1 00:00:07,500 --> 00:00:10,000 Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. 2 00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:13,750 Welcome to Rethink Culture, the podcast that shines a spotlight on business 3 00:00:13,750 --> 00:00:17,250 leaders who are creating intentional cultures. 4 00:00:17,750 --> 00:00:20,625 My name is Andreas Konstantinou and I'm your host. 5 00:00:20,625 --> 00:00:24,416 I'm the founder of Rethink Culture, a company that aims to help create one 6 00:00:24,416 --> 00:00:27,500 million healthier, more fulfilling work cultures. 7 00:00:27,791 --> 00:00:31,666 Today, I have the pleasure of welcoming Spencer Harrison, who's a professor of 8 00:00:31,666 --> 00:00:36,291 organizational behavior at INSEAD Business School and a TED speaker. 9 00:00:36,916 --> 00:00:39,000 His expertise and research are highly 10 00:00:39,000 --> 00:00:43,541 recognized in the field, and his work has been featured in Harvard Business Review, 11 00:00:43,541 --> 00:00:45,500 Fast Company, Money, and Inc. 12 00:00:45,500 --> 00:00:46,541 magazines. 13 00:00:47,000 --> 00:00:50,500 He co-founded the Creativity Collaboratorium, the world's largest 14 00:00:50,500 --> 00:00:54,375 working group of creativity researchers, and he has become a culture advisor to 15 00:00:54,375 --> 00:00:58,500 many of the fastest growing organizations, including Google, Salesforce, and 16 00:00:58,500 --> 00:00:59,500 Deloitte. 17 00:00:59,750 --> 00:01:03,791 So with that, Spencer, welcome to the Rethink Culture Podcast. 18 00:01:04,291 --> 00:01:05,541 Andreas, thank you for having me. 19 00:01:05,541 --> 00:01:06,625 It's a pleasure to be here. 20 00:01:07,000 --> 00:01:13,125 So I was recommended to you by Eric, who's been a guest on the previous podcast with 21 00:01:13,125 --> 00:01:20,125 highest accolades, and you have been studying organizational psychology and 22 00:01:20,125 --> 00:01:23,541 behavior for a long time. 23 00:01:23,791 --> 00:01:31,541 So walk us a bit into your current work, your areas of interest, and what does 24 00:01:31,541 --> 00:01:33,125 organizational behavior mean for you? 25 00:01:34,250 --> 00:01:39,875 So I think the major theme that you see across the work that I do, and I do 26 00:01:39,875 --> 00:01:45,416 research in a variety of some might say odd contexts for a business researcher. 27 00:01:45,416 --> 00:01:48,666 So I've studied people that are designing t-shirts. 28 00:01:48,666 --> 00:01:52,750 I've studied people that are making new products out of garbage. 29 00:01:52,750 --> 00:01:54,875 I've studied modern dance groups. 30 00:01:54,875 --> 00:01:57,416 I've studied popular music bands. 31 00:01:57,791 --> 00:02:04,083 And what is sort of similar across all of these different contexts, is this idea of 32 00:02:04,625 --> 00:02:07,625 How do you sustain transformation? 33 00:02:08,250 --> 00:02:12,750 And that's important because it's no longer enough for a business to come up 34 00:02:12,750 --> 00:02:17,875 with one really good strategy and then just rest on that for a really long period 35 00:02:17,875 --> 00:02:18,375 of time. 36 00:02:18,375 --> 00:02:24,416 There's a need to sort of constantly think about what are we doing today that's going 37 00:02:24,416 --> 00:02:27,041 to make us better tomorrow? 38 00:02:27,041 --> 00:02:29,666 And so this idea of thinking... 39 00:02:29,791 --> 00:02:33,375 How do we sustain transformation is important, rather than thinking about 40 00:02:33,375 --> 00:02:37,166 transformation as just sort of a one-time, discrete event. 41 00:02:37,791 --> 00:02:44,875 And what led you to being a professor at INSEAD, which is a highly claimed business 42 00:02:44,875 --> 00:02:45,500 school. 43 00:02:45,500 --> 00:02:46,375 Like, where did you start? 44 00:02:46,375 --> 00:02:50,125 Did you envisage becoming a professor as a child? 45 00:02:50,125 --> 00:02:52,375 Did you envisage becoming a researcher? 46 00:02:53,166 --> 00:02:58,375 Well, I did actually, but I did it through sort of a meandering story. 47 00:02:58,375 --> 00:03:01,625 So the short version is this. 48 00:03:01,625 --> 00:03:04,500 When I grew up, I wanted to be an animator for Disney. 49 00:03:05,041 --> 00:03:06,625 And I loved creating. 50 00:03:06,625 --> 00:03:07,416 I loved drawing. 51 00:03:07,416 --> 00:03:09,500 I loved coming up with characters. 52 00:03:09,750 --> 00:03:18,375 And then that love for creation led me to also love storytelling and writing and 53 00:03:18,375 --> 00:03:19,541 poetry. 54 00:03:19,541 --> 00:03:23,166 And I thought, what is a career that could subsidise 55 00:03:23,166 --> 00:03:28,166 me as a writer, especially as a poet, and the idea was, oh, I could be an English 56 00:03:28,166 --> 00:03:29,125 professor. 57 00:03:29,125 --> 00:03:33,000 So originally that was sort of the idea is I'm going to be an English professor. 58 00:03:33,291 --> 00:03:37,375 And at the same time, I happened to be working as a technical writer, just 59 00:03:37,375 --> 00:03:40,000 understand the business side of language. 