, more to do with behavior?
[00:36:13.00 - 00:36:17.01] I think that there's an opportunity for it to be a mixture of both.
[00:36:17.01 - 00:36:23.18] I think the research that's being done on holocracies and even if you think about
[00:36:23.18 - 00:36:30.04] research that was done before that on transparent accounting or employee-owned
[00:36:30.04 - 00:36:35.00] organizations where there was this idea of how can we push power down in the
[00:36:35.00 - 00:36:40.13] organization, those are really fascinating experiments in human behavior.
[00:36:41.06 - 00:36:43.15] There's a reason why they haven't been adopted more broadly.
[00:36:43.15 - 00:36:47.06] And I don't mean that in a critical way in terms of criticizing the structure.
[00:36:47.06 - 00:36:54.10] I think it's more of a critique of, do we give ourselves the audacity to make bigger
[00:36:54.10 - 00:36:58.00] leaps in structure and systems?
[00:36:58.00 - 00:37:02.00] And so again, I think that that's where organizations are able to figure out what
[00:37:02.00 - 00:37:09.15] is the right balance between a system that enables people to live their lives, both
[00:37:09.15 - 00:37:11.10] at work and outside of work.
[00:37:11.15 - 00:37:16.09] and the behaviors that align with that system that bring it to life in a
[00:37:16.09 - 00:37:17.16] meaningful way.
[00:37:17.18 - 00:37:21.09] And the organizations that get that balance between the two right, I think,
[00:37:21.09 - 00:37:22.18] are just gonna be so far ahead.
[00:37:22.18 - 00:37:27.21] And one of the reasons why I've become convinced of that really came out of the
[00:37:27.21 - 00:37:29.00] pandemic.
[00:37:29.06 - 00:37:34.18] So for somebody like me that studies organizations, and this is sort of a
[00:37:34.18 - 00:37:39.13] horrible thing to say, but it's brought a lot of attention to work that I'm doing
[00:37:39.13 - 00:37:40.15] and it's...
[00:37:41.00 - 00:37:43.22] provided me a lot of business because organizations are coming to me and they're
[00:37:43.22 - 00:37:47.22] saying, hey, after the pandemic, we're really concerned about what's happened to
[00:37:47.22 - 00:37:49.01] our organizational culture.
[00:37:49.01 - 00:37:50.04] Can you help?
[00:37:50.21 - 00:37:56.10] So what that means is, is that a lot of organizations were just operating their
[00:37:56.10 - 00:38:01.03] culture on autopilot, and then this crisis happens, and most people are working
[00:38:01.03 - 00:38:05.07] virtually and they realize, oh, what is actually holding us together?
[00:38:05.07 - 00:38:07.00] Do we have any
[00:38:07.00 - 00:38:12.12] shared patterns for what it means to jump on a Zoom call in our organization, and do we,
[00:38:12.12 - 00:38:15.15] you know, ritualize that in a way that brings our values to life?
[00:38:15.15 - 00:38:19.06] Are we doing things if we're working remotely that make these values come
[00:38:19.06 - 00:38:20.07] alive?
[00:38:20.13 - 00:38:27.15] So there is this need for organizations to really figure out how to make this work
[00:38:27.15 - 00:38:34.13] because people are coming out of that pandemic experience asking themselves, is
[00:38:34.13 - 00:38:36.12] this what I want from my life?
[00:38:36.12 - 00:38:38.15] is this trade-off worth it?
[00:38:38.18 - 00:38:47.06] And you see this whole phenomenon around quiet quitting and purposeful unemployment
[00:38:47.06 - 00:38:52.12] where people are just choosing not to go back to work because people are sort of
[00:38:52.12 - 00:38:55.09] looking at their options and they're saying, no, this is actually not what I
[00:38:55.09 - 00:38:56.03] want in my life.
[00:38:56.03 - 00:39:00.06] I want something that's more meaningful, whether that means I'm traveling more or
[00:39:00.06 - 00:39:04.13] spending more time with my children or I'm more engaged in a hobby.
[00:39:04.21 - 00:39:05.12] And...
