SocialOptic Work Together podcast – Ep2 Culturalising technology Transcript Benjamin So I'm joined today by Richard Maybury. So very excited to be having this conversation and a long overdue one, but we've got you here and we're actually in the environment of log-in lounge in Camberley today. So a little bit of a different sound to the room and you can kind of imagine a very swish set up around us, with some great looking furniture and co-working vibe to the space. So Richard, I should get you to introduce yourself for the listeners. Richard Thank you. Lovely to be sharing some time with you, Benjamin. Always a joy. I'm Richard. Richard Mayberry and I have a training business called Attitude Solutions. And really, we're about helping our client’s people to manage ridiculous workloads. Conflicting priorities. Imminent constant deadlines and manage all that stuff a little bit easier every day, so that's the thrust of our main training programmes. Benjamin That sounds like a very familiar working environment for a lot of our customers and lot of people that we work with. A frequent topic today, an I have to be frank, I feel like it's almost overdone is a lot of people talking about hybrid work. And yeah, I remember, and I'm showing my age a bit unfortunately, something like 30 years ago when I was working in IT, setting up our first remote worker. So it's not new news, remote work, but that said the hybrid work there are some things that are a little bit different there. So what do people generally mean when they talk about hybrid work or what should they mean? Richard That's a really, really good question and we haven't got time to go into that deeply. However, I recall a number of transitions, the transition from telex when I was working in Nairobi, doing insurance risks into Lloyds of London. Essentially, all day, every day we were doing that by telex and you know eventually that migrated into emails, but you couldn't do emails into third parties so easily. So I think there's always been transition. Faxes. There's always been transitions. I think what differentiates where we are now, there's a couple of things. One is this is a change that's been enforced upon us very, very suddenly and at scale. So in the past there was a there was a time of reorientation, if we recall when hybrid first became a word or a thing, it was literally people having to go overnight to work from home and everything changed. And I think that's the big difference. It's also compounded, I think, by the fact that most of the people who were sent home to do work. Probably felt that their sanctuary was invaded rather than they were doing some work from home and none of them signed up to that job. They all signed up to go into the office and now they're working from home in not ideal circumstances. So, I think the suddenness and the scale differentiate the hybrid environment from every other work change and evolution that we've seen over time. And without getting too semantic around this stuff and I I'm not entirely happy with the word hybrid because we're still dealing with people and it's about how we work. I'm a big fan of calling it, really, flexible first working. So some of the people I think, who are making real differences in this new, new world are people who've embraced for their organisation, elements like flexible first. You know, these are your results, these are what we expect. But you work any way you want so long as it works for everyone else. And I think. There's one organisation who created an ethos around this and it is your day your way. So I think organisations who do that sort of are winning rather than the ones who say: “We're in this new world. You don't have to come into the office all at the time, but you must be in on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.” Yeah, I don't think that's hybrid. I think that is just an extension of flexible working. And for those of us who might be a little bit older flexi time. Benjamin Well, there's lots of things that some people have to go Google and look, I think I have to go and. Google telex. It is amazing how fast that transition was and it's easy to forget that when we take kind of life on teams, et cetera for normal. I remember with one of the organisations we worked with, they had a three-year transition plan that they had just started on for moving to remote working for their employees and they enacted that three-year plan in effectively about 18 hours in terms of, you know, literally the IT team driving around taking laptops to people and setting people up at home. Incredibly sudden change. And it happened for everybody at the same time, which is not the normal pattern for transition programme in an organisation. And I think now there are there are lots and lots of different aspects. You're very right in terms of, you know, sometimes people talk about hybrid meaning some of the people in the office and some people are not. And they're very specifically the idea of some people joining by speakerphone and some not. Other people who talk about working patterns. It's a term that's very overloaded in what it means, but it's interesting to focus in on that bit that I think we would put in the bucket of autonomy. What choice the employees have over stuff in terms of how they work and when they work and that's I think a real challenge for managers. As well, because that you know, there's a history of managing people by seeing them. And that illusion that that things are controlled of performance management is managed because you can see somebody. That goes away when you can't see people face to face and that forces that shift like you say to kind of focus on results and outputs. Yeah, that's when the rubber hits the road. I guess. How are organisations adapting to that and what the main challenges that you see that people are finding in that transition? Richard I'm not sure that organisations have got it right. Even the ones who've got it right haven't got it right. So by that I mean, you know, you you might have heard me mention this before, Benjamin, but I