E001: organisational Development

hi everyone. This is James here, and this is Jane. And welcome to the first ever the world of work podcast. Woo, woo. I feel like that deserves a woo

or a wow. Maybe that's a wow. That would be far more on brand. So every week, we're gonna have a chat with you guys. We're gonna release another episode, and in that episode, we're gonna talk about another factor around world of work. We're gonna talk about things around what it's like to be in an organization, what it's like to initiate and deliver change in an organization, how HR functions work, how change programs work, what it takes to succeed at work, and a range of things like that, broadly in the sort of HR world of workspace that's right, not only that, but throughout all of the podcasts, we're going to be sharing our own experiences and Journey, and both of us are on a continuing pilgrimage, if you will, to learn Thank you,

to learn more about how everyone can be influential in the workplace and make a better place to work people. Yeah, that's right. And in terms of, like, the people that we're hoping to help with this, to share knowledge with, I think it's really anyone involved in work. I mean, maybe it's people who are starting careers in HR, or people who are already involved in careers but don't really know much about the HR side of things, or maybe even like students looking to learn about work from maybe a sort of MBA type perspective, or other early stage entry, really. Yeah. And I think, I think the other, the other group of people that I would hope would like to listen would be new managers and members of bigger teams and also leaders of organizations. Because I think,

for me, increasingly, leadership teams and CEOs are recognizing that by creating a healthy world work where people are engaged and are happy and it's a productive workplace, they have better organizations? Yeah, it's a real win, win, isn't it? I mean, it's better for the people working there and it's better for the outcome of your organization, yeah. So hello to all of you, whichever group you fit into.

So what is our topic for today? James, what's our topic for today? Well, our topic for today, and our very first ever topic, is something that's quite close to my heart. It's organizational development

that sounds like a jargon buster moment. It is. It's a bit it's a bit jargony, but it's a funny thing. So what we'll do over the course of this episode is we'll tell you a little bit about what organizational development means. We'll tell you a little bit about the background of organizational development, some of its history. We'll tell you a little bit about how sort of organizational development programs that are delivered in organizations work, what good looks like for those, how to how to make sure that you've got one of those. And then we'll share a little bit from, I guess, some of our careers, speaking about how, how we've delivered organizational development, or where we've seen it in workplaces. But before we do that, should we say a little bit about who we are and where we're coming from and why people might care. That sounds like a great idea. Yeah. Should I go first? Yeah, go for it. Yeah. So my name is Jane Stewart, and I have spent around two decades working in non profit and sports organizations, and increasingly, over the last few years, I found myself working more and more in the people and processes area. So how to make it

a really great place to work, and how to make it a place to work that's productive, versus on the actual products and service itself. And you know what I found out, I really like it. It's I feel

like I'm having a bigger impact, and it's much more interesting to me. So I decided to take the plunge this year, and scarily, went back to uni part time students, what are you studying? I'm studying for my masters in Organizational Psychology. Talk about jargon buster, right? Yeah, yeah, we'll come on to that. Yeah. There's definitely some joyful phraseology that I'm learning before. And I also

am a consultant and help some really great, small nonprofits at the moment be better places for their people, which is one of my favorite things to do. Cool. Yeah. So my background is a bit different, but hopefully I've got a bit of credibility through it as well, just in a different way. So I started my career as an accountant. Yay, go, numbers, go, Excel. So I trained as a chartered accountant with anston Young and did the sort of consultancy piece through there. Consultancy piece through them for a while, and worked in fairly core finance roles. And then I moved into project management at large financial services firms delivering mainly sort of finance change programs. And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, right? What does that have to do with people? And the answer is not very much. But through that, I started to work on projects where we brought team.

Together, and started to look at building new teams, new finance teams, new operating models and things like that, integrating businesses. And I liked that. And then from that, I jumped over into roles, really looking at improving performance, improving engagement, improving things like well being and functionality of teams, and introducing new ways of working. And that really kind of whetted my appetite to work more in the sort of HR type space. So that's my background, and in terms of location, I mean, I've worked in all around the UK, and I've worked around a lot of Europe as well, admittedly, for short stints, but a lot of time in Scotland, a lot of time in London, Bristol, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Harlem, bit of Madrid. You know, any cities you want to name that you're friendly with. So I'd like, I'd like to claim that I to claim that I've worked all the way around the world, and I have way around the world, but I would also acknowledge that the jobs have been somewhat different from from organization development, although I would say that I learned as much about management from a bar owner in Amba Australia than I did

in any of my more corporate esque jobs. It's one of the bigger nonprofits I work for. And before we move on to the first topic, I think it's worth mentioning that you guys can follow us online. We have a website, and it is, it's the WoW podcast.org The W, O, W podcast that is wow. We like that, of course, that stands for the world of work podcast. So that's our website, yeah. And you can get in touch with us there, or you can follow us on Twitter at the WoW podcast. Nice and easy. Yeah. So wow, let's go for it. So, James, where do you want to start with? Organizational Development. So organizational development, why don't we start with trying to explain what it possibly means? I mean, I think, I think there have been a lot of different definitions out there, and I know it's a bit of prep. You looked at some Do you want to tell us a little bit about how you tried to break down some of those definitions? Yeah, well, I think you're you're hiding your modesty, because we both had a look. And certainly the bit that I thought was really interesting was how many of them fit three or four genres. So a bit of background. We both love definitions. We think it really helps. But we also quite enjoyed looking at these definitions, because some of them maybe they were trying to just cover too much ground, or they were trying to be too jargony. So we're going to share a few of those with you. There's a great set of definitions that are all list based, where, effectively, the writer has decided to try and list everything that could ever possibly be considered organizational development. I'll give this mix. Development. I'll give you some examples. So the Australian HR Institute shout out to our friends. Down Under

