E115 – Org Culture and Remote Working (w/ Ben Branson-Gateley)

Hello. This is James, and this is Jane, and here

we are again today with another episode of a world work podcast. What are we speaking about today? Jane,

we're revisiting one of our favorite topics today, and we are going to be talking all about culture, and a little bit about remote cultures too, and we're going to be doing it with our guest, Ben Branson Gateley from Charlie HR Brilliant, well, that's one

of our favorite subjects, so let's get into the conversation and see what we can learn. Okay, so here we are on the main body of today's podcast, and we've got a really great conversation lined up. We're going to be speaking to Ben Branson Gateley, and we're going to be exploring a little bit more of a broader topic of organizational culture, and focusing in a little bit more on remote cultures and what they're like and how maybe we can foster and create helpful remote cultures for our organizations. Ben, before we get into that subject, would you be able to introduce yourself to the audience and say a little bit more about yourself and your background and what you are working on at the

minute? Sure, sounds. Sounds good. I'm always really intrigued as to people's podcast voice versus their real voice. James, your podcast voice, loads of energy. I love it. Yeah. Hi team Ben. And I'm the CEO co founder of Charlie HR. We started that business about five years ago, focusing on how to help people save time in terms of all the HR admin that happened in a business day to day, we predominantly work with SMEs, small businesses under 100 that's kind of what we're really passionate about. And we're now sort of refocusing the organization and trying to move towards a world where we help companies craft their culture. So that's what I'm really passionate about, culture how to think of that as a sort of strategic tool within an organization? Yeah,

brilliant. And you know, culture is a topic that we're hugely passionate about as well, and we'll come on, I'm sure, to some of those reasons. I guess, before we explore this, when you think about culture and the things that you're doing, how would you describe culture as you know, to a lay person, I guess, what does culture mean to you? Yeah, it's

really, it's really interesting question. It's a really important question. And I think it's, it's a question that we've historically had really bad answers to, and I think this is kind of why we're in a bit of the place where we are why? Maybe culture isn't prioritized as much as I would like and as we would like. Maybe so to me, culture is the output of the people you bring into your organization, right? Who you hire? It's the policies that you set. So what are the do's and don'ts and I and guys, I don't just mean things written on a document and put in a desk drawer. I mean, those that are, those that are said, but also those that are unsaid, right? The kind of the natural, the obvious, do's and don'ts of an organization, and then your processes, so how you work, I think culture is actually very operational, right? The activities, the way you run your company have massive impact on the culture you create. So that's how we see culture as being the output of those three buckets of activities.

Yeah, that's helpful. Thank you, and it's good to bring some of that sort of acknowledgement of a role of process and procedure and some of those more mechanistic and structured aspects of work into the discussion of culture, because we think that's important too. When, when we think about culture, and when we talk about culture, we sometimes take it for granted that culture brings benefits with it, and that that, you know, you talked about it being a strategic thing. I guess it would also be good to step back and reflect a little bit on from your side. How you think cultures help organizations? You know, what's the advantage of having a stronger culture? Or what do you gain by investing time in your culture?

Well, there's three things, three areas, three buckets that we know from studies, from research, that are the output of a strong culture. The first one, which is pretty obvious, is it's going to put you in a really good place to attract the best people. You know, we've, you know, McKinsey wrote about the war on talent probably 10 years ago now, and that's still the case, right? There is a war on talent. The businesses with the best people win. Yeah. And I think one of the interesting things, like, a side note, is what we've seen from from from COVID, is lots of people are really taking a second to think about, what am I doing with my life, and is this really where I want to work? Is this really where I want to spend my time? So I think it's going to become even more important to attract, attract great people. The second is retention. So we know that organizations with really strong cultures have a much higher retention than those that don't. Cultures where people want to spend their time are much more likely to be places where people decide to spend their time, right? That feels pretty obvious. And then the last one is performance. So a highly enabled culture that thinks very strategically about what the organization is trying to achieve and how that culture can support that has a huge impact on performance and output. Think one of the massive benefits of the last 12 months is remote work. Hybrid work forces us to get a way of looking at ours as a way to measure output. You know, really out, really results are driven, you know, by the outcomes that we that we create as people within within teams. So, you know, we know that culture has a has a huge impact on how to create motivation within a team, how to drive a team towards a common goal. And the output of that is all results, right? Business results, which is what we're after.