60 00:03:40,416 --> 00:03:47,916 And as that career began to expand, I realized I can still write and I can still 61 00:03:47,916 --> 00:03:51,000 create for myself on my own time. 62 00:03:51,166 --> 00:03:56,375 But there's this opportunity to help organizations and help other people 63 00:03:56,375 --> 00:03:58,541 sustain this sort of creation. 64 00:03:58,666 --> 00:04:03,625 And that led me to become more interested in sort of the business side of things. 65 00:04:04,041 --> 00:04:06,750 And that's how you get somebody that wanted to be a poet to become a business 66 00:04:06,750 --> 00:04:07,291 professor. 67 00:04:07,291 --> 00:04:10,375 And for some people, that might be sort of a very cynical story. 68 00:04:10,375 --> 00:04:16,500 For me, it's been a really fascinating journey because I get to apply this sort 69 00:04:16,500 --> 00:04:18,875 of humanistic lens that I learned. 70 00:04:18,916 --> 00:04:24,500 through my studies and through my childhood to a business world that often 71 00:04:24,500 --> 00:04:30,500 doesn't see that as important, but once they begin to understand where that has a 72 00:04:30,500 --> 00:04:34,125 huge impact on them, then it makes all the difference in the world. 73 00:04:34,291 --> 00:04:39,000 So yes, I did wanna be a professor, not necessarily a business professor, but I 74 00:04:39,000 --> 00:04:44,750 found that it's sort of this perfect blend for me of my talents and how I can have 75 00:04:44,750 --> 00:04:45,750 impact on the world. 76 00:04:45,875 --> 00:04:47,750 And what's the most fun part of your job? 77 00:04:47,750 --> 00:04:49,166 Is it research? 78 00:04:49,166 --> 00:04:51,041 Is it working with clients? 79 00:04:51,791 --> 00:04:53,666 Is it the innovation work? 80 00:04:53,875 --> 00:04:54,791 I think it's both. 81 00:04:54,791 --> 00:05:02,625 So I think that it's very often the case that professors sort of see teaching as 82 00:05:02,625 --> 00:05:05,375 one of the things that pulls them away from research. 83 00:05:05,375 --> 00:05:10,500 I think one of the really nice things about a school like INSEAD is we try to 84 00:05:10,500 --> 00:05:15,875 stay really close to the real world and the experience of executives. 85 00:05:15,875 --> 00:05:21,500 And as a result, some of my best research ideas actually come from conversations 86 00:05:21,500 --> 00:05:22,875 with executives. 87 00:05:22,875 --> 00:05:27,625 So there is this very nice exchange of, I learn a lot from the research, I present 88 00:05:27,625 --> 00:05:31,375 that to executives, they're extremely curious about it. 89 00:05:31,375 --> 00:05:34,625 They'll say, you know, could you come into my organization and help us? 90 00:05:34,625 --> 00:05:40,000 And then as a result, that helps me change the model that I was thinking of before or 91 00:05:40,000 --> 00:05:43,250 gain new insights, and then I can teach other executives. 92 00:05:43,250 --> 00:05:47,125 And so that virtuous loop tends to continue itself. 93 00:05:47,125 --> 00:05:48,375 And as a result, 94 00:05:48,375 --> 00:05:51,875 There's always more ideas that I can pursue and more opportunities that I have 95 00:05:51,875 --> 00:05:53,625 time to help with. 96 00:05:53,625 --> 00:05:58,875 And that's sort of the constant struggle of my day is how do I find the space to 97 00:05:58,875 --> 00:06:03,291 say no, or the willpower to say no to all these wonderful opportunities. 98 00:06:03,666 --> 00:06:06,375 What is some of the research you're most proud of producing? 99 00:06:06,416 --> 00:06:09,291 or some of the work you're most proud of, not just research. 100 00:06:09,791 --> 00:06:16,000 the thing that always goes through my mind is I'm most proud of the thing that I'm 101 00:06:16,000 --> 00:06:18,375 working on right now. 102 00:06:18,375 --> 00:06:24,125 So once something is already produced and it comes out, at that point, I'm sort of 103 00:06:24,125 --> 00:06:27,875 already past it and sort of moved on to the next thing. 104 00:06:27,916 --> 00:06:33,166 So if I were to sort of keep that as a truism for me, I think the thing that I'm 105 00:06:33,166 --> 00:06:36,166 really excited about right now is 106 00:06:36,166 --> 00:06:40,541 a set of research that I've done with a colleague, Professor Kristie Rogers at 107 00:06:40,541 --> 00:06:48,375 Marquette on how organizations connect their, what we call big C culture to their 108 00:06:48,375 --> 00:06:49,416 small C culture. 109 00:06:49,416 --> 00:06:54,500 And we have some research coming out in the near future on that topic that I think 110 00:06:54,500 --> 00:06:55,375 is really exciting. 111 00:06:55,500 --> 00:06:57,791 So tell us more, what is big C and small C culture? 112 00:06:58,375 --> 00:07:01,875 Well, this insight comes from two places. 113 00:07:02,166 --> 00:07:09,375 So the first place is, Kristie and I were working with a extremely famous 114 00:07:09,375 --> 00:07:15,125 organization that had seen a spike in turnover and they were very concerned 115 00:07:15,125 --> 00:07:15,541 about it. 116 00:07:15,541 --> 00:07:20,416 And so they wanted somebody that was independent to come in and talk to the 117 00:07:20,416 --> 00:07:24,541 employees that had left to see if they could understand what was going on. 118 00:07:24,541 --> 00:07:25,750 And it was sort of... 119 00:07:26,000 --> 00:07:29,125 you know, the Hamlet version of there's something rotten in the state of Denmark. 