[00:39:05.21 - 00:39:08.18] organizations that are able to adapt to that reality are going to have an
[00:39:08.18 - 00:39:13.13] advantage because they're going to get the most creative, intelligent people.
[00:39:15.00 - 00:39:24.18] Do you think this maybe it's now become almost a common saying, which is we need
[00:39:24.18 - 00:39:30.09] to be in the office to maintain our culture by the companies that want to go
[00:39:30.09 - 00:39:34.15] back or have gone back to fully in-person working.
[00:39:34.15 - 00:39:36.00] Do you think it's a...
[00:39:36.09 - 00:39:42.13] It's a myth or is it a necessity to be in the office and to maintain culture?
[00:39:42.16 - 00:39:48.15] I think that there is some truth to needing to be in the office to maintain
[00:39:48.15 - 00:39:49.03] culture.
[00:39:49.03 - 00:39:50.16] And this is why.
[00:39:51.01 - 00:39:56.16] Because throughout human history, and I'm thinking, you know, if you go all the way
[00:39:56.16 - 00:40:04.00] back to, you know, pre-history, human beings figured out how to work together by
[00:40:04.00 - 00:40:05.01] working together.
[00:40:05.01 - 00:40:11.13] And so we are used to seeing culture in the words that we say, in the tone of
[00:40:11.13 - 00:40:12.09] voice.
[00:40:12.09 - 00:40:16.15] through our body language, by watching what other people do.
[00:40:16.15 - 00:40:21.13] So for example, some of my early research looked at how people are onboarded into
[00:40:21.13 - 00:40:23.00] organizations.
[00:40:23.01 - 00:40:29.00] And if you look at that broader research, you find that certainly one of the key
[00:40:29.00 - 00:40:35.04] ways that people learn is they have mentors, they have trainings, they ask
[00:40:35.04 - 00:40:36.15] questions.
[00:40:36.15 - 00:40:40.00] So, you know, those are all things where
[00:40:40.00 - 00:40:43.21] they might be hearing things and you could get that online.
[00:40:43.21 - 00:40:48.07] But notice that like mentorship is not just hearing something, it's watching how
[00:40:48.07 - 00:40:53.06] that person moves through the office and who do they talk to and how often do they
[00:40:53.06 - 00:40:57.18] stop and interrupt what they were doing to help somebody else do something.
[00:40:57.21 - 00:41:01.16] And the same thing with the training, like I'm there in a room with other people, I'm
[00:41:01.16 - 00:41:05.19] meeting them, my network is growing at the same time, I'm learning content.
[00:41:06.03 - 00:41:06.19] So.
[00:41:07.21 - 00:41:11.03] What I was getting to is that a lot of these studies actually show that learning
[00:41:11.03 - 00:41:15.03] is not just about hearing and being given written materials.
[00:41:15.03 - 00:41:19.21] It's also about observing what other people are doing, what are sort of the
[00:41:19.21 - 00:41:24.00] unwritten rules, how are people behaving, these values.
[00:41:24.00 - 00:41:30.03] And so, if you're working virtually, you lose basically one of the main senses that
[00:41:30.03 - 00:41:33.21] we as humans use to navigate our lives, which is like watching what other people
[00:41:33.21 - 00:41:34.07] are doing.
[00:41:34.07 - 00:41:35.09] We can't really do that.
[00:41:35.09 - 00:41:36.15] And if you think about
[00:41:36.15 - 00:41:41.21] some of the really poor habits that people have on Zoom, either they show up and they
[00:41:41.21 - 00:41:45.07] immediately turn off their camera, and so now you can't see any visual information
[00:41:45.07 - 00:41:48.21] about them, or they show up and their camera's on, but their eyes are down and
[00:41:48.21 - 00:41:52.10] their hands are, and you get the sense very quickly, they're not even looking at
[00:41:52.10 - 00:41:57.09] the camera, they're busy responding to other emails, then that means that all the
[00:41:57.09 - 00:42:00.10] cultural information I might be getting from that interaction is severely
[00:42:00.10 - 00:42:01.15] compromised.
