E031: organisational Culture & Engagement

with James and Jane. now on to this episode.

Hi. This is James and Jane, and here we are again with another episode of The World of Work podcast. It's a part of our summer special series. In fact, this is the first of the episodes on our summer special this summer, we're going to be releasing a few episodes, and they're really focused on things to do with culture and engagement. And how do you measure culture and engagement, and how do you assess it in organizations? And then a little bit on feedback as well.

Yeah. And they're different from our normal approach, because they're focused around some conversations with people in the field. So we've gone out and found people that work in this space, are active in it, and we've asked them to have a conversation with us, because we thought it would be really interesting for our listeners to hear a different perspective of what's happening out there in practitioner world. Yeah, that's

right. So we're going to start off with a whole episode today about culture and engagement specifically. Then we're going to follow up with a conversation about employee experience and how to shape an employee experience. We're then going to look a little bit at measuring, specifically some stuff around sentiment analysis as well. And we're going to talk about what to do once you've measured something, and start to look at predictive analytics and what that says about the future of organizations, and we're going to wrap up this summer series, this bit focused on culture engagement with a conversation all about feedback, and the role of feedback in shaping cultures, and what makes a good feedback culture. So it's kind of exciting. Yeah, I

think I really enjoyed these conversations, so I'm looking forward to everyone getting a chance to

listen to them. Yeah, put them in your bag when you're away on holiday or something like that. Yes, I

believe that we were jokingly referring to them as the book that you pop in your bag to go and read on the beach. So we don't go too heavy into too much the research, and it's much more about what's going on out there in the world and and there's some of the solutions that people are coming up with, with some of the problems that they perceive in the workplace. Yeah, pretty

exciting. We start off, as I said, with a conversation that's about culture and engagement, and this is with somebody called Darren Merner, who's from an organization in the States called cloverleaf, and they're really engagement and culture specialists. They've got cloverleaf as a platform that looks at this. So some really good stuff there. So you might want to check that out. But when we get speaking to Darren, he says a bit more about that, and the conversation covers a wide range of things. You know, we explore what culture is. We explore whether there's relationship between culture and engagement. We ask whether there's such a thing as a good culture. Is it? You know, is a good culture consistently good for everyone? What does it mean? What about bad cultures? Does culture affect things like metrics and business outcomes? Who's responsible for culture? So is it just a leadership thing? What's the role of leadership and culture? Yeah,

we covered, we covered a lot in quite a short space of time. And it is, I thought it was really interesting conversation. So I think we probably should let our listeners decide that although I and the one caveat I would just throw out there is it does sound a little bit at points like James is in the bath, because there's a bit of an echo, and also the sound quality just shifts. It's all good, but it shifts a bit in levels, so apologies for that. And we have got some new equipment coming that will transform the way we do this for the future. But the content is still great. Yeah,

great stuff. Cool. All right. Well, let's jump into our conversation with Darren and let the listeners see what they think about that. Okay, everyone. So here we are. We're at the core part of our conversation this week, as part of these sort of summer specials where we're looking at culture and engagement and employee experience and different things that affect that we wanted to start things off by really exploring culture and engagement specifically and setting a bit of a sin. And we've been really lucky to get Darren murna from cloverleaf, and he's also written a book called Corporate bravery, to spend a bit of time with us and then talk through based on some of his experience these topics. So why don't we start by handing over to Darren? Would you like to introduce yourself and say a little bit about your background?

Sure, yeah, thanks. Thanks so much, and thanks for the intro. So I mean, first off, I'm a husband and father with four awesome kids, and we are also doing fostering. So a lot of my leadership lessons continue to be influenced by the experience as a not only a husband, but also a father of these, these awesome kids. I started my career more focused on, you know, in corporate environments, so fortune, 1000 companies. My first job out of school was with Arthur Andersen, the large accounting firm that's no longer in existence. And that's story for another day. And really. In the last five years have transitioned to full time entrepreneurship with a specific focus on people, and started that journey by writing a book corporate bravery that just was a lot of thoughts kind of bouncing around in my head and experiences that I've witnessed over the prior 15 years, and which, by the way, you can find on Amazon. Sorry for the quick plug. And then after that, really starting our current venture, which is cloverleaf.me. In the HR tech space, and we can obviously get into that a little bit more, but both the book and cloverleaf are really the outcome of one and a half decades of experiencing managing and leading people watching other people's successes and failures that try and do the same thing. So it's, it's a difficult job and it's messy and there's no no easy play.

