E112 – organisational Cultures (w/ Karen Jaw-Madson)

and James.

Hello everyone. This is James. Just before this podcast, I wanted to take a minute and remind you that we're actually a community interest company working to improve people's experience, performance and engagement in the world of work. In addition to our free podcasts and articles, we provide online training seminars, workshops, courses and development programs, as well as one to one our team coaching. You can learn more on our website, www, dot World of work.io, that's www, dot World of work.io and if you like this podcast, please do take a minute to review. Okay, let's get into the show. Hello. This is James. This is Jane, and here we are again with another episode of World of Work podcast. We've got another great topic for you, something that we'd like to speak about. Jane. What are we talking about today, and who are we speaking to?

Well, today we are talking to Karen jaw Madsen, and we are exploring organizational culture, specifically, some of the practicalities of assessing and changing your culture. Great, let's get into the conversation.

Okay, so here we are in the main body of today's conversation, and we've got a really exciting guest and another exciting topic. We're going to be speaking about organizational culture, and we're going to be speaking about organizational culture with Karen John Madsen, who's got a range of professional experience and background, and one of the things that she's doing at the minute is she's actually an instructor at Stanford, where she teaches a bit on this subject. So that's a great background to bring to what we're speaking about, Karen, before we get into the actual subject of organizational culture and why it matters, and explore it in more depth. Could you introduce yourself to the audience and say a bit about yourself and your background and what you're working on in your course at Stanford?

Yes, of course. And thank you so much for having me. I'm very much looking forward to this conversation. I am a principal of my own firm. It's called co design of work experience, author of the book culture, your culture, innovating experiences at work. And I'm a founder of a future of work platform called nu HR. I also do executive coaching, and as you mentioned, I'm an instructor at Stanford University's Continuing Studies program. So the work that I do primarily enables decision makers to address organizational challenges that affect business performance. So things like I put in four main buckets. One is coaching and developing leadership. Two is enabling organizations to leverage their culture diversity and employee experience. My third bucket is optimizing talent, so that's aligning people with strategy, and then the last kind of cuts across all the others, which is driving change management and transformation. So that's, that's what I do, in a nutshell.

Yeah, well, that's quite a nutshell. You've grown quite a bit in there. That's a great range of really interesting topics that all fit within the, I guess, for broader domain of understanding our our working environment, and improving those which, which is exactly the focus area for what we look at as our podcast, and it's the same areas we're fascinated by. If we start to look at organization culture and start to dive into it a little bit like we usually do, we like to start with quite a broad question. I just check it out there. How would you describe organizational culture? What is your take on it? I know a lot of people write about it and think about it, but, but what sort of resonates with you as

a description? Yeah, I do have my own working definition. And as you can, as you know, having had all these other conversations, is that there is no one universally accepted, established view of culture. And so all of us who are in this space kind of have to put that line in the science and the sand. And for me, culture is this social construct. So anything that influences behaviors, interactions and perceptions in groups of people, primarily organizations and they communicate the boundaries of what is acceptable, not acceptable, and as well as what's condoned as well. So it's kind of all those things that are in that influence people's behaviors, at the end of day, the dynamics and the patterns that they have between each other. I must warn I'm an organizational psychologist by training. So having grown up and I've had background in nonprofit corporate I grew up in HR, so I've kind of got quite a few decades of perspective that I've been able to shape and hone over the years.

Yeah, and, you know, that's brilliant. So as I'm sure, you know, Jane's background is in the nonprofit, nonprofit space, as well as organizational psychology. So there's a lot of overlap there. And we actually, we really like the, you know, the multifaceted experience that generalists is not quite worried about COVID But But career changes and people. Looked into different domains bring to their thinking. We think it's refreshing, and we think that cross pollination of ideas is really great. So I like a lot of the things that you've brought into that definition it. It brings in things like the social construction aspect of it. And I think there's some some really good takeaways within there. You've clearly been informed by the different facets of your career, as well as your sort of working experience from this. If you were to think about people who've maybe academically influenced what you've done or what you've thought, does anyone stand out in terms of theories or models or ideas that you've clung to or been influenced by as you've developed your own definitions?