[00:42:01.15 - 00:42:06.03] So I think that there is something about bringing people together.
[00:42:06.09 - 00:42:10.00] I think the thing that organizations need to be thoughtful about is, what is the
[00:42:10.00 - 00:42:11.16] right cadence?
[00:42:11.18 - 00:42:14.01] What is the right intensity of that?
[00:42:14.01 - 00:42:19.21] And again, I don't think that the answer is, it requires 40 hours per week to get
[00:42:19.21 - 00:42:25.15] the culture right because certainly religions have been able to sustain
[00:42:25.15 - 00:42:33.15] themselves for millennia and the often ritual pattern there is once a week.
[00:42:33.22 - 00:42:38.16] for like a very small slice of your time to sort of rededicate yourself to that
[00:42:38.16 - 00:42:41.16] community and to each other and to a set of practices.
[00:42:41.18 - 00:42:45.22] And I'm not suggesting that organizations need to go down to one hour per week, but
[00:42:45.22 - 00:42:47.18] I mean, that could be sort of a radical experiment.
[00:42:47.18 - 00:42:51.07] Imagine an entrepreneur that says, we're gonna build this organization, we're gonna
[00:42:51.07 - 00:42:55.18] pay each of our employees to do one hour of work per week, but that's gonna be the
[00:42:55.18 - 00:42:59.09] most fun, meaningful hour of their lives that week.
[00:42:59.12 - 00:43:03.15] Like I think a lot of people would sign up for that experience because I can keep my
[00:43:03.15 - 00:43:07.12] other job and I can work for this company for one hour a week and they're going to
[00:43:07.12 - 00:43:12.06] pay me nicely for that hour, but I'm going to create this like really fun, engaging
[00:43:12.06 - 00:43:13.07] way of working with each other.
[00:43:13.07 - 00:43:16.15] I mean, you and I should just stop the podcast right now and let's go found that
[00:43:16.15 - 00:43:17.04] company.
[00:43:17.04 - 00:43:20.22] And you know, like if that sounds good, just saying it out loud.
[00:43:21.12 - 00:43:22.07] So yeah.
[00:43:22.18 - 00:43:24.06] Yeah, it's very radical.
[00:43:24.19 - 00:43:26.15] I wonder what that company would do.
[00:43:28.01 - 00:43:33.07] But yeah, it's a great thought experiment to think about building companies' culture
[00:43:33.07 - 00:43:34.03] first.
[00:43:36.12 - 00:43:44.06] With the purpose of having people fulfilled.
[00:43:46.06 - 00:43:50.03] Before you talk about how does the company achieve a purpose and what should the
[00:43:50.03 - 00:43:51.15] purpose of the company be?
[00:43:53.00 - 00:43:56.13] outside that fulfillment.
[00:43:56.13 - 00:44:04.18] Spencer, as we come to wrap the podcast, if you were to whisper to the ear of a
[00:44:04.18 - 00:44:10.03] leader who's not intentional about their culture, what would you tell them?
[00:44:10.12 - 00:44:13.21] What do you think we need to rethink about culture?
[00:44:15.09 - 00:44:21.15] I would say that the best organizations will win the battle for talent by creating
[00:44:21.15 - 00:44:24.10] cultures that allow people to be their best more frequently.
[00:44:24.22 - 00:44:29.12] And so what that means for you as a leader is you need to start gathering stories to
[00:44:29.12 - 00:44:31.06] understand when your people are at your best.
[00:44:31.07 - 00:44:37.22] And if you were to create an organization with the hope that it would be someone's
[00:44:37.22 - 00:44:40.22] best job ever, where would you start?
[00:44:40.22 - 00:44:43.15] Well, I think that some organizations do start that way.
[00:44:43.15 - 00:44:47.04] You know, so the founding story of a company like Hewlett Packard is the idea
[00:44:47.04 - 00:44:51.00] that here's these two engineers and they just sort of say, Hey, we like working
[00:44:51.00 - 00:44:53.00] with each other, let's build things together.
[00:44:53.00 - 00:44:54.18] And it, and it starts there.
