CultureLab with Aga Bajer
Aga Bajer: Culture Strategist, Writer, Coach
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This podcast helps you turn your company culture into rocket fuel for meaningful growth. It explores how we can make work synonymous with fun, meaning, and belonging and looks at how we can build remarkable cultures that scale as our businesses grow and the world keeps on changing.
Available episodes
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Aug 9, 2022
David McCraney - How Minds Change
Have you ever felt frustrated by the fact that people tend to stick to their guns, even when presented with indisputable evidence that their beliefs are completely unfounded or plain wrong? This is the question that intrigued my guest, David McCraney, a science journalist fascinated with brains, minds, and culture. It led him on an investigative journey that resulted in a new book, How Minds Change. In this episode, David and I do a deep dive into the science of practices and methodologies that can lead to significant changes in how people think, feel and act at an individual and a collective level.
To join CultureBrained®, go to tiny.one/culturebrained
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Jul 26, 2022
Best of the Archives: Culture & Strategy Have Breakfast Together | Max McKeown
This month we are sharing some of the best episodes from our archive and this episode with Max Mckeown is a must-listen and a great place to start when thinking of how to align culture and strategy.
We talk about how to find your next big idea, what role strategy plays in your ability to create the future you want and what scenarios could emerge if culture and strategy really sat down to have breakfast together instead of trying to cannibalize each other.
Just a note: This episode is a rerun and was recorded a while ago. There are some references that may seem a little out of date but the content is more relevant than ever.
To join CultureBrained®, go to tiny.one/culturebrained
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Jul 12, 2022
Heiko Fischer - Reinventing HR
What would happen if you got rid of traditional HR? Listen to this episode where Heiko Fischer, the CEO of Resourceful Humans, talks about how he moved from noodling over this question to actually giving it a go at Crytek, one of Europe’s biggest video gaming companies. Learn how Crytek transitioned from a traditional hierarchy to a network of self-managed teams that are fueled by 100% entrepreneurship and 0% bureaucracy - and how you can implement some of these practices at your company.
To join CultureBrained®, go to tiny.one/culturebrained
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Jun 28, 2022
The 4 Deadly Sins of Work Culture | Adam Grant - WorkLife
How do you avoid joining a company with a toxic culture—or build a healthy one when you are already a part of the organization? These are just a couple of questions addressed in this episode of Adam Grant’s WorkLife that we are grilled to bring you as part of our new collab with TED Audio Collective. In this episode, Adam Grant explores how to recognize the four deadly sins of work culture when you’re on the outside looking in, and shares strategies that can help shape a thriving workplace from the inside.
To join CultureBrained, go to tiny.one/culturebrained
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Jun 21, 2022
Best of the Archives: Building a Fearless Organization |Amy Edmondson
As a society, we've certainly made some progress in honoring the contribution of the LGBTQ workforce. But, there are still minds, hearts, teams, and companies that do not engage and where people, irrespective of what group they identify with, do not experience psychological safety. And so we thought that during the Pride Month, it would be more relevant than ever to release the interview with the mother of psychological safety, Amy Edmondson.
Amy is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School with a long standing academic career. She’s the author of The Fearless Organization and in this podcast, we explore why the fear of taking interpersonal risks will destroy your culture and any DEI efforts you might have undertaken.
To join CultureBrained, go to tiny.one/culturebrained
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Jun 7, 2022
Mark Rickmeier - MindShift: From Office-Centric to Remote-First
How do you know that it’s time to update your views on what’s best for your team and your business? Our guest, Mark Rickmeier, the CEO of TXI, believes that the best time to rethink comes when you first sense that the way you work no longer serves your team. In this interview, Mark shares his personal journey of challenging his personal beliefs evolving the culture at TXI, and of the three major shifts that tested his open-mindedness and ultimately helped his company to thrive in this brave new world of remote and hybrid work. To join CultureBrained, go to tiny.one/culturebrained
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May 24, 2022
Jamie Dixon - The Story Habit
Storytelling is the very stuff of culture. It’s also the language of the mind. Stories bridge the gap between the past and the future, create shared identities, provide us with meaning, and shape the culture within our communities. But there is more to storytelling than just telling stories. Influencing, changing minds and inspiring action is ultimately about shaping the stories people choose to believe in. And in this interview, Jamie Dixon, the author of the upcoming book “The Story Habit – How Leaders Shape Stories that Drive Action” shares his methodology for doing just that.
To join CultureBrained, go to tiny.one/culturebrained
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Apr 19, 2022
Daniel Coyle - The Culture Playbook
What on Earth is frontalis? And why is it the most important part of human anatomy when it comes to forging authentic connections in the remote work environment? How can a corny catchphrase help a team accomplish more? What’s a better alternative to brutal honesty when we want to speak the truth at work? What can leaders learn from Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy? And how can we harness the power of deep fun to improve our workplaces?
These are just some of the topics we discuss in this episode with Dan Coyle, the New York Times bestselling author of The Culture Code, and the upcoming title, The Culture Playbook. Tune in and enjoy.
Join CultureBrained here: https://www.agabajer.com/culture-brained-community/
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Apr 5, 2022
Best of the Archives: People Like Us Do Things Like This | Seth Godin
This month we are sharing some of the best episodes from our archive and this one is very special as our guest is none other than the honorary godfather of our show, Seth Godin! Seth is the author of 19 books that have been bestsellers around the world and have been translated into more than 35 languages. He’s also the founder of altMBA and The Marketing Seminar, online workshops that have transformed the work of thousands of people.
He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership, and most of all, changing everything - including culture!
To join CultureBrained, go to tiny.one/culturebrained
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Mar 22, 2022
Best of the Archives: Unleashing Your Team's Potential | Frances Frei & Anne Morriss
This month we will be sharing some of the best episodes from our archive and we are starting with one of our biggest blockbusters - an interview with Frances Frei and Anne Morriss. When Google, Uber, WeWork, Riot Games or other high-growth companies need help with their culture and leadership, they call Frances Anne. Frances Frei is a Professor of Technology and Operations Management at Harvard Business School and her wife, Anne Morriss, is the Executive Founder of The Leadership Consortium. They supported a growing list of companies with culture change and wrote a wonderful book on leadership called Unleashed, The Unapologetic Leader’s Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You.
Just a note: This episode is a rerun and was recorded in January 2021. There are some references that may seem a little out of date but the content is more relevant than ever.
To join CultureBrained, go to tiny.one/culturebrained
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Mar 8, 2022
LaTonya Wilkins - Creating Cultures of Belonging
In many companies, the approach to shaping culture can be quite superficial. Our guest, LaTonya Wilkins, suggests it's time to go "below the surface" and embrace a radically inclusive leadership style. This interview explores her signature REAL leadership system which creates psychologically safe relationships across differences, empowers underrepresented employees to feel valued, heard, and engaged - and creates cultures of belonging in the workplace.
To learn more about CultureBrained, go here: tiny.one/culturebrained
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Feb 22, 2022
Dr. Donte Vaughn - Helping Leaders Become Culture Champions
A bit like the operating system on their PCs, culture is something most leaders rarely think about - until it starts causing them problems. When culture slows their teams down and makes work more difficult than it should be, people often start panicking and finally give it the attention it deserves. But even then, it's often with the mindset of "Let's fix it asap and get back to work!"
But what if culture was the work, especially for leaders? What if it was their primary responsibility to create an environment where people can do their best work?
And what would happen if leaders took a more intentional approach to culture?
This is what Dr. Donte Vaughn and I talk about in this episode of the CultureLab podcast.