Oh yes, of course. I mean, and we'll get into this with my framework as well. My big heroes in organizational psychology have influenced my work tremendously. People like Warner Burke out of my graduate school program have been very formative to me. He, of course, has a lot around change in organizations, and of the last few years, has also gotten into learning agility, which has an influence on innovation. David cooperrider from Case Western, who is the father of appreciative inquiry, whole different way of thinking and a shift in mindset that has influenced me over the years and a lot of other thinkers out there that are on the front end, but kind of combining that with the practical side of things. So I've been highly influenced by design thinking, you know. And of course, there's plenty of culture thought leaders over the years that I've taken bits and pieces of. It's just I haven't fully adopted, you know, one entire model. And that's kind of how I ended up developing my own framework, because it got a bit tiresome, you know, going, Oh, it's a bit this, and I'm inspired by that. And became easy shorthand. It's just, it's not that I set out saying, Okay, I'm gonna add another one to this big pile here.

yeah. And I like the, I like that recognition of the need for, you know, theory, and the need for practice and trying to occupy that, that practical interpretation, and then to incorporate both aspects, I think that's important for for making a difference, which is, I think what a lot of us, yeah,

that's very, I'm sorry, I'm I was gonna say that's very tied to my definition of learning as well, right? So learning is not just acquiring the knowledge, it's being able to do something with it. So it's actually defined by change. Think about it, right? You encounter something new, and you behave or think or do things differently as a result of having that knowledge, you've incorporated it. So that's exactly you described it exactly in that type of thinking. Yeah, yeah.

Brilliant. Well, that comes across really, really clearly in some of the descriptions you brought. So that's great when, when we're thinking about what an organizational culture is, and if maybe people aren't close to it, I mean, we kind of have an intuitive sense, but what types of factors might appear like if we're talking about a facet of an organizational culture, or a distinctive feature of somebody's organizational culture. What might some of the things that that we would give name to be that would make a specific culture distinctive?

I think I'd look at that in two different ways. So organizational culture shows up every day in our interactions. It comes through lived experience. So when you go and you ask somebody, how is your day at work, culture is there? You know, it's some aspect of how people remember, and that's why I frame so much around experiences, because that's how we're coded, is to remember things and have memories based on experiences. And so that's kind of where culture shows up. It's it's basically in everything every day, if you in a day to day standpoint, but if you're talking about, you know, if you're going into an organization from the outside and you say, Well, you know, how might I figure out what the culture is? It's just, first of all, I would tell you, it's more than what people say. It's what people do. So observation, to me, is a big part of understanding culture. I think this what I said earlier, about what is acceptable and not acceptable or condoned. That's the real culture. And so when you see those interactions, then you can be able to describe them, when you when you can describe them, you know, with the adjectives, those are really what the culture is, right? Do people feel safe to be able to be authentic at work? You know that those are hallmarks values, as long as they are lived, as opposed to just written. Is where you can also get a sense of the culture as well. So all different places, as you can see. You're going to hear this theme. For me, it's everywhere.

Yeah, well, I guess that kind of leads me on to a next question and, and this is maybe a little bit more of a personal motivation question, but I mean, you've spoken eloquently and fairly broadly already about what organizational cultures are, I guess for you, what is it about organizational cultures that attract you? What is it that is interesting about an organizational culture, and what are some of those hooks that brought you into this subject as a field of interest? Yes,

it is quite personal actually, to use your word because, rather than I'll qualify it and say culture by itself, because I grew up as a person of color in the United States, daughter of immigrants, and had experiences as a child and wondering why things were the way they were. And that developed even further in high school, where, you know, I believe women of color, people of color in particular, when they're in they have the kinds of experiences that that I've had is they go through a period where they need to negotiate or figure out what their personal identity is, and that's Where the questioning started. And ended up majoring in ethnic and cultural studies with a minor, and understanding Women's Studies and gender and all that. So, I mean, this has been going on for a very long time. So no matter what work I've done or what kind of endeavors that I've gotten involved with, there's just this common theme of understanding people culture and affecting positive change. And I do credit my parents, because, you know, I think that's embedded in my personal values as well, so that my interests have really been been driven by my experience as a woman of color and understanding the facets that come with and as you know, there's been a lot of talk around Dei, thank God, but it's taken many years to kind of get to that stage, and with a lot of horrible things that have happened in the meantime. And so that's really what interests me. I'm fascinated. I really am fascinated by how these dynamics develop, and I want to be able to equip people to to use it as a positive force for good, because, as you know, there are lots of bad, toxic cultures out there. Yeah,

that's great. And thank you for sharing some of the personal nature, just as a little playback to you something I didn't mention in our intro for listeners week, we have like a, you know, a mini intro with guests before we start. My parents are actually both social anthropologists, so even though in my career, I went off to do finance as some form of rebellion and became an accountant, throughout my life, I've always had the sort of exposure to interest in and perception of and reflection on how people behave and why they behave that way. So I kind of funneled back into it as well. So I think that's kind of an interesting, interesting, exactly what's that like so, so if we think about the cultures that organizations have we've defined them, we've described some of the facets of them. We've talked a little bit about why culture more broadly and sort of social interactions, and the way that we function as groups of people. Why that's interesting, if we think about cultures within organizations, or, you know, distinct cultures of organizations, why are those important things to understand. I mean, what are the what are the benefits that we get, or what are the practical applications, or what are the outcomes of being able to understand those cultures and influence them? Well, why are they important?