think that if we accept that we're all in a Petri dish at the moment. I mean, this is a two year laboratory exercise and we haven't yet got to a point where something is 100% right and even if it was, it wouldn't be right for every organisation. And I think that there's real challenges around how we work together in this hybrid world. Real challenges around how we do the nurture. And the people caring side of things and the development side of things versus the operational side of things. I think there's a there's a real challenge around what I call the two worlds of work, the operational world and the project world. Typically people who are working on projects would be probably sort of more sort of working together and they could bounce ideas off each other pretty easily within an office environment or whatever. And I think that's what's happening now is you get these people who are working sometimes in the office, sometimes at home and or somewhere else, like in a wonderful coworking space like log in business lounge and it's too easy to get the operational mode and the project mode mixed up. So and what I'm seeing is a lot of people are operating within a project world, so they bring an operational imperative to the project world as opposed to a project imperative and a project mindset to the project world. So I think and because they're not totally connected with everybody, there's that sort of disconnect. So I think that projects are getting that's a little bit more difficult to manage unless you do the right thing. Benjamin You know we're definitely hearing that as a pattern and again definitely for some organisations and some roles even explicitly people feeling quite disconnected from things and it's very easy for that to happen. We we've got one hack that we borrowed from one of the companies that we worked with about having an open call. So just actually calling somebody who's on the project not as a meeting, but just having an open channel and working. My kids call it body doubling and it's this idea of working with somebody who's working. Just to remind you what you're doing. But also just that sense of connection and being able to see when they're interruptible and go ohh, hey, you know what's this happening? And do we need to have this happen, and recreating the office environment. Obviously you can't necessarily do that at scale, but it's interesting for us as a business where we've always been remote. Actually, there was still a shift with the transition because it's difference between you. Don't work together by default and you can't work together and it really highlighted for us the role of that connection and how much you need that as a yeah, as a member of a team. Richard Exactly and I think that's an element. That's an example that's an artefact of what I call culturalising our technology. How we can because we are and probably going to continue having this flexible first, mobile first, internet speed of business first type environment that we're working within. I think it's important that businesses and people within businesses find their way together to work with all those constraints and freedoms, if you will, and still be able to produce the results that they're, you know, they're there to, to produce. So an open channel and everybody understanding that that's available and that it can be used to really good effect, especially if you're in what Cal Newport called sort of deep work or deep collaborative work. You know that's a cool thing to do, but unfortunately, a lot of people don't understand what that is. They don't understand that it's available. So one of the things that that I that I try to get my clients people to understand is that. You know what? Whatever you do, don't be a default driver. And unfortunately, unfortunately with software, most people are default drivers. Most people use e-mail the way they used e-mail 20 years ago. Not the people at the cutting edge because they've moved on or they've changed behaviours, but a lot of people haven't changed the way they interrogate their inbox and the way they deal with their inbox since they first got e-mail. Loads, loads people still file emails for example. I mean, why would? Why would you file an e-mail into a folder when we live in a search age. But people do. Benjamin But it's so comforting to send my emails into neat folders. There's a whole set of things that I'm gonna drill into there, but I'm gonna take us back to this and use that this word culturalising. And we are in that age of buzzwords so I'm gonna get you to explain that one a little bit because I think you gave some texture as to what that is, but What? What's this culturalising technology thing, what does that mean? Richard OK, so I started thinking about this. How we use technology and as I say, don't be a default driver and how we use technology to sort of really migrate from that ‘me’ to ‘we’ type philosophy. Which is so important when we're collaborating, and so it kicked in for me a good few years ago when somebody said to me. In a really great company, I mean. People would die to work for it. Good company in the technology sector. This particular person who ran a team across EMEA, so pretty senior, and this person said that you know they've got a great company culture, and then followed that by the ‘but’ word, and the but word was we got a great culture, but our e-mail culture stinks. And at that moment I said, if your e-mail culture stinks. And that's the way people communicate. Back in that day, internally. Then, you haven't got a great culture. Or if you have, the culture’s constantly been undermined and compromised by the e-mail culture that everybody has to live and work with. So when I talk about culturalising technology, I'm talking about how can we all use the technology that we've got to support and reinforce our culture. Rather than be thinking of it as something separate. So, you know, having an open channel and having that available. Even something as simple as using our status in Microsoft Teams, more cleverly. Now so, being a bit smarter