Yeah, and you said in a lot of your work, you're working with organizations maybe up to 100 people or not. Kind of demand so organizations less than 100 people, when you find that you're working with these types of organizations, do you get the sense, or is your experience that culture is intentionally shaped within these organizations, or is it sort of evolved as a product of their sort of history and existence? What's your sense of how cognizant and intentional teams and leaders are when it comes to shaping cultures in their organizations.

Super, super, super, good question. I think this is part of the problem and part of the challenge. I don't think culture is prioritized well enough within organizations, and I think part of that is because we don't have a good definition for it, and a lot of the definitions that sit out there are pretty fluffy. And you know, you talk to tech companies, small businesses, high growth companies, however you want to kind of classify it, and you'll hear people talking more about ping pong tables and free beer and great Christmas parties than you will about some of the things that I've just talked about, right people, policies and process. So part of the kind of mission that I'm personally on, the battle that I'm fighting, is I want to give people that clearer definition a two. I want to help them understand the benefits of a great culture, which we just talked about, attraction, retention and performance. I think if we could do both of those things, people will start to prioritize it more. But at the moment, for sure, it's, it's definitely not the top of the agenda. Yeah,

that's interesting. That's, that's our sense as well. And and I guess one of the other things that I guess I'll ask sort of in relation to your your business at the minute, what sort of assumed knowledge do you take in with you? I mean, when you're working with people and you're going out, something that we find when we speak to consultants and practitioners is that people have an assumed level of knowledge for the people that they work with. When you're actually working with these people, what sort of assumed level of knowledge do you find is right to bring to them? How much knowledge do they have about culture?

I think, I think you want to, I think, I think that the answer to that question is kind of how you approach any conversation, if I'm honest with you, James, like, approach every conversation humbly,

you know, approach every conversation, knowing that you can add some value, but not trying to prove that maybe you know more than the other person. You know, culture is something that affects all of us. It has a huge impact on how we feel at work and and therefore, has a massive impact on our happiness, right? So it's an important thing. But equally, no one, well, no one enjoys being preached to, right? So I think making sure that you kind of check yourself in terms of, in terms of how you have those conversations, I think, is it's just what it means to be a good person right at the end of the day, yeah, but

a little bit of humbleness can go a long way that, you know, listening before we leave is helpful, for sure, when we talk about the different factors that are that affected a culture, you mentioned a few different things. So you talked about processes, you talked about policies. You also talked about, you know, statements and things that you don't, you know, put in the desk drawer, but things that you live. What other factors do you think affect. Culture in an organization, and who within organizations contribute to and impact and shapes for cultures that exist. Well,

I think, you know, the three buckets, people, policies and process. I do think people is the biggest one, and that's why I'm such an advocate for how you prioritize hiring and thinking about that and getting that right, the people that you bring into a room have an exponentially bigger impact on the culture than any policy or process right. Policy and process are there to kind of guide and shape, but really, if you want to rebuild a culture, if you want to remake a culture, you probably have to change the people in the room, right? The people are kind of the raw ingredients for this dish that we're making, so they have the biggest impact. I think, you know, there's a good point to make here around leadership, which is that, you know, leaders can have a really, really positive impact on crafting the right culture, but they can destroy it overnight as well. So yeah, as I think about, you know, consultants in the space, or practitioners, or I think about HR leaders who are kind of advocating for this work. And there are some awesome groups and people out there, you know, culture amp, run a great culture first community, which is awesome. There's so much great advocation for the prioritization of culture. None of that matters if a CEO is not on board, or a founder's not on board, or a managing director is not on board, because if they're not living those things each and every day, no one's going to believe it, and this kind of idea of authenticity and trust and vulnerability, I think are really big themes and really important powers when it comes to crafting culture within any organization. I'd be interested

in your thoughts. We've taught, we've talked about culture a little bit in previous episodes, and people come on different sides of the fence on this. So I'd be interested on your view of on your view of how much you think cultures are driven by from a kind of a bottom up approach, of what happens within the majority of interactions within organizations between the people and the people themselves, versus how much is driven from the top and through the actions and role modeling of the senior staff. It's