Yeah, on a personal level, it has to do with human potential, right? Because the cultures drive the environments in which people can either live up to their full potential or or aren't able to right? So on a personal level, it's about like, you know, the meaning of life in my in my world, you know, and being able to, you know, find that autonomy and fulfillment and having really great work experiences, where you do wonderful things, right? But on an organizational level, and I'm not the only one to say this, is that culture can be either an asset or a liability. It's there's not a whole lot in between, okay? And so it's kind of a pass fail, and they are so important your organizational culture is either helping your business or your organization do better or perform well, or it's detracting from it. So even companies that, in my mind, are temporarily successful in spite of their culture are leaving a lot on the table there. Right? So I think they're, they're important to everybody. I think culture is everywhere. And so it's so challenging when I come across organizations where they're like, oh, that's hrs job. Because, in fact, culture is in every functional space in the organization. And you can have the best products processes in the world. It's never going to be what you need it to be if you don't have a people piece down. And that comes through culture.

I you've managed to press one of our hot buttons already because we would, I think both totally agree with you on this idea that we sometimes hear around culture being HR responsibility, or a specific sectors responsibility within the organization, which is, I wanted to, I wanted to get your view on I think anyone who, anyone who works in culture, quite often, comes up against that. It can be quite frustrating. One of the other things that we sometimes see is organizations who are keen to change their culture, but if you ask them what their culture is like, or what if they could describe their culture now, they kind of sometimes, some organizations look at you a little bit blankly and say, Well, I'm not sure about that. So I guess we wanted to understand a little bit about what your views are on, how leaders of organizations can actually think more about their current cultures and actually get better understanding of what their current cultures are?

Yeah, well, I always just got off a call earlier this week where the organization reached out because they wanted to answer that question. And to me, that's already half the battle, the challenges, and sometimes in organizations, leaders think they know what people need, and when they do culture work, it's almost a dictation from above, right? And then they wonder why it didn't work. So this is part of why I developed my framework design of work experience and wrote about it in my book. So my book is really the step by step how to for culture, and that's why I named it culture, your culture. It's meant to be a practical guide, and it has, it's made up of forming components, and has five phases, the first of which is called understand. So that's entirely everything that you just asked about is, how do we understand our current state? Where are we? Where are we today and and that is understanding the nuances behind that is so critical to implementing change, because it's kind of like a GPS. That's the analogy I give people, like, how do you know where you want to go? If you don't know where you you've been, you know, you might know where you want to go, but you can't get the directions there if you don't know where you're starting right. So you have to be able to know where you are, where you're going, and to be able to map that journey in between. And so my framework is intended to give that entire process from beginning to end, and then to be able to set the conditions for their culture to be successful and to be sustained for as long as they need it to be,

which makes total sense. And I was wondering if you might be able to share with our audience some examples of maybe some of the tools or the methods or exercises that you might do with an organization or ask an organization to do, and when they're trying to explore and understand their own cultures,

yeah, so I call that. So the product of that first phase understand is called the culture study, and there's three learning loops that help them get there. It's called people in context, insights and criteria, and in the people in context space, the analogy I like to give people, because, you know, shorthand, it helps people kind of grasp it sooner, is that it's like consumer research, but targeted at employees. So when I go into an organization, it and, you know, there's hundreds and hundreds, if not 1000s of methodologies out there for for understanding human behavior, but I would go into an organization and we would curate anywhere from three to five different methodologies. Now I'm going to nerd out. Okay, we know that every methodology has its its benefits and its shortcomings, and that's why we do method multiple methodologies, because then they offset each other's limitations, and they also give you different perspectives of a culture. And when you gather all that kind of data, then you're able to develop insights that you otherwise wouldn't have access to, and then be able to also form the criteria based on that data that becomes your decision making tool later on as it comes to deciding what to do and where to prioritize around culture. And so it's very, I mean, my whole process, it's all about kind of creating each learning loop to have a specific set of activities that are going to build upon each other. Because usually this is how we're. Train. We go from problem to solution. We don't think in between, and that's where we fall short when it comes to culture. And so this is like a form of organizational mindfulness, because it's forces, the the thinking and the process in there to make sure it's done right. You mitigate risk that way as well. Wow,

that sounds that. That does sound to me like a very, I guess, mature or developed process that you're adopting there, in comparison to some of the sort of individual models or the individual approaches that I've heard before. Do you find that that that approach gives you a greater richness, but also engages the organization better, or is it predominantly just about getting a better, more clearer view?

Yeah, I'm glad you asked that, because I mentioned that the framework is made up of four components, and it's basically design and change processes enabled by leveraging and building capability and engagement throughout. So absolutely, it's about engaging people in culture, and culture change from the very beginning of the work through the entire process. And who better? It's a co design model, right? So who better to collaborate with than the people that you expect to carry out the culture? Right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's a certain

obviousness that is not there in any models, but probably should be, that if, if people are fundamentally executing or creating culture, they probably need to co create any change, or at least be involved in it, right? Yeah.