their definition is, whilst there is no single definition of organizational development, it is commonly known to be the practice of changing people in organizations for positive growth. In practice, OD can take on many forms. And typical od activities can include some of the following, team building, organizational assessment, career development, training, e learning, coaching, innovation, leadership development, talent management and change management. So that's pretty much everything, even after that's like everything that's not a specific process, like paying people's payroll or something, right? Yeah, so that's pretty much. There's a few of those around the list based ones, I think the trends that I would pick out is the really good ones. Understand that they need to articulate the role of people in the workplace. So University of Pennsylvania has a great one, the theory and practice dedicated to exploring the knowledge and effectiveness of people to accomplish more successful organizational change and performance, which is, you know, it's long, but I like it. I think it's most importantly, it recognizes that organizational development is about people. Yeah, I really like that. And a theme that might pop up over time as we talk about this, is that I tend to think that organizations really are about people. I mean, I know there are organizations that produce different things and have different specialisms, but fundamentally, a lot of the organizations that I've experienced working in I think you do as well are really about a collection of people and how people work well together. And I really think the effectiveness of people in teams is one of the most powerful competitive advantages any organization can have. So I love the people aspect of that one. Yeah, I think quite often people get angry about organizations as things, and I think they're just groups of people. They're just groups of people making decisions the best way they can. Yeah, that whole legal entity separation is just a funny, different thing. I mean, yes, it's really a collection, exactly. So building on that. The other type of definition that I came across was the one where they have basically made it so broad that they're trying to cover everything so CIPD UK the practice of adapting, improving and evolving as an organization so that it can grow or advance. Now I'm gonna hang my hat out here and say that is not only organizational development, yeah, it's,

it's a lovely thing catch all, yeah. But let's face it, there are a whole host of things that go on in organizations, not least things like technological progress define how they grow in advance, but But certainly, organizational development is one way, yeah, and I'm improve.

An organization. I mean, that's a pretty big statement. It is, and absolutely it's one of the massive ways that you can Yeah, but it's definitely not Yeah, of course, predominant and the way that people relate to each other and make decisions together. But there's a big difference between that and it being the exhausted Yeah. And I you know, like you said earlier, you can improve an organization of technology quite easily. You can chuck in whatever faster servers that will improve a supply of customers, or even internally, and that's not really organization development in my mind, absolutely. Now I'm gonna, there's one other type of definition that we came across, and I'm, I'm gonna lay it out there. James, you found it? Yeah, I'm gonna let you share it. I think it's probably my favorite. Yeah, it's my favorite as well. It's hands down my favorite. And it's an organization that it's kind of a fun one. Anyway, this is in the UK. It's the National Health Service, and their definition of organizational development is that a organizational development is an evolving field of practice that has many definitions. Rather than assuming that there is one magic definition that will work in every situation, we suggest a deeper understanding of what organizational development means to you in the context of your organization. So Right? I mean, basically what that said is, you go figure it out.

And that's kind of a conclusion I've reached. I really like practical nature, that it's basically saying it doesn't matter, let's just get on with the job, doesn't it? So for those of you who don't know British culture as well. That is, that is brilliantly sums up our National Health Service, which is, you guys go talk about it. We'll just get the job done. Yeah. So I think that might be the one that's going on my wall. And we'll, we'll share some of the other funny ones that. Well, I thought they were funny. Some of them on our Twitter feed later, because I think it would be really useful. Yeah. And of course, if you guys have got a definition. If anyone's listening out there who has a definition, feel free to fire it in. I think at some point we'd like to come up with our own definition, and maybe once we get there, we can share that on the website as well, and maybe we'll actually have an agreement on what organizational development actually means. I'll be kind of cool and actually just a challenge to our listeners. If any of you actually have organizational development words in your title, yeah, we want to hear from you, and we want to hear what your company's definition is. Because I think there's increasingly a large number of people who have organizational development, yeah, title or OD, and I'm not 100% sure everyone agrees on what that is. You know what I think would be cool. I've spoken to quite a few people in the last six months. You've got organizational development in their job title, and a lot of them just suddenly, kind of woke up one day, and it's like they've been dragged through the closet into Narnia, and suddenly now they're organizational development practitioners, and they don't really necessarily even know what it means at that starting position. So I think there probably are a lot of people out there who are trying to figure it out as well. I mean, you are actually building quite a good evidence base for the NHS definition right now, which is that there is no magic definition. Get over it, yeah, but, but, like, I mean, at its core between us, it's, we kind of agree. It's about helping change the way that people in an organization work and how they can be effective in achieving the goals of the organization. Yeah. I think for me, I often talk about, it's about improving people and processes, yeah? Such that

organizations can be effective, yeah? And they can do what they want to do, and they can deliver what they want to deliver. And people can, we can get the most out of people in the best way possible, yeah, yeah, that seems about right. So we run through a little bit about the background of OD maybe, and see if we can figure out. I'm going to hand over to you the history buff in this place. If anyone knew me earlier, they would think that was funny. Younger in my life, I was, well, let's say I've never been buff. How about that? But I certainly wasn't all that strong from a history perspective.

So I did. I did go back and look a little bit and try and learn a little bit about the history of OD, because it's something that's actually really quite interesting. And, you know, as we said, organizational development, based on those definitions, is loosely around helping an organization get better through, you know, the way that the people in it work together. And organizational development really kind of has a founding father, and it's not that long ago, a guy called Kurt Lewin in the US, in the sort of 30s and 40s working at MIT, started building out some work that ended up leading into defining what organizational development is. And as he started, he really started coming out of a field of Psychology and Organizational Psychology. And what he started looking at, in his language, was group dynamics. And he wasn't really looking at the business space so much initially, but it was, how do groups of people work together, and what are the dynamics between people? What causes stress, what causes efficiency, what causes effectiveness? How can we make sure people communicate well? And he started looking at that kind of stuff. And he also started looking at something called Action Research, which is basically looking at, how do we make changes to the way these environments work while we're involved in them, while, you know, while we're in a group. How do we make changes to that and see what the impacts are? I started to try and look at how we can influence and change the way that dynamics work. When was he when was he doing that research? So he was doing stuff often in like, well, he started a bit earlier, but most of his were.

Was in the 30s and 40s, and he actually died in 47 which I love, because, you know, you would think this was a new area, yeah, and it's so popular now, it's kind of like Zeitgeist at the minute. But he died in 47 and he never actually used for phrase organizational development in his lifetime. That wasn't his work. He just, he just worked in this field of basically, group or organizational psychology, trying to look at how people work together. And that was really a starting, starting piece there, like I said, he never did use the phrase, and the phrase came out a couple years later. And there was somebody actually called Richard Beck who ended

up using the phrase organization development. And what he was doing is he was building on some of the group psychology stuff, and starting to think about it actually in an organization. So he was working at General Mills, which is one of the big steel companies in the US, and he was working there doing some experiments in the 50s and 60s with somebody called Douglas McGregor. And they were looking at how the organization works effectively. So taking Organizational Psychology work and bringing it into an industrial environment to see how it works. And he actually is the one that started to apply the name organizational development to it. And interestingly, both he

and Curt lemon were working at MIT when they published their work in relation to this. So can we blame MIT for the job? We can blame MIT for a lot of things, I think even beyond, yeah, pretty, pretty interesting place. So that kind