a good point. I think, you know, I would not be able to put a percentage on it for sure. I think it's going to look very different in every in every organization. But I, I guess I want to advocate for a leadership model rather than a management model, right? And if you, if you look at the two the two definitions of those two words, you'll see that, you know, leadership is someone walking forward and people following behind, whereas management is someone turning around and saying, let's do this. Let's do that. It's much more, much more dictatorial. It's much more this is how we're going to do things. So I think, I think that's the big decision that organizations need to make. And I'm not saying that one is better than the other, right? Like, there are some organizations which do very, very well and are very successful when it when it comes to their sort of management philosophies and really echoing those, those traits. But I personally believe the types of organizations that I want to be part of, the types of organizations that we want to build and help and help grow, are those that you know, use and channel that that that leadership style, and so in thinking about that, when it comes to culture, you know, it puts you in a much stronger position, because you're saying, Look, I'm going to act and behave in the right way, and I'm going to kind of march forward into the sunset, and, and you're all going to follow and, and you're gonna be able to see how I behave and how I interact, and how I how I do things, and the decisions that I make, and and you're going to mimic those. I think it's it's it's it lets up, it sets up for a much more successful, successful culture. I think you can have a leader that you know embodies the culture really well. And then you can have people on the team that that don't and that maybe are corrosive, or, you know, the ante of the culture that you're trying to build, and you can still have pockets of the culture that you're trying to achieve. You know, what you can't have is a team that are embodying the culture in some ways, and then a leader that doesn't, I don't know about you, that's something we see quite a lot.

Yeah, it is, and it's frustrating. It's really frustrating. But I think the more I talk about any of these things that relate to culture people, a. Char all of these different topics. The thing I keep coming back to is good leadership is actually really, really difficult. And not only difficult, it takes up a lot of time and energy. And unfortunately, I think a lot of people are pretty lazy, and so they end up going that the quick and easy route rather than the difficult and hard route and and that's why we end up in the situations that we end up in. So it's

it's really interesting listening to you Ben, because one of the things that we find, James and I is that culture is one of the most contentious things. We talk about with our guests. Like we like we feel differently to them, and they feel differently to each other and all of that. And there's things that you say that feel so accurate and so unspoken, sometimes like the fact that leadership is really hard. So James and I talk about it all the time. Leadership is like a daily for us. Anyway, we talk about how leadership is almost like a daily challenge to do the thing that you need to do in every interaction wherever you can, to be really your best within the terms of the culture, so that your team can see that and relate to it and directly apply the knowledge. So it just made me smile as you were saying that, because I felt like saying yes, please, can everyone listen to how hard leadership is and also how much effort you put into it? I guess the question comes whether people are lazy, whether they just don't understand what it means to be that sort of attention. Have that attention to detail as a leader. So I don't know about that, but definitely, definitely that piece about strength leadership, I wanted to ask you about your thoughts then on middle managers, because one of the things we talk about loads is this up down business. And I think you're right. I think it's contextual. I think James and I would both agree on that, that it depends on the organization. But what we do find when we talk to organizations quite a lot is that the middle managers get stuck in the middle. So there's there's either a desired culture from one end or the other that's being driven. And those people that are managing the teams on the ground find that they get sandwiched in between or pulled in one direction, struggling to sort of enforce change or drive change. I guess I'd be really interested what your sort of thoughts are on, how those people who are sort of aspiring to be their best management but maybe are finding it challenging to push upwards, to sort of drive better cultures. If you've got any thoughts on what they can do or how they might approach that,

yeah, very hard. It's very difficult. And you know, and just to your earlier point, you know, being a good leader is exhausting, genuinely exhausting.

You know, I have been doing it for doing it for 10 years. We've built a social media agency before we started work on Charlie and yeah, it's tiring, right? Been through lots of bouts of burnout and therapy. You know, I have therapy every single week just to kind of keep me on on the track and sane, and, you know, help me to be a good a good brother and a good son and a good husband and a good friend and all of those things, right? Because I think otherwise, you know, work can definitely overtake those, those things.

And I think the key thing that we get wrong as leaders is we're not vulnerable enough, you know, we we think that what our teams want from us is to stand up and be like, yeah, we've got all the answers. We're really good at our jobs. We're very effective. We're the smartest person in the room, we're the best at with the best person in the room. And in fact, that's a complete lie. I'm definitely not the smartest person in the room at Charlie. I'm probably middle of the pack at best. I'm definitely not that great at my job. And I definitely have good days and have bad days. And I think, you know, one of the coping mechanisms that allows you to be a a better leader, more authentic leader, is kind of just taking taking the pressure off and saying, You know what, I'm going to try this, but I'm not going to be perfect. And then suddenly the team are like, okay, cool. You're being real, you're being honest, you're being vulnerable. With us, we can, we you know, we'll give you the feedback you need, and we'll work with you on this rather than, you know, trying to be this sort of Churchillian leader carved out of stone, which is just, it's never going to happen. Yeah,