And this is where proof of inquiry comes in. It's like the whole of the organization that tapping into the knowledge and the capabilities and the experiences there is so important, and so that that not only helps with the culture study, the other two artifacts that come out of this work is you get a blueprint, which is your design for your culture. So I'm all about intentional design of a culture, and then the implementation, which comes through the roadmap, so all of those should equip organizations to be able to leverage culture as that asset I mentioned.

Yeah, that sounds that certainly sounds like a far, far more in depth and detail focused approach, which I think is absolutely necessary when you're trying to do something as sticky and complex as affect an organization's culture. I wanted to, I want to just ask you a little bit we, a lot of our listeners are from small organizations, but we also have a significant number of listeners who work in larger organizations, and I imagine that whatever the challenges are around changing cultures or affecting cultures in smaller organizations, it's even tougher when you get you get to the big ones. And I guess I wanted to understand when you go into larger organizations, do you find cultures that are uniform? Do you find them in as being relatively consistent across organizations, in some organizations, or is it do you find that there's a lot of variation and difference within the organizations? Yeah, it depends on the organization,

because companies that have done a great job of instilling their values might have more consistency when it comes to the experiences across the board. On the other hand, if an organization hasn't done the work behind instilling that, then there absolutely is a lot of subcultures. The other thing is, if it's a global organization, then you have the influence of different national or regional cultural differences influencing the culture at work as well. The research has shown, however, if a company has done the work and has created a strong enough organizational culture that can supersede the influence of nationalistic backgrounds, but it's only if they do that work, right? And so yeah, the answer is yes, in both cases, I have seen consistency in organizations that have a strong culture, and I mean, and that could include, you know, imperfect culture. I'm not saying good or bad. It's just if it's culture is really strong or salient, and then those that have kind of a weaker, looser affiliation between people, then, yeah, there's a ton of subcultures, and they show up as in, in People to People interactions, or within teams themselves as well. So I've done a lot of that work there, and I've also worked with startups that are very small, so I've kind of got the scope of understanding between how culture scales from small to large as well.

Great, great. I think that's really valuable, and I think often missing in a lot of this kind of work, because quite, quite often, you larger organizations are more active in this space, and therefore tend to influence the work. So it's lovely to hear that there's a variation of diversity through the sources of your your sort of, oh, thank you.

No. I mean, a lot of this came out of frustration, like developing and writing this book. I mean, it's almost like I tell people I had two babies and one. Here because I had my son in the span of 12 months. And, but no, there's reason why people don't write books. At least I don't write books for fun. It's like I had a motivation and drive and a frustration that I wanted to contribute and, and you're right. I mean, there are gap there have been gaps, a lot of, a lot of the things that I saw in written work is, you know, a lot of here's how we did it, which is not context driven at all, right? And then you have some things around bits and pieces of culture, but not or archetypes. I should say, you know, here's what's good and what's bad culture. So I think we know enough there, but now it's like, how do we leverage it? And that's kind of why I wanted to be able to equip there's more work out there to be done than what I can do alone. I literally put almost, you know, I put everything into this book. I gave everything away for the cost of a book, because I feel so passionate about equipping people, no matter the size of their organization, to be empowered to access culture, because people tend to say, well, culture is esoteric and it's it's something that I can't touch. But the reality is that all of us, we're all actors and oh, I shouldn't say like we're all participants in these systems. I'm also influenced by systems thinking, by the way, Peter said, Hey, we're all, we're all participants in the system, and so we do have access, and we can affect culture. So I've actually, you know, created the book for organizations and and practitioners to be able to leverage. But I've also have something on my website called the 30 day challenge that empowers individuals, no matter what job title level, to be able to, you know, begin to boost their culture, to to initiate the conversations around culture.

That's it. That's a really, really great thing to have, because we talk a lot on the podcast about and we have, we have, we have a large number of listeners who experience this, who may, may not be in positions of leadership as yet, but still want to look at how they can start to learn and develop and influence around this space. So that's that's lovely, and we will, listeners will pop a link to all of Karen's materials when we're promoting the podcast. I just I wanted to you've talked a little bit about your framework already, but I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about the framework and how people use it, so that those who are listening can start to get an understanding of how this framework helps shape the culture work and processes that you use.