120 00:07:29,125 --> 00:07:32,250 So the question that they were basically asking is, is there something rotten with 121 00:07:32,250 --> 00:07:33,375 our culture? 122 00:07:33,750 --> 00:07:36,666 And we did about a hundred interviews. 123 00:07:36,666 --> 00:07:39,250 We discovered some really interesting things that were going on in this 124 00:07:39,250 --> 00:07:40,625 organization. 125 00:07:40,750 --> 00:07:45,166 And basically what was happening is this organization was scaling itself so quickly 126 00:07:45,625 --> 00:07:50,166 that they became a little bit less focused on who are we bringing into the 127 00:07:50,166 --> 00:07:53,375 organization and how many of those people are bringing into the organization. 128 00:07:53,375 --> 00:07:54,375 So as a result, 129 00:07:54,375 --> 00:07:57,625 they were hiring almost entire divisions of their company away from other 130 00:07:57,625 --> 00:07:58,791 organizations. 131 00:07:58,791 --> 00:08:03,375 And what that meant is people were sort of coming in with a blueprint for the culture 132 00:08:03,375 --> 00:08:07,250 from the former organization and just pasting it into this new company. 133 00:08:07,375 --> 00:08:12,750 So that led to a lot of what we called shadow cultures. 134 00:08:12,750 --> 00:08:16,625 So sort of these cultures that are creeping up in the shadows that are not 135 00:08:16,625 --> 00:08:22,000 following the culture that's supposed to be in place in this organization. 136 00:08:22,125 --> 00:08:25,375 but they're allowed to persist because the organization is just growing so fast, they 137 00:08:25,375 --> 00:08:27,791 don't have time to pay attention to it. 138 00:08:27,791 --> 00:08:31,916 And what we found is these people were in some cases actively leaving the 139 00:08:31,916 --> 00:08:37,291 organization because it was easier to boomerang back into the company and find a 140 00:08:37,291 --> 00:08:40,416 manager that actually managed for the culture. 141 00:08:40,625 --> 00:08:43,791 So there was this interesting moment where we were presenting these results and the 142 00:08:43,791 --> 00:08:47,125 CEO looked at me and he said, Spencer, what are you going to do to fix this? 143 00:08:47,125 --> 00:08:49,166 And I thought, Oh my gosh, you know, 144 00:08:49,500 --> 00:08:52,000 I was hired to just diagnose the problem. 145 00:08:52,000 --> 00:08:55,250 I wasn't hired to be the surgeon to fix this for you. 146 00:08:55,375 --> 00:09:01,541 But what I said was, the solution for this problem already exists here inside the 147 00:09:01,541 --> 00:09:02,250 organization. 148 00:09:02,250 --> 00:09:05,625 And this is true, I think, of most organizations and they don't realize it. 149 00:09:05,916 --> 00:09:10,750 I said, what you need to do is not figure out where these bad managers are. 150 00:09:10,750 --> 00:09:15,375 You need to figure out who are the most excellent managers that people are wanting 151 00:09:15,375 --> 00:09:19,625 to boomerang back into and ask them what they're doing. 152 00:09:19,750 --> 00:09:24,000 If you can find those practices and spread those through the organization, then 153 00:09:24,000 --> 00:09:26,875 you're going to make the entire organization that much more resilient and 154 00:09:26,875 --> 00:09:28,541 improve the culture. 155 00:09:28,541 --> 00:09:33,125 What we did is we took their performance management data and we used that to 156 00:09:33,125 --> 00:09:38,500 isolate who are the leaders that were able to have the highest retention rates with 157 00:09:38,500 --> 00:09:41,791 their employees, but we're also pushing them to get the highest level of 158 00:09:41,791 --> 00:09:42,875 performance. 159 00:09:42,875 --> 00:09:47,500 If they're doing both those things, then that means I'm pushing you in a way where 160 00:09:47,500 --> 00:09:49,625 you're not feeling so burned out. 161 00:09:50,041 --> 00:09:51,375 that you want to leave. 162 00:09:51,375 --> 00:09:54,625 And so there's something else going on there culturally that allows people to 163 00:09:54,625 --> 00:09:55,750 want to stay. 164 00:09:55,750 --> 00:10:00,750 And that's where we found this really fun link between what we call the big C 165 00:10:00,750 --> 00:10:01,291 culture. 166 00:10:01,291 --> 00:10:06,750 So these are the official culture documents, the official expressions, our 167 00:10:06,750 --> 00:10:14,625 mission, our values, our vision, the official selection criteria, onboarding, 168 00:10:14,625 --> 00:10:18,666 leadership development and rewards policies, and the official measurement 169 00:10:18,666 --> 00:10:19,750 systems. 170 00:10:20,041 --> 00:10:23,375 And so we have those things sort of at the top level where we can point to, we can 171 00:10:23,375 --> 00:10:26,166 say, that's our culture, this is how we manage it. 172 00:10:26,625 --> 00:10:31,500 But what we found is that these leaders were actively building culture within 173 00:10:31,500 --> 00:10:32,750 their sphere of influence. 