Yeah, that's, that's a great injury. And you know what's funny? One of the other people we were speaking to today has has a background in Arthur Anderson as well, and was greatly influenced by the changes there and the experience with Enron and that led them to look at this type of space as well. So it's an interesting, interesting piece there. So I guess one of the first questions for me is that a lot of the talking that people do about engagement and about organizations uses the word culture and talks about organizational culture. I just wanted to ask, What do you think an organization culture is? Yeah,

so I think we have a really unique take on that. So as we think about organizational cultures, really, it's just a collection of groups of people, and oftentimes, you know, we'll talk, especially in larger organizations, just about how all of these different subcultures exist. You know, it has a different organizational culture than the sales organization, and those are examples that are feel tangible, and you can definitely tell the differences between those cultures. There's an overriding culture, and there's aspects and characteristics you can experience, you know, at a high organization level, like, Oh, those people work at this company, and here's some of the things that I you know, we typically notice about that, but at the end of the day, it's just a collection of people, and it's individual behaviors, individual experiences, that are melded together inside of these groups. And you know that the interesting thing about when we talk about culture and organizational culture. There's really no one way to define it, and there's so many different subcultures that exist inside these organizations that it's really, it's really tricky and really difficult to kind of measure and define, and it's just kind of this murky thing that I think is, is is really difficult to tackle.

Yeah, certainly, my experience in large organizations echoes yours, and that you get a whole range of different cultures within an organization, right? So your different functional areas have different different cultures within them, but even within large sort of homogenous areas, you get different cultures. What do you think team sizes? Do you think feel like a culture? Is there any sense of how large a body you think would have a distinctive culture, and you think

it matters. I think there's, there's some layering that happens, right? I mean, when we look at teams in general, you know, team sizes, I think there's been a lot of research around what's the, what's the optimal team size? And that's typically around seven people, you know, give or take to and there's obviously going to be a really distinct culture for that, that individual team, but oftentimes those teams are a part of a department or division, and departments and divisions can have their own unique cultures. And you know, I think what is so fascinating to me, and why I love this space, is that it's, it's very nuanced, and no one team looks like the the next team and and it's, it's a complex mix of factors that kind of come together to create this thing that we call culture. And you know, one of the things that we believe really strongly in is that you know each individual, you know each hire that you make, or each internal transfer that you make, has an opportunity to significantly change the culture, especially at a team level, but even inside a department or division, and you know, really kind of focusing on what that impact might look like, and what that might mean in terms of their level of engagement for that individual work team or that department or division is a really, is a really unique thing. Yeah,

no, I get that. And it feels like different people have different roles to play in, in shaping the culture, which obviously, from the, you know, the recruitment side of things is quite interesting at a higher level, what kind of impact do you see culture having on individuals and on teams? I mean, what do you see culture correlating with or translating into? Have you got any thoughts around that?

Yeah. I mean, I think I think this question, you know, the idea that culture can have an impact on individuals and teams is definitely a real thing, but I think oftentimes that question implies that culture is a top down component, and while what we've seen is clearly leaders have an outsized. Impact and role in creating culture. I'd argue it's really probably more bottom up than we give it credit for. You know, the biggest culture influencers that we've we've seen and we've experienced in any organization that we've worked with are typically not C suite people, but individual contributors in important areas of the company, or lower level managers in those areas, because they just have an outsized opportunity to impact the experience that the people that they're working with experience on a day to day basis. So

I've seen some stuff around things like network analysis, where you look at individuals who are kind of nodes in organizations who affect mood, and things like that. Is that the type of thing that you're getting at when you talk about levels of impact. Yeah,