Yes, it's so hard to do it by voice only because it is a visual it's a visual model, but I'll try my best, and actually, I've given the bits and pieces of it as I've spoken so far. So just to summarize it, it's, it's made up of four main components, design and change processes. And as I said, they're enabled by capability, engagement. And when I talk about capability, it's about, it's about developing and leveraging capability. And when I talk about engagement, it is true engagement in every sense of the word, co designing right and and partnership and bringing and weaving together an organization even closer. So, so there's, as you know, and in your work, there's a there's sometimes this huge gap between leadership and everyone else, right, just us versus them aspect. And so this is where design thinking comes in is, it's us with them. So this is, this is a collaboration, and all that work is broken down into five different phases. So those are, understand, create and learn, decide, plan and implement and and each of those are made up of learning loops of what I mentioned to be specific sets of activities. We are constantly trained to look ahead and say, What are we doing next? So the way I've developed the framework is to be able to provide the map of the entire process, but to force people to focus where they need to focus where they are in the process. And it's meant to be iterative. That's why I put learning loops in there, because it's about incorporating new knowledge, looping back, solidifying, validating, and when you iterate, you're making smaller decisions along the way, as opposed to saying, right? We're doing a culture initiative, and we're going to do this, and let's hope that it actually works, right? And the big, important piece about it. So there's like three deliverables, as I mentioned, the culture study, the blueprint and the roadmap, right? And it's intended to allow people to really intentionally understand who they are. For their specific context. That's the other problem I had with what was going on with culture work is this so called Best Practice thing? Well, what's everybody else doing right? Copy that and expect it to work the same way

we've talked about that specifically with regards to a few organizations that drag and drop, it must be right for us if it was right for them. It's interesting. You brought that up.

Yeah, no, no, that was a one of my big frustrations there as well. So this is this framework is really intended to empower people to lead and understand their own cultures and to leverage them intentionally and in the process, because you're engaging people throughout, you'll see that change begins to happen even whilst you're going through it. So to me, it's just to me, amazing to experience and see it, which is why I've decided now this is one of my four buckets. But obviously I take a lot of these concepts and apply it to all the other work I do when I coach somebody, it's about designing their experience of being coached, co designing, you know, when I teach class, it's about CO designing their learning experience. So it's all about creating those experiences and and and those cultures to support them that I want people to be able to take away with this framework. Yeah,

it's it's good. I can see how it's brought to life visually as well. So I think it'll be important for us to share some of that visual representation when we when we share this podcast, and as you describe it, I can feel the systems thinking influence coming through within this which is, which is interesting and nice to see. If we think about, I guess, those points of influence within the system, or, you know, opportunities to exert influence within the systems of culture that we think about, what are some of the factors that are there? What are some of those factors that influence or contribute to cultures? Or, I guess players within that systemic culture that we have in organization, some of the key things to think about that might influence our cultures?

Yeah, um, so I would say, I mean, separate from the fact that everybody, of all of us as participants are part of the culture. But if I were to bucket things, it would be the context which many organizations forget about their own context. Yes, values, so company values, because that those are the foundational building blocks of the culture leadership. And then there are people, because leaders need followers, right? So those are, I think, the main influencers on culture, because people actually are more powerful than they think. They're the ones that help determine what's acceptable, not acceptable and condoned, right? And so that's why you've seen a little bit more social activism happening at work, because people are realizing that they, at the minimum, can ask the questions. And and one of my favorite quotes I heard from David Cooper rider was our worlds are formed by the questions we ask, and so change begins the minute we start questioning things. And that's an amazing thing, right? It's what makes us human. It's what allows us to be creative and practice ingenuity and to incorporate our learning. So I really am trying to be human, centered about this, but in a way that benefits both people and their business, because you don't do this just for the good of it. I mean, for businesses, that's how they feel. I feel like motivation, but, but this is really, truly a win, win. I mean, when you when you talk about it, it's like, I just when we talk about it, and then when we see it in practice, you actually there's only so much we can talk about it. People actually have to experience it themselves.

Yeah, and you can really see some of those impacts, like you're speaking about, on the organization. But also more widely, right? I mean, the way that changing cultures affects the lived experiences of people is a really powerful thing, and it's, it's really good to consider it. Yeah,

I mean, to your earlier question about, you know, why is culture important? The future of work is here, I mean, and it's continually being developed. We have new generations of workers that the old models won't work with. And we have new knowledge and technology the work. Future of Work is all about, you know, kind of understanding this combination of technology and people and kind of the global context and culture is such an important player in that and and we have had very rudimentary approaches to culture in the past, and that's why I very intentionally put in my my book title innovating experiences at work, because we desperately need to do that. Yeah. Yeah,

yeah. We're still anchored in the 1890s view of what work is in many ways, or Yeah, period, I believe. So I'd like to, I'd like to go on and speak a little bit about some of the things we might be able to do to change our cultures. And I'd like to start by, well, I guess I'm going to kind of take it for granted why teams might want to do this. When we talked about the benefits of cultures, we talked about the impacts it can have on people, the impacts it can have on, I guess, competitive advantage within organizations. We talked about future proofing. We talked about it as a strategic imperative for success in a range of different factors. So I think I'm going to take that for granted. And what I'd like to explore a little bit is the, I guess, the process of changing culture and what people might be able to do. And we've talked a little bit about your model, but I'd like to maybe talk through a little bit, you know, what somebody might do in an organization specifically, but I'll come on to that in a minute. I guess one of the starting things that I wanted to go back to was a few times you've talked about appreciative inquiry as a tool. And I think some of our listeners will be aware of that, but some of them won't, so I thought it would be good if you could just give it a quick example or a quick description of appreciative inquiry, and maybe reflect on its power as a tool of change, or even a contributor to understanding and changing culture. Okay, so appreciative inquiry, and I'm not going to have, you know, the definitive