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Feb 8, 2022
Jay Van Bavel - Social Identity and Company Culture
From neurons to social networks, Jay Van Bavel’s research investigates the psychology and neuroscience of implicit bias, group identity, team performance, decision-making, and public health. In this conversation, we talk about how we can put the science of social identity into practice so that we can increase performance, improve company culture and create more of a sense of belonging for our people.
To join the CultureBrained Community, go to: tiny.one/CultureBrained
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Jan 25, 2022
Rodney Evans - Getting Ready for the Future of Work
Rodney Evans is a pioneer in adaptive organization design and the future of work. She has taught new, better ways of working in dozens of complex environments—including Airbnb, Macy’s, GE, Cooper Hewitt Museum, Intuit, and Johnson & Johnson—to slay bureaucracy, unleash talent, and modernize traditional workplaces and practices.
To join the CultureBrained Community, go to tiny.one/culturebrained
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Jan 24, 2022
Rohini Anand - Leveling the Playing Field: How to Lead Global DEI
In this episode, Rohini Anand draws on her experience as the former Chief DEI Officer at Sodexo and shares insights from her book, Leading Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: A Guide for Systemic Change in Multinational Organizations. We focus on how you can level the playing field so that anyone can do their best work in your organization, irrespective of their identity and background.
To learn more about the CultureBrained community, click here: https://www.agabajer.com/culture-brained-community/
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Dec 28, 2021
Leandro Herrero - The 5 Principles of a Viral Culture Change
Leandro Herrero is the pioneer of Viral Change™ - a methodology that delivers large-scale behavioural and cultural change in organizations. In this episode, we explore how to create viral change within an organization by following five vital principles for change.
To join the CultureBrained Community, go to tiny.one/culturebrained
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Dec 14, 2021
Charlie Sull - Using AI to Understand Your Culture
Charlie Sull developed a groundbreaking AI tool to understand and assess organizational culture through the use of big-data processing. The tool mines “digital traces” of culture in electronic communications, such as emails, Slack messages, or Glassdoor reviews. By studying the language employees use in these communications, AI can gauge what the current culture is and how it influences people's thoughts and behavior at work.
To join the CultureBrained Community, go to tiny.one/culturebrained
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Nov 30, 2021
Timothy Clark - The Four Stages of Psychological Safety
Timothy Clark is an expert on psychological safety in the workplace. He is recognized as a global authority in the fields of senior executive development, strategy acceleration, and organizational change. He is also the author of five books, including The Four Stages of Psychological Safety, a wonderful, hands-on guide that shows us how we can build psychological safety in our teams and organizations. Tune in for actionable insight on how to build the foundations for a healthy culture.
To join the CultureBrained Community, go to tiny.one/culturebrained
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Nov 16, 2021
Kevin Oakes - It's Time for Culture Renovation
Kevin Oakes is CEO and co-founder of the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), the world’s leading human capital research firm focusing on people practices that drive high performance. In this episode, he shares his research into company culture and what he's learned about culture change.
To join the CultureBrained Community, go to: tiny.one/culturebrained
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Nov 1, 2021
Pim de Morree - Corporate Rebels, Unite!
Pim De Morree, co-founder of Corporate Rebels talks about what he and his partner, Joost Minaar discovered traveling the world and researching innovative organizations. He shares the 8 shifts that the pioneering organizations embrace as they move towards a more engaging and meaningful work experience.
To join the CultureBrained Community, go to tiny.one/culturebrained
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Oct 19, 2021
Tom Chi - Cultivating a Culture of Innovation
Tom Chi is one of the founding members of Google X who served as head of product experience at developing technology such as Google Glass and Google's self-driving cars. In this episode, we dive into the topic of cultivating an innovative culture and the role leaders play in enabling their teams to develop radical new technologies to solve some of the world’s hardest problems.
To join the CultureBrained Community, go to: tiny.one/culturebrained
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Oct 5, 2021
Gina Bianchini: Communities at Work
Community and social belonging are fundamental human needs, hardwired into our DNA. Gina Bianchini, the founder and CEO of Mighty Networks has had a front-row seat to hundreds of thousands of successful communities. She has also seen an equal number of communities fail. In this conversation, she shares what she learned about what sets successful communities apart and how you can apply her insights to create community and social belonging in your company.
To join the CultureBrained Community, go to: tiny.one/culturebrained
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Sep 22, 2021
Yvette Pasqua: Cultivating a High-Performance Culture
With hybrid and remote work, building diverse teams that collaborate well together is more challenging than ever. So, how do you go about creating an environment that drives innovation, performance, and impact and where people can create products that customers love and the business needs?
My guest today, Yvette Pasqua, shares her experience on the topic.
Yvette is the CTO of EXOS where she leads the product and engineering teams with a focus on continuous improvement, iteration, and using data to launch software that helps their members become healthier and achieve their wellness and professional goals.
To join the CultureBrained Community, go to: tiny.one/culturebrained
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Sep 6, 2021
Katarina Berg: Culture at Spotify - Lessons in Scaling
Spotify's CHRO, Katarina Berg, knows how to maintain a thriving culture while scaling from a successful startup to a global giant. She shares some of her secrets around unlocking human potential and turning the company culture into the grease that helps it keep rolling at top speed. She also discusses the importance of clarity about who you are and what you stand for and finding effective ways to operationalize your Culture Playbook. She shares how Spotify helps people connect meaningfully while they are working remotely and why people tend to have fun working for the company.
To join the CultureBrained Community, go to: tiny.one/culturebrained
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Aug 24, 2021
Brian Robertson: Getting Rid of Managers
People don’t leave bad jobs, they leave bad managers. So here is a radical idea: What if we got rid of managers altogether? What if we could do it without decreasing the power of traditional hierarchy but by increasing the power of everyone else? This week Aga is joined by Brian Robertson, the father of holacracy to explore these questions and more.
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Mar 29, 2021
Giff Constable: Talking to Humans
Giff Constable is a product leader, entrepreneur, and author who has sold three companies and helped build many others. In this wide-ranging interview, we cover a lot of ground: from developing great products, leadership, cognitive biases, designing an HR function that actually works for the business, creating psychological safety, taking on creative pursuits that scare us, and much more.
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Mar 8, 2021
Bretton Putter: Building a Remote Culture
Bretton Putter is the CEO of CultureGene and he helps companies build and develop strong, functional company cultures. He recently published his second book, Own Your Culture, and in this episode, we talk about what to think about and what to do (asap!) to create a thriving culture in the world of remote or hybrid work. Brett shares plenty of actionable insights and examples of practices you can implement to adapt to this new way of working.
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Feb 23, 2021
Frances Frei & Anne Morriss: Unleash Your Team's Potential
The world’s top leadership and culture whisperers - Frances Frei and Anne Morris joined me for a fun, wide-ranging, and insightful conversation about how you can unleash your team’s potential. Frances and Anne talk about redefining leadership, the relationship of culture and strategy, love and trust in the workplace, their experience working with Uber, WeWork and Riot Games, and much more.
For more ideas on how to build a thriving culture at scale, download my FREE Culture Playbook Guide
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Jan 12, 2021
Tommi Forsström: Building Product and Culture during the Weird Middle Part
Growth. We all crave it. Both in our personal lives and in business. But what we often forget is that the biggest growth spurts inevitably come with growing pains. Suddenly we are in this weird place in the middle - no longer a child but still not an adult. Adolescence: something’s emerging, everything is changing and it’s really, really messy. Turns out that startups go through a very similar stage. And this is exactly what my guest today and I talk about in this episode of the CultureLab podcast.
For the Culture Strategy Bootcamp, go to bit.ly/culture-bootcamp
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Dec 21, 2020
Dorie Clark: Reinvent Yourself
My guest today, Dorie Clark, suggests we need to make things easier for ourselves in 2021 and embrace the lowercase "r" reinvention: small, subtle changes that, over time, compound and often produce major transformations. But to achieve such impressive results over time, we need to develop a "reinvention habit."