about how we how we use that technology to support the culture of the of the organisation and not to be thinking of it as something separate and that of course then means that you start asking a lot of different questions. You know, questions like if we've got say for example Microsoft 365, you know, why are we still using third party apps? When there's probably something within Microsoft 365 that would work, or we can get an add in that would work better within that environment, then the app that the marketing team happened to love but it doesn't link in to anywhere else. So culturalising technology for me is about using technology to support the culture of the business, creating a set of constructs around how we do things here. Because culture is only how we do things here. So using the technology to sort of support that how we do things here and. And then really streamlining that technology so it's not, you know, I want to use monday.com because I like monday.com and my team have grown to likemonday.com. Other apps are available, but you know. Not just saying. OK, that's what we're gonna do, because that might not be the way the company culture can be best supported, maybe the company culture can be best supported through another app or through integrating something else into you know your mandated environment. Benjamin And it's interesting one, and the one of the founding ideas of SocialOptic was based on the idea that you could use technology and introduce the technology to shift and shape an organisation’s culture and now we also use the technology to measure the culture or understand it. Now it's very much most company cultures are shaped by the technology they have adopted and whilst we used to maybe choose a piece of software to support the processes of the business, particularly now in the world of, you know, software as a service and very pervasive software, a lot of organisations, processes and culture are a result of the software platforms they've adopted, to your default driver thing, at an organisational level, that's become the way they do things, not through a conscious choice that this is the right way for the business. It's just been enforced on them. That's how it works. And the culture has become an artefact of particular features of the communications technology that they use, which is probably not what the business leaders actually intentionally want. Richard No and that that that that's a pretty natural evolution. Is that technology driving the culture. Or should it be the culture driving how the technology is used and I would argue that, you know, it's the culture is the most important thing in any firm. I think. It's a key differentiator. It sets the tone, it sets the ethos, it sets the purpose of the business, it sets a whole pile of things. It's it's really important. I think it's really important that that culture is nurtured and preserved and expressed through the technology and through the best use of the technology and not just have it as something separate where we can say we've got a great culture here, but our behaviour in teams meetings is just the same as whether the meeting is a meeting in, in a room or a meeting over some software as a service or an app, or Microsoft Teams. If the meeting culture isn't good, then the overall culture is compromised. It's not a separate thing. Benjamin Yeah, it sends me back right to one of my most frequently used quotes, which is Malcolm Mugridge which is “all new news, is old news, happening to new people”. A lot of these problems are problems that were always there, or people who've experienced before, but now they're very much accented by the technology. We’ve become more conscious of them and interestingly one of the things you touched on there, the fact that you know, there is company culture, but there are company cultures and the marketing team operate differently. The sales team might operate differently and now it is more evident that you've got these different subcultures and where you want to align those or help people work together. One of the ones that sticks in my mind from the last few years that became a bit of a talking point or point of amusement in our organisation. Was being able to walk past somebody's desk when you could do such things and you could tell what departments call it was because if you saw a bunch of circles with initials in, you know all the cameras off. That was a that was a call with the IT team. If it was, you know, all cameras off and there's this great background. It was like it was a call with the marketing team and it. Was a bit of a stereotype there, but it was so true that there were these these different accepted practises that, although the tool were shaping the culture, there is a thing the other way around where you can make conscious choices or unconscious choices. About how different teams even use the same tool. Yeah, that led to actually quite incompatible working types, because when the marketing team had a call with the tech team, they felt alienated. Why? Why have people got the cameras off? What have they got to hide? Yeah, conversely, the tech team felt quite threatened about. Why don't you know? I don't wanna have to put my camera on and people see where I live and see my stuff. You know, you stay in your space. Thank you very much. Richard Yeah, and that is compounding this, this is why I think culturalising technology is so important because that's compounded by the separations that we have. That's compounded because, you know, individuals are now largely working from a cafe, a coworking space or home, as well as the office. And so you can't make that automatic assumption when you walk through a department on an office floor, you know. You are now separated from it. But you're still making evaluations and where you're separated. Those other links that link you sort of emotionally, intellectually, commercially into the business are not there. What you have is your screens and that's it, you know? So, I think it's even more important. So things like with this sort of culturalising