there's so many perspectives of people out there thinking like that, right? And thinking that's what it is,

yeah? And I think that's partly because of the media. It's partly because of the history books. You grow up and, you know, you hear about all these amazing founders in Silicon Valley who are like the media portrays as being incredibly smart and incredibly good good at their jobs. We don't talk enough about the things that we get wrong, the things that we struggle with, you know, the example that I will, you know, highlight is the founder of Monzo, stepping down, stepping off the board. This year, he was a CEO, moved to move to the chairman position, and he's now, he's now completely stepped away. So. You know, citing mental health examples and his well being as a reason for doing that. And I wish more people would do that. I wish more people. I wish we would celebrate more the people that do that. I think, I think that's the example we need to set. You know, when we think about middle managers, I completely empathize with their situation, right? They've got a team of people beneath them who are pushing them and saying, We want more. We want this. We want that. And in some organizations that then trying to manage upwards and say, right, this is what we need to do. This is what we need to make happen. I'm a big believer in pushing decision making as far along the branch as is possible. So distributed decision making, I think, is really important process that I think can impact your culture in a really, really beneficial way. So I don't want to be the decision maker. I don't want our function leads, our heads of departments to be the decision makers. I want the individual to be, to be the decision maker as much as possible. And I think one of the ways you can, you can kind of

make it really clear that that's what we're trying to achieve, is by what I call the upside down org chart. So I don't know if you guys ever seen this, but take an org chart and put it on its head, and at the very top you're going to have, you know what were the lowest ranks in your org chart are now going to be the highest ranks in your org chart. And very typically, they are the customer facing, people on the front line, people on the coalface, and I would argue that they are your most important employees. They are there. Everyone beneath them at this point is just there to enable and support. And again, it comes back to that difference between leadership and management. Management in its title, implies that the person giving the instruction knows better than the person doing the job as fundamentally incorrect. I think, as a leader, your your role is to, is to coach, is to ask questions, is to is to remove roadblocks, and and so, you know, in our organization, we try and push decision making as far as we can, down the decision making branch so that team members can make decisions, team leads can make decisions. And I think in that scenario, middle managers are going to feel a lot more empowered. That

makes total sense. Yeah, and we are. We love looking at different decision making processes, so we're all for encouraging people to look at people to look at different ways of doing it as well. I'd be really interested now to think about what it's what your thoughts are on, how those responsibilities and those shaping of cultures through leadership and management have changed or do change when you consider remote working. And I wonder if you know both from your your expertise as an organization that supports culture, but also your own perspective as a leader. Yeah,

super topical, and then so COVID for us has been great in the context of this, this sort of culture flag that we're flying. And I want to be clear, that's not me kind of saying that's what. Last 12 months have been easy. And, you know, there have been lots of very horrendous things that have happened around the globe. And you know, I count myself as a very lucky one to be able to sit at home on my computer and and and still work. Definitely fortunate for that to be the case. But I think in the culture space, what COVID And, you know, hybrid work and remote work has pushed is it's it's taken away all of the distractions. So people use a great office or getting drunk on a Friday afternoon or an amazing Christmas party or great snacks in the office or a team lunch. They used all of those as distractions, as a as plasters, to cover up very weak cultures. And then suddenly, over a space of a couple of weeks, all of that was gone, and business leaders around the world were sitting there going, Oh, I actually don't know if our culture can withstand this. I don't know if we've got the right people, I don't know if we've got the right policies, and I don't if we've got the right processes to actively craft our culture on a daily basis. So this quick switch to remote has basically it's enhanced. It's accelerated our transition to having to think about culture as a tangible thing that you can work on and prioritize. Is, and the way that we're going to do that is by thinking about people, policies and processes. So it's had a profound impact and and I think long term, that's really positive, because I think it means a lot more organizations are going to prioritize their culture. Prioritize culture means happy engaged team members. Happy engaged, engaged team members is just good for the world, right? Like, what a sad thing to think about, that the majority of people that work in the UK in a job don't enjoy going to work. Yeah? That is, that's something that we can change through, through great culture.