[00:44:55.09 - 00:44:58.15] The question is like, how much of that is scalable?
[00:44:58.15 - 00:45:04.19] Does everybody show up to the organization with that same sense of like meaning and
[00:45:04.19 - 00:45:09.22] energy, and you don't know that if you're not gathering those stories.
[00:45:09.22 - 00:45:10.15] So.
[00:45:11.19 - 00:45:19.03] I think for me, that's sort of like the crux is thinking at the start, what is it
[00:45:19.03 - 00:45:21.04] that allows us to be at our best?
[00:45:21.21 - 00:45:26.10] And then inevitably as organizations begin to scale, like the focus on that sort of
[00:45:26.10 - 00:45:29.19] shifts to how do we win in the market?
[00:45:29.19 - 00:45:32.21] How do we get our financials right?
[00:45:32.21 - 00:45:35.04] How do we grow past this stage?
[00:45:35.04 - 00:45:38.21] So there are a lot of other distractions that can sort of take your eye off of
[00:45:38.21 - 00:45:41.12] that and what happens then is we sort of let
[00:45:41.12 - 00:45:46.21] culture grow almost unchecked because we just assume, because I know everybody here
[00:45:46.21 - 00:45:51.00] and I've hired everybody here, I have a good sense of what the culture is.
[00:45:51.09 - 00:45:54.04] But really quickly organizations get to the size where there are a hundred
[00:45:54.04 - 00:45:58.01] employees, there are 200 employees, and suddenly organizational leaders wake up
[00:45:58.01 - 00:46:02.00] and they realize, oh, I don't actually know everybody and I'm not even sure that
[00:46:02.00 - 00:46:04.09] the culture is what I think it is anymore.
[00:46:04.09 - 00:46:06.10] And at that point we've sort of lost the thread.
[00:46:06.10 - 00:46:10.19] So I think that, again, the thing that I would whisper to leaders is,
[00:46:11.04 - 00:46:14.12] The best organizations will win the battle for talent by creating cultures that allow
[00:46:14.12 - 00:46:17.03] people to be their best more frequently.
[00:46:17.06 - 00:46:23.03] And that means one of your practices as a leader needs to be gathering stories that
[00:46:23.03 - 00:46:26.12] tell you when your people are at their best.
[00:46:27.15 - 00:46:34.13] And using your paradigm about big C and small C, if you have an unintentional or a
[00:46:34.13 - 00:46:42.18] default culture of a fast growing company, you could have the small C eat the big C
[00:46:42.22 - 00:46:46.01] for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and the after party.
[00:46:46.12 - 00:46:47.06] Exactly.
[00:46:47.06 - 00:46:50.21] And I think that there's a lot of organizations where that happens.
[00:46:50.21 - 00:46:54.21] And sometimes they are sort of naively intentional about it.
[00:46:54.21 - 00:46:58.09] So they'll just say, hey, let that division do what's best for them.
[00:46:58.09 - 00:47:02.00] Let this country or region do what's best for them.
[00:47:02.00 - 00:47:05.22] And then all of a sudden, they start to think about pulling off some larger
[00:47:05.22 - 00:47:09.15] strategic initiative and they realize none of these parts of the company can even
[00:47:09.15 - 00:47:11.12] have a conversation with each other.
[00:47:11.18 - 00:47:17.12] So if you allow small C cultures to sort of grow unchecked without any sort of
[00:47:17.12 - 00:47:21.00] connection between with the big C culture, then you'll just have a set of
[00:47:21.00 - 00:47:23.18] subcultures that are going to be at war with each other.
[00:47:23.19 - 00:47:27.19] If you focus too much on a big C culture without having any small C cultural
[00:47:27.19 - 00:47:32.13] experimentation, then you'll have people that are so focused on protecting
[00:47:32.13 - 00:47:35.21] alignment with the big C culture that they're completely unable to change as
[00:47:35.21 - 00:47:36.15] well.
[00:47:36.15 - 00:47:40.04] So you need to have this middle ground where we have an understanding of what the
[00:47:40.04 - 00:47:41.15] big C culture is.