technology thing, one of the things I talk about is intentional visibility. Not just being visible, but when you are being visible, you're intentionally visible. So if you're in a nurturing sort of coaching, sort of supporting role with your people or within your peer group, then you know that's an intentional thing and you gotta be very, very separate about how you deal with that rather than an operational thing or a or a management thing. Yeah, it's about intention and you won't be surprised. For me it all comes back to purpose and priorities, right? Everything comes back to purpose and priorities, so we're intentional about the thing we're doing and the and being intentionally visible because. There's people still haven't met their new boss. I find it amazing that people have been onboarded and haven't actually physically met their new boss. Now, in some companies, I mean, you know, some of the companies I've worked with in the past, but in some companies your boss is speaking English as a third language and they're based in Milan. That's fine, because that sort of world of work has been around for a long time. But at some stage you do see somebody who's got some lying responsibility for your development and for your role and for your for your management. But there's people who haven't met their boss, you know, even though they're working happily for a year in the business. Benjamin Yeah. And it, you know, the fact is the world of work is still relational and it it's easy to lose sight of that and coming back to that, the team culture thing that also obviously comes down to an individual level as well. You know different individuals will have different ways that they're comfortable working with technology or not. And so it is integrating all of those things. But that interesting thing about being intentional about it is also. Giving people clarity of what's expected makes things a lot more comfortable. Yeah, We have cameras off because that's what we do because as an organisation we respect people's privacy and we don't want to do that. Might be the culture if everyone knows that's what it is, you feel safe doing that thing. Conversely, it might be you know, we do have our cameras on because we want to connect, but we respect people's privacy, and we're not gonna make comment around what's in the background and we accept that people have got a family life and the kids might wander in the background and that's OK. But making that part of the culture that people understand, it's like not only is this how we do things, these are the things that are OK. And by the way, these are the things that are not ok as well, sometimes. And makes the working environment a lot more comfortable for people to be to be able to show up and be at their best. Yeah, but it definitely is having to be a lot more intentional. About stuff. And being more intentional about the communication cause so much of it in an office happens by default. We watch and see how people behave. And it's very noticeable to me that organisations have lost that bit of cultural transmission in the remote world where it needs to be more explicit in terms of this is how we do things. And This is why. Richard Absolutely. And you know, you and I have walked around floors and worked with organisations where, you know, subtle, subtle signals, were there. If somebody had a headphone on and they were in in one of the IT departments. You knew that they were writing code or you knew they were in deep work and you knew that you didn't tap them on the shoulder, because they had their headset on and when their headset comes off, they're available. You know, you don't have that subtle signal when you're working with people who might be in an office, and people who might be working elsewhere, you don't have that. So that's why I think you know sort of when you are and by visible I don't just mean the video on video off by the way. I mean, you're intentionally visible and you're intentionally engaged at what you're engaged in with your people. And they know that there's nothing else that’s gonna get in the way. So if there's a meeting. They know that no one is doing e-mail in that meeting, for example, just because they can, you know, so. Yeah, we've gotta find a what? Well, you know, obviously you can find a way to sort of replace those subtle signals and still have still engender this sense of belonging, and do that through appropriate, you know me to we use of technology. You know where we all understand what it is. So that's an area that I think companies who embrace that as a, because I always work from principles first, and you know, I'm sure that everybody who's listening to this right now in their leadership role knows that, you know, principles first sort of per, per second, maybe strategy and then how we do it and then what tools we use down the end of the line. All right, and but it is really important I think for us to focus on 1st principles around stuff and then how can we, how can we sort of support our purpose and how can we support our culture through the technology that we're invested in? To actually make that thing a living, breathing reality, even when people are working away from a central office at the moment. Benjamin And it's amazing how much technology right now pushes against that and just taking that simple thing about. Visibility and it's so messaging is such a blunt tool, aside from missing prosody, and we had an interesting communication incident yesterday about somebody had made a comment which was slightly tongue in cheek and somebody had read that as not, gone off done some investigation and come back with a sense of, where it was like a rhetorical answer right? Like, “what size problem is this” as a joking comment Which turned into a looking and come back. Well, I think it's this size and it's like no that comment was like we know this is a big problem, we need to go fix it. You can lose those things. Richard Can lose it in a heartbeat and unless we're conscious of that, these little things happen all the time long, and then