layman's introduction, yeah, just, I just thought it would be good to bring it up for Yeah,

yeah, absolutely. For me, Appreciative Inquiry is a mindset and practice, and this is my own take on it, right? The things that stick out for me is it's a completely way, different way of framing people's the way they look at whatever social problem they're trying to address, right So, and I already right there. I use the word problem Appreciative Inquiry is about creating the conditions where those problems can't exist. So it's not addressing problems. It's actually it's using the positive, the positive opposite, to be able to render those problems obsolete. So instead of the example I gave in the book, is, you know, having having a manager list all the problems that have come out of this investigation in their department, and telling to set aside that list and to just go back and think about when their department worked at its best, and recreating that. Because if you go through your problems one by one, you're never going to be finished, and you're going to create new problems in the process, right? But if you create the conditions where they can exist, so this positive framing around possibility and the benefit of leveraging the whole of our systems, our social systems, is going to be able to take everything that's positive, our knowledge, our experiences, our motivations, to be able to create new possibilities. So it's all about this positive framing that we have had trained out of ourselves as we've grown and then relearning it as adults to understand that there's some benefit to looking at things differently. And so those are the things that kind of that kind of stand out for me as it relates to appreciative inquiry. But if you go look at my process and you experience Appreciative Inquiry, there are some similar characteristics, because it's about creating and engaging with the whole of the organization to be able to consider those positive possibilities, right? And we're not trying to create a better culture. We're trying to create the best culture and the best experiences when we do this work, because otherwise, you'll, you know, always fall short. So I hope that I did it justice.

Yeah, no, that's brilliant. And one of the, one of the things that I'd like about tools like Appreciative Inquiry is that that they, from my perspective, at least, they seem to be informative while at the same time changing people. So you think about and you learn, but by the very act of exploring and learning, you're changing at the same time. So they feel like these dual purpose tools that influence while informing, which is can be really powerful,

absolutely and getting. I mean, imagine the power of getting people that otherwise don't talk to one another, you know, in the same room. And I do this with my cultural work as well with design of work experience, which I shorthand as Dewey, by the way, D, O, W, E, very similar to appreciative inquiry. In that respect, is leveraging that whole community and combining the knowledge. And by the way, when you look at how innovation develops, it's about making sure you bring those fragments together and then you come up with something entirely new, but necessary, you know, so all these concepts I've been influenced by, all these different aspects and schools of thought and integrated. In a way that allows companies to define them, companies and their people to define this for themselves. But going back to your question about, you know, how do teams go about this? Yes, they can implement kind of work experience. This scales from small and it scales large. It allows you to customize, but when it comes to like forming new configurations of teams or starting a new team. I'd like to start with Team charters. Okay, so kind of helping people to be able to it's literally, it's a social contract written.

And again, Can I just jump in? Would I? Would I be wrong to assume that you would look to co create that, as opposed to impose that? Or how would

you I do feel a little bit like we should have a buzzer system for when people talk about, particularly when people talk about CO create sort of Team contracting or coming up with Team ways of working, because James speaks very eloquently and very passionately about the role of it. And so we're always very excited when someone comes on and talks about it. Yeah.

We could do this all day again, yeah. So if you were, if you were looking, then to say, for example, you were in the leader, a leader of a smaller team in an organization. So you had, maybe, I don't know, 1520 people in your team, and we're thinking about starting this process of culture change, maybe exploring a team social contract or team charter to do that. What would what would your process be? How would you actually do that? What like mechanically? How would you go through that? And what would it feel like, and what would it result?

Yeah, and for me, it's not just about getting the work done, it's about creating the connection between people in the process. And so I actually break it up. This is where I combine different aspects of my work together. And this is fresh top of mind, because I've actually written proposal, sent off a proposal this week out of a press we like it. Yeah.