And this is exactly what we talk about in this episode of the CultureLab podcast. I can't think of a better way to ease ourselves into 2021.
For Culture Bootcamp click here: bit.ly/culture-bootcamp
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Dec 7, 2020
Darius Mirshahzadeh: Start with Core Values
"I hate this company,” I said to myself, sitting in the office in San Francisco. “I can’t believe I created this.”
This is how my guest today, Darius Mirshahzadeh, opens his book, The Core Value Equation.
Darius had been successful by any external measure. He was the founder and CEO of a company that would soon hit the $10,000,000 revenue mark. He had 150 employees and a seventeen-thousand-square-foot modern tech office space in the heart of San Francisco’s SOMA district.
And yet, he had serious regrets as a founder. He realized that the company he created was not the one he intended to. Somehow, while trying to build a successful business, he lost track of what he now considers one of the most important factors to achieve success and grow with minimum growing pains - the core values.
And core values are what we are focusing on in this episode.
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Nov 24, 2020
Ethan Mollick: Beyond the Startup Myth
What does a successful startup founder look like?
You probably have a vivid picture in your head – two supercharged recent college graduates bursting out of the gate with a fresh new idea that hits them like a lightning bolt, gets massive funding, and leads to a product launch that is an astounding success.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
My guest today is Ethan Mollick, an award-winning researcher at Wharton and the author of a new book, THE UNICORN’S SHADOW: Combating the Dangerous Myths that Hold Back Startups, Founders, and Investors.
His mission is to democratize entrepreneurship.
In this wide-ranging conversation, we talk about what's a myth and what is true in the world of startups.
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Nov 9, 2020
Peter Rabey: Growing During a Pandemic
Today, my guest is the co-founder and CEO of X4 Group, Peter Rabey.
Peter and his team managed to scale and grow their business through extremely challenging times. Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, X4 Group has realigned the entire business strategy to avoid layoffs. The reboot went so well that their business - and headcount - grew by over 50% since June.
Tune in to this wide-ranging conversation about scaling through the pandemic, hiring, onboarding, cultivating a healthy culture, and more!
To download the Culture Playbook guide, click here.
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Sep 7, 2020
An Audio Postcard from Wendy Smith
Wendy Smith is an associate professor of organizational behavior at the Alfred Lerner School of Business at the University of Delaware. She earned her PhD in organizational behavior at Harvard Business School, and she researches a really interesting area - strategic paradoxes. For the interview with Professor Smith, click here. To be the first to receive the new audio postcards, please click here.
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Aug 24, 2020
Bobby Herrera: The Gift of Struggle
To say that 2020 has been a challenging year would be an understatement. But there are many ways to look at our struggles and Bobby Herrera, the founder and CEO of Populus Group, suggests that we choose to see them as a gift. In this wide-ranging conversation, Bobby and I talk about his entrepreneurial journey and the culture he is committed to cultivating in his company.
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Jul 6, 2020
Max McKeown: Culture & Strategy Have Breakfast Together
Dr Max McKeown is a visionary, and influential presenter who reveals insider knowledge, gleaned from twenty-five years’ experience consulting for Pfizer, Topshop and Sony, amongst many other major global brands. In this conversation, we talk about how to find your next big idea, what role strategy plays in your ability to create the future you want and what scenarios could emerge if culture and strategy really sat down to have breakfast together instead of trying to cannibalize each other.
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Jun 22, 2020
An Audio Postcard from Garry Ridge
Garry Ridge is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the WD-40 Company, a billion-dollar business with a 93% employee engagement index. WD-40 has been making history when it comes to harnessing the power of organizational culture. It has kept its values aligned for over six decades by making them the heart and soul of the company. On its culture homepage, WD-40 has the following message for job applicants: "Please consider employment with WD-40 Company only if you feel as strongly about our values as we do." Here's a message from Garry on how to navigate this difficult period.
For the interview with Garry, click here: https://www.agabajer.com/podcast-list...
To be the first to receive the new audio postcards, please click here: https://mailchi.mp/eafee17fef25/audio...
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Jun 15, 2020
An Audio Postcard from Bobby Herrera
This audio postcard comes from Bobby Herrera, from Michigan. Bobby Herrera is the co-founder and CEO of Populus Group - one of the fastest-growing HR services companies in the United States with annual revenue of $500 million and many Fortune 100 customers. Bobby speaks beautifully about how he sees his role as the CEO during the times of Coronavirus. I hope you enjoy his message.
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Jun 8, 2020
Aaron Dignan: Brave New Work
Today, on the CultureLab podcast, we welcome Aaron Dignan - the author of one of my favorite business books of the past few years - Brave New Work and the founder of the Ready.
If you feel like the way we work hasn’t worked for a while and if you are curious about what new ways of working we could adopt, you’ll enjoy this conversation.
In this interview, Aaron and I talk about why scale and bureaucracy that once made companies strong have become huge liabilities. Today, it’s the companies that operate with transparency, autonomy, decentralization, and empowerment that are better positioned to navigate disruptive changes.
Our conversation was set in the context of the current events, especially the COVID-19 pandemic. And while there's a lot of tragedy happening right now, Aaron believes that there's a lot of promise in this moment as well. He says that the current disruption has challenged a lot of assumptions that we hold about trust, remote work and empowerment. It looks like…
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Jun 1, 2020
An Audio Postcard from Melissa Agnes
It's in times like these that our values and ethical standards are put to the test. COVID-19 emergency and its aftermath will call for empathy, compassion, and generosity. If business leaders don't rise to the occasion, they'll put their companies at risk. In this audio postcard, crisis expert, Melissa Agnes, encourages us to put ourselves in our stakeholders' shoes and ask: how can we serve them to the best of our capabilities?
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May 26, 2020
Amy Edmondson: Building a Fearless Organization
When people don't speak up, the organization's ability to innovate and grow is at great risk. A culture of silence is a dangerous culture. A culture of openness and candor, on the other hand, offers immense benefits for creativity, learning, and innovation. But for people to speak up, they need to experience psychological safety and this is what Amy Edmondson, my guest today, has studied for more than 25 years.
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May 22, 2020
An Audio Postcard from Thimon De Jong
It looks like we might be in a pretty long tunnel. And while there's certainly light at the end of it, why wait? We can create some light right now by building human connections through the means we have available. Here's Thimon De Jong speaking on this topic.
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May 11, 2020
An Audio Postcard from Ron Carucci
We have a new postcard - this time from Ron Carucci. Ron says that we are currently in an odd, liminal space, in between chapters. And while it's undoubtedly a difficult season, things will resume eventually. So how can we prepare for our new normal? Listen in!
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May 8, 2020
An Audio Postcard from Aga Bajer
We have created the Audio Postcards series to help you tackle the challenges of COVID-19 pandemic in a calmer and wiser way. This week, the postcard comes from Aga Bajer and she shares three questions to explore with your team to regain a sense of control and purpose in these crazy times.
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May 4, 2020
Simon Sinek: Embracing an Infinite Mindset in Times of Crisis
As time goes by, we all realize that the Coronavirus outbreak is, first and foremost, a human tragedy. But it has also become increasingly clear that COVID-19 is having a growing impact on the global economy, causing many businesses to switch to full-on survival mode. While taking short-term measures to mitigate the effects of the current disruption, many leaders ask themselves:
How do you deal with the current issues without losing sight of the long-term goals? And how do you embrace an infinite mindset in times of a crisis of such vast proportions?
Simon Sinek shares his thoughts on the subject.