of gets us to the end of the work that Richard Becker was doing around, you know, bringing Organizational Psychology work into into places like General Mills. At the same time that he was doing that some other organizations were starting to do similar stuff, but starting to look a little bit more at, you know, interventions. And how do you change the way that organizations work? And how can you introduce, you know, change agents and introduce programs work that maybe lead to improvements and in Organizational Psychology. And a couple of leading places doing this were the Tavistock Institute here in the UK, and then the National Training laboratories in the US, and they started to really look at the role of change agents. And how do you actually, you know, initiate these changes to get a better outcome? So, so that was going on in the 50s and 60s, and then when we get to the late 60s, you know, having worked on how you introduce changes and try and start changes in organizations, people got more interested in, how do you measure the effectiveness of changes? So it's really in the late 60s that you start to get things like engagement surveys and other survey based techniques to look at the effectiveness of these interventions, which kind of blows my mind, if I'm honest, because the idea that things like engagement surveys were around in the 60s, yeah, just seems incredibly far fetched, but they were, and actually, we're not all these things that we think are new. They're really and I think I knew for some people now, really, this stuff's been around for a long time, but I guess in some ways, that 60s was a long time ago, right? I mean, it's one of those things. 60s was definitely a long time ago, I promise you, yeah. So that's

what was going on there. I started to be able to measure these impacts. And, you know, there's a whole growth now of survey methods around how you do this kind of stuff. But fundamentally, measuring this stuff is hard, and we might cover it another point. But survey before you do an intervention, do an intervention. Survey afterward, try and prove what you've done is the standard way to do that. And that really started back then. And people did that, and they started through that process. They were working at, how do you intervene and affect a specific part of an organization. And then, as you got a bit later in the 80s, another sort of a hero of organization development, somebody called Edgar Schein, who was also from MIT, he started to look at

sort of systems thinking type stuff. And we can maybe do an episode on systems thinking at some point. But Systems Thinking basically says that, you know, an organization is really a collection of individual systems that all feed together, so you can't really change one bit without considering the overall, you know, end to end, collection of systems that affect an organization, which seems really obvious, right? When you think about it now, yeah, it does. But I mean, even now, organizations are focusing on things that don't consider the systemic impact of the broader structures they work within.

So he started thinking, started thinking a little bit more in that space, and started to try and bring od concepts into the systemic structure of organizations, and looking at changing the overall, I guess, systems architecture, not from an IT perspective, but from the way that, the way that, you know, complex systems of human behavior interact in organizations and started to have some good, good outcomes there. And like I said, maybe we'll touch on that as another episode. So that kind of got us up into the 80s, and then, really, since then, you know, OD has become even more important and more popular as a concept. You know the world, as everyone says and tells you, it gets more complex, it gets more interconnected. And also, I think people are constantly looking for that extra game, that extra little efficiency, that extra competitive advantage. And through doing that, everyone starts to focus on as many areas as they can, and organizational developments really become.

One of those competitive, competitive advantages. And over the last five years, I've certainly seen a huge growth in the actual phrase itself.

You know, it's not a phrase that I'd heard when I started working in this type of area, but, you know, increasingly you see that name pop up everywhere. So I think that's kind of a whistle stop tour of the background. And I think, pardon me, when we were speaking a little while ago, Jane, you said something that I thought was really interesting, which is, you know, as you start to get the rise of industrialization, and with that, the rise of the sort of larger bureaucracies, where you get lots of offices hammered together in big populations, then you know, you've got these larger groups of people that need to work together. And when you've got larger groups of people working on complicated stuff, it becomes really increasingly important that they do that well. And, you know, you've got, like, Dunbar's number, you know, I don't know if you know that that's like a view on how many people you can work together with effectively, without having, you know, structures and stuff. And it's like 100 people you can work with and manage those social relations. But when you get beyond that, as a lot of businesses started to get in, you know, the start of the 20th century, and into the middle, then, you know, there's much more demand for tools and techniques to really ensure that large groups of people work together. So I think the growth of those denser office based industries really probably was a great sort of,

you know, a fertile bed soil in which the blossoming ideas, wow, that is, that is a gardening analogy that I'm gonna have to think about. I think, I think economies of scale isn't always an interesting thing. There are two ways to dealing with the concept that you can interact with 100 people and create meaningful to work. One is not to have anything more than 100 people. So I've worked with people who believe in breaking their businesses down into effectively independent units that work. And the other is to try and find ways to create better

cohesive and try and increase that number so they're more effective. And I think, I think it's really interesting, because you're right, industrialization had economies of scale was so clear around things like production lines. So if you look at producing cars and stuff, it became really obvious. But have one person do one job, and what you see, I suspect, is the rise of organizational development as a concept, rather than as the work it is once there was enough people in one place that you could employ someone just to worry about that. And I think so. My background is working with small organizations, all of whom pretty much are under, certainly under 150 200 people. And what I see is trends in big organizations and smaller organizations trying to lift them wholesale rather than understanding need to apply them. And for me, that's, that's about the difference between the trend of organizational development versus what it really is, which is making better opportunities for people and processes to be more efficient, to work more effectively.

And I think, you know, it's, it's where the jargon comes for me, it's where people get really excited. And you know the guy, we all know that guy, right? He's the guy in the office. His job titles changed every time a trend has come along. And he's always the guy who's got the ear of someone senior, and it's because he's ferociously reading up on what's going to be the next Yeah, you get to other emails from whoever it happens. Yeah, it's gonna be, oh, yeah, this is the next big thing. And last week it was thing. And last week it was leadership, and this week it's now I'm a transformational leader, and VUCA environment, I feel like if you did a word search on people's profiles on LinkedIn against their job title and what were they using to describe themselves, I think we would have so much fun around this, because I think organization development is absolutely at the heart of it, but it's because it matters, and it's really important. And the more we move towards

AI and technology, the more it's going to matter, because the more the difference between organizations is not going to be the technology, because everyone's going to it's all outsourced, or it's all uniform, absolutely. So for me, it's really interesting to know. Thank you for all of that. I didn't know pretty much any of that coming into it, yeah? And firstly, I'm delighted to hear that the UK at least, had a little stake with tap stock. But also, I think it's really important and realize that there's very few new ideas, yeah, and it's all about how you take those make them applicable to your workplace, yeah, just when we were chatting about something popped into my mind that maybe we should think about at some point in the future. And when I think about organizational development and where it's really helpful and a beneficial tool, it's where the types of jobs that people are doing are sort of creative or self directed or intellectual, right? So, so for me, organizational development is less beneficial in some ways when you've got a particularly rote or highly repetitive, highly structured, more manual process, see, whereas I would totally disagree, yeah. So that's really interesting. So I was having this conversation with someone only last night. Yeah, who they work in a factory? Yeah? And.