174 00:10:32,750 --> 00:10:35,375 And we grew to call that the small C culture. 175 00:10:35,500 --> 00:10:40,000 And the idea is basically that even though we can point at big C culture, we actually 176 00:10:40,000 --> 00:10:45,625 experience small C culture in day-to-day life in business. 177 00:10:45,625 --> 00:10:48,041 And so it's really up to those leaders that have 178 00:10:48,041 --> 00:10:54,041 the biggest control or influence on that small C sphere to bring the big C culture 179 00:10:54,041 --> 00:10:54,541 to life. 180 00:10:54,541 --> 00:10:57,000 And that was sort of the real exciting part. 181 00:10:57,000 --> 00:11:02,750 I think that the second part to that is at the same time, I'm doing all this work 182 00:11:02,750 --> 00:11:07,375 with executives and we would start talking about the culture. 183 00:11:07,375 --> 00:11:12,125 And I had a participant in a class once that raised his hand and he said, so 184 00:11:12,125 --> 00:11:16,375 Spencer, I don't understand why we're talking about culture, our CEO 185 00:11:16,416 --> 00:11:19,541 has already articulated what the mission and the values are. 186 00:11:19,541 --> 00:11:21,125 Like at this point, it's set in stone. 187 00:11:21,125 --> 00:11:22,375 There's no way to change it. 188 00:11:22,375 --> 00:11:24,750 So why are we talking about culture? 189 00:11:24,875 --> 00:11:30,291 And at that point, it became very clear to me that for a lot of leaders, and this is 190 00:11:30,291 --> 00:11:34,750 also true in the popular business press, when you look at books that are written 191 00:11:34,750 --> 00:11:41,250 about culture, we glorify the writing of the culture as though that's the magical 192 00:11:41,250 --> 00:11:44,375 moment where culture takes its meaning. 193 00:11:44,375 --> 00:11:45,791 It's almost as though 194 00:11:45,791 --> 00:11:50,500 we describe this moment of sort of coming up with the values and the mission 195 00:11:50,500 --> 00:11:55,666 statement, like Moses walking down the mountain and he's got these tablets and 196 00:11:55,750 --> 00:12:00,375 there's sunlight behind his hair and God speaking from the mountain. 197 00:12:00,500 --> 00:12:04,791 And if we just get those tablets, if we just get the culture written right, 198 00:12:04,791 --> 00:12:06,916 everything will fall into place. 199 00:12:07,125 --> 00:12:10,041 And I found that a lot of leaders were sort of paralyzed by that notion because 200 00:12:10,041 --> 00:12:13,541 if the culture is already written, then what do I do? 201 00:12:13,750 --> 00:12:14,750 And that... 202 00:12:14,750 --> 00:12:20,125 became an opportunity for us to realize there is a set of activities that leaders 203 00:12:20,125 --> 00:12:26,416 can engage in that allow them to build cultural capacity throughout the entire 204 00:12:26,416 --> 00:12:27,750 organization. 205 00:12:27,750 --> 00:12:31,625 And what's important is these behaviors are completely scalable. 206 00:12:31,625 --> 00:12:34,375 Anybody at any level of the organization can do them. 207 00:12:34,625 --> 00:12:40,791 And most importantly, the behaviors themselves really don't require 208 00:12:40,791 --> 00:12:41,875 permission. 209 00:12:41,916 --> 00:12:43,125 Because I'm not. 210 00:12:43,250 --> 00:12:47,166 going about changing the culture, not just doing things on my own. 211 00:12:47,166 --> 00:12:51,500 I'm actually doing things that further connect what happens at the small c 212 00:12:51,500 --> 00:12:53,125 level with what happens at the big c level. 213 00:12:53,541 --> 00:13:01,625 And these managers that were the ones that led their teams to the highest performing 214 00:13:02,250 --> 00:13:08,750 results, did they have different systems or did they have different behaviors? 215 00:13:09,666 --> 00:13:11,541 So they existed in the same system. 216 00:13:11,541 --> 00:13:15,250 What was different is their behaviors and their approach to the system. 217 00:13:16,000 --> 00:13:21,750 In a lot of cases, leaders feel like their job is to be a steward of the system. 218 00:13:21,750 --> 00:13:28,041 So I'm just here to keep the system moving, to oil the parts and sort of keep 219 00:13:28,041 --> 00:13:32,625 people performing the way that they're already expected to perform. 220 00:13:32,750 --> 00:13:35,625 And what we found with this group of leaders that were high performers is 221 00:13:35,625 --> 00:13:36,666 number one, 222 00:13:36,875 --> 00:13:41,041 they did not see themselves as the best leaders in the company, even though 223 00:13:41,041 --> 00:13:44,750 quantitatively speaking, there was all the evidence in the world to say that they 224 00:13:44,750 --> 00:13:45,625 were. 225 00:13:45,666 --> 00:13:50,250 So what was interesting about them is they were actively learning from other leaders 226 00:13:50,250 --> 00:13:51,375 how to be better leaders. 227 00:13:51,375 --> 00:13:56,375 And they probably had the best network of, here's an idea I learned from this person, 228 00:13:56,375 --> 00:13:59,916 here's an idea I learned from this other person. 