it compromises the culture. So somebody said to me a while back. He said back in the day, Richard, we used to, we used to sort of talk the talk, right, and then we got smarter and we used to walk the talk. And he says the problem now is that we're writing the talk and like sometimes we're writing the talk in a way that we know what we're saying, but the receiver doesn't really know and they take something that could be tongue in cheek as being a slight or a criticism or something else. And we don't know until it's too late, it's already out there. Now. We can't take it back. You know it's in that. It's in that teams chat it's in that text message. It's in that WhatsApp group, you know it's in that e-mail and it's there. And then you gotta backtrack. And that's only if you know that it's been badly received. So I think we're gonna be much more careful around how we use technology just because it's easy and culture can be quite fragile. Benjamin As I say, culture is breakable. Richard It's breakable and what you what we don't want is lots of lots of probably accidental compromises and those accidental compromises happen when we don't agree and don't culturalise for this new sort of flexible working world of work. Benjamin And so there is this perspective, that culture is this global thing, and there's a degree to which that is is true. And that culture is a, you know a top down thing. You get into organisation, the culture washes over, you become part of that. But there's also an aspect where culture emerges from the micro moments. The micro decisions in an organisation and that becomes the culture and you know, going back to the message example it has been so shattering. I mean, a message comes in on chats now and then I think about even for me where I think we have a reasonable handle on these things. We're still learning. But yeah, it's our technology. And culture is our day job. So we hope that we manage to be reasonably performant at it. Something comes in on teams. Is that a “hey, we've got this thing that needs doing in three weeks time. Can you just take a look over this and give me your thoughts on it?” Is it a “ohh wow you. Know one of the organisations. Something's just hit the media. They're they're battling a really difficult issue. We've got the chairman on the phone right now. Can we get, you know, team together and get on this thing?” Or this servers down, or this thing's broken? Or is it “Yeah. Hey, I just kind of wanted to say hello because I, you know, realise we haven't spoken for a bit and it's been a bit quite here and I'm feeling a bit disconnected, but everything comes in as that little number in a circle in the corner of the box and for a lot of organisations, it's coming inside. It's in teams and it's in an inbox and it's in the 14 slack channels they've got with different customers and it's coming from the trouble ticketing system as well, which by the way, seems to be a place where sometimes people record that the tea and biscuits have arrived and I've got this this in-tray of alerts. And all these numbers and circles and trying to decide what, what do we do right now? Richard And then, you know, you're definitely into my world now on that stuff, but that sort of overload and I think part the cause of that overload is because we haven't made it clear. What is appropriate? What channels are appropriate? We haven't even made in some organisations. I mean, not all, but in some organisations we haven't even made it clear what constitutes a real escalation, where you can, where what you've got Trump's everything else that everyone's got. Because unless there's clarity around that, then of course everything is going to be urgent and important. And that's just the, you know, that's just the natural law. So yeah, it's not as easy as just giving people a piece of hardware, a bunch of apps and let them get on with it. It never was, by the way, but it's even more so, you know, difficult. Benjamin People get to experience and see the damage and the impact much more clearly now, although interestingly, not all organisations do and you know some of the work we've been doing is helping people understand what has the impact on your culture been, what you need to shift and change, and also noticing that some teams have got this right. Some leaders have really got this thing. Others have not, but also some of those learnings are transferable into the different micro cultures you've got and some of them aren't. Yeah. And it's really understanding that that map, but it does come down to that. Minute to minute activity for the employee and the individual. And how do you how do you choose what to do next. Richard Yeah. Yeah, and there's always going to be a challenge between what we think we need to do and what other people think we need to do right now. I mean, there's always gonna be. I used to say that if you've got competing priorities you're lucky because really, these days, you know competing priorities. Just something you gotta manage. That's it, right? The challenge comes with the conflicting priority where the decision isn't as easy and there are implications, deeper implications around our decision about what do we defend and what do we sacrifice and it does come down to defending and sacrificing. You know, and I advocate that you know there are some things that we do need to defend and the team needs to know that if I'm in that defend mode I am in that defend mode and nothing is going to compromise that. And I say. Nothing. You know, maybe something might, but. And it is a, but. If it's defend, then it's defend, and if it's defending the group calendar, it's defend. And we respect that and we expect then that our decision to defend and to carve out some time will be respected by the team. Obviously, if the world's falling. Down then someone will have to sort. Of reach out in some way and say the world's falling down. Forget it and just enjoy the last 10 minutes of your life. That's fine. That's fine. Otherwise, I mean, let's get some, let's get some culturalisation around, you know. You