And the factory organization think they are doing a really good job because they offer living wage versus minimum wage. But actually what happens really quickly is it is such a tiny difference that once it's done, the culture becomes everything. So yeah, when people have limited skills and the only thing that they have to exercise and differential is their ability to work hard, yeah, and work effectively and consistently over a period, they will choose an organization based on whether they want to be in that room, yeah, yeah. And that's what I think. So I get that sort of like, I guess there's the two different sides of it. Those are, what's the benefit for the individual and what's the benefit for your organization. So I think that within organizations that are, you know, more procedural like that, and more manual,

that, that things like creativity are less important to some extent, that you free up people's intellectual capacity, that sort of mental load and stuff in intellectual jobs, and it's got a different impact. So, so I think you lose stuff. And that's what, that's the really funny thing that I always, yeah, I totally get that I really thought about. And do you know what? Neither did I until last, I think particularly, and I think this may age terribly, but Brexit is coming to Britain, and there is going to be less workers available at certain levels. And so there's going to be a really interesting thing where I suspect that those workers that are needed, and yes, technology is taking some of those jobs, but those workers that are needed are going to have all sorts of challenges, and they're going to be able to pick and choose. Yeah, so I guess as a differentiator for an employer, it's great to have a great culture and a great way of working, because that'll help you get the people in. I think that with the rise of the knowledge economy, but the way that you get people to work really translates into better outcomes, or, sorry, better output from them. So I guess there are two sides to that, and you can see the advantages of things like organizational development both areas. So in short, organizational development is for everyone people. That's what we're saying. Yeah. Doesn't matter whether you're working in a factory or you are working at high end. AI, yeah, you all still care about whether it's a coffee culture, yeah. So what next? So we want to talk about, like, how od programs work, and what we think makes an OD program well, so yeah, I think that would be a really good idea, because effectively, we've talked about organizational development, we've tried to give you a flavor of give people a flavor of what people think organizational development is. And I think, if we're honest, the jury's still out, but it's about

like the NHS says there's no magic definition, and we've talked a little bit about where it's come from. But I think what's most relevant, probably for the people in the workplace, is what does it look like? Yeah. How do you know if your organization has a current organization development plan. If they're working towards the program, what does it look like was and I guess to some extent, it's good to know, you know, if you're working in organization, it's good to know what people are trying to do with an organizational development program, how you can spot it, how you can maybe contribute to it, or all those types of things. Yeah, I think certainly if you're listening to this podcast, you must care a little bit about your workplace. And I think the easiest way to get involved in your workplace with shaping what that place is is by understanding what their organization plan is. They might have another name for it, but ultimately, how they're trying to move the organization forward for its people and its process. Yeah, and on that actually, one thing that just popped into my mind is, you know, a lot of people, when they're in their careers in the workplace want to have a little bit of something extra to do, or a way to get involved in some larger programs, because it gives them visibility and opportunity to make a difference and things like that. And, you know, with more technical programs, say, like an IT change program, you can't just really put your hand up and get involved and say, all these are extracting, transforming and loading of data, because nobody cares about, I don't even know what two of those boys are. Yeah, it's an ETL process. We could talk about that later. Yeah, that's not, this is not an IT podcast before you turn no no. And I've got nothing to do with it anyway, really. But my point is, you can't really volunteer to get involved, because those are very special things. But with things like an OD program, a great way to sort of grow your skill set as somebody in an organization is to put your hand up and get involved in things. And OD programs are great way to do that. You know, people are always looking for a bit of voluntary support, looking for opinion, looking for engagement with Absolutely. And I, you know, my experience is that pretty much doesn't matter how small the organization, there is some form of either employee forum or there's an opportunity for employees to step forward and talk about and speak on behalf of their colleagues. These are the kind of opportunities that will give you a door in to helping look and understand the organizational development process in your organization? Yeah, cool. So what are those programs like? What are they having? That's a fascinating question. So firstly, we're going to caveat this, just like we have every time, which is, everyone does it differently, yeah, and for pretty much every organization that covers slightly different functional areas, although the biggest and the most robust tend to cover pretty much everything, except for the products and services that actually producer. I guess probably quite a good place to start is maybe a practical example of what a program might look like. Yeah. Okay, so we. When I've worked on organizational

development programs, they've tended to be triggered by a external influence that's quite common in nonprofits. So for example, there's been a funding change, or there's been come to the end of a lifetime of a strategy, and it's an opportunity to reflect on where the organization is and where it wants to go, and the organization development program is how we're going to get the people, the infrastructure there so that it can do that new job. So there's probably a few things that it covers. I know you had because I know you love a list, James, you actually tried to whittle it down into sort of a five stop list, I think, didn't you? Yeah, yeah. One day, I'll share my top five list of lists with you, and I'll share my top five favorite lists of everything, but in the meantime, man, if, if the top five records isn't that top five list, I'll be sad. Okay, so I'm gonna maybe pick off the first couple of things, because they're the things that I always get really worked up about. And the first one is about a strategy. Partially, I get worked up about this because I write strategies for a living for some organizations, but

it's really important that there's a reason for an organizational development program, and that it is a reason that aligns really closely with the organization's existing strategy. And, you know, a strategy doesn't have to be a 55 page document. It might be on the back of a an envelope, and it might be the owner's understanding of how he's going to get from a quarter of a million company, a pound company, to a half million pound company, but it will be a series of

tactics that will get him to that place, and the Organizational Development Program has to fit really neatly with that strategy, and has to be about getting the organization to a place where it can achieve that strategy. So that's, that's the first thing. So like, for me, just a slightly different background. Example of that is the way Financial Services is changing. And then the way that I phrase that, or just popped into my head, is that really organizational development should enable the achievement of a strategy, right? That's exactly you've got all these things, but you've got to enable that. So within financial services, where I've been working, there's been, as with many industries, this huge shift towards digital and digitization. And if you're running an organization with, say, 100,000 people, and you want to become a digital leader, right? And that's your future strategy. You know, that's the way it's going. You need to maximize your use of it. You need to be cost competitive. You need to provide great services. How are you going to do that? Well, you know, to do that and to achieve that strategy, you need people with digital capabilities, right? So you need to shift the way that your organization sees itself. You need to shift the pace at which it works. You need to shift the core capabilities so that you can have the people and the skills and the ways of working that let you be a digital leader in financial services. So that strategic alignment is essential. So strategy comes first, and then your od program enables the achievement of that. I'd say, yeah. And I think, I think quite often, particularly in goods based or retail based organizations. You quite often see people worrying about how they're going to get their product or their service to that stage. Yeah. So they sit there and go, right? We know our products and our services need to be here, so that's what we need to do. And you know, they've got their research and development department thinking about how, how they're going to manufacture, how are they going to scale? What are they going to do? What's going to like, what's their offer going to be to the market? And somewhere along the line, there seems to be a slight misunderstanding about whose job it is to think about how you get that organization ready to be able to deliver that products and services. And again, back in the FS financial services world, right? If you go to a totally digital world, but you don't have people who can develop new digital offerings quickly, then you're never going to be able to sustain that future piece. Absolutely. And I think what's really interesting is sometimes you go the other way. So what astounds me, without question, is the idea that