229 00:14:00,000 --> 00:14:04,625 And what that learning allowed them to do is to really think about what does the big 230 00:14:04,625 --> 00:14:06,166 C culture mean. 231 00:14:06,250 --> 00:14:07,875 for other people in the organization. 232 00:14:07,875 --> 00:14:12,666 I know we say these values, but how are they putting those things into action? 233 00:14:12,750 --> 00:14:17,250 So there's this curiosity about what's happening at the official level and how do 234 00:14:17,250 --> 00:14:18,916 I translate that? 235 00:14:19,250 --> 00:14:23,916 And then there's this curiosity about what can we do within my sphere of influence, 236 00:14:23,916 --> 00:14:27,291 within my small C culture to bring that to life. 237 00:14:27,291 --> 00:14:32,625 And what they do then is they begin to cultivate experiments with the culture 238 00:14:32,625 --> 00:14:33,541 where they... 239 00:14:33,666 --> 00:14:38,291 encourage themselves and the people around them to try new things. 240 00:14:38,291 --> 00:14:42,625 So sort of the easiest way of thinking about this is there's a lot of data that 241 00:14:42,625 --> 00:14:46,000 shows that most people don't like meetings. 242 00:14:46,000 --> 00:14:48,125 We see it as a waste of our time. 243 00:14:48,125 --> 00:14:50,416 We think that they could be improved. 244 00:14:50,416 --> 00:14:53,750 We feel like most of them should actually just be cut from our agenda. 245 00:14:54,250 --> 00:14:58,500 But meetings are actually really important because those are cultural moments. 246 00:14:58,500 --> 00:15:02,000 We see culture come to life because people come together. 247 00:15:02,041 --> 00:15:03,750 and we see how we behave with each other. 248 00:15:03,750 --> 00:15:05,916 We see what's permitted, what's not permitted. 249 00:15:05,916 --> 00:15:08,625 What does it mean to bring values to life? 250 00:15:08,625 --> 00:15:15,375 So for example, with these high performing leaders, meetings become a laboratory. 251 00:15:15,500 --> 00:15:20,916 How can I take this half hour or this hour where I have people together and use it as 252 00:15:20,916 --> 00:15:27,541 an opportunity to bring our values to life based on what we choose to talk about, how 253 00:15:27,541 --> 00:15:31,375 we choose to interact with each other, how long the meeting takes. 254 00:15:31,375 --> 00:15:33,875 what the emotional tone of the meeting is. 255 00:15:33,875 --> 00:15:39,250 And so they're using these moments, not in a taken for granted way, like, yeah, we 256 00:15:39,250 --> 00:15:44,291 have meetings every day, it doesn't matter, but in like a very precious 257 00:15:44,291 --> 00:15:49,625 cultivating way where they're thinking, how can I bring seeds of our values to 258 00:15:49,625 --> 00:15:54,500 life and behavior so that the people in my small C culture can point to that meeting 259 00:15:54,500 --> 00:15:59,541 and say, that's an example of us living our values because we did X or because we 260 00:15:59,541 --> 00:16:00,250 did Y. 261 00:16:00,625 --> 00:16:03,791 And what happens then is that these moments, and it doesn't just happen with 262 00:16:03,791 --> 00:16:07,250 meetings, but that's sort of a low-hanging fruit just because we can all point to 263 00:16:07,250 --> 00:16:10,750 them and say, meetings are horrible, they're a waste of time. 264 00:16:10,875 --> 00:16:14,000 If all of a sudden you're changing something that most people agree is a 265 00:16:14,000 --> 00:16:17,791 waste of time to something that's engaging and energizing and nobody wants to miss 266 00:16:17,791 --> 00:16:21,375 it, that ripples through the organization pretty quickly. 267 00:16:21,375 --> 00:16:25,125 And people start saying, oh, we should run meetings like this group and this other 268 00:16:25,125 --> 00:16:26,750 unit because... 269 00:16:26,750 --> 00:16:30,291 they're all standing up or they have a pizza every meeting or they start their 270 00:16:30,291 --> 00:16:36,125 meeting by having a safety announcement or they start their meeting by doing a 271 00:16:36,125 --> 00:16:41,125 relationship building exercise, whatever it is, they're using that opportunity as a 272 00:16:41,125 --> 00:16:43,750 way to bring the organization to life. 273 00:16:44,416 --> 00:16:54,375 That's a great point because at least I was only thinking of major events like 274 00:16:54,375 --> 00:17:00,250 firing someone or a crisis as opportunities to... 275 00:17:00,291 --> 00:17:09,875 communicate big C culture and convey messages and, you know, whatever you need 276 00:17:09,875 --> 00:17:11,541 to convey to the workforce. 277 00:17:11,541 --> 00:17:17,875 But actually, it is the everyday meetings of these, you know, daily opportunities 278 00:17:17,916 --> 00:17:19,291 and we learn through. 279 00:17:21,291 --> 00:17:29,666 through the tens or hundreds or thousands of small opportunities at every part of 280 00:17:29,666 --> 00:17:31,750 our life, work or personal. 281 00:17:32,750 --> 00:17:34,750 And yeah, it's refreshing. 