So it's two parts. The first part that I've proposed is to build self awareness. Because, I mean, you can't have team awareness without self awareness, right? And so doing some of that talent optimization work to make sure that you know, people understand each other and are aligned. So the first part of that work is the understanding individual differences, you know, work preferences and approaches, opportunities for improved collaboration, and then being able to leverage that knowledge into actually figuring out, you know, how are we going to get things done? How do we explore our areas of and gaps, and how do we de risk execution when it comes to achieving common goals, and when you've done that work, then you get into the team charter, and then, and the team charter includes things like a shared purpose, processes, the norms that you want to establish, operating principles, things like that. Then, then you could see how much more powerful it is, right, having done some of that connectivity work, and then being able to social contract with one another, and then designing the experience of the team. So in the absence of, say, the organization, the larger organization, might not have the purpose, mission, vision, values established. Well, you know, I'm not beyond having teams define that for themselves, having them create their own cultures. So that, you know, Clayton Christensen talked about these cultural islands that can exist when it comes to innovation, and I believe the same thing can happen from a culture standpoint. This is where or widespread organizational change can be established is like, they'll say, Hey, what's going on with that team? You know, people start to pay attention, and that's kind of how it will spread and go viral. I've worked with very small startups like founding teams from the very beginning that care about establishing culture on the founding team and then scaling it up rapidly through obviously, you know, you always want them to have rapid growth, but you want them to scale up in a way where they don't lose their cultural identity and that they can evolve. And so I've kind of seen that aspect, and at the very beginning, working with 235, founders, it's about that social contracting, and they can't do that without understanding themselves first. And I speaking of startups, is that they don't always get the organizational support or the leadership development that do in larger organizations. So that's one reason why I work with a lot of them, because I do want to be able to provide that to them. Yeah,

yeah. So it feels like teams need a certain level of, perhaps sort of maturity to some extent, before they're really able to really go in and embrace things like a charter. So they need to, I guess, have some of the foundations of trust and openness and ability to communicate. Would you say those are some of the key. Actors that would enable this as well as that self awareness, yes,

but it can, it can be developed very quickly. So the proposal I gave us for new configurations of teams, that new teams coming together for the first time, and so everyone might have an understanding of the work that needs to be done, but they might not have agreed on how, how it's going to happen. So it can happen. So you don't necessarily have to have all that trust. The whole intent is to cultivate trust on the team. And so if it's not established this work can help, help them do that. So, you know, creating the sense of psychological safety by which they can earnestly align with one another and focus and working in the same direction, leveraging diversity, by the way, yes, oh yes, yeah. Because, like, the values are what people hold in common, everything else is this wonderful diversity thing, like the things that we can leverage, that people bring, uniquely bring to the table, or that

sort of multiplier effect. And at the very beginning, when I was speaking about your background, I talked about the cross colonization of ideas. And within that whole diversity space, diversity of ideas, ways of working, contributions, thinking patterns, all of that. It's lovely. So I guess the very last question I would ask is, in the interest of time, we're going to start to run out not very last second, last question I'm going to ask, question I'm going to ask is, if somebody was in a small team listening to this, and you know, they've been through and we've covered lots of really great content, if you were going to try and think of maybe one, one sort of takeaway, or one key message that might help somebody go forward, or a key thing that you'd like them to take away, if they are looking to go on and influence and then potentially improve a culture within our teams. What might that key message be? Yeah, I have some tips, I guess I would call them, pay attention to your culture. Yes, awareness is powerful, isn't it? Yeah,

yes, of course. It's never a bad time to focus on culture. People are like, you know, I deal with this every day. It's like, oh, well, maybe after this happens, or that person gets hired, or it's never a bad time to focus on culture, let me just say that. And the whole point is to be intentional about it, because if it's not, then it will organically evolve for better or worse, right? And when it's better, then you can't sustain it because it's not intentional. And so things change all the time. So if you want to have culture as an advantage, you have to be intentional about it and empower yourselves with that 30 day challenge I mentioned. And it's really it starts the conversation. And so the tips are to be able to do all these things, ask the questions and figure out for yourselves what's the best way to go about it. But I'm saying don't put it off. Okay, so that's my big thing. Everything I've mentioned throughout this entire conversation is entirely accessible to people, regardless of their job or level, titles, what have you. And by the way, they might learn something along the way and create new connections and relationships with people by virtue of this process. So I think there's a lot of advantage to be had. It's just people have to just, you know, to use the old term, grab that brass ring, right? Yeah. So I hope that helps with people. I certainly invite them to reach out to me if they have any question, specific questions of their own situations, what they'll find is, I'm always going to have that appreciative point of view. Is like, we can turn this into positive. There's always that possibility and and people just need the permission, I guess, sometimes, or the envisioning, to be able to say, Oh, yes, that is possible, yeah.

And that impetus to start, and to start now, as you said. And why not? Yeah, I sound like an infomercial, but it started, yeah, exactly.