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Apr 27, 2020
An Audio Postcard from Liane Davey
We have created the Audio Postcards series to help us tackle the challenges of the Coronavirus pandemic in a calmer and wiser way.
This week we have a postcard from Toronto, from my dear friend Liane Davey who speaks about how not to let a good crisis go to waste.
If you want to be on our postcard mailing list, sign up here: http://tiny.cc/5utvnz
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Apr 20, 2020
Mary Abbajay: Managing Up
The quality of the relationship with your boss has a major impact on your career, satisfaction and even your overall wellness and health. And yet, it’s much easier to find advice and guidance on how to be a good boss than on how to manage a relationship with one. In this episode, Mary Abbajay, the author of the best-selling Managing Up: How to Move Up, Win at Work, and Succeed with Any Type of Boss. shares how you can take control of your career by managing up.
Episode Highlights
Here are some of the themes that we explore in this conversation:
* Why so many people still have terrible bosses
* The unique nature of the relationship between a boss and a team member
* What’s at stake when you are not managing the relationship with your boss
* The boss spectrum: from the unicorn boss to the toxic boss
* The three choices we have when faced with a difficult situation
* Why people tend to spend 30% more time working for toxic bosses than for good bosses
* Key principle…
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Apr 15, 2020
An Audio Postcard from Michael Bungay Stanier
We have created the Audio Postcards series to help us tackle the challenges of the Coronavirus pandemic in a calmer and wiser way.
The tricky thing with being a leader or an entrepreneur in times like these is that while we have no clear answers, our team, our family, and our friends are looking to us for guidance.
And so it's important that we learn how to walk the line between the light and the dark. Here's a message on this topic from Michael Bungay Stanier.
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Apr 6, 2020
An Audio Postcard from Cy Wakeman
We have created the Audio Postcards series to help us tackle the challenges of the Coronavirus pandemic in a calmer and wiser way.
This postcard is second in the series and comes from Cy Wakeman.
Cy challenges us to let ourselves and our teams be impacted by the current crisis and approach it with curiosity, using this "time-out" to grow, develop and perhaps even transform the way we think, feel and act.
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Mar 30, 2020
An Audio Postcard from Seth Godin
In difficult times, we all need some guidance, some inspiration and... an occasional kick in the butt.
To help leaders, entrepreneurs and soloists navigate the unchartered waters of the Coronavirus pandemic and its impact on our lives, our team started producing audio postcards.
They contain powerful messages from the world's leading thinkers, leaders, movers, and shakers.
This message comes from Seth Godin.
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Mar 23, 2020
Nikki Gatenby: Putting People and Purpose First
Our guest today is Nikki Gatenby. Nikki is a business consultant and best selling author, specializing in the field of culture and engagement at work, having been featured in The Guardian, The Times, Management Today, Chamber of Commerce and Corporate Rebels.
Over the last 10 years as MD and co-owner of Propellernet, Nikki transformed the Brighton based SEO agency into a global marketing organization and SAAS technology provider, serving the PR, content and search world with coveragebook.com and answerthepublic.com. This, hand in hand with Propellernet, being one of the top 15 Best Places to work in the UK, for 8 years running.
Episode Highlights
In this episode, Nikki and I talk about how to create and maintain a company culture that drives performance, boosts enthusiasm, increases engagement levels, and…makes life better at the same time.
Here are some of the themes that we explore in this conversation:
* How a mix of curiosity, frustration and a belief that there’s a bett…
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Mar 10, 2020
Siobhan McHale: Disrupting Dysfunctional Patters
Our guest today is Siobhan McHale, a culture change specialist, EGM People, Culture & Change at DuluxGroup and the author of The Insider’s Guide to Culture Change.
Siobhan has worked across four continents, helping thousands of leaders to create more agile and productive workplaces. She has been on the “inside”, as the executive in charge of change in a series of large, multinational organizations. One of these inside jobs was a radical seven-year change initiative at Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ) that transformed it from the lowest-performing bank in the country into one of the highest-performing and most admired banks in the world.
Professor John Kotter used her work with ANZ as a Harvard Business School case study designed to teach MBA students about managing change.
Episode Highlights
In this episode, Siobhan and I talk about how to disrupt dysfunctional patterns of behavior in a company. Here are some of the topics we cover:
* Culture as patt…
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Feb 24, 2020
Kirsty Bashforth: Culture Shift
Our guest today is Kirsty Bashforth, the founder and CEO of QuayFive Ltd.
Her new book on managing organizational culture (Culture Shift) was published by Bloomsbury in July 2019.
In this episode, Kirsty and I talk about shifting culture so that it serves the business, its employees and the wider ecosystem.
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Feb 10, 2020
Jitske Kramer: The Making of a Corporate Tribe
Jitske Kramer is a Dutch anthropologist. She travels the world to learn from traditional healers, leaders, surprising innovators, and random passersby. She looks at the world and at organizations through the eyes of an anthropologist, and what she sees is fascinating. In this interview, we talk about what's involved in the making of a corporate tribe.
Episode Highlights
Here are some of the things that we discussed:
* The lessons Jitske learned when doing research in Uganda
* The two opposites that attract us: harmony and disruption
* What is anthropology and how it’s relevant to organizational life
* Nature and nurture debate in the context of culture
* The elements that shape culture: purpose, definition power, and the cultural narrative
* One of the biggest misunderstandings about self-organized teams
* The importance of reflecting on what leadership means in your organization
* Why boundaries are important and how to set them in a way that supports rather tha…
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Jan 27, 2020
Mike Ganino: How Stories Shape Culture
Our guest today is Mike Ganino. He is a storytelling and communication expert who helps executives, teams, and thought leaders communicate, connect, and engage. Mike is also the author of Company Culture for Dummies and has been named a Top 30 Culture Speaker by Global Guru. Mike is also the executive producer of TEDx Cambridge and the head performance coach at Heroic Public Speaking, where he helps people connect in authentic and engaging ways with audiences.
I first met Mike when he was facilitating a workshop in HPS, and I was blown away by his ability to craft a compelling story.
Why is storytelling important when it comes to cultivating a healthy culture?
Because a great story engages and moves people. It makes them feel invested in the outcome; it helps them make meaning out of what surrounds them and it changes the way they think, feel, and act.
We humans have been using the power of story for millennia to pass on knowledge, instill common values, and influence each other.…
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Jan 13, 2020
Melissa Agnes: Crisis Ready - How to Build an Invincible Brand
Our guest today is Melissa Agnes. Author of Crisis Ready: Building an Invincible Brand in an Uncertain World, Melissa is a leading authority on crisis preparedness, reputation management, and brand protection.
Melissa’s area of expertise is something that most of us don’t enjoy thinking about. She works with organizations to explore questions such as: What will happen if things go off the rails and we find our business in a major crisis situation? Are we ready for the worst? Do we have what it takes to handle a crisis in an effective manner? Can our brand and our reputation survive a major crisis? And most importantly: Is there a way to prevent what’s preventable?
After a recent crop of scandals—including Uber, Volkswagen, Wells Fargo, and Boeing, just to name a few—companies and boards have started to emphasize shaping a healthy culture as a way to reduce risk.
If you and your company want to create an invincible brand, make sure you don’t miss this conversation.
Ep…
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Dec 9, 2019
Cy Wakeman: (You - Drama) = Positive Culture Change
Our guest today is Cy Wakeman. Cy is a drama researcher, global thought-leader, and New York Times best-selling author who is recognized for cultivating a counter-intuitive, reality-based approach to leadership.
Backed by 20 years of unparalleled experience, Cy’s philosophy offers a new lens through which employees and executives alike, can shift their attention inward, sharpen their focus on personal accountability, and uncover their natural state of resourcefulness simply by ditching the drama.