282 00:17:35,000 --> 00:17:42,416 Yeah, and what becomes interesting then is those daily opportunities are data. 283 00:17:42,791 --> 00:17:52,250 And in most organizations, we are really excited about sales data or inventory 284 00:17:52,250 --> 00:17:57,375 turnover in our operation system or how we're spending our marketing dollars and 285 00:17:57,375 --> 00:18:01,750 how that leads to stronger market growth and market penetration. 286 00:18:01,875 --> 00:18:09,250 And what's interesting is we're a little bit less fluent in reading culture data. 287 00:18:09,666 --> 00:18:14,750 So most organizations have some sort of culture instrument or they outsource it to 288 00:18:14,750 --> 00:18:16,291 another organization. 289 00:18:16,375 --> 00:18:20,500 And this is great because it gives them sort of a baseline at different levels 290 00:18:20,500 --> 00:18:24,750 about what's going on, but that's sort of a big C baseline. 291 00:18:24,750 --> 00:18:28,125 I don't understand the daily interactions. 292 00:18:28,125 --> 00:18:32,666 that actually make that come to life, unless I have people gathering that data. 293 00:18:32,666 --> 00:18:36,791 And that data is usually not gonna show up in a report that comes across my desk as a 294 00:18:36,791 --> 00:18:40,541 leader, because that data is encoded in stories. 295 00:18:40,541 --> 00:18:46,125 So if you think back through sort of the evolution of the human species, long 296 00:18:46,125 --> 00:18:52,625 before we invented numbers, we actually had stories as literally the survival 297 00:18:52,625 --> 00:18:54,000 guide of the human species. 298 00:18:54,000 --> 00:18:55,625 I would tell a story. 299 00:18:56,416 --> 00:19:01,416 to a young member of my group to help them understand where to hunt, what is safe, 300 00:19:01,416 --> 00:19:04,666 what is not safe, what does it mean to be a part of our group? 301 00:19:04,875 --> 00:19:10,250 So there's this fabulous research that was conducted by a set of anthropologists, 302 00:19:10,375 --> 00:19:17,291 where they went into tribes in Southeast Asia, and they offered them a sack of 303 00:19:17,291 --> 00:19:18,250 rice. 304 00:19:18,541 --> 00:19:23,625 And the sack of rice was a fairly significant offering because it meant... 305 00:19:23,625 --> 00:19:28,000 basically the equivalent of a month's worth of food for people in this tribe. 306 00:19:28,041 --> 00:19:29,625 And all they did was ask them one question. 307 00:19:29,625 --> 00:19:36,041 They said, who else in the tribe would you want to share this rice with? 308 00:19:36,625 --> 00:19:38,625 And then they tracked where the rice got shared. 309 00:19:38,625 --> 00:19:42,875 So basically the people that were getting the rice, and this is not surprising, they 310 00:19:42,875 --> 00:19:45,625 would keep the majority of it for them and their family. 311 00:19:45,750 --> 00:19:48,916 But then they would share it with other members of the tribe, and then the 312 00:19:48,916 --> 00:19:52,125 researchers would go and give that portion to other members of the tribe. 313 00:19:53,375 --> 00:19:58,125 The people in the tribe that were most likely to get shares from other members of 314 00:19:58,125 --> 00:20:01,375 the tribe were the storytellers. 315 00:20:01,541 --> 00:20:06,541 So what that does is it shows that this physical resource that sustains human 316 00:20:06,541 --> 00:20:12,166 life, in this case, it's rice, is actually going to these individuals that provide a 317 00:20:12,166 --> 00:20:14,166 different resource for the rest of the group. 318 00:20:14,166 --> 00:20:18,500 It's something that isn't physical, and yet it still has this sustaining function 319 00:20:18,500 --> 00:20:22,750 because it tells the rest of the group, what is it? 320 00:20:22,750 --> 00:20:25,125 that we do to belong together? 321 00:20:25,125 --> 00:20:29,875 Or what are the patterns that we use in order to work together as a group? 322 00:20:30,041 --> 00:20:35,000 Now, here's the most fascinating part of this study, is that when they asked the 323 00:20:35,000 --> 00:20:40,416 storytellers what they would do with their rice, they were the ones that were most 324 00:20:40,416 --> 00:20:43,000 likely to redistribute it to everybody else. 325 00:20:43,500 --> 00:20:48,291 So the storytellers actually shared the resources with everybody else. 326 00:20:48,291 --> 00:20:51,750 And that meant that the more storytellers you had in a tribe, 327 00:20:51,750 --> 00:20:56,250 the more equally the rice was spread among the entire group. 328 00:20:56,375 --> 00:21:02,500 Now there's a key learning there then for managers, which is you need to be a story 329 00:21:02,500 --> 00:21:03,750 gatherer. 330 00:21:03,875 --> 00:21:08,375 So you understand the daily data that's leading people to have their best 331 00:21:08,375 --> 00:21:10,250 experiences with the culture. 332 00:21:10,250 --> 00:21:15,250 And then you need to be telling those stories to other people, both below you 333 00:21:15,250 --> 00:21:19,875 and above you, so that they understand what brings the culture to life. 334 00:21:19,875 --> 00:21:23,500 And when you do that, you're sharing this key cultural resource. 