organizations that are fundamentally not digital organizations. So a bank is not a digital organization, the digitization is the the method that they're going to use to get technology is the method with which they're going to engage their customers. They're about, yeah, money and and so what I always find really interesting is your IT team and your digital

development team are not going to know regulations. They're not going to know what customers want and they shouldn't. It's not their job. Their job is to work with those people. And I think one of the things that I think very early on in the digitization period people lost out on was understanding what they needed to do was take people that existed already in those jobs and were doing a process and make them ask the right questions, so that instead of digitizing a process, they were taking that process and making it different and more fit for purpose, yeah? And so I think we've learned that now, but the industries took a while to do Yeah, and I don't think everyone's learned it, no, and without question, I would say nonprofits and charity sector and the public sector are still struggling with that hugely. So strategy is number one. Number.

And it would be number two and number three if I was only and then the second one for me, of what makes an OD program is that it's long term. So give you a practical experience. The most recent strategy I was working on is a five to 10 year document. Now I get criticized routinely for this conversation. It's like, well, how can you know what the world's gonna be like, I don't that's not what a strategy is. A strategy is about what is our position going to be. And the organizations that I work with have been around for sometimes hundreds of years, so they need to be thinking far longer term than what we're gonna do in the next two years about snap trap, because that quite often can become very distracting for what is the bigger mission and what you know, looking forward, what are going to be the big issues that these organizations are going to face? Yeah, I think we different views on that, right? I mean, like,

certainly in my industry, strategy cycles seem to be, or are consistently about three years. So it's a three year strategy cycle, broadly, is what it is. But at the same time that you're looking at that three year cycle in the back of your mind. You're thinking about longer term trends as well and trying to structure to succeed in that future piece and and I have those different conversations as well, saying, you know, you can't work that long, but pace of change is going faster. You need to be able to pivot quickly. Or, you know, all these types of phrases, right? Another brilliant, brilliant, let's do it. So, you know, my kind of response about is, you need to think about the future, but you need to remain agile

that you can respond to changes in the market, changes in technology, changes and regulations. I think we should stop playing job and bingo at some Yeah, okay. We can issue cards, I think. And you're right. I guess my concern is that

with CEOs moving around far more frequently, yeah, and leaving Sometimes organizations mid transformation process, if people are always only working to three years. And I think that's the problem with some people are only working to that, yeah? Um, you end up in a scenario where, effectively, you're no different to various governments around the west at the moment, which is that they're living till the next election. Yeah. And someone's got to start looking at the bigger picture. And I think organizations that do that, as well as obviously working in a more operational sense, to three years, will be the ones that most successful. And I think that's particularly true in my sector, because we're talking about, you know, poverty is not going to go away in three years. Yeah. And so how we approach that and what tools we use. Might be a two to three year plan, but why you're doing it and how you're going to do it, and what strategies and tactics you're going to use to try and address that problem is probably not going to change that much. And I think some of the distinction in the time spans that you look at come back to your stakeholder mix as well. And if you've got active, aggressive stakeholders or shareholders trying to look at your quarterly returns, and you've got a different approach to strategy and a different need to progress in in a different timeline, yeah, we had definitely a subject for another day. I was talking to a friend of mine, who's remain nameless, who works in one of the big four consultancies, and we were discussing whether it is better to work in a business that is privately owned. Yeah, you know, it's the grass.

Well, yeah, I don't know. He might, rather than ask him. I think he's, I think he's a great argument for one side of that. But certainly I think it's

interesting. So I work with member organizations, and the average, the last organization I worked with, the average length of membership, if you knock out everyone who doesn't renew in the first year, the average length of membership is like 15 years. You've got to be thinking big if you're talking about a shareholding situation, particularly where there is a

FMCG market. I think, yeah, it's different, isn't it? But I but whatever it is, whatever is long term in your industry, long term is, yeah, whatever is long for your industry, that's what organizations will implement. You know, it's not about single interventions and it's long term, but there's that bit of willingness to change as well, right? So you do it, you aim for the future, you aim for the long term and end sometimes you got to change because, you know, stuff happens in the world, doesn't it? Stuff does happen. James, there's one thing I've learned about organization development, stuff is always happening. To throw you off. Maybe that's the key takeaway for the audience, is that stuff happens. How about that? Yeah, I believe you've referred to it earlier with your slightly jargonistic But I get it agile working. You've got to be a journalist and you've got to pivot. Things change. Have a plan and things change. Does it be willing to pivot in an agile way? I think, wow, that's special. So my actually, the best learning I got was from event management. So I spent a few years working in event management, in sport. And good event managers have great plans, such that when the event happens, everyone is getting on with it, and the event managers sole job is to deal with the stuff that happens that wasn't meant to and I think, I think really good organization development leadership is that have a great plan. And then there is someone who is just sitting on the Hill going, Oh, that doesn't look good. What's coming over the hill. Let's respond. But as we.

Know that's that's a lovely situation to be in, but we're all stretched and on head count and all sorts. So number one strategy. Number two, longer term, yep. So why don't you take us through the last three so a couple other bits, but I think irrelevant for for a good od program, and for me, number three is, it's multi disciplinary. So you know, when you went through your list of, you know, listed definitions, and some of them were list based, and they cover a whole wide range of things, I think, I think that that's really relevant for organization development programs. I think really what you're trying to do is you're trying to change the way that a group of people work together, the way that an organization works for practices, ways of working, and all that. And I think that there are multiple factors that contribute to this we talked earlier about, you know, systems thinking and the fact that organizations are, you know, complex interweave systems and things. And I think to change that, you need to or to change it successfully and effectively, you need to be multi disciplinary in your approach. So things like, you know, some leadership development for your senior people to help them improve broader management training feels like part of it, looking at things like even your organizational structures and how you structure within your hierarchies, relationships. I think that's part of it. I think even things like systems come into it. So if you you know, if you want to address things like communication, you might want to bring in, say, you know, an enterprise social media tool or something like that, to help people communicate. Even something like Slack is a great way to do it. That's a technological thing that you can bring in, but it affects your organizational communication and structuring, and it's in doing that part of your organizational development package. So for me, bringing all these things together is important for a big organizational development program. I think it's that sort of holistic approach and covering all the bases, I'd say. So multi disciplinary is number three for me.