know, Col Newport again, with his deep work, but. Get some culturalization around what is what does a defended piece at time in the calendar mean not just for the person who's doing it, but for everybody else? Benjamin Yeah. And how that again, it's always a learning for me moving back in the last few years back into a bit of where I'm doing hands on software development again and being back in that world, for example. That that is a real deep work world. It takes you if I'm working with a piece of of AI software. Yeah, it probably takes me an hour to get in the headspace of OK, this is how this works. These all the parameters. This is the problem I'm trying to solve and the build. So somebody booking 1/2 hour meeting in the middle of an afternoon, that's cost me half a day because that I can't get to that deep work point. Conversely people blocking. Yeah. I'm just gonna do this two hour discussion about this thing for me when I'm in CEO mode. I'm working in five minute, 15 minute time slices looking for the quick hits of let's make some decisions. Let's move this along. Next decision, next thing, move along and those are quite different mutually incompatible modes, but helping people navigate that in the world where they can't see. Oh yeah, he looks a bit a bit annoyed right now. He looks like he's really concentrating on something or she looks like. She's not really interruptible. You don't have those signals when you're sending somebody. A meeting invite. Richard No, no. And you certainly don't have them when you're say sending a WhatsApp message to a group because you haven't got sight of their visibility in whatever sort of office app applications they're using. All you know is you've got, you've got the WhatsApp, you've got the group you've got the message and you hit send, you know. Benjamin And it's interesting. It’s those subtle little features things like, you know, slack has its message, threading in in quite a different way to Microsoft Teams. And it sounds like a small thing. But that actually ripples up into culture and how people you know, with teams that, well, stuff runs past and it might have been in that team group chat but that doesn't mean that everybody's read it, versus an expectation of while it was in that thread that got marked as priority and we take it as a given that people read it. That’s a subtle thing where the technology has changed the culture. Umm, that then impacts on and, you know, even people's stress levels. And again, that's one of the things we're seeing there where you have that lack of clarity in people having to make judgement rules. That stress, we've got something we don't have control over anymore. Richard The whole the whole thing with stress as, as you know and as you've just alluded to, stress is really, I mean it might be the work environment, it might be the workload, it could be a number of things. But essentially at its core, I think that stress is just a sense of feeling out of control. And some people can eat loads of work and not feel overworked, and somebody else would have would feel overworked with that volume. The difference is that the person who can eat all that work feels in control of it, so it's when you get that sense of feeling out of control that the stress levels sort of go up. “I can't take it anymore.” It goes up and. Again, those subtle signals aren't always there when people are working away from an office. We don't know what goes on behind closed doors. You know, we don't know what's really happening beyond the screen. Benjamin And how quantifiable work is an interesting thing. I remember starting my journey looking at the world of work and one of the analogies was that a lot of traditional work. Was what? What the author and I forget whether it was, or who it was now, but the idea of the ploughed field. So when if you did that kind of work, you know, well, you know, on average this hectarage, I will power field of that size in a day and I should be done by 3:00 or the bigger field, done by 4 and so I can quantify the work, I know how long it should reasonably take for somebody whose performance and at the end of the day I can look back and I can see the ploughed field. That's a distant memory in the world of knowledge work because work’s very difficult to quantify. It's very difficult to quantify how long it should reasonably take and it's very difficult to know if you even got the thing done at the end of the doing. And you used the phrase, what was it a job and a half was that the one. Richard Ohh yeah so I'm firmly convinced and, and certainly with the people I work with, I'm firmly convinced that everybody with a half decent job has got a job and 1/2 to do every day. And even if they haven't got a job and 1/2 to do, it feels like they have. You know there there's a number of reasons that, it's not that companies are over demanding. I think it's, it's like this ploughed field. It's the visibility. When I do my welding purpose to priority stuff, very tactical and how do we manage the ridiculousness of a business day, I asked people you know. Something even very simple, like how many to do lists are you operating from at the moment and they can come up and they say I’m in these slack teams I’m in these projects I've got a list for this and I've got a list for that. And I said well and, most people have got more To Do Lists than they care to articulate, and it's very interesting. Quite a few people think, say in a workshop. Or a webshop, they say I've only got 2 lists. I've got my personal list and I've got. My business list. And then the question is obviously, you're smiling. Then the question is, OK, so where's all your commitments from the last three teams meetings that you attended this morning? Because if they're still in chat or in your memory or on a piece of paper, and they're not in one single source of truth somewhere, then you've got two or three To Do List there. If you've got opened emails or unopened emails, if you've got emails marked as unread, or if you've got a whole pile of WhatsApp messages you haven't looked at