Yeah, that's, that's some really interesting question there. I As you were speaking, the sort of analogy of the Emperor with no clothes on, sort of appeared in my mind, right? I mean, so, so once we make some of these transitions, it's easy to see what's really there and to see through these things. But like you said, have been distractions. And years ago, I remember speaking to some people about culture and Facebook, UK and things like that. And this was at a time when people were sort of lauding the benefits of this type of organization, and I remember him saying, yeah, it's all really good, but we don't have a pension policy. So we've got these great sleep pods, but we don't have a pension. And I just remember thinking about, you know, what are the things that are of value to people, and the things that really define and shape their organizations and their experiences of women, and how, you know, we can be distracted by some of these things. So I think that's, I think that's neat. And one other thing I wanted to just mention is your, your point about the upside down org chart, I like that, and it to me, it brings an image of of a tree and of growth and those types of things, which I like. A few weeks ago, or, I guess, a couple months ago, we had a long conversation with a couple of marine aviators, so pilots. And then they talked about, you know, the culture in the military, things like that, and and about the fast moving nature of leadership and accountability within organizations. And essentially, what they said, and I think this is actually policy and in some air forces, is that whoever has the best view is the person that's in charge of that moment. So if things change, then you know the leader is not the leader at that moment. The leader seeds through that distributed leadership to the person who can bring the most to that organization. And it's nice to hear that kind of thing echoing, echoing in some of the language that you, that you bring. If we dive a little bit more into some of these remote cultures. What do you think from an actual, practical working standpoint, are some of the challenges that we face that make remote cultures maybe more difficult to think about or more difficult to grow and expand into productive, fulfilling places for people to work, you

have to just work so much harder. Unfortunately, you have to be really, really deliberate. You know, you look at all the all of the best remote first organizations. You know, get lab, bro credit example, base camper credit example, buffer was a great example. I spoke to the People Operations Manager, Nicole from from buffer this week on my podcast. And all of them are so deliberate about how they think about these three, these three buckets of activities. So who are the people that are going to really thrive in a remote culture? Because let me tell you, it's not the same people that thrive in office. What are the policies that are gonna that are gonna really support us? You know, how are we thinking about maternity and paternity leave? How are we thinking about holiday how are we thinking about learning and development? How are we thinking about mental health and support there, right? You know, isolation is a challenge when it comes to remote work. So, you know, mental health becomes something that's thrust into the spotlight. You've got to have answers for that, and an old school employee handbook is not the answer, let me tell you. And then processes things like transparency. How are you going to ensure there's a free flow of information across the organization, so that people have all the context they need, because they're not sitting in an office over listening and hearing what people are talking about. How you gonna ensure everyone's aligned? Are you gonna use something like OKRs, or you're gonna have another kind of KPI and planning process? You're gonna retro things, how you going to learn from your mistakes? We have to spend so much more time being really focused on which of these are right for us and are going to help us build, build and craft the culture that we want, but the time that we need to invest in into it from a remote context is just so much greater, because in an office, when everything's together, you can kind of get away with a bit of this stuff. A lot of this stuff happens naturally, and then you've got those sort of, those plasters, those crutches that people rely on, and it kind of means they don't have to worry about this. But let me tell you, if someone's sitting at home alone, all they've got is the work that. Doing. So it better be engaging. It better be something that they're aligned on. It better be aligned to the business's vision and its mission and its purpose. They better be getting good feedback all of these things, right? It's just, it's so, so much more important to invest in them. And so we've definitely seen that across customers, friends, you know, other people in the space and, and, yeah, I'm genuinely, really excited by it, because I think it's going to accelerate all of this work. That's

interesting. I thought your point at the beginning was particularly interesting about, you know, the people who would thrive in a in a conventional, you know, shared office, maybe are different for people who would at home. I wanted to ask about a couple of aspects of work that we see coming up when we speak about remote working, and just to get your thoughts on them, and they fit very well within the areas that you're thinking about. One of them is, I guess, the shift from synchronous to asynchronous working, and how how working works for us when we're not always at that touch point with other people. I mean, how do you see people managing that transition? Or do you see people continuing to work in a sort of always on function at home? Or do you see communication styles changing? How do you see people actually managing that communication piece remotely to make sure that people have the time for focused work, while also maintaining the connection that they need for instruction, feedback, connection, and all those types of things.

So I guess I throw the question a little bit back at you, James, well, what's the part of that that worries you the most?