Number four for me is collaborative. And I think this is something that breaks down a lot in organizations. And really what I mean by

by this is that you know, to really change an organization, you need to take people with you, right? So when you're talking about organization development, you're talking about the way that people work together, and if you're going to change that, you need to listen to them. You need to understand what's working now, what isn't working now, what needs to change. And you need to take people with you on whatever that journey is that you're going to go down. So I think, you know, collaborative is a really important factor

in this. And I think we've probably both seen examples of programs where somebody in an ivory tower says, Hmm, you know, I think everybody should work in this different way, and we should change factor X. God damn, that ivory tower. Yeah, some of it doesn't it, and they're off busy trying to change factor x, but they've never spoken to everybody that says, You know what, we don't care about factor X. Factor X. We've got all these other problems. We've got Y and Z down here, right? So why are you caring about x? That doesn't even really matter. And if you don't listen to the people who are close to that coalface that we talked about earlier, you're never going to really work it out.

I remember a scenario where they were trying to make an equality and diversity policy to help women in the workplace. Yeah. And it, it was brilliant. It was it was not getting any traction, and one could understand why. And it turned out because basically everyone in the organization was hacked off that the girls toilets was another building, great. Yeah. And no one had just not occurred to anyone that they were like, well, you're being hypocrites, because until you sort that out with and we have to go out and put our coats on every time want to go to the bathroom, we're really not going to get you. To get involved in any of your supposed equality. And I was like, you just, it's a brilliant example of how you have to look at the big picture. Yeah, in that, sort of, in a similar space, I helped create and deliver a female leadership program, right, helping with all those types of things. And one of the things came up with, we sort of like, you know, we were taught to go and build this program. We built it out, we started delivering it, and we got sort of mixed feedback from it. And so I went out and started to ask people a little bit about, you know, what's going on. And some other feedback I got was, why do you possibly think I want to progress? Why are you trying to get me to progress? I just don't want to do this. Like, I'm really happy where I am. And now I feel pressured, and now I feel like I'm underachieving, because you're telling me I need to progress, so just kind of leave me alone. You know, it's really interesting, because I had a conversation off the record with some someone from the army a few years ago, and they were saying they were delivered leaders, and they needed a few followers, which I just thought was a brilliant concept. Is this idea, and it's classic example of a trend, not everyone needs to be a leader in the traditional sense, everyone can be a leader for their own,

their own priorities. But you know, and leader, leader means so many things. The organization doesn't need 1000 leaders and one follower. We need one or two great leaders. And so that word followership is out there now, right? Oh, is it so

behind followership, right? You need to be a good followership anyway. So that collaborative thing is really important. You get things like co creation, CO production, getting people involved. It helps understand what the real needs of an organization are, and it helps ensure that people are engaged from an early stage. People get ownership. You get more effective and lasting outcomes. So that's number four.

So we've had strategy, longer term focus, multi disciplinary, and then number five, I think, is, you know, almost a product of all of those, which is that, for me, organizational development programs of work need to be bespoke. You know, you're looking at a specific organization, strategic drivers. You're looking at the specific situation with a specific current starting position with an organization has, and you're looking at the distinct blend of structure and individuals and challenges in the organization. So if you're going to get from you know where you are now in an organization to where that organization needs to be, you kind of need a tailored approach, because all organizations are different, you know, you get some some similarities, but every organization is going to have its own challenge is so I think, I think a good program should be bespoke. And also often I think you see people going in with a sort of, you know, like their toolbox, like, go in, they open up a toolbox, and they say, collaboration, and they drop out collaboration tool number 1047, on your desk, and say, Here we go. And people kind of don't always respond, yeah, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna pick one up, because I do a bit of consultancy, and I see it quite a lot. It's because it's expensive to do properly. It's, you know, even, even in a small organization, it is time out of people's day to sit down and tell you what their problem and it frustrates them because they've told them one a million times. So some point, we should probably have a chat between about sort of internal consultant versus external cost of upskilling, and where we see all that that alone is a fascinating day. That's another chat for another day, although it will begin to feel like a job interview, I suspect. Okay, so let's just recap on those top five, because I think a top five is always a good thing to have a lover list, and you've sold me on this one. So when we're talking about what makes an organizational development program, we talk about it being strategically aligned, and we talk about it being a longer term piece of work, something that's multi disciplinary. It's a collaborative piece of work. It absolutely is bespoke. It's tailored to the organization that it's fitting,

and ultimately, it's about helping that organization be best equipped to reach its strategic goals. Yeah, great. There you go. You now know what an organization development program is. People, if you have different opinions about what should be on that list, let us know. Yeah, yeah, if anything strikes you as us, just chatting, yeah, don't forget. You can reach us on Twitter, at the WoW podcast, or you can reach us on our email, on our website, yeah, that's the WoW podcast.org

and you can email us at JJ, the WoW podcast.org so feel free to get in touch. So yeah, so what have we done so far? So we've said a little bit about the podcast. Said a little bit about who we are, talked a little bit about what organizational development is running through a bit of a history of organizational development. Talked a little bit about what constitutes an organizational development program. You know, what the factors are, what might make a good od program? One thing I'll say, actually, we didn't touch on earlier, but I think is key to the success. And maybe later we'll talk about success factors. You know, for an organizational development program to be successful, it really needs sponsorship and buy in from the top. So you sometimes see that dichotomy of, you know, do as I say, not as I do, and if you get out at an organizational level, it all just falls down anyway. Yes, and I think,

I think authenticity and credibility are big words at the moment, but then you could think they were trendy. It's never not been in fashion. It's never not been in fashion to be who you're meant to be and to not be fake. Yeah, I don't remember. I don't believe there was ever a timer. And was like, yeah, look at that guy. He puts on a really good show of being something he is. Yeah, that's not a thing unless you believe madman, which, well, I'm not convinced. Okay, so we've talked a little bit about what makes an OD program we mentioned earlier. We might share a few experiences from the trenches, yeah, shall we say, I think, you know, from my side, I was just going to talk a little bit about some of the types of things that I've been involved in that are broadly early programs. I'm not going to go into too much detail, because I think we can cover some of them a bit later, but I've got a couple of examples of sort of larger od programs that I've been in, I guess the first one that was quite interesting was

the integration and simplification of two banks effectively. So I worked on a program that was integrating two legacy banks from a merged banking group in Europe. So we had corporate bank A operating in a range of European countries, corporate bank B, operating in a range of European countries. And now we need to have a combined entity, right? So the work that I did was very much in the finance area. So I did, you know, technical stuff, but financial technical stuff. But also I was responsible for ensuring that we brought together the finance function to these two banks. So how do you do that, right? I mean, you get different people. And we had people in different locations, different ways of working, different structures, different priorities, different contractual terms of reference around their employment, different incentive structures. And you know, to add to that, we had people working in different countries with different cultural ways.