yet, they're potentially items on the To Do List that you haven't got in a single source of truth, yet. Benjamin 36 tabs open in your browser. Richard 36 tabs open in your browser. I mean you haven't got so. I think there's a real challenge and you know, most good people do struggle with this stuff, even seasoned experienced people. Unless they've got a great sort of process or habit or behaviour around this stuff, or unless they've got some appropriate support. Most people haven't got the appropriate support, they're engaged to do stuff. And they're doing of the stuff can sometimes feel overwhelming. They get it done, but they get it done by the skin of their teeth. They get it done just in time. And it’s a wipe the brow and “phew”. And they still get up next morning and go into work and do it all again. They're great people, it's just that: sometimes they're default driving the software, sometimes what they want to get done, you know is hijacked by the understandable imperatives from other sources. But it always amazed me. For example, it always amazes me that people haven't got explicitly. What they've got to defend against all incoming that will happen at 8:00 o'clock in the morning or 9:00 o'clock in the morning. They haven't got. They haven't got that. They might have it in their head, they might have it in their heart, they might be feeling excited or fearful when they get to work, whatever that is. But, they haven't got it explicit. And the first thing they do is they open up their e-mail and they sort of get in to look at their chats and everything else. And before they know it, they're doing stuff that's completely moved, that imperative out of their head. Because they haven't got a structure or the structure they're using, they're using different things. They haven't got bringing things together into one single source of truth where they can say this is where I got. I got these meetings. I got these things I must do. The others I'll try and do, and within that I can take on all comers, and I can say yes or no or date. Something that comes into me. But I know what I need. I know what I told myself I need to do today because it's there in front of me. And I think you know, it's a very simple thing, but that's what a lot of people are missing. Most people don't know how many to do lists they got. And most people don't know how much work in progress they got. Now accountants and will know work in progress, because it's one of the things. They measure but. Most of the people who are doing really good stuff, they don't know how many incompletions, how many expectations, how many commitments from others, how many commitments they've made to others. They haven't got all that in one place. They've got it in. Too many apps, too many places, and in their memory bank. Benjamin So you've given some hints to the question that I was gonna ask next, which is so where, and particularly as a leader, where do you help people start with the job and 1/2 where? Where do you start with helping with that problem and helping that problem go away so you can have employees you can work in a sustainable fashion who aren't gonna burnout, who can come and bring them like full cells to work and leave, happy and fulfilled at the end of the day. Richard Ohh, that's a massive question. That's a massive question. Yeah, that's a big question that we're sort of we're throwing at each other now, 40 minutes in and If I was to sort of put a meta tag around it I'd say that It all comes down to the reason why we're there. So, shorthand for that is purpose, so you know purpose can be a capital P purpose. You know the thing that we think we're here for sort of outside of work and in our lives and it could be a small p purpose you know the purpose of the day the purpose of this meeting the purpose of the phone call I'm going to dial into in 5 minutes time. So, I think it comes down to the leadership engendering that sense of purpose within, for themselves, obviously, and within their team. Once people know why they're there beyond just the KPI and beyond just the target, right, once they know how they contribute to that, you know how what they do contribute to the overall arc. If you will then And there and they've got some sort of approach. And some visibility, you know, intentional visibility with software and once they know what everyone else is looking to do and. Once we know that we're aligned, one of my clients uses a wonderful phrase and he calls it extreme ownership. So, and I and I was saying to, they're a great business. I mean really great business. And this guy is he is a man and he is absolutely he is top notch and one of his things he says you know we want to encourage extreme ownership and so that means that everything, whether it's just stuff that we own explicitly or stuff that we are responsible for, because other people own it and it hasn't been delivered so extreme ownership means that every individual takes responsibility for what everyone else is about. And I thought, how does that work? And he started to talk to me about what they do about extreme ownership, and I thought, “you know what? That's really cool”. But I think it all does come to that sense of purpose. And then people having that sense of purpose, whether it's a capital P thing or whether it's, you know, the purpose of the next phone call, what do I deliberately want to get from this next conversation? What do I deliberately want to get from this meeting? How then can I make sure that if I have said that I will in the teams meeting? For example, if I've said you will have something on your desk on Thursday? You know. Taking that commitment and making it explicit and evaluating that commitment again against everything else that's gonna happen between now and Thursday. You know, and everyone takes ownership of that. There's no one off menu and menu means you know the software, the package, the environment that we're working within because everyone knows what everyone is doing more or less. I remember back in the day when. And Microsoft calendars started to