I'm less talking about organizational network analysis, and it's more so just this idea that the individual employees experience is, is really the impact of their the relationships that they have on a daily basis, right? So their peer group, their manager, or the people that they're managing, depending on, you know, kind of, which side of that equation you're looking at and and ultimately, that's, that's what is culture to them, you know, if, if they're on the, you know, over the weekend having beers in the backyard with friends and family, and they're talking about their work experience. It's more about that peer level relationship, the day to day work team that they're a part of, that influences that more than anything else. So what I think, you know, when we think of culture, when we talk of culture, it's really easy to think of this concept of it being top down, and this thing that's created by C suite executives. And the reality is the experience that people have and how they talk about their the company that they work for, the employer brand of that organization, it's really the day to day experience that they have with the people that they're working with on a daily

basis. So it's fairly immediate for them, their immediate surroundings, their peers, their immediate line managers, their immediate direct reports, things like that. I believe that wholeheartedly. Yes, yeah, it's

interesting. I did a I was going through a change project with an organization a little while ago, and we talked about when you announce things or when things smaller things change in the organization, physically sitting in the room and seeing who everyone looks at before they react. And inevitably it is not the person delivering the information. It's a member of the team who might be quite Junior, but maybe has been around a long time, or maybe people is really trusted within the team. And you see this, you physically see it, where people look, and they don't look to their most senior person in the room at all. They look to the people they trust and that they work with day to day. How are you going to react to this, the look on their face, you know? How am I going to say and do I feel the same way as you? That's right.

Absolutely. So. So, yeah, so, so culture is a mix of things, and it's, I guess, at a mix of levels, from what we talked about here. Do you have a sense or any opinion of what makes a good culture? Is there such a thing as a generic good culture, or do you think it depends on other factors? Or what's your view?

Yeah, I think our view, and, you know, we've had a lot of internal debates, especially early on, when we were creating cloverleaf and just kind of building a technology platform that can kind of help measure and identify some of these factors is, you know, really one of the conclusions that we came to is we don't want to be deterministic about what is good or what is bad. And you know, one of the things that we kept coming back to was this New York Times article that was written, and I think it was in January of 2017 and it was kind of this expose on Amazon's culture. And you know, they interviewed multiple existing employees and multiple past employees, you know, or previous employees, and every single one of them you know, one, they talked about the impact on their on their life, you know, the relationships and their family. And you know that they worked these 80 hour work weeks that kept them away from these things outside of work, and, you know, you and I might read that and be like, Oh my gosh, that's terrible. I would never want to work for that culture. But the interesting thing, the through line in that interview, or with each of those individuals that were interviewed, is they missed it if they weren't still a part of it, and they longed and are searching for a culture that is like that, you know, an experience that they can feel like they're part of something, something bigger. And so while I might look at that culture and say, Hey, that's a really bad culture, and these are characteristics of a bad culture, that's not necessarily the case, and each individual person has their own preferences that they bring to the table and their own work styles, and this, this really complex set of factors that determine whether or not that culture is good for them as an individual. So I think that's what's ultimately hard, is there's not you can't pass a judgment decision whether that's a good or bad culture just off of whether or not I have a negative reaction. To some of the things that I'm seeing from the people that are part of that culture.

So for you, is it more that people about helping people identify where there might be a match or where there might be a culture that will suit them and their preferences and the way that they work, rather than, you know, holding organizations up or pushing them down based on what they're doing

that's right now. I mean, I think there are definitely some factors, you know, there are indicators of what could be a potential dysfunctional culture or dysfunctional organization, and we can talk a bit more about that. But I think, in general, I think everyone can find a great culture fit, even if it's not necessarily something that you or I might be interested in being a part of.

Well, let's jump back to that comment you made about the different factors and different traits. So while it's clear that there might not be a good culture generically, and that fits a really important thing, there clearly are kind of ways to look at culture and factors that are associated with culture that will make cultures attractive or unattractive to different people. What are your views on what those factors

are? Yeah, I mean, I think, I think when we look at, you know, factors for a good culture, I think some of the things that we look at is, you know, how good is the communication, you know, how clear is the vision? And then are you living that out on a daily basis? Is there high levels of trust in that, in that organization? And, you know, coming back to that kind of Amazon example, while some of those things may have been repulsive to me or, you know, and I saw a lot of, you know, commentary about that article, it was, it was talked about for weeks and months after it was published, because people found some of the things repulsive. It was very kind of divisive in terms of people choosing sides on Hey, was this a good or a bad culture? But ultimately, there were high levels of trust and the way they communicated. It was structured and it was effective, and there were all of these other impacts outside of the culture and the people that chose to be a part of that culture. But ultimately, it the things, the factors and the the, you know, the outward experiences that you could look at to say, hey, is this a good culture or bad culture? You know, it seemed to be effective for the people that were a part of it,

and with things like that. I mean, how do you go about measuring those things? You said, you look at trust, you look at communication. How do you, in your experience, analyze those types of factors?