Cy and I had a wide-ranging conversation exploring what can happen when we ditch drama, take accountability and stop blaming culture and our environment for why we can’t do things. I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed interviewing Cy.
Episode Highlights
In this interview, Cy and I discuss:
* Cy’s early cultural influences
* The influence of Rumi’s poetry on Cy’s personal philosophy and her work
* Changing our experience by changing the lens we view the world t…
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Nov 25, 2019
Seth Godin: People Like Us Do Things Like This
In the early days of the CultureLab, I approached Seth Godin and invited him to come on the show. He told me, “Sure, I’d love to. I’ll be your 50th guest.” This is what Seth does. He finds ingenious ways to help us keep going, do the work that matters, and persist in the face of adversity and our own resistance. He shows us how to hone our craft and show up with integrity every single day.
Seth is also an incredible source of practical wisdom on how to shape cultures around us so that we can make a dent in the world and bend history in the right direction.
It was such a privilege to pick his brain and learn from him, and it is such a joy to bring this conversation to the audience of CultureLab!
If you care about the place where you are and the impact you want to make, this interview is for you.
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Nov 11, 2019
Ron Carucci: Values, Trust and Corporate Culture
Meet Ron Carucci, the co-founder and managing partner at Navalent, who works with CEOs and executives pursuing transformational change for their organizations.
I came across Ron’s work in the Harvard Business Review. His writing on leading change, navigating conflict, and understanding corporate values and lies, as well as many other topics, has always challenged my thinking and offered valuable insights.
Ron is someone deeply invested in helping leaders thrive by impacting the lives of those they lead.
I was fascinated to learn that Ron keeps a collection of antique door knobs, door knockers, and skeleton keys so that he gets a reminder that life is about finding and pursuing the open doors in front of us and making sure those doors open for others.
Episode Highlights
In this interview, Ron and I discuss:
* Being an introvert and the superpowers that come with it
* What helps Ron be grateful for all those in his life who’ve been part of his story…
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Oct 28, 2019
Chris Westfall: Stop Pitching, Start Connecting
When leaders want the culture to change or to be a certain way, they often try to convince their teams to adopt a new way of being and behaving. Often, their communication style resembles a pitch rather than a conversation or dialogue. Our guest this week, Chris Westfall, says that it’s time to stop pitching and start connecting.
Chris Westfall is the author of Leadership Language: Using Authentic Communication to Drive Results and a consultant to financial leaders and Fortune 100 companies. He’s helped entrepreneurs launch a broad array of businesses and successfully rebranded products and services around the globe. Working with thousands of business leaders, he's helped launch over 50 companies, while raising over $100 million – and counting – in investment capital.
He’s coached teams to victory in the Intel Global Capital Conference, the Harvard Executive MBA Pitch Competition, and the Rice Business Plan Competition 2016 (the largest and most lucrative pitch competition…
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Sep 30, 2019
Jim Lawless: Cracking the Fear Algorithm
Meet Jim Lawless, a leading authority on what he calls AQ: developing organizational AdaptAbility skills to deliver bold, fast change.
Jim works with senior leaders to build cultures that can adapt and deliver. He has contributed to bold, fast change in global organizations, government, Olympic teams, and business schools for two decades. He has inspired and educated over half a million people on five continents through his mind-set shifting keynotes and even more through his bestselling book, Taming Tigers.
What’s fascinating about Jim is that he tested and developed the AQ skills personally. He became a televised jockey within a year of starting to ride and became Britain’s deepest freediver after just eight months of training. Both done alongside his day job – a key element of AdaptAbility.
Episode Highlights
In this interview, Jim and I discuss:
* His definition of the fear algorithm and the role it plays in organizational change
* The importance of creating a sa…
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Sep 18, 2019
Jos De Blok: Ditching Hierarchy and Building a Thriving Culture in Buurtzorg
Meet Jos De Blok, the founder and CEO of Buurtzorg. Buurtzorg Nederland was founded in 2006 by Jos and a small team of professional nurses who were dissatisfied with the delivery of health care by traditional home care organizations in the Netherlands. Together, they decided to create a new model of patient-centered care focused on facilitating and maintaining independence and autonomy for the individual for as long as possible.
Episode Highlights
In this interview, Jos and I discuss:
* How Buurzorg grew from a team of 4 to 14,000+ with a simple and flat structure, no departmentalization, minimal back-office functions, and minimal employee monitoring and controlling functions
* Buurzorg’s experience with independent, autonomous, self-managing teams with no team leaders and under no line-managerial direction or control
* Scaling company culture through a collection of loosely connected teams, unified by a common purpose
* The role technology played in Buurzorg’s succe…
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Sep 2, 2019
Liane Davey: Cultivating a Culture of Productive Conflict
Meet Dr. Liane Davey, the New York Times bestselling author of You First, Inspire Your Team to Grow Up, Get Along, and Get Stuff Done; a regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review; and an organizational psychology expert for Quartz magazine.
Liane’s new book, The Good Fight: Use Productive Conflict to Get Your Team and Your Organization Back on Track, was released in March 2019, and it’s the best book I’ve read on conflict.
I loved speaking to Liane and learning how to make conflict more productive - both in our lives and in our organizations.
Episode Highlights
In this interview, Liane and I discuss:
* Why some of the imagery and language we use around teamwork can be misleading or even damaging
* How excessive focus on happiness in the workplace can hurt performance
* The importance of normalizing conflict in the workplace
* The origins of human beings’ aversion to conflict
* How to build a mindset that helps us engage in conflict in a constructive way…
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Aug 19, 2019
Srdja Popovic: Why a Successful Cultural (R)evolution Requires a Movement
Meet Srdja Popovic, an activist who formed the Otpor! movement in 1998 to overthrow Slobodan Milosevic.
Born and raised in Belgrade, Serbia during times that he describes as culturally schizophrenic, economically devastating, and historically confusing, Srdja initially didn’t see himself as a change agent.
A bass player in a band, Srdja just wanted to play music and have fun. Like most of his friends, he despised the security police, the terror, and the repression, but he didn’t believe anything could be done about it. That is, until he and his friends realized that activism could be…cool and that it was, in fact, possible to mobilize people to resist Milosevic regime.
Today, Srdja is the Executive Director of The Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies or CANVAS, a Belgrade-based NGO he founded with a handful of other Otpor! members in 2003. He has now advised and trained pro-democracy activists in more than 50 countries, including India, Iran, Zimbabwe, Burma, U…
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Aug 5, 2019
Chris Fussell: Culture Lessons from a Former Navy SEAL
My guest today is Chris Fussell. He serves as the President of McChrystal Group and is the author of the 2015 New York Times bestseller, Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World as well as 2017 Wall Street Journal bestseller, One Mission: How Leaders Build a Team of Teams.
In this episode, Chris and I explore his experience as a Navy SEAL and what it taught him about shaping adaptive cultures and successfully meeting the challenges that we face in the business world today.
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Jul 1, 2019
Zeynep Ton: Creating Good Jobs to Build Better Cultures
My guest today is Zeynep Ton. Zeynep is an adjunct associate professor in Operations Management at MIT Sloan School of Management and co-founder of the nonprofit Good Jobs Institute (GJI). Before MIT Sloan, Zeynep spent seven years on the faculty at Harvard Business School.
Zeynep’s research explores how companies can design and manage their operations in a way that satisfies customers, employees, and investors simultaneously. In 2014, Zeynep published her findings in a book, The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits.
I wanted to speak to Zeynep because while cultivating healthy and adaptive cultures requires focus on issues such as purpose, mission and vision, behaviors. and skills, it also calls for something that we don’t talk about enough in the context of culture - making the right operational choices.