335 00:21:23,500 --> 00:21:28,041 This is the data that allows us to understand how we actually manage culture 336 00:21:28,041 --> 00:21:28,541 day to day. 337 00:21:29,250 --> 00:21:37,500 And stories, listening to the study you just recounted, to me sounds like 338 00:21:37,500 --> 00:21:44,625 inspiration, a higher purpose, a story that tells us about the world that we are 339 00:21:44,625 --> 00:21:50,166 part of and reaffirms that we're a very small part of this bigger world. 340 00:21:50,166 --> 00:21:54,916 So it's in a sense a driving purpose, which gives meaning. 341 00:21:55,625 --> 00:21:58,875 So how does a manager practically 342 00:21:59,375 --> 00:22:01,791 give meaning to their team through stories. 343 00:22:01,791 --> 00:22:07,791 Like if there was a manual, a short manual for managers who want to become story 344 00:22:07,791 --> 00:22:11,750 gatherers and storytellers, what would be in page one of that manual? 345 00:22:12,500 --> 00:22:20,000 So I think page one of the manual is to realize that culture is built on values. 346 00:22:20,000 --> 00:22:24,166 And by values, I don't just mean nice sounding words that we want to have on our 347 00:22:24,166 --> 00:22:25,125 walls. 348 00:22:25,416 --> 00:22:31,250 I mean values are patterns of human engagement that are meant to foster 349 00:22:31,250 --> 00:22:32,250 success. 350 00:22:32,250 --> 00:22:37,125 So when I espouse loyalty as a value, I'm not just saying that's a nice sounding 351 00:22:37,125 --> 00:22:39,541 word and it's something that we aspire to. 352 00:22:39,541 --> 00:22:41,500 I'm actually saying we're going to interact. 353 00:22:41,500 --> 00:22:44,500 in a particular way that brings loyalty to life. 354 00:22:44,500 --> 00:22:49,125 And there's some hope for positive outcome that we're trying to drive to from that 355 00:22:49,125 --> 00:22:49,541 value. 356 00:22:49,541 --> 00:22:56,250 And those outcomes can be financial things like ROI or EBITDA, but they can also be 357 00:22:56,250 --> 00:23:03,541 more subjective things like employee satisfaction or sense of inclusion or some 358 00:23:03,541 --> 00:23:05,041 sort of triple bottom line measure. 359 00:23:05,041 --> 00:23:07,375 It can be any number of things. 360 00:23:07,500 --> 00:23:08,750 The reason why 361 00:23:09,375 --> 00:23:12,791 values are important and understanding that values are the building blocks of 362 00:23:12,791 --> 00:23:17,625 culture is important is because when we understand that values are patterns of 363 00:23:17,625 --> 00:23:20,875 human engagement that are meant to foster success, we realize that values always 364 00:23:20,875 --> 00:23:23,375 have a positive bias to them. 365 00:23:23,375 --> 00:23:30,041 Organizations never espouse a value that is negative like we aim to be the most 366 00:23:30,041 --> 00:23:32,291 lazy company in the world. 367 00:23:32,916 --> 00:23:34,416 Nobody's going to want to be a part of that. 368 00:23:34,416 --> 00:23:37,208 Well, I mean, some people might want to become a part of that organization 369 00:23:37,208 --> 00:23:39,416 but nobody is going to want to invest in that company. 370 00:23:39,666 --> 00:23:47,875 Um, so because values always have this positive bias to them, we see values in 371 00:23:47,875 --> 00:23:54,000 action by asking for stories where people experience the positive moments at work. 372 00:23:54,250 --> 00:23:58,125 So one of the keys then is if we're going to be good storytellers and good story 373 00:23:58,125 --> 00:24:02,791 gatherers as leaders, we need to ask for specific stories that point to the values. 374 00:24:02,791 --> 00:24:08,875 And the easiest one to ask for is tell me about a moment when you were at your best. 375 00:24:09,791 --> 00:24:15,375 And if every leader just started with that one behavior, you would see a dramatic 376 00:24:15,375 --> 00:24:19,750 difference in how organizations operate around the world. 377 00:24:19,750 --> 00:24:25,375 And notice, as I said earlier, that sort of behavior is non-controversial. 378 00:24:25,541 --> 00:24:31,416 No senior leader is going to get mad at middle managers because, Hey, I heard that 379 00:24:31,416 --> 00:24:34,500 you're asking people about, you know, when are they at their best in their 380 00:24:34,500 --> 00:24:35,125 organization? 381 00:24:35,125 --> 00:24:35,875 Stop doing that. 382 00:24:35,875 --> 00:24:38,041 We don't want people to be at their best here. 383 00:24:38,375 --> 00:24:39,500 nobody's going to say that. 384 00:24:39,500 --> 00:24:42,000 So what's great about it is it's completely scalable. 385 00:24:42,000 --> 00:24:43,416 Anybody can do it. 386 00:24:43,541 --> 00:24:50,000 And what's important is when I gather a story like that, I know the story as the 387 00:24:50,000 --> 00:24:54,666 leader, but the employee that shared it with me knows that I know the story as 388 00:24:54,666 --> 00:24:55,250 well. 389 00:24:55,250 --> 00:24:57,291 And they know that I'm gathering those stories. 390 00:24:57,291 --> 00:25:02,416 So now I've sort of authorized them to share that story with others. 