Yeah, I mean, it's really hard. You know, when we think about culture and we think about engagement, it's really nebulous. I mean, that HR in general, and HR technology thinking practically about as we're going to market. And, you know, trying to sell our product, it's really hard to put an ROI to some of these soft components. We all know we can it's tangible, and we can feel it, but it's really hard to say, hey, these actions, or these specific factors, you know, is what determines success. And I think there's a lot of things that we can do. And I think that's part, partially, part of the reason why engagement tools, or listening tools, have have become so popular inside of organizations, because it's the it's at least provides something quantifiable. Now we can argue about, what are some of the specific things that we're measuring inside of those engagement tools to kind of determine, you know, are those the right things to be measuring, and are those the right levels of, you know, engagement to be thinking about for our particular organization? But I think that's one of the ways that people have found to kind of fill the gap is, you know, just in general, what's employee sentiment and how's that working? And then also looking at, where is there pockets of negative sentiment versus positive sentiment? That's one way that I think we've we've looked at that. And I think, you know, one of the really awesome things about kind of this emerging HR technology landscape right now is we have more data than ever look at performance and what we can use to correlate to individual factors of organizational culture or organizational engagement. And so that's a really powerful driver for, you know, how we can start to think about, you know, putting an ROI, or some sort of measure to to culture and engagement. I think the other really powerful driver of that right now is, you know, machine learning and AI and those two things coming together right now, I think you're seeing a tremendous, you know, upswell of new technologies and new ways organizations are applying both of those two concepts, both data and and The machine learning or AI algorithms to try to identify new ways of doing that, instead of just relying on sentiment data or employee surveys, we can actually start to tie performance metrics from tools like Salesforce or JIRA or rally on the software development side to some of the factors that might be contributing to. To the culture that exists in those particular work teams or in that organization at large,

certainly in my background, in my experience, when we've tried to look at things like change initiatives around culture and ways of working and behaviors and organizations, we've struggled with linking some of the actions but we've undertaken to business metrics and your perspective, do you see more sort of change programs being able to successfully link to metrics from a culture or people perspective?

Yeah. I mean, I always use a an American football analogy of, you know, how far are we, you know, down the field towards scoring a touchdown? I think we're, you know, we're still on our own 10 yard line in terms of really being able to tie performance metrics to specific factors. You know, I think where a lot of people focus is, you know, managerial competencies. And you know how, how the how the work team feels about the level of support that a manager is providing to individuals. And one of the key focus areas for us as a technology platform is that manager employee relationship. So is the is the manager skilled and trained? Are they competent? Can they, you know, do they have a competency of coaching? Do they understand how to tailor their approach to the specific needs of the individuals that might be in their work team? You know, I think managers have a really key role in shaping and building culture, and I think that's where a lot of lot of people have started, but I think we're still, you know, we're at the very early stages of, I think, kind of a new frontier of how we measure culture and how we think about defining culture and shaping culture organizationally,

you talked to a little bit about the role of managers in this. In your experience, how equipped Do you think managers are for the demands on them now, in terms of managing their teams, effectively, engaging, inspiring, doing the things we spoke to towards earlier, about trust and effective communication, what's your sense from your business?

Yeah, I mean, I think we see a lot of ineffective managers, you know, when we look at Gallup's study on disengagement, you know, two thirds of the workforce, at least in the US, and I've seen numbers higher than that in Europe as well and abroad. You know, the a lot of the key factors, you know, the top 10 factors, really comes back to relationships. And a key part of those relationships is that manager, subordinate relationship. And, you know, oftentimes it's not necessarily just a lack of training, but it's, it's also kind of, you know, one of the things that we mentioned earlier was about trust. And you know, effective organizational cultures have a high level of trust. You know, you can have a really competent manager that you know, at least in terms of the behavior that they're exhibiting, or maybe the stress that they're under, or the demands they're being placed in, drives them to a point where they are actually eroding trust, unwittingly with the teams that they are leading. So I think, you know, I think you know, definitely managers have a key role in that process, and it's not always necessarily training and development and resources, although that's, that's a key, key part of our value proposition as an HR technology platform is giving, you know, managers the tools and resources and the training and development, but oftentimes it's the circumstances that they're in organizationally that can drive them to potentially a road trust, or, you know, have ineffective communications organizationally, because, you know they're operating out of a place of, you know, fear, or, you know, concern for their own safety inside the organizational context.