Zeynep shares her expertise, experience, and examples in this interview and gives us a lot of useful…
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Jun 17, 2019
Ed Morrison: Why Strategic Doing Beats Strategic Planning
My guest today is Ed Morrison. Ed directs the Agile Strategy Lab at Purdue University.
For the past 25 years, he’s worked on a new approach to developing strategies to address complex challenges.
His methodology is called “strategic doing,” and it emphasizes the strategic value of collaboration.
Ed brings a refreshing approach to strategy creation. He defines an effective strategy as "a process of shared learning that has open participation and leadership guidance.”
If you are looking for an effective way to address any complex business challenge, you will definitely benefit from listening to this episode and reading Ed’s book, Strategic Doing.
Episode Highlights
In this interview, Ed and I discuss:
* The value of practice and discipline versus skimming the surface of things
* The need to slow down before going fast
* The benefits of creating a safe space for deep, focused conversations
* How power and hierarchy can stand in the way of collaboration
* What ad…
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Jun 3, 2019
Jeanette Bronée: Creating a Culture of Care
My guest today is Jeanette Bronée, an author, speaker, performance strategist, and culture coach. She helps leaders and companies rethink performance and culture by focusing on creating what she calls a Culture of Care™.
Jeanette highlights how physical health and emotional, mental, and social well-being affect people’s resilience and performance. She shows how our mindset affects our productivity and why self-care habits at work are essential to creating a human work culture.
One thing is certain - depleted and burned-out individuals can’t create healthy, high-performing, and well-balanced cultures.
That’s why this conversation is so important and relevant to anyone who hopes to change the culture in their little pocket of the world - whether it’s their team, their organization, or society at large.
Episode Highlights
In this interview, Jeanette and I discuss:
* Why taking good care of ourselves is such a challenge in the workplace
* How we can ground ou…
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May 11, 2019
Lindsay McGregor: Using the Science of Motivation to Build High Performing Cultures
In her book, “Primed to Perform - How to Build the Highest Performing Cultures Through the Science of Total Motivation”, Lindsay McGregor and her co-author Need Doshi say:
“While most people agree that culture is important, building great cultures still feels like magic that only a gifted few are born knowing how to practice.”
In this episode of the CultureLab podcast, Lindsay talks about the findings of her research to demystify this “magic”.
We explore what she learned from over a century of existing science on high performance as well as from her original research that involved iconic organizations such as Southwest Airlines, the Apple Store and Starbucks.
Episode Highlights
In this interview, Lindsay and I discuss:
* What brought her to culture work
* What tactical and adaptive performance are, how they differ and why it’s so important to balance both
* Total Motivation (ToMo) - what it is and why it can revolutionize the way you and your team work and wh…
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Apr 22, 2019
Greg Satell: How to Build a Successful Movement That Will Change Your Culture
In 2014, Greg Satell experienced the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. What he observed in Kiev during that time seemingly defied all logic or reason: thousands of people would all of a sudden stop whatever they were doing and do something else entirely. And they did it in unison as if guided by a mysterious force. This whole situation baffled Greg so much that he decided to research what makes some social movements successful while others fizzle out without making an impact.
The outcome of the decade-long quest for understanding the principles of successful change is Greg’s new book, "Cascades - How to Create a Movement That Drives Transformational Change”.
The main thing that Greg discovered in his research was that:
"To truly change the world, you don't need a catchy slogan or a charismatic leader. What you need is a cascade, small groups, loosely connected but united by a common purpose."
If you seek to change the culture in your team or your company, you will find that Greg’…
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Apr 8, 2019
Bruce Daisley: How to Fix Your Culture and Enjoy Work More
Bruce Daisley is obsessed with figuring out what makes a really great workplace. A Vice President EMEA for Twitter, he created the number-one business podcast in the UK, Eat Sleep Work Repeat, in his spare time.
On the podcast, Bruce interviews leading experts about how to fix our workplace and make work more enjoyable.
Recently, Bruce also published a new book based on his findings from the podcast. The book’s title is The Joy of Work, and it consists of 30 tips that cover a wide range of our modern office life.
If you are not entirely happy with the status quo at work and want to find out how to evolve your culture and start enjoying work more, this episode is for you.
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Mar 25, 2019
Stan Slap: The Benefits of Redefining Corporate Culture
Stan Slap is the CEO of SLAP. He has a hard-core point of view about what’s right with the world and must be protected and what’s wrong with the world and must be corrected.
Stan believes that nobody should be diminished by business - working in it or buying from it.
He is a realist who knows that we need to make a business case for humanity.
That's why he created SLAP and studied and worked with corporate culture for more than 20 years now.
Episode Highlights
* How Stan’s unique definition of culture came about
* What is employee culture, management culture, and customer culture… and how they differ
* Tactical advice on how to create “performance insurance” - getting the culture to stand up for the company when it needs it most
* Why we need to understand how culture operates if we want to bring about cultural change in our team or company
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Mar 11, 2019
Jeremy Hockenstein and Sopheap Im: How Social Mission Fuels Growth at DDD
We often hear how important it is for an organisation to have a meaningful mission and purpose. And yet, a lot of companies struggle to see the link between their mission, purpose and business results.
So, here is a question:
Can a meaningful social mission help you grow your business and win in the marketplace?
Digital Divide Data (DDD) proves that it can.
DDD was founded by Jeremy Hockenstein and his friends after Jeremy's Cambodian vacation in 2001.
What Jeremy noticed during his first visit to Cambodia was the need to bring tech skills and living-wage work to men and women in underserved communities.
Since then, DDD established operation in Cambodia, Laos and Kenya and helped plant the seed for a socially responsible outsourcing practice known as impact sourcing.
Impact sourcing involves intentionally hiring and offering career opportunities to people who otherwise have very limited prospects due to poverty, disability, etc.
The combination of traini…
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Feb 11, 2019
Claude Silver: Putting the Heart Back into the Workplace
Claude Silver is the Chief Heart Officer at VaynerMedia, a digital agency founded by Gary Vaynerchuk, an entrepreneur, author, speaker and internet personality.
In our interview, Claude explains that the “heart” in Chief Heart Officer means being in touch with the heartbeat of every single person at the agency.
She feels it’s her job to have a finger on the pulse of who needs mentorship, who needs a chat, who needs a team change, or who needs anything really.
Claude is constantly reaching out and communicating with people — through one-on-one conversations, text messages, emails, and quick phone calls.
Claude and I talk about the challenges of maintaining such a high-touch job while running an HR department of an agency with 800+ employees, what the culture at VaynerMedia is really like, and why “heart" is important when running a business.
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Jan 27, 2019
Wes Kao: On Brand Identity, Marketing and Culture
Wes Kao is a marketing strategy expert who helps challenger brands maximise their product launches.
When working with her clients, she often finds that the biggest challenges for a lot of companies lie at the intersection of brand identity, marketing and culture.
Wes strongly believes that the culture people experience inside their organisation has a major influence on how the company is perceived externally and how successful it can be in the marketplace.
In this interview, Wes shares her experiences as a marketing strategist who's helped companies evolve their culture to achieve success and growth.
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Jan 14, 2019
Barnaby Lashbrooke: Driving Culture Change Through Authentic Leadership
Barnaby Lashbrooke, the founder and CEO of Time Etc, brings busy entrepreneurs and incredible Assistants together.
Barnaby managed to transform his second business, Time Etc, from an initial failure into a global success story. As Time Etc culture evolved, the business itself has changed the lives of thousands of entrepreneurs by liberating them from more than two million tasks and saving them almost 500,000 hours to spend with their families or growing their businesses.
