What Matters

I’ve always loved culture. My siblings and I were raised with wanderlust. My father travelled around the globe for work, returning home with gifts for us from places far away. Some were consumable (hello Swiss and Belgian chocolate). Electronic games and toys came from Japan and Korea, none of which survived our attention. Many of those souvenirs are still on my cabinet shelves, mixed now with my own collection of travel keepsakes.

My interest in the cultures of different countries and regions drew me to travel widely in my twenties. I studied economics, history and languages at...

Working with leaders and leadership teams, I encourage them to first explore, then to experience and then push to extend themselves. I love using experiments as a frame to try, test and learn.

For leaders and executives, the most useful learning is emergent.

It comes from being open and aware.

Noticing.

It requires a preparedness to rethink and unlearn.

Are you exploring, experiencing and experimenting ?

Or are you just existing?

#leadershift #experiment #experience #exploration #existence

Yes, culture is complex and intangible, but it is also simple and actionable.

Culture is intangible, but its performance impact is not. By understanding culture, and the actions you can take to shape and shift it, you will achieve results through culture.

Yes, culture is organisation-wide, but it is also local. As a leader, your everyday actions contribute to the broader culture and determine the culture of your team.

I am passionate about simplifying culture and making it actionable for leaders so they feel confident and competent to shift their culture every day, and not rely on experts to...

More than ever, leaders are expected to be worth following, to lead cultures worth belonging to and work worth doing, while investing in technology (and managing the distracting side effects) and dealing with shifting societal and regulatory demands. All while delighting customers, keeping teams safe, sustaining growth, and delivering results. It’s a big ask.

So let your culture do the heavy lifting.

Culture can sustain teams and organisations through uncertainty. Culture can anchor people when everything else is changing around them. Culture can support your teams to stretch,...

When faced with an unfamiliar crisis, many leaders launch into action. This however is when you need to take a breath. To pause before you pounce.

This breath or pause is a counterintuitive response to stress but you can train yourself to adopt a deliberate calm.

Leading in the never normal means dealing with uncertainty on an ongoing basis. The ability to calm yourself deliberately is a key differentiator for leaders and executives.

Calm is contagious. The ripple effect of your calmness on your teams means everyone’s heart rate lowers and improves your teams’ ability to...

GRASS is my shorthand way of remembering what matters most when it comes to leading and shifting Culture: Gatherings, Rituals, Actions, Symbols, and Stories.

Grass gives us some useful metaphors for culture.

Grass needs care and maintenance; it’s not a one-and-done intervention.

Grass can be wild or a well-trimmed lawn. Both are beautiful when they are healthy.

Weeds can grow even in the best quality grass.

There are plenty of varieties of grass. It can grow from seed or be imported as turf, or you can work with what you have.

The grass looks greener on the other side, but it’s...

If you do nothing else and just fix one thing - fix meetings.

Change the way you gather, change your Culture.

Gatherings are of course more than just meetings. I’m talking about any time you bring your people together - social events, learning, hackathons, site visits, all hands, Thursday drinks… the list goes on. I love Priya Parker’s work on Gatherings. Her book, the Art of Gatherings, so beautifully guides us through how to do gatherings, on purpose, with purpose. Likewise, the idea of ‘leader as host’ taps into our natural hosting abilities. We host...

Change your rituals, change your culture.

Rituals are powerful when used on purpose and are often underestimated and undervalued in the workplace.

Often, the norms and unwritten rules of culture are demonstrated through rituals. Rituals are collective behaviours that are repeated, shared and learned. Together, they build and strengthen connections among team members and convey your culture. They may be visible through your welcoming and onboarding activities, how you gather and meet, celebrate and reward team members, and how you make decisions and resolve conflicts.

Rituals provide a focal...

Everyday actions can shift culture. Where leaders are deliberate and lead culture on purpose, they can shift their culture.

Actions shape culture. Actions speak louder than words. Your team are looking to see what you do, and the gap between what you promise and what you practice.

Leaders set the tone. Role modelling matters. Your people are always watching you. They notice what you notice. Your teams are listening to what you say - and don't say. Your actions shape culture.

But it's not just what you do. How you demonstrate leadership matters for sure, but so too does what you tolerate. What...

Culture is not something extra that you do on top of your day job. Culture is not something you do once a year when it’s engagement survey time.

Culture is the cumulative effect of your leadership:

• How and why you bring people together (or not).
• What rituals you and your team share- how you greet, celebrate and farewell.
• What you do and how you do it. Your actions, even when you think no one’s looking (and someone is always looking).
• What people see - the symbols and signs, the unwritten rules.
• The stories you share (or don’t)

How are you thinking about Culture? Is it a...