That's definitely something that, but I've seen it's that individual circumstance causing some challenges for managers. I just are under so much pressure that they almost have no chance but to squeeze their resource. Sorry to use the word resource, but you know their resource in their minds to such an extent that it's detrimental to performance. Definitely,

under under other circumstances, their behavior may be completely different, but sometimes demands of the situation causes them to behave or ask things that they're people that you know, actually drives them away and creates a culture that actually becomes dysfunctional,

if you got a sense overall, over like, you know, the last 10 years, or, I guess, maybe five years, but you've been working the space sort of collectively or holistically. Do you think there's more focus on organizational culture than there used to be, or less? Or what's your view?

You know, obviously economic cycles have a huge impact on that, you know, in a period where, in a period where it's easy to find talent, and, you know, we're kind of in a contraction economically, there generally appears to be less focus and less investment in culture and engagement, when, when unemployment. Slow, then that's obviously going to be a much bigger concern, because every person that turns over, or every time there's difficulty in finding talent, then that's an easy way to to think about investing. It's a lever that we can pull to kind of keep people around longer, keep them engaged and more productive. And, you know, attracting talent as well. And I think that's that's typically one thing that kind of drives the interest and the level of focus on culture. I think the other thing that's really unique is, you know, the last 1015, 20 years, you know, we're becoming increasingly more knowledge based, and if we are creating value through our knowledge and our ability to kind of work together and collaborate to create something compelling. Then the culture that you're a part of, you know, the support mechanisms that you're putting in place, or the environment that you've created for people to be collaborative, to bring diverse ideas and concepts to the table, to work through that effectively, to come to the right solution when we may have differing opinions, the ability for organizations to be successful largely depends on that, and so I think that's also one of the key factors driving more investment, more focus in organizational culture.

So we've got the overarching economic cycle piece, but we've also to some extent, got the industry dynamics and change in, you know, workforce and organizational structures in themselves, in terms of who's accountable for a culture, then in a team. I mean, who do you think is accountable for it, or who do you think has a role to play in shaping the culture within an organization? Yeah, I

mean, I think, I think ultimately, everyone has, or has a role in that, as I've mentioned, kind of up to this point. You know, I come back to the managers often, just because there's a power dynamic that exists there, they're, they're gonna, they will always have more influence and more opportunity to impact either positively or negatively the culture at a team level or at a department or division level, and typically, that's where we focus our energies, and that's where we're focusing our resources and and and tools and competency development is, is on the managers. You know, unfortunately, I think sometimes in organizations, a lot of that investment is focused at, you know, mid to senior level managers, and oftentimes it's the it's the line managers and supervisors that have the biggest opportunity to drive culture and impact that culture. And you know, the consistency of the experience that people get across that level of management has a significant impact on what the culture is today and how, you know, we can move the culture to something different the future.

Certainly, in my experience, it's one of those situations where, when people approach C suite, or, you know, directorship levels within organizations, it's at that stage that they start to get really invested in from a development perspective. So they'll get individual one to one coaching, they'll get leadership development programs, and that's when people start to invest in them. But invest in them. But my experience echoes yours in the lower levels. In my organizations, we've seen little investment in that place, which I think is kind of counterproductive. Yeah, absolutely,

I would. I'd love to see organizations. And I think a big, big value proposition of our technology platform is that it really kind of helps democratize that, that learning and that development capability at deeper levels in the organization, because I truly think that's where you're going to going to move the needle from a culture standpoint. But unfortunately, I think they're there, you know, and data and research has shown this, we spend an inordinate amount of development and and resources at that senior level. Do you think it's possible

to have a good culture if you don't have sort of leaders who role model good behavior? Yeah. I mean, I

think, I think, you know, I would never, I would never, say never. But I think it becomes much more challenging to create and sustain a high performing culture if managers at all levels the organization are not modeling the right behaviors. You know, the saying is that people quit managers and not the companies that they work for. And I think you know more than ever that's true. You know, really amazes me that so little effort goes into coaching, training, helping managers in those organizations. And you know, if, if you it's possible to have a good culture, but I think the managers, really, you know, are the role models for that behavior and and if that's not, that's not occurring, I think you have a much bigger challenge at creating the culture that you want.