I guess the bit that I think I see challenges within there is as I see scope creep, so I see often leaders who lose visibility of a work that people do, and lose of their perceptions of control over their teams, maybe creeping in their communication, maybe becoming more frequent, maybe giving less space and time for people to embrace deeper work, calmer work and focused work that both fulfilling but productive to your organization, is kind of where I see it. I think see that loss of visibility from a leadership being a challenge. Is that something that you guys see, or is it just in my

role? Yeah, I I really challenge leaders to think about what is it that they need to know? I really don't think the CEO should be the most informed person in the business. And I think, I think if that is the case, if they're trying to be the most informed person in the business, they're trying to understand everything that's going on, I think that's a really bad use of time. It's a kind of it's a self confidence thing, right? It's hard to let go, isn't it? I mean, that's, I think that's a challenge. It's hard,

yeah, it is it is it is it is it is it is is hard to let go. And it's a sort of, there's a, there's that deep seated worry about, are people doing the right thing? Are we making progress in the right way? Are we? And that's why having a really, really clear vision a really clear purpose. So why are we here? What's our mission like? What's the thing we're trying to solve, and what's the vision for the world? Once we've, once you've achieved that mission, what does that look like? Why is it important that we achieve that mission? So doing that, and then making sure that you have some process for aligning everyone around? What are the priorities this quarter, this month, this week, in helping us make progress towards that if you do that really well as a leader. You shouldn't really need to know what's going on, is my challenge. You know, you should have the confidence that you've hired really smart people and make and make decisions. You've set up this framework. It's a bit like it's a bit like a football field. I think human beings, we like some constraints. You know, I am not one that believes in complete flexibility, right? You know the idea that, you know, if I took you to the Peak District and said, play a game of football, you'd be like, This is really difficult. Where's the goal? This is like a ginormous area to play a game of football in. We're going to get lost. We're probably gonna get hurt. It's just gonna be really challenging, and it's not gonna be a good game of football. If I take you to a football pitch and say, play a game of football, be like, Okay, this makes sense. I know what the boundaries are. I know what success looks like.

If I take two football teams, and I put them in an area that is, you know, 10 meters by 20 meters, they're going to be cramped. They're not going to have space to flow. They're not going to have space to do anything. It's going to be, it's going to also going to be a really bad game of football. So I think that's the job of a great leader. It's. Set the constraints, what's the pitch we're playing on,

and then place the goals in the ground. What does success look like? And then let your superstars run around that pitch and try and score goals, and if they fall over, if they hurt themselves, if, if they're playing off position, then you don't shrink the parameters, the pitch, but you have a quick word with them. You say, Hey, what's going on? How you feeling? Do you need anything else? Is it clear? Have I been clear on what your role is, on what on what position I want you to play? Like that's the model for for getting this stuff right, rather than I want to be the person that knows everything and is close to every decision.

I think that's a really lovely metaphor to bring to life, kind of where the limits of a leader's responsibility might be with an organization, particularly in terms of the practical getting involved. And I think, I think I agree that we quite often see leaders sort of drawn into more detail, particularly so my background in small organizations, particularly in the expertise or the route they've come up through, so they quite often be much more respectful of expertise that does not necessarily overlap with their own experiences. I wondered a little bit about just wanted to ask a couple couple of questions before, before I wrap up with mine is, how, how do you when we think about developing cultures in a team and people are different and individual, right? And not even if we recruit well for fit, and we're trying to get diversity within our hires, as well as a good, strong culture, we still have people have different opinions and different ways of working. How do you think leaders can navigate situations where they have teams with different cultures within their sort of wider culture? And is that something that worries you, or would you encourage it? So for example, on a very practical level, teams I've led before have had the IT team has the sort of the IT software team has had a very different culture from the people team, for example, in terms of the way they behave, their people, their hires, their policies, their processes. You describe it in the buckets. Does that? Do you think that matters? Is that a good thing, or can that be a hindrance for an organization trying to get something consistent across the whole organization?

Yeah, it's an amazing thing. And I am so confused at this idea that we, well, I don't know where we picked up this. Picked up this idea of consistency.