Well, to wrap up then, because we are, we are pretty much out of time. Now, I would like to ask, how can people learn a little bit more about what you're doing, or get in touch and we get to know a little bit more about the dates of your course and how people could sign up to that as well, if they can. Yes,

of course. So I'm available online. I'm on Twitter. I'll give you all the links for your show notes, but I'm on social media. I'm always happy to connect with people to talk about all of these topics. My book is called culture, culture innovating experiences at work. There's a quite an extensive appendix in the back to cover things like I have, like a change primer for people that are new to change management, things like that, and it helps them understand the concepts behind some of the work. And then my book, my course, is called leading company culture to build trust and align your organization. It's through Stanford Continuing Studies. It's bus 280 business 280 and it's for culture leaders, again, regardless of role or title or level. And I've had the entire gamut before and. It helps you walk your culture talk. At the end of the day, you can lead and be able to walk your culture talk as organizations. And you know, every iteration of this course is CO designed with the students, and the students are all working professionals, and so this next round is going to focus a little bit more on the remote work culture aspects, and we're also creating more space for what I call learning lab time, where they can bring some of the challenges and the questions they're struggling with in the organizations, and workshop it with their colleagues. So I'm very excited to do this registration. You can get registered through me right now. Registration begins end of February, and I'm sorry I don't have the exact dates, but I'll send it to you, and the course begins in April. So I and it's quite affordable in US dollars, it's 500 ish for eight week course, and I've adjusted my it's a recorded class so people can, you know, take it from around the world asynchronously. And I've also adjusted the time to accommodate more time zones, because I had people, you know, that were online at midnight, their time, yes, yes. And I felt awful. I mean, I love their dedication and their commitment to it, because again, like culture, the culture change only happens when there's that true commitment, right? And so exactly I loved seeing that. So that's all different ways. I'm involved in all different things. I've got some book projects I'm participating in as well. So sign up for my newsletter, which is only a sometimes newsletter, because I can't we know about those. I look forward to the engagement, and I really did enjoy having this conversation with quite, quite fun. Yeah? Well, we enjoyed it too. So it's a big thank you for me, yeah, and it's a big thank you for me too.

so you are back in the room with Jen and myself, and that was our conversation with Karen John Madsen, all about organizational culture, in which we talked through some of the concepts from her book and a lot of the work that she's done in the practical space as well. Jen, any key reflections for you or anything you want to pick up on based on what we

discussed? Yeah. So I think one of the things that Karen articulated so well, that I think is really important, is about understanding and taking stock of what your culture currently is and whether there's an issue with it at all. And for me, that's massively important. I'll tell you, I always reflect on a story I was told by a lecturer who said to me, she used to get lots and lots of inquiries in her consultancy about, I want to improve my staff's motivation, and the response she would always give would be, how do you know there's anything wrong with it right now? And they wouldn't. They would just be making an assumption or making an estimate. And I think that that power of knowing where you are or what your current culture is, is so powerful and important in order for you to make any decisions about what the future might like and any changes you might want to make. Yeah,

I think that's a great point. And actually it's in many ways quite similar to the point I was going to pick up on, which was again, about bespoking and applicability and really understanding where you are. And one of the things that Karen talked about when we were having our conversation was that sometimes organizations see another organization and want to mirror their culture, or want to be like them, or want to replicate the things that they're doing to improve their culture and experience. And Karen's point was that actually, you know what's right for somebody else might not be right for you. And again, it's that same sort of need for awareness and reflection on where you are at the minute and creating the right things for you based on your context and your experience. So I think there's a lot of sort of crossover between those two points. So I

just want to add on while you say that, have you heard of the phrase isomorphic pressures? No, tell me about this. Isomorphic pressures are exactly what you just talked about, where in sectors, particularly people catch ideas from others without necessarily it being either the thing that's made that organization successful or indeed would work for them. So the example would be like, where everyone tied to Spotify their teams. So there was, there was stories going around, around corporates, around how Spotify did things, and everyone wanted to copy them because they were so successful without asking. Is that the reason they're successful? Or indeed, is this right for us? Yeah,

and those things could even be holding them back. They could have been much better if I didn't do that. So there are other sort of questions to reflect on. I like that word isomorphic. That's fun. I know it's my favorite at the moment. That's good. One other thing that came up that we discussed, that I liked is appreciative inquiry or inquiry, depending on where you were. I like the, you know, the act of focusing on a positive side of things and looking for better ways to do it and adopting that mindset. Is it something that you've done before? Jane, is it something you've

been involved in? So I am a massive fan. Appreciative inquiry. But I will also say that it's something that I'm relatively new at understanding formally and getting to grips with. But the little that I have both read and had sort of had a go at, if you will, involving it, trying to develop it into my practice, I just find it incredibly powerful. What about you? Yeah, similar. I mean, I've come across it in

in sort of theory and education before and speaking to people, and I've done little bits of it in practice, but again, not as a really formal part of a large program. So like you, I find it interesting and refreshing and a great way to do things, but I've not used it on a big scale, so I'd love to explore it more. Yeah, well, maybe we should do a podcast about it. Could be fun. All right, we'll add

it to the list. All right. Well, I think that's it for today. So thank you guys very much for listening.