There's been a big shift over here, certainly on this side of the water, around investing in leadership training over management training, and arguing that that that's enough, whereas my own personal experience is that managers are quite often moving into roles and not feeling equipped. Is that? Is that similar experience on your side of the pond? Is it something you see? Do you think? Because I wonder how much that. Challenges, that challenge creates a problem with creating positive cultures. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I think part of what you're talking about is, you know, are when people get promoted into leadership or managerial roles, oftentimes it's because they were technically strong at the work that they did. And that doesn't necessarily mean that that person is either a, equipped B, you know, has it, has a strength, or even even C, even wants to be a leader of people. And you know, the skill set and the competencies that you need to be an effective leader in an organization, or not necessarily, what got you to the point of being considered for that position. And I think all too often, we just move people right into that leadership goal without any sort of development mentoring. You know, in advance of that, it's usually not until after there's problems or, you know, there that manager is struggling to kind of make that shift from being a more individual contributor and a technical resource to being this person that is leading and challenging people, and oftentimes where I see that show up as in delegation, because as an individual contributor, it's, you know, it's just the value that I create for the organization is what I'm producing and making this shift to delegating effectively and and being a coach over that work, you know, you're going to be 510, 20 times more effective by delegating that workout, coaching, training and developing those people, you know, because you're effectively replicating yourself. But making that transition for individual contributors is really, really difficult.

It's really interesting. We We recorded an episode a few weeks ago about coaching, and one of the things we looked at was a survey that was talking about what people look for for coaching. And they were they were saying that in the US middle management, one of the most sought after things was coaching and delegation and learning how to make that transition from being a practitioner to managing other people in practitioner, whereas once you move up to senior leadership, VPS, C suite, it's just not an issue for them, because they don't, they don't experience that challenge day to day.

Yep, yep, um, one of the phrases that's out there at the minute that people talk about is culture fit. What does that mean to you?

Yeah, I mean, gosh, that's it's such a tough thing. Because I think the word fit has been, you know, really overused and misused as we think about this concept. Times the word fit means, does this person look like me and act like me and have the same life experiences as me, you know, or would I enjoy having beers with this person after work? And we all know that this, you know, that that idea has a major negative consequence for the business. And, you know, diversity, inclusion is a part of that, but also just kind of the the diversity of thought and how we process that information. You know, I think the challenge is that there's no easy way to measure or visualize what the current culture is and how others might fit or or, you know, fit into culture. And, you know, that's part of what we've been building at cloverleaf. Is a way to bring that concept to life, make it more tangible for people to identify and visualize. This is what our culture is, and this is, this is how this person might align with that. And really, I would argue that a more appropriate way of representing that is a con. You know, the concept of fit would be to use the word alignment, because ultimately, what you want to do is kind of a three step process. So first is, you know, have clear set of values and a vision that others can buy into. And that's really a starting point, being clear on that and communicating it in a way that other people understand what it is that they're that they're buying into. And then the second thing is, you know, being very clear, telling that story and representing those values, even in how you go to market with your products and services. And I want to come back to that second, but the third is ultimately allowing people to self select into that vision and purpose because it aligns with their own beliefs and where they want to take their career as a whole. So I'm gonna let me come back to that concept of, you know, even how that's represented in products and services at cloverleaf, one of the things that we have as a key value is transparency. And oftentimes, when we you know, when we're in sales conversations with with potential clients, we can tell pretty quickly how interested a an organization is in providing transparency in their culture, and it will come out in a series of questions that we we will typically get about how much information we're sharing organizationally inside the product, and, you know, we've built in Preferences and ways for people to kind of set their privacy settings. But ultimately, what that indicates is is a culture that isn't necessarily ready for transparency, and we'll walk away from those opportunities even though, you know, they'd be more than willing to pay. Us for our product. And you know, we've talked about that as a sales organization, as a marketing organization, that you know, we want people as customers, because we know long term, if they value that, then you know, we're in an alignment, and we can provide better value to them organizationally. And that's had a tremendous impact on our people, because they understand like, hey, this isn't just a value that we've put up on a wall, you know, but we've also embedded that in in our product and how we're going to market, and that we're willing to walk away from new business if the culture isn't, isn't, doesn't promote, doesn't promote those same things, and isn't necessarily, you know, going to kind of find value from our product long term.