[00:47:41.15 - 00:47:45.12] And we're enabling some level of experimentation with the small C that
[00:47:45.12 - 00:47:46.13] brings that to life.
[00:47:46.13 - 00:47:49.06] And there's sort of a constant flow between the two.
[00:47:49.06 - 00:47:54.01] So you can almost think about it visually as sort of a tree and the relationship
[00:47:54.01 - 00:47:56.18] between the canopy and the leaves and the roots.
[00:47:56.18 - 00:48:00.09] So if the big C culture is the roots, like this is what we're growing from,
[00:48:00.09 - 00:48:04.13] those roots will die if they're not getting light and energy from the leaves
[00:48:04.13 - 00:48:05.15] up above.
[00:48:05.15 - 00:48:09.01] And those leaves are gonna grow in sort of different ways, depending on what part of
[00:48:09.01 - 00:48:12.03] the tree they're in and what part of the sun they face.
[00:48:12.03 - 00:48:14.00] And so that is a living system.
[00:48:14.00 - 00:48:16.12] And we need to be thinking about culture is that same sort of way.
[00:48:16.12 - 00:48:21.03] And I think that the nice thing about using those sorts of metaphors like a tree
[00:48:21.04 - 00:48:26.09] is that it requires that same sort of care and nurturing from a leader.
[00:48:26.09 - 00:48:29.07] I can't think about the culture from an engineering perspective.
[00:48:29.07 - 00:48:30.19] Like I put it in place.
[00:48:30.19 - 00:48:34.12] and then it runs and it just works like a bridge and people just cross that bridge
[00:48:34.12 - 00:48:38.01] and I have the tolerances built in and that bridge is going to work.
[00:48:38.01 - 00:48:41.09] I have to think about it as something that's growing because it is.
[00:48:41.09 - 00:48:48.06] If the organization and the culture isn't constantly reinvesting in itself and
[00:48:48.06 - 00:48:52.18] experimenting with what works, there will come a moment as there is for every
[00:48:52.18 - 00:48:56.13] organization where there's a disruption in the environment that's going to cause the
[00:48:56.13 - 00:49:00.03] organization to shift and cultures that are agile.
[00:49:00.03 - 00:49:01.03] we'll be able to do that.
[00:49:01.03 - 00:49:07.04] And there's actually sort of recent study that's brilliant by some of my colleagues
[00:49:07.04 - 00:49:11.06] at the University of Berkeley, California, where they looked at exactly this and they
[00:49:11.06 - 00:49:16.15] showed in recent market downturns, the organizations that were best able to
[00:49:16.15 - 00:49:21.06] perform during those downturns were organizations that had as one of their
[00:49:21.06 - 00:49:23.18] values, change.
[00:49:24.03 - 00:49:29.00] So if change is sort of part of who we are, then when something dramatic happens,
[00:49:29.00 - 00:49:34.06] we're actually able to be agile and to shift to meet what's going on with that
[00:49:34.06 - 00:49:35.01] change.
[00:49:35.03 - 00:49:38.09] and even be anti-fragile, if you can.
[00:49:39.15 - 00:49:44.07] The metaphor is brilliant, Spencer, and you could even look for pictures of
[00:49:44.07 - 00:49:49.21] malformed trees to make your point, because I think then it will be really
[00:49:49.21 - 00:49:50.15] graphical.
[00:49:50.15 - 00:49:53.00] I think it's so intuitive.
[00:49:53.15 - 00:49:54.21] So intuitive.
[00:49:55.18 - 00:50:03.00] So as we close, you told me about a broken jaw.
[00:50:03.21 - 00:50:13.03] iguana pets and Neruda being your favorite poet and I'm gonna guess I'm gonna guess
[00:50:13.03 - 00:50:20.13] that the broken jaw is true that Neruda is your favorite author and that you have a
[00:50:20.13 - 00:50:25.07] different pet which is also unusual but it's not an iguana that's my guess
[00:50:25.09 - 00:50:27.18] All right, so you are really good at this game.
[00:50:27.18 - 00:50:29.04] So you are right.