Working. I mean, if you're trying to get, say, some of the Dutch colleagues that we have to work effectively with some of the Spanish colleagues that we have, you'll find that there's just different inherent cultural aspects. Yeah, way beyond time zones. Way beyond time zones, indeed. So, you know, so there's a whole piece of work around, how do you combine those two? And for me, that's kind of an organizational development piece of work. So we needed to look at things like premises and footprints, and how do we integrate the physical locations? We needed to look at things like the organizational designs. So what is our current structure? What's our future going to structure going to look like? We needed to look at things like operating models. So whatever roles and responsibilities, how do they split out? And then we needed to look at things like the teams, and what makes a good team. And then starting to introduce, you know, work, work streams that would help bring teams together to create a more cohesive way of working, the whole team building side of things. So that's an example of for me, an OD program is bringing those two businesses together. Another one I've got is around, you know, for a larger UK function, say, you know, 4000 people in a functional team,

looking at a particularly low set of engagement, and I guess, an overly large team, how do you increase engagement, create,

you know, a better sense of identity, and at the same time, try and shrink and improve the efficiency across a larger group of people. So, you know, this is a multi year stream of collection of streams of work, looking at that and again, that's introducing new ways of working, introducing new teams, restructuring changing footprints, all that kind of stuff, feeding together and combining, in this instance, with leadership training programs as well to make sure that the leaders are in a good place for that. And then the last example I was going to touch on is around,

sort of future proofing of an organization, or, you know, preparing for the future. So this is around, and I touched earlier on digitization. So again, in a sort of functional perspective, if you're looking to become a digital leader in a financial services industry, you need your functional areas to become

capable of dealing with increased or changing job demands of digitization. So how do you consider the future capability needs of your organization? And then from that, how do you transition from where you are to a new capability mix? So essentially, what is the overall capability structure I have of a minute? Where do I need it to be in three years time? How do I get from A to B, and how do I, while I'm making that capability transition, ensure that I deliver consistently, but also ensure that I maintain engagement, maintain buy in, listen to people, all that kind of stuff. So those are some examples of early programs that I've been involved, yeah, and they're really, they're really great examples. And I think what they show is that generally, and there are massive exceptions, and probably your last ones a little bit more like that, but generally, they're in response to something that's happening external to the organization. Is quite rare. Even last one is like technology, right? Like technology and in financial services, your competition is now. It is your Amazons, it's your Google it's all the people with the payment mechanisms. And I think, and I think

all too often, it's a response, you know, and I would love to see a world where organizational development wasn't just in response to specific change, and rather was a Oh god, I can't believe I'm gonna say it, but more agile approach good work. And I guess my experience of OD is very different

in the sense that all the issues are the same, but that the frame and the context is different. So I work in an industry that is specifically designed not to make profit. We're not allowed to make too much profit, which, you know, blows the mind of half people I know,

but we are quite often anchored to funders, and those funders have expectations, and so as those funders change, so do the expectations. So for example, for a long period, I worked with organizations that the funder really didn't want to invest at all in back office,

in other words, in the people in the processes. And the challenge was, if you weren't savvy enough to structure your funding applications, you would end up with a very unhappy, unmotivated and very badly equipped finance team, HR, team, IT team, restricted and unrestricted funding. I suspect that might be where it's got it certainly that's one part. So you need, yeah, no, no. So you know, you're absolutely right. So I'm restricted income. You can play you can spend anywhere. But more specifically, some of the organizations I work with have very big relationships with single funders. Fine, and as that single funder is swayed by the government, so the government policy changes. So at the moment, they're really all about investing in those back offices. So it's great. Yeah, you know they're going and they're really doing that stuff. And I think one of the best examples I saw was I've

worked with some really brilliant CEOs, and I worked with this one CEO, and part of the strategy that we were developing, it was becoming really clear from consultation with all our stakeholders that everyone was sick and tired of being reliant on single funders. And there.

We needed to re weight it, and I think that's really common but, but I think that I had to see the strength of feeling that and they wanted and they were prepared to take some hits for it. So

he we wrote the new strategy, and the strategy had quite an aggressive financial ambition to reduce that Reliance to a third of allocator of income. And it was about, it was somewhere around two thirds at one point. So, huge amount of money. And, you know, he went out and he got me to ask people, What do they need? What do they need to do to deliver, what we want to deliver without that money? What do you need as tools? What do you need in your workplace? What staff do we need? What are the roles, what are the resources that we need? And from there, we built an ideal scenario, what are the tools and what the people and what the processes? And then we figured out how we'd have to get from one to the other and that, you know, that's where the leadership team need to be, sitting down and going, Okay, this is what

paradise looks like. We can't afford that, and we can't get there, but what is the closest we can get with what we've got, and how can we make it work? And I think, you know, you go back to your top five list, and what was extraordinary was utterly wedded so simplistically to the strategy, because it was about how do we get to this end point? And it was truly collaborative. I don't think it would have worked in any other organization, because in no other organization was there a leadership team that was that prepared to get stuck into figuring out how it would work, but also share it. Yeah, absolutely so. And you know what, they're still going through that journey, but their retentions, up their engagements, up people care about what they're doing, and they believe that their leadership team believe in them and believe in their opinions. You know, that stuff makes such a difference. And one thing I'd say is, you know, over early programs I've done, some of them have had such huge impacts on things like engagement scores we talked about surveys earlier. I mean, you measure this stuff through surveys, and you've got great impacts on that, but you also get not just about, you know, sort of quantified, or proxy quantified through survey information. You get great sort of messages from people as well. So I think it's great that you've got some examples. Yeah, I had a, I'm just going to see one. I had a call this morning, and we were talking about talking with someone who is figuring out there a bit of a career crossroads. And they said, you know, they said, Whatever happens, my manager believes in me and he cares about me