That's a great example. And people speak about espoused values versus Values in Action and bringing that to life through a demonstrable case like that's a really, really powerful way to demonstrate that.

Sorry, I'm just really nosy. How do they take it if an organization is not ready, how do you have that conversation? And you know, do they come back to you sometimes, or is it, is it about them not being at the right stage of their development? Yeah,

so sometimes it's about the problems that they're trying to solve, and there may be parts of the organization that could be ready for that transparency, or the problem is, so we're so tricky that they're willing to over, you know, overcome kind of that transparency, you know, culture gap. So it really just depends, you know, some, sometimes people are excited that, you know, because if you're being sold to, you know, having, having the person selling to you say, like, hey, this may not necessarily be a great fit. It can, can sometimes be a relief, but oftentimes it's, you know, if they have a problem that's tricky enough and that they feel like, hey, maybe this isn't right organizationally, but for this particular challenge or this particular group, it could be then. Then sometimes we may continue to move forward, but just in a smaller way. I think we're kind

of getting towards the end of our time, but I've got two questions, so I'm going to jump around a little bit, because I think these are both interesting within some of your work. And cleverly, if you talk about like, nudges to affect culture, could you say a little bit more about

that? Yeah, so there's really been a lot of emerging research that shows that small habits can add up to big results organizationally. And typically, you know, when we think about forming new habits that can, that can typically take about four weeks to get to a point where you can actually sustain that new habit, or that that behavior to a level of repeatability. And you know, the problem with a lot of corporate training and learning is that, you know, it's typically single day, it's classroom. You know, it teaches the people that are being taught to be more consumers of information. But what we know is learning is a is an immersive kind of interactive experience, at least if you want learning to be effective at at really driving change and people really need an opportunity to try it, to embrace it, and to do that over a period of time. McKinsey did a study recently on executive leadership, and you know, to get just to an 80% proficiency level with a new concept or new skill or new challenge, on average, a person needs to be exposed to that or have an opportunity to practice it as many as 30 times to get to an 80% proficiency level. And you know, my experience is, you know, very few organizations will repeat it three or four or even five times, let alone get to a point where you have an opportunity to really try something, you know, 30 times. And so we're really just taking that concept to a new level, and that same approach of repeatability, hearing the same messages, but in different contexts at the right time where you need that information, and our focus is more on the soft skills. So building empathy, creating understanding, improving communication and teamwork, and what we find is that nudge concept is the best way to actually drive behavior change. Yeah, that's really fascinating.

I guess my last sort of core question is that, you know, if somebody's listening and they're a manager and they're going into work tomorrow or the next day, or whenever it happens to be. Have you got any individual bits of advice that you'd give them, that they could take away to, I guess, develop themselves or help create a better culture in their working world? Yeah. I

mean, I think, I think just pursuing opportunities, you know, letting people know that, hey, this is, you know, I think couple of things that kind of come into play that that keep people from growing, you know, professionally and inside their career. One is just a willingness to admit that, hey, I'm not great in this particular area, right? So, I mean, that's like, that's a major win. You've won like 80% of the battle, just kind of saying, like, this is an area that I want to grow, or this. This is an area that we could be better at. And then the second thing is, you know, just letting people know that have resources that might be willing to commit those resources. So if you have a learning and development group kind of coming to them and saying, Hey, this is a challenge that I have. What resources are available to me? Because what I typically find, and what we see in organizations is oftentimes people just aren't asking for those things, right? And if they don't know that there's a problem, or there's no they don't know that that someone is interested in a particular opportunity, then there's no opportunity to actually help or bring those resources to bear on that particular opportunity. So as a manager you know, talk to people you know, obviously your direct reporting manager, but you know, there are other influencers and resources inside your organization oftentimes. And who can you find that can be a mentor that might be outside of your department or division or your organizational structure? You know, are there HR resources or learning and development resources that you can tap into? Because, if you're asking people want to help others that are looking for looking to improve, kind of their their performance, and so that would be my biggest piece of advice. So please around