our customers are not consistent. Yet we kind of got a little bit, you know, fascinated by this idea of creating cultural consistency within our organizations. I think that's a really dangerous thing to do. And anyone listening who is hiring for culture fit, I want you to stop doing that immediately, because I think it is, it is dangerous, and it leads to mono cultures. We want to hire for culture add. We want to hire for how these people going to add to our culture? What are they going to bring that that that culture is ever changing and ever evolving, and we use the people we hire, the policies and the processes to navigate it, to to amend things, to shift things around. But I think we should be absolutely celebrating differences. We should be celebrating subcultures within the within our organization. You know, I think it's so important that, for example, in the example that you used, it can be and I'm going to use some stereotypes introverted, if they, if they want to be introverted, and they want to, they want to do a computer games night, or they want to do a board games night, or they want to, you know, do something that the people team don't want to engage with. I think that's awesome. That's amazing, and we should be supporting them to do that equally. If the people team want to do something completely different, we should allow them to do that. So I think that's really important. I think I think that that the end result is a is a is a culture with diversity of thought and opinion, and that's a really great thing, and that's going to allow you to serve your customers much better. The the common thread that we're trying to we're trying to pull here is not cultural alignment. It's not cultural fit. It is values alignment. Do the people that we're hiring share the same values and and that that's where we're looking for alignment, and that's the key thing. And I think it's really important not to get those two things mixed up. You know, people can behave slightly differently. They can have different things that they're interested in, different passions, different ways of communicating, but they can share the same values. Let's use integrity, right? Integrity is a great example. I. We want to hire people with really high integrity. They can be very different people, but they can have high integrity, and that's the fit that we're looking for. It's not necessarily cultural similarity, it's values alignment and similarity.

That's that's really helpful, and it's a good insight for individuals looking to make changes in their teams. I guess we're starting to get towards the the end of our conversation, just in terms of time, if you were maybe a leader in a smaller organization, and you've listened to the things that we've spoken about here, and you wanted to start to affect your culture or make some changes, what advice would you give that person in terms of how to start, you know, if there's a leader, looking at one of these smaller organizations that we're speaking about, you know, less than 100 people, and I want to change things. What's the starting point for and what's that departure point for changing their culture?

So I think the first thing is to actually prioritize it and start talking about it. So the easiest thing I would do is, do you have a leadership team meeting. Is it once a month? Is it once a week? Is it once a quarter? Put culture on the agenda and make it a standing agenda item, and just have an open conversation about, what do we think about our culture? Like, what's working, what isn't working? That's the first thing is to actually, is actually start talking about it, because once you start talking about it, you'll realize how it's serving you and how it's not. I think the second thing is, then make it someone's responsibility, and that person should be at the highest level of the business. It should be someone on that leadership team. We have a chief of staff who's ultimately responsible for culture, but we also have what's called a culture Ops Manager, which is a new role that we've created, which sits between people, HR and operations, and gives them a remit to change those three things, people, policies and processes. You don't need to hire someone into the role full time, but I think definitely having someone that's responsible for it is responsible for it is really important. And then the third thing is try and write down what you want your culture to look like. What does success look like here? What are the what are the values, what are the behaviors that you're trying to embody in your culture? Is it teamwork? Is it integrity? Is it speed and agility? Right? Now, all of those words are great. They're not very helpful, though, because, again, we all have slightly, slightly different definitions. So then go and define them with the proposed and the correct behaviors that you'd want to see. So we show integrity when we do X, Y and Z.

We show our commitment to teamwork when we behave like this, and give examples. So you codify it, so talk about it, make someone responsible, responsible for it, and then codify what does success look like. And I think if you can do all of those two things, that's a great start.

That's really good, and that values into behaviors. Piece is such a powerful stage, and it's such a good way to help people see what these things mean for them on a day to day basis. It really brings things to life. We've spoken there a little bit about what leaders can do, or those more in positions of power and towards top organizations can do in this space, I guess very last question for me, if there's somebody out here who's maybe not in a position of power, who who maybe thinks their organizational culture could benefit from improving or changing, or they have some challenges with it, which, as you alluded to earlier, a lot of people do, what's something that somebody might be able to Do everything, to do just one, one thing as as a person you know, scattered in the midst of an organization, what type of thing might they be able to do to start looking to implement the cultures that they are working within, feedback, the highest value

process that you can implement within an organization that will have a exponential impact on your ability to transform and craft your culture is feedback. If an organization has feedback at their core, people are willing to give feedback up, way up, ways down, ways sideways, then you're setting yourself up to craft your culture. If you don't have feedback in place, it becomes really, really difficult to make anything happen. So feedback is always where I would start.

Cool, that's helpful. Okay, well, with that, we are pretty much out of time. So just to wrap things up, I just wanted to ask you, how can people learn a little bit more about the work that you're doing now in the culture space, and maybe explore your business a bit more and things like that.

Sure. Yeah, well, look, I'm on a podcast, so I guess I'll talk about my podcast. Yeah, we do a podcast called The culture ops podcast, or one word culture ops, and you can find it everywhere. And, yeah, we're in our. In our second season, 10 episodes per season, every week, I do a deep dive on a particular policy, a particular process that is interacting with with someone's culture. So this week, it was Nicole from buffer. The previous week, I spoke to Bruce Daisley. He used to be a European VP of Twitter. So yeah, subscribe and give it a listen, and hopefully there's some useful nuggets in there. Brilliant.