On this episode, we talk about Barnaby's journey towards creating a great company culture by discovering how to bring his authentic self into work and entrepreneurship.
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Dec 31, 2018
Lisa Unwin: She's Back!
Women often choose to take career breaks to take care of their children or other relatives, such as ageing parents. Some men are gradually joining them, too. And, sadly, what they quickly find out is that it’s really difficult to get reintroduced to the workplace after taking a break.
Lisa Unwin discovered that there’s a huge untapped potential in this talent pool.
This triggered her to carry out research in collaboration with the Edinburgh Business School, to establish a consultancy called “She’s Back” and to co-author a book under the same title.
Lisa’s book aims to help hundreds of thousands of professional women (and men) who have taken an extended career break, then realise that they have 20 (or more) years of professional life ahead of them and have no idea how to get back onto the right career track.
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Dec 17, 2018
The Best Bits: Episodes 21-29
Every tenth episode of CultureLab, we look back at the previous 9 episodes and pick the ‘best bits’: the tips and stories that help us demystify organisational and team culture to make it more accessible and less overwhelming in its complexity.
The Best Bits episode is also an opportunity to zoom out and see the big picture, extracting common themes from the interviews with our diverse group of guests.
This time, yet again, we had a truly eclectic mix of guests: Rahaf Harfoush, Kate Cairns, Sue Black, Garry Ridge, Wendy Smith, Patty McCord, Kip Lambert, Dave Ulrich, and Ayse Birsel.
Here’s what you will find in this compilation:
* How Dave Ulrich defines culture and why he believes that we should be building a culture from the outside-in
* The "secret sauce" of Netflix’s success
* What's more important than technology in the future of work according to Digital Anthropologist, Rahaf Harfoush
* What building a culture from the inside-out looks like
* Why…
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Dec 3, 2018
Ayse Birsel: Think Like a Designer
Our guest, Ayse Birsel, learned that, contrary to what a lot of us believe, ordinary people can be extraordinarily creative - provided that they are given the right tools and use the right processes.
We can use this creativity in all sorts of unique pursuits, including reimagining and reinventing our teams, our cultures and our workplaces.
In this episode, Ayse and I discuss how to think like a designer to create a team, a company or a culture that we love.
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Nov 19, 2018
Dave Ulrich: On Creating a Culture from the Outside in
In this episode, Dave Ulrich - the father of modern HR - talks about the ideas with the most impact that he encountered in his 40-year career as a management thinker and consultant.
Not surprisingly, he considers the shift of focus - from individual talent to culture - to be one of the most game-changing ideas in HR in the past decades.
But while in most cases we approach shaping culture from the inside out, Dave suggests there is a better way - identifying the right culture and shaping it "from the outside in".
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Nov 5, 2018
Kip Lambert: A Culture of Kindness
When people think about the key attributes of a successful company culture, kindness doesn’t always make it to the top of the list. In fact, it often doesn’t make the list at all.
And yet, when you think of how kindness could potentially express itself through people’s daily actions at work, you’ll easily come up with a long list of highly desirable behaviours.
In this context, it’s not surprising that Kip Lambert, the co-owner and Chief Culture Officer of the company called Destination makes it his priority to cultivate a culture of kindness.
In this episode, Kip shares why kindness is so important for him and what he and his team do to create WOW experiences for their team members.
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Oct 22, 2018
Patty McCord: Culture Lessons from the Silicon Valley
We live in the era of exponential change. Business as usual is dead and we need to redefine, reimagine and rethink work.
Our culture and our HR systems need a long overdue update.
Patty McCord is one of the biggest HR disruptors, challenging the old way of “doing HR”. She served as chief talent officer of Netflix for fourteen years and helped create the famous Netflix Culture Deck.
In this episode, she shares her disruptive thinking and culture lessons from the Silicon Valley.
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Oct 8, 2018
Wendy Smith: The Power of Paradox
We continuously ask ourselves the question: "Do I do this OR do I do that?
We are hard-wired to crave certainty and clarity and so we seek the best choice.
And instead of finding the answers that feel good and produce desired results, we are perpetually trapped in the same old dilemma: A or B?
But is it really a matter of choosing one over the other?
Our guest, Professor Wendy Smith doesn't think so.
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Sep 24, 2018
Garry Ridge: Cultivating a Great Company Culture
Garry Ridge is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the WD-40 Company, a billion-dollar business with a 93% employee engagement index.
WD-40 has been making history when it comes to harnessing the power of organisational culture. It has kept its values aligned for over six decades by making them the heart and soul of the company.
On its culture homepage, WD-40 has the following message for job applicants: "Please consider employment with WD-40 Company only if you feel as strongly about our values as we do."
In this interview, Garry shares what makes WD-40 culture so unique and how its tribal nature fuels the company’s impressive business results.
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Sep 10, 2018
Dr Sue Black: On the Other Side of Fear
For most of us, fear can be paralysing. The moment we experience fear, it stops us dead in our tracks - we are unable to move forward, desperately clinging to what we perceive to be our comfort zone.
But not Dr Sue Black. Every time Sue Black faced fear, it mobilised her to push beyond it and get to the other side. It seems that she knew perfectly well that everything that she ever wanted was on the other side of fear. In this interview, Sue Black and I talk about overcoming our fear, creating movements and evolving culture.
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Aug 27, 2018
Kate Cairns: We Need Actions, Not Just Words
It can feel risky to put our head above the parapet and be the first one to challenge the status quo. And, it's even harder to actually do something to put things right.
In this interview, Kate Cairns reminds us that speaking up for what is right is crucial and brave - and sadly does not happen often enough. When we uncover a problem - in our team, our company, or our industry - it's up to us to DO something to fix it.
Tune in to find out what compelled Kate Cairns to advocate for policy change and what strategies she used to change the culture in an industry where women are still the minority.
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Aug 13, 2018
Rahaf Harfoush: The Future of Work Is Human
In this episode we explore how technology and digitisation impact our culture: the way we live, learn, work, travel create, and fall in love. Best-selling author, strategist, and digital anthropologist, Rahaf Harfoush, challenges our view of technology, work, and our belief systems surrounding how to achieve fulfilment and happiness in our lives.
Rahaf works at the intersection between emerging technology, innovation, and digital culture. She is currently working on her third book entitled “Hustle & Float,” about our contemporary work culture and the realities of a post-work society.
We talk about what led Rahaf to focus on culture and technology, about the potential of technology to become a tool in creating workplaces that are healthy, stimulating and engaging, and the need to strike a balance in how we “hustle and float” - alternating periods of intense activity with “going with the flow.”
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Jul 30, 2018
The Best Bits: Episodes 12-19
Every tenth episode of CultureLab, we look back at the previous 9 episodes and pick the ‘best bits’: the tips and stories that help us demystify organisational and team culture and make it more accessible and less overwhelming in its complexity.
Best Bits episode is also an opportunity to zoom out and see the big picture, extracting common themes from the interviews with our greatly diverse group of guests.
This time, we had a truly eclectic mix of guests: Richard Newman, Terence Mauri, Ed Schein, Michael Bungay Stanier, Tim Kuppler, Patsy Rodenburg, Thimon De Jong and Whitney Johnson.
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Jul 17, 2018
Whitney Johnson: How to Build an A-Team
Whitney Johnson is an innovation and disruption expert, best-selling author and one of the world's most influential management thinkers by Thinkers50. She’s an expert in disruptive innovation and personal disruption, and in this interview we talk about how you can tap into our innate human need to grow and develop to drive learning, engagement and innovation in your team.
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Jul 2, 2018
Thimon De Jong: The Future of Work
Does the idea of a driverless car make you nervous? Timon De Jong, a futurist specialising in human behaviour, takes us back in time when automatic elevators made people just as apprehensive.