be shared, and I remember this is a, a woman said to me in a training programme, she said she put a meeting in my calendar, Can you imagine? The audacity of putting a meeting in my calendar. And at that moment, I thought, you know, software is different to having you own diary. Software is collaborative. So how do we how do we make collaboration an easier and more visible open sort of system founded on culture. But then everybody sort of working together in, it's principle 10 in my world in purpose to priorities thing, migrating from ‘me’ to ‘we’. How do we work as an us? More effectively within the constraints and the opportunities created by our mission and by the software that we choose to enable that mission. And not have it as something separate to the business mission. Benjamin Ooh, things to talk about. So I was teasing. I feel there's Richard Maybury, episode 2 around purpose, which we will definitely come back to in a future podcast. If I can pin you down again. But it's also interesting to hear really clearly how what leaders do and what the leadership does, how closely linked that is to the minute by minute of even the newest employee in an organisation that these are connected problems, not disconnected problems. And if you are somebody who is helping or serving a leader. Supporting them in getting that right and doing that is one of the biggest differences that you can make for them is if they're not in that mindset, having them to understand the power and responsibility of that, that how culture impacts on the minute to minute and the minute to minute impacts on culture. And if they do understand that already, which most good leaders do. How you can bring them the tools, the information, the accurate map that helps them make the right calls around making the right calls. And that stuff is what transforms an organisation and helps it not just survive, but thrive and grow. Well, it's been a pleasure having you here. I'm gonna leave through the thing that I always do and I'll buy you some time on this one. I always ask, is there a question that I haven't asked you that I should have done or you really wish that I should have done? And I'm going to because that's always a surprise to our guests because we’re new in this series. And I'm gonna lose the thrill and the excitement of that being a surprise question as we go on and people cheat and listen to that, we're able to listen to episodes beforehand. But it's always a thing that we like to do is kind of round up with, well, what do we miss here? What? Did we not ask. That's the important thing. Richard OK, I think and this is hard, right? Anybody else is going to do this, this is a hard thing to answer. So I think there's a challenge as well. In business that just because we've worked hard on a culture and we nurture a culture. And you know It is a differentiator for us and it's important for us and we're known for it. Even with that there is inevitably going to be some sort of compromise between the culture that we're espousing and we're looking to nurture and support within the business and, you know, based upon purpose and based upon behaviours and expectations there is. Also going to be that sense of purpose that is within each and every single person who works within the business so. And it is a big question how? Because we can't expect people who are in our employ to just become clean slates and absorb our corporate culture, our business culture. That's not going to happen. How can we make sure that the people who we've got are purposeful in themselves and their own lives and their career development? As well as absorbing and supporting the culture that we're trying to build within the business. Because you have to live in those two worlds as well. Benjamin I love that you've hits upon two of my favourite things at the moment, which are definitely things that in future I want to drill down on. I think one is what I call the credibility gap. That there are organisations out there who are espousing a culture that's very different from the culture and it's like brand and marketing. If you tell people this is how we are. How you get them in on that basis and that's not how you are. They won't stay. And if they do stay, they'll wreck the ship. The other one is this thing that there is a misunderstanding. Sometimes that having a strong corporate culture means an environment of clones. And that does happen and you get these almost, like, cultish environments. And I come from the tech world, where that was definitely a thing, but actually, real culture is incredibly diverse and that singular purpose doesn't mean that everyone is the same. It can be and should be, an incredibly diverse set of viewpoints, which is healthy, different set of historical perspectives. The more of that you can bring into your organisation, the richer your culture is. It's not dilutive, it’s actually strengthening. If you're doing this stuff right, that's a whole other one. Richard Yeah, yeah, that is. That is that's that's a very exciting and interesting area. To solve this more. Benjamin It's great that businesses are thinking about it now and I think for me that's one of the shifts of the last few years is people are a lot more conscious around what is that culture? How do we treat people, which, that's a good thing. I hope. I think I'm pretty sure and it's been a real pleasure to have you here today to talk about that. We will add in the show notes there will be links so you can go and find out how to find Richard and the things he's written and the things that he's involved in, which is many and varied, as you will discover. Thank you to the log in team for letting us use this space, and it's been a real kind of culture thing you probably heard. Maybe in the background, like coffee being made and people moving around, there's stuff happening here, so I'm going to go dive into that and get the work day done. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Richard, and we will speak to. Richard My great pleasure, Benjamin, as always, thank you for having me here.