and that matters. Yeah? And I was like, Well, I challenge you to get, I felt like saying, Well, I challenge you to go into any other organization and be guaranteed to find a manager that you can talk that higher. Yeah? And it's a good thing. Yeah, it's a really good thing. We need more people. Like that. We've all heard those stats. I mean, I'll make up a number, right? But like, you know, 35% of people would turn down a 40% pay rise if it meant there to stay with their same boss, right? Stuff like that. There's lots of figures out there, right? I mean, people leave because of their relationships with their leaders in some instances. So, you know, organization development can really change without question. Every job I've taken has been because of my boss, yeah, because I believe that even if the job isn't 100% right for me, they will figure it out with me to make it work so that I take the organization, yeah. And you know that collaborative approach will collaborate with you, and you'll be part of that journey, and that's good. Um, when you were talking earlier about some of those programs, you said something like, our program, like our program was helping us get from here to there, and maybe that's kind of almost a definition of organizational development. You know, helping. I love that kind of good, isn't it? It is good. Yeah. Anyway, well done, well spotted. I just drank some words together, but I like that is, it's about getting from here to there, and it's about there being better than here? Yeah, exactly. Strategic Goal. There you go. NHS solved. Yeah, there we go.

Cool. So okay, so I guess there are a couple little examples of what early years and some other programs that we've done, and I think that's probably all we're really going to talk about today. I mean, I don't really know that we've got that much else on the list. I guess. You know, I was just gonna list people, by the way, people you can't see it. Yeah, right.

So I guess just to run through and don't worry, there are many other things on the list for the future as well. Um, so today, you know, an introduction, you know, welcome to the world of work podcast. A little bit about us, focusing on organizational development. And I guess, you know, with that sort of ending definition about getting from here to there, it just feels like organizational development is a sort of overarching factor for the world of work. I mean, it helps make the world of work better. And so, you know, for about basis, it feels like a field. It felt like a really good starting point for us.

So we've touched a little bit about, touched on a little bit what the definitions are for organizational development. We've run through some of history. So, you know, real growth in the 20th century coming out of organizational psychology, pretty interesting. We've talked about what makes a good od program. We've had some, you know, five main points there, talking about its strategic its long.

Term, it's collaborative, good stuff like that. It's spoken, it's multi functional. Spoken, it's multi functional. Yeah, go team. That was teamwork, right there. And we've touched a little bit on some examples. So from smaller charitable organizations even to huge behemoth, you know, 100,000

employee services, financial services organizations, everyone's doing that. So I guess that's kind of what we've been through. Any top tips, if you're going to have any messages for anyone, and you know, people out there listening who are thinking about the world of work and how organizational development relates to it, is there anything that you'd say that would help them maybe explore organizational development a bit more or get a bit closer to it? I think that's a really good question.

I think my advice to anyone actually, this doesn't matter whether you are involved currently in organization, HR, leadership, or whether you're just

in a place of work and you want to make it better, or you want to be involved in that journey. My best piece of advice would be to get involved in conversations. Yeah. So if there are opportunities to feed into stuff, do it. If there is an opportunity to have a chat with someone who works in that area, have that conversation. If you can join up an employee forum. Great. If you've got opinions, find a way to constructively share them. Because, you know, I think the more that we all take ownership of what it's like for us at work, the more better chance we've got about having a better workplace. And you know, so many people are like, oh, you know, if I fill in the employee survey on there, but I'm the only whatever, 32 year old black, white, Female Man, and they do right, yeah, but they do right, but, but they don't care. That's the point. Yeah. You know, people can find you. I mean, that segmentation does it, but nobody cares. It's about the aggregate and it's about the message. So I guess my point is, you know, get involved in that stuff and share your opinion, because you're never going to make things better unless you speak about it. You've got to, you've got to understand your real starting position before things can be better. I think that's really true. I think you have to understand where you are and where you want to get to. And that's true whether it's about you and your relationship with the workplace or whether that's a much wider what the workplace you're trying to create for the people that you're looking after and your personal development as well. Then we'll touch on coaching and stuff, the joys of personal development. I guess one thing that for me, I'd say is worth doing, for everyone, thinking about this type of stuff from an organizational development perspective, is just trying to step back sometimes and be mindful about your actions. And this is sort of my hippie hat coming on here. De Bono's hippie hat is a special one that I like to James hippie hat moment.

But you know, you really should be mindful of what you do in the workplace, because every action, I think that you take in the workplace, and every interaction you have with somebody else affects not just them, but also you and those around you. So just be conscious of how you contribute and how your behaviors contribute to the way it feels in the workplace. And I think if everyone's just a bit more conscious of the impact that they have on others, then, you know, even just through that awareness piece, you can probably create some better, better environments. So, yeah, step back, be a bit mindful about what you're doing. I think that's a really good piece of advice. I think it

always strikes me that the minute that an organization employs someone to do something, everyone else says, oh, it's not my problem anymore. Yeah. And you know what? That's just not the case.

Have to be responsible for the workplace that we create. It's the only way it's going to be a great place. Yeah? And things like, I mean, you know, we're going to touch on emotional intelligence next time. But things like, you know, emotions are contagious, and you can just see it ripple through. If you're a leader, and you come in with a frown on that face, and you're miserable, and, you know, that stuff just cascades. So you, you'll kind of snap a bit at somebody, and they'll go home and kick the dog, or whatever the analogy is, you know, they'll, they'll disseminate that similar negativity throughout your organization. Yeah, it's an extraordinary thing. I remember working on site, biggest event I'd ever worked on, and I was, you know, it was stressful. I was dealing with maybe two and a half 1000 volunteers. I was worried about it. There were kids on site, a lot of them.

Anyway, we were working with some some young people from the princess trust, and they would, they were getting work experience. And one of them came up to me on the third day, and she said, I'm not trying to be rude, but you look really, really unhappy and really stressed. Yeah, I think you've got the best job in the world, isn't it? And it just blew my doors off. I was like, yeah, do

literally the best job in the world. I'm in in the outdoors, dealing with 3000 kids playing sport. Great. Why on earth am I not happy? And also, how is, how is that being seen? That how bad an advert is that for my industry? So, yeah, I would, you know what that's, that's my tip. I'm changing to yours. That's a great tip.

Cool. All right. So any any last words, anything else you want to say, actually, no, I think it's probably time to close this out. Yeah, let's sign out. So yeah. Thank you very much for listening, and until next time when we.

Start exposing our true emotions. Have a great time at work.