Originally, elevators had an operator who would stop the car at the right level and open and close doors manually.
It wasn’t ideal because of high cost of labour and human errors that often led to serious accidents. So when the first automatic elevator was invented in 1900, its creators were convinced that it would catch on like the proverbial sliced bread.
And yet, it took more than 50 years before the automated elevator was widely used by the public.
Why? Tune in to find out!
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Jun 19, 2018
Patsy Rodenburg: Leading with Presence
Patsy Rodenburg divides her time between London, New York and Silves in Portugal.
While London and New York is where she keeps busy, Silves is her place to retreat, write and recharge.
I met Patsy in her farmhouse in Silves - a perfect setting for a conversation about presence. Surrounded by citrus groves and vineyards, with an unobstructed view of the Silves Castle on one side and white storks of the Algarve busily flying to and fro above us, we eventually settled in her kitchen with a cup of tea.
Patsy was completely relaxed when I rearranged her furniture to minimise the echo of her newly renovated house, as if having people armed with huge mics and headphones was a daily occurrence on the farm.
It wasn’t until I looked at her fridge that she set her boundaries.
“I’m not switching that off.” she said, smiling.
I took a mental note: “This is how you can be warm and firm at the same time.”
Patsy and I sat opposite each other in the least “boomy” part of her hous…
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Jun 4, 2018
Tim Kuppler: The Culture Advantage
As I like to say, culture can be like the proverbial soap - often too slippery to grasp. My guest, Tim Kuppler - the Director of Culture and Organisation Development with Human Synergistics, is on a mission to make this deep and complex topic more accessible to an average person. And he does it brilliantly here.
In this episode, Tim and I have a truly in-depth conversation about what makes a culture transformation successful.
Tune in to listen to this incredibly rich and interesting interview that will answer many of the questions you had about evolving culture. What you will learn in this episode
* Why oversimplifying culture can be dangerous
* What the difference between organisational culture and organisational climate is
* Why assessing both culture and climate is so important
* What are the three most popular approaches to culture change and why the future of culture transformation lies in combining all three
* What’s the process that Tim and Human Synergistics use…
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May 21, 2018
Michael Bungay Stanier: Building a Coaching Culture
Michael Bungay Stanier was the first Canadian Coach of the Year, he is a Rhodes Scholar, and was recently recognized as the #3 Global Guru in coaching.
In this episode, we talk about how to be a coach-like manager to increase your team’s productivity, impact and engagement.
Michael is the founder of Box of Crayons, a company best known for teaching 10-minute coaching so that busy managers can build stronger teams and get better results.
While he’s all for promoting coaching in the organisations, he says that we should never try to build a coaching culture.
Coaching is a powerful force of change and goodness in organisational life but it’s a means to an end - a process that helps better outcomes happen. And when we talk about building a “coaching culture” too much, the danger is that we make coaching culture the thing rather than what it allows to bring to this world.
"Coaching is a powerful force for change in organisations. But we shouldn't forget that it's merely a me…
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May 7, 2018
Ed Schein: Shaping Culture
There is no getting away from it - the person ultimately responsible for organisational culture is the leader. It’s what they do, what they pay attention to, and what they encourage and reward that will ultimately shape the organisation’s culture. Interestingly, it is also what the leaders don’t do and don’t pay attention to that can be a tremendously powerful culture shaping factor. As Ed said in the interview:"When it comes to culture, leaders get what they settle for." What you will learn in this episode
* what the key attribute of a successful culture is
* how to determine whether you should be worried about your team’s or organisation’s culture
* the circumstances in which culture is particularly important for an organisation
* what people in organisations pay most attention to when it come to culture
* when it makes sense to evaluate culture using quantitative and qualitative tools
* what changing a culture really entails
* whether small, light-touch in…
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Apr 24, 2018
Terence Mauri: Leading in the Age of Disruption
If you are feeling nostalgia for the “old good times”, Terence Mauri doesn’t have good news for you. He believes that there’s no going back.
The era of gradual, incremental change is gone for good. Going forward, we’ll experience a perfect storm of exponential change. What used to be science fiction will now be science fact.
Terence says:"The speed of change today is the slowest you will ever experience in your lifetime. It can be both scary and exciting, all at the same time."
According to Terence, our fear of losing jobs and control to robots is mostly unfounded. He believes that there is a fantastic opportunity for humans to focus on tasks that we are naturally good at and allow the robots to do the “boring” stuff. Uniquely human traits, such as empathy or creativity will be valued more than ever in the future and we will have more and more opportunities for self-actualisation. What you’ll learn in this episode:
* what today's leaders need to do (and be) to t…
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Apr 10, 2018
Richard Newman: Born to Speak
Imagine what would be possible if you could talk in a way that connects with people's emotions and mobilizes them to action.
Or craft stories that give meaning and illustrate what your team or your organization is truly about. Imagine what it would feel like to pitch your products or services at a 100% win rate...
In this episode of CultureLab, we host an award-winning communication expert and speechwriter, Richard Newman who shares incredibly useful tips on how to do all of the above - and more!
Communication and storytelling play a huge role in shaping cultures. In his book, “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind”, Yuval Noah Harrari makes a compelling case for storytelling and myths being the key factors for homo sapiens dominating our planet. He argues that stories and myths were the main enablers of civilisation as we know it. Without them, we would still live the life of our early ancestors, hunters and gatherers, struggling for survival in the world where homo sapiens wa…
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Mar 27, 2018
The Best Bits: Episodes 1-10
On March 13th CultureLab was 10 episodes old. To celebrate, we’ve created this “best bits” compilation with some of my personal favourites. From Marissa Levin, Richard Barrett and Emmanuel Gobillot on the role leaders play in shaping culture, through the transformative power of truth-telling and contagious nature of culture with DJ Mitsch, the 3 top skills that managers need today to create wellbeing cultures, the dialogue that moves mountains with David Clutterbuck, keynote listening with Itay Talgam to the “formula of guaranteed success’ with David Taylor.
If you are new to CultureLab, this is a great place to start!
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Mar 13, 2018
Sir Cary Cooper: A Different Kind of Manager
For our organisations to create healthy cultures, we urgently need a new breed of managers: emotionally intelligent, able to give candid feedback, open, transparent and effective in leading organisational change.
According to our guest, Professor Cary Cooper, we still don’t have enough managers with strong people skills. In spite of progress made in the domain of HR in the past decades, people keep getting promoted to managerial roles for their technical expertise, not their leadership qualities.
It comes as no surprise that leaders lacking social skills create dysfunctional cultures characterised by utter lack of interpersonal understanding, transparency, recognition and personal and professional development.
As a result, the teams and organisation that they lead are often driven by fear and blame rather than by purpose and meaning.
Professor Cooper says that in order to creating wellbeing cultures where people thrive, change needs to start at the top. We need more senior leader…
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Feb 27, 2018
David Clutterbuck: The Dialogue That Moves Mountains
According to Professor David Clutterbuck, one of Europe's most influential management thinkers and author of over 70 books, truly great leaders have one thing in common:
They've mastered the art of dialogue that moves mountains.
David deeply believes that the majority of problems we face in the workplace could be easily solved through honest conversations where both parties are prepared to be open, to listen and take different perspectives on board.
So, what stands in the way of these powerful conversatons at work (and at home)?
One of the main obstacles is our apparent inability to be honest.
Not only are we not honest with others, we lack honesty with ourselves as well.
We've created an environment where being honest can be considered suicidal, particularly at work.
After all, who’d dare to tell their boss that their performances problems are due to the boss’ management style?
So, what's the solution?
David believes that to change the current status-quo, we need more “…
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