Well, we will share that when we share this, and look forward to those episodes. First time. Great. So it's just time to say a huge thank you for me. That was really fun. So thank you and a thank you for me too. No worries, guys, thank you for having me. Really appreciate

it. Okay, so you are back in the room with us, and that was our conversation with Ben from Charlie, HR, um, Jane, there was lots of stuff in there. We covered quite a wide range of things in the broader culture domain. Is there anything that struck you specifically, or anything you'd like to reflect back on? I felt we

covered a lot of ground it feels like. But probably the two things that really struck me, firstly, something I just really enjoyed listening to, was listening to Ben articulate his own experiences of leadership, and listening to how he seems to have incorporated those into the way that Charlie HR work with organizations to support them on their culture. And I thought that was really interesting to because it feels like a almost like a curtain being lifted on an organization when people talk about it. So I liked that. And the other thing I thought was really powerful was his articulation of leadership responsibilities, both in the metaphors he used. So I really liked the I mean, I would it's sport, but I he really the metaphor of football pitch, and you know where leaders need to step back and give space for their teams and their organizations to do stuff. I found that a useful way of thinking about things, but also that he he talks as if he perceives that leaders have a response a quite serious responsibility to their organizations, and that that should be worn not too lightly. And I I really warm to that as an idea, because I think leadership is hard. I don't think it's about the best person doing it. I do think it's about the person who's willing to do the work, to do it, and to do it well. And so when he talks about leaders taking that responsibility, I found that quite a compelling argument. I think,

yeah, I connected with those points as well. I thought the image of a football pitch up in the Lake District was particularly, particularly visual and helpful. And I liked the incorporation of our, you know, definition of rules of a game, which is what a lot of this sort of contracting is about, how we work together. That visualization really helped with that. Yeah,

we should probably just occurs to me. We should probably point out to our international listeners that the Lake District is a mountainous region, or a very hilly region of the UK, where playing foot, and it's vast for the UK, so it would be very difficult to play any kind of flat, pitched game in a single part of the Lake District without finding

help. Yeah, and all the you know, the necessary incorporation of boundaries and expectations and rules into our ways of working is really well encapsulated in that image. So I thought that was great. A couple of other bits stood up for me, but I thought were worth picking up on or sharing again. And one for me was really about the importance of sort of putting this conversation about culture out there. And you know, even just putting it on your agenda, right, making culture a talking point as a starting point for exploring and changing your culture is such an obvious starting point, but it's such an easy one. And even if you just put it on as a talking point and a meeting, you can just see what emerges from there. And that in itself, shifts the leadership attention and leadership focus and role modeling and all those types of things that will start to drive some of a change in awareness, which I think is helpful. And another thing that I particularly liked about this conversation and a set of things that we heard from Ben, is that we have a lot of really practical steps in here, specific pieces of advice. And one of the problems I think we often have with culture is that it is sometimes seen as too big of a thing, or difficult to access or hard to change, and all those things. And listening to the conversation that we had with Ben, we don't need to boil the ocean when it comes to culture. We don't need to press one button and change it. You know? What we can do is we can step back and think about how we want things to be, and then we can just make small changes, and we'll make a small change here and a small change there, and before we know it, we've changed a lot of things that have had a direct impact on the behaviors within our organization and how it feels to be there, and the impact that it has on us. So I like that practicality of what we've covered, yeah,

and I guess my one piece of advice for listeners, if they were interested in this episode, would be go and revisit the stuff we've talked around around Edgar shine shines, organizational culture, model or triangle or go and google it. Because actually, I think what Ben articulates really well is that how. Just shows up. But I also think it's a really helpful sort of CO read, if you like, to understand how shine conceptualize what lies underneath that and what drives that, because I think it explains quite well why you and I quite often talk about the espoused values, but also the underlying beliefs of organizations, and how that shapes and should shape well thought out. People, policies, policies and process.

Absolutely great. Shout out. All right, well, let us leave it there and wrap up. So it is goodbye from me, and it's goodbye from me. Hi everyone. This is James. Thank you very much for listening to that podcast, and please do share it and review it if you enjoyed it. And don't forget you can learn more about our coaching, workshops, courses and development programs on our website that's www, dot World of work.io, again, www.io, you.