[00:50:30.15 - 00:50:34.16] So we actually do have an iguana, but the iguana is my son's pet.
[00:50:34.16 - 00:50:35.22] It's not my pet.
[00:50:37.15 - 00:50:39.10] So that was the nuance there.
[00:50:39.10 - 00:50:44.21] Yep, but I did have this like crazy accident where I broke my jaw and Neruda
[00:50:44.21 - 00:50:46.18] is my favorite poet.
[00:50:47.10 - 00:50:51.00] What's one quote from Neruda that you recall if at all?
[00:50:51.06 - 00:50:55.03] or what you like Neruda from Neruda.
[00:50:55.12 - 00:51:02.09] yeah, so Neruda has two books that I would actually recommend to executives.
[00:51:02.09 - 00:51:07.12] So one is the Book of Questions, which is just a series of questions that are sort
[00:51:07.12 - 00:51:10.21] of magical and allow you to appreciate the world in a different way.
[00:51:10.21 - 00:51:15.12] And I think question asking is one of these keys to developing a culture.
[00:51:15.12 - 00:51:19.19] And, you know, notice that, like, as a story gatherer, I said, what executives
[00:51:19.19 - 00:51:23.15] need to do is ask people, tell me about a moment when you were at your best.
[00:51:25.00 - 00:51:28.09] So that's sort of a brilliant book that I think is super applicable.
[00:51:28.09 - 00:51:33.18] The other one that I love is Odes to Common Things.
[00:51:34.03 - 00:51:41.03] And in this book, he'll write poems about sort of the beauty of an onion, the power
[00:51:41.03 - 00:51:42.22] of the word thank you.
[00:51:43.06 - 00:51:46.19] And one of my favorite odes there is Ode to My Socks.
[00:51:47.00 - 00:51:53.04] And he talks about how socks can be this sort of brilliant thing because
[00:51:53.06 - 00:51:56.18] you put them on and they're sort of beautiful and they make your feet look
[00:51:56.18 - 00:52:00.09] beautiful, but then they're also meant to be worn out as well.
[00:52:00.09 - 00:52:04.21] And it's that sort of like duality of this can be something that is extremely
[00:52:04.21 - 00:52:09.01] functional, but then I wear it out and I can have this gratitude for it.
[00:52:09.12 - 00:52:14.09] And that sort of dual meaning that you can capture from even common things I think is
[00:52:14.09 - 00:52:20.03] important as we try to look at life and just appreciate that in the.
[00:52:20.15 - 00:52:25.16] the mundane contours of our lives, there's still beauty and meaning, even in a pair
[00:52:25.16 - 00:52:26.15] of socks.
[00:52:26.21 - 00:52:32.03] beautiful and humbling and down to earth in a literal sense.
[00:52:33.13 - 00:52:35.06] So Spencer, it's been a pleasure.
[00:52:35.06 - 00:52:36.16] I learned a lot.
[00:52:37.16 - 00:52:40.15] I love your big C versus small C paradigm.
[00:52:40.15 - 00:52:49.15] I hope it really gets, you know, in the headlines of all management publications
[00:52:49.15 - 00:52:56.09] because it just highlights how the intended culture is.
[00:52:56.21 - 00:53:04.03] often so different to the ground truth and just brings the need for intentional
[00:53:04.03 - 00:53:07.06] culture to the forefront.
[00:53:08.03 - 00:53:12.01] So thank you for being with us, sharing your wisdom, sharing your research,
[00:53:12.01 - 00:53:13.21] sharing your life stories.
[00:53:15.13 - 00:53:23.09] And to everyone listening, thank you for being with us. If you like
[00:53:23.09 - 00:53:25.15] to not miss any future episodes.
[00:53:25.15 - 00:53:31.07] You know what to do, you hit subscribe, leave a comment so that future listeners
[00:53:31.07 - 00:53:33.06] will know what to look for.
[00:53:33.12 - 00:53:36.15] And as I like to say, keep leading.
[00:53:37.12 - 00:53:37.19] Wonderful.
[00:53:37.19 - 00:53:38.19] Thank you, Andreas.