being open and acknowledging where you've got development to do is a powerful act in itself, and being a bit proactive

about it. Okay? So that's, that's probably, well, it's

not everything from us, because clearly we could talk about this all day. It's really interesting, but it's we kind of run out of time in terms of our questions. It'd be really interesting. Is there anything that you kind of wish we'd asked you that we didn't or there's something that you think would be particularly interesting that maybe we haven't had a chance to explore?

Yeah, it's always such a tough question. And I'm like, I don't trying to interview myself. Is, yeah, is never, is never really, is there really an easy task? So, you know, I suppose we could, you know, you could ask my opinion on, you know, Donald Trump, but that's probably a spin off podcast that we can do in a different day. So I can't really think of anything else that would be a really good follow up question.

So So I think probably at this stage, it's really worth just mentioning, because there will be people listening who are really interested in your work, in your book. And I know you mentioned at the beginning, but now they've had a chance to get to know you, they may well want to pursue that rather than having to rewind. If you could just remind people how they can find cloverleaf and the back book, that'd be really great. Yep, absolutely. So

to get to cloverleaf, so it's cloverleaf.me.me, and largely because, you know, when we think about culture, it really does start with the individual. So we'd love, even though we would love to have the.com for that, we also really like how that aligns with our story. So cloverleaf.me and then if they're interested in corporate bravery, they can just go to Amazon, type that in, and they can find several different options, you know, both printed and electronic and just as synopsis, the books around sort of cultures of fear. Is that right? That's

right, yeah, but the focus is really on, how do we how do we create a brave culture, and one that isn't dominated by what could go wrong, or fear of things that could happen, but more so being aggressive and offensive in terms of how we approach business, in terms of how we approach building a culture, because ultimately, if we're just, if we're just always in reaction mode, we don't have an opportunity to shape the culture and the business that we want. All

right. Well, that sounds really good. I'm sure a lot of people will be interested in that. Go and check it out. Yeah, go and check it out. I guess last thing is to say a huge thank you. A really interesting conversation, I think, a great overview and insight into culture and engagement and some factors that are affected and ways to measure it. So a big thank you from us,

absolutely pleasure speaking to you. Enjoy the rest of your day, because I know you're on morning time and we look forward to seeing where cloverleaf goes. Awesome. Thanks, guys, great. So welcome back to us. That was our conversation. With Darren. I thought it was

really interesting. Yeah, I think, I think there's a number of things that I find useful about talking to people with different perspectives. I think he's in a different country and culture. I know that the European and America often get thrown in at the same place, and I don't think that's always true. I think, I think it's, it's a problem that's not easy to solve, and I like how they see it as a complex problem, rather than trying to think there's one solution to all of this stuff. And he's just, he sounds like a really nice guy who's really passionate about what he does and what they're trying to do. So those are all tick boxes for me. Yeah,

really good conversation, really interesting guy, clearly motivated by the purpose of what they're trying to do as well, and with a lot of great insight in this book, sounds book sounds really interesting as well, so I think that's worth checking out. So overall, really pleased with that, and hopefully we'll get to cross paths with Darren again in the future. He's given you his details of how to find out more as well, so feel free to look that up. And in terms of getting in touch with us,

yeah, don't forget, you can always get in touch with us on. Twitter, which is where we tend to be busiest, at the WoW podcast, but we're also on LinkedIn, if you search for at the WoW podcast, yeah, all right. Well, I think it's just time for us to check out and say, enjoy your summer. I

hope you're enjoying the lounger that you're sitting on, or the travel bus that you're in on your holiday or maybe you're on a pedal. I don't know, what else do people

on a pedal? Oh, okay, just do me a favor, listeners, if anyone, anyone is listening to us on a pedal in any form or shape, please, can

they tweet us? Yeah?

Because I would pay good money to see one of our listeners listening to us and on a pedal. Yeah? Well, on