391 00:25:02,750 --> 00:25:07,500 And now it creates this sense of expectation and shared understanding 392 00:25:07,500 --> 00:25:08,291 around 393 00:25:09,000 --> 00:25:11,375 What does it mean when we're talking about culture? 394 00:25:11,500 --> 00:25:17,375 So when you think about how do you make leaders good storytellers, and this is 395 00:25:17,375 --> 00:25:20,750 something, this is one of those skills that more and more organizations are 396 00:25:20,750 --> 00:25:25,500 spending millions of dollars on trainings for their leaders to help them become 397 00:25:25,500 --> 00:25:30,750 better storytellers because they realize this is a skill that we need in the same 398 00:25:30,750 --> 00:25:33,666 way that we need leaders that can read financial statements. 399 00:25:34,916 --> 00:25:38,625 I can give you any number of tactics and certainly I've looked at the research on 400 00:25:38,625 --> 00:25:43,875 what is the most effective structure of stories, how do you write those stories. 401 00:25:43,875 --> 00:25:47,125 Clearly as somebody that studied poetry, like this is something that I'm extremely 402 00:25:47,125 --> 00:25:52,125 interested in just individually, but the best stories are the ones that are the 403 00:25:52,125 --> 00:25:53,125 most authentic. 404 00:25:53,125 --> 00:25:58,500 And so if I'm able to actually say, here's a story about Andreas and his most 405 00:25:58,500 --> 00:26:01,666 meaningful experience and Andreas is actually in the room and he's nodding his 406 00:26:01,666 --> 00:26:04,125 head and everybody knows that's real. 407 00:26:04,125 --> 00:26:08,125 and I'm explaining a value coming to life, like that's the golden moment for me as a 408 00:26:08,125 --> 00:26:08,541 leader. 409 00:26:08,541 --> 00:26:12,416 It's not me sort of trying to craft a perfect story and using an exact 410 00:26:12,416 --> 00:26:13,375 structure. 411 00:26:13,375 --> 00:26:17,375 That can help people, but if the underlying story isn't true and it didn't 412 00:26:17,375 --> 00:26:20,916 really happen in the organization, it's not gonna inspire people. 413 00:26:20,916 --> 00:26:26,125 And so this is why, you know, leaders need to be gathering these stories on a daily, 414 00:26:26,125 --> 00:26:27,500 weekly basis. 415 00:26:27,875 --> 00:26:31,166 because that gives them sort of this constant flow of, oh, have you heard 416 00:26:31,166 --> 00:26:32,041 what's going on here? 417 00:26:32,041 --> 00:26:34,250 Do you know about this great idea here? 418 00:26:34,291 --> 00:26:38,500 And they're energized, the people around them are energized in sharing them, and it 419 00:26:38,500 --> 00:26:40,375 just begins to take on a life of its own. 420 00:26:41,000 --> 00:26:47,166 So what I hear you say is that the unit of culture should not be values which are 421 00:26:47,166 --> 00:26:55,291 abstract or behaviors which are maybe impersonal, but stories which are 422 00:26:55,291 --> 00:27:01,000 personal, they are relatable and they are every day, they happen every day. 423 00:27:01,750 --> 00:27:07,541 And managers should gather these stories from individuals in their team or anywhere 424 00:27:07,541 --> 00:27:11,291 in the organization, or their own. And recount them 425 00:27:11,291 --> 00:27:17,166 as affirmation of what the culture is and how it's lived, which I find really 426 00:27:17,166 --> 00:27:18,041 powerful. 427 00:27:18,375 --> 00:27:19,375 Exactly. 428 00:27:20,125 --> 00:27:26,750 And Spencer, before we move on, there's this game I like to play with guests, 429 00:27:26,875 --> 00:27:28,625 which we talked about this. 430 00:27:28,625 --> 00:27:35,291 So I think you already have in mind two truths and one lie, in no particular order, 431 00:27:35,291 --> 00:27:38,000 just so we can get to know you a little better. 432 00:27:38,541 --> 00:27:41,625 So we're all ears. 433 00:27:41,875 --> 00:27:42,500 here we go. 434 00:27:42,500 --> 00:27:45,791 So this will just sort of give you a sense of who I am. 435 00:27:45,791 --> 00:27:50,625 Here are my two truths and a lie. 436 00:27:50,625 --> 00:27:56,166 Number one, I broke my jaw on April Fool's Day and the neighbor we asked for help 437 00:27:56,166 --> 00:27:57,250 thought it was a prank. 438 00:28:00,500 --> 00:28:02,500 That must have been a painful prank. 439 00:28:03,375 --> 00:28:06,875 Number two, I own a pet iguana. 440 00:28:07,375 --> 00:28:11,125 And number three, my favorite poet is Pablo Neruda. 441 00:28:13,916 --> 00:28:15,041 That’s a tough one. 442 00:28:16,000 --> 00:28:18,541 There could be a lot of false positives there. 443 00:28:18,541 --> 00:28:20,416 All right, let's leave it to the end. 444 00:28:22,750 --> 00:28:24,500 So, moving on. 445 00:28:25,541 --> 00:28:32,375 You also talk about culture needs to meet strategy, not just for breakfast but also 446 00:28:32,375 --> 00:28:35,250 lunch, dinner and the after party. 447 00:28:35,250 --> 00:28:36,000 What does that mean? 448 00:28:36,250 --> 00:28:40,000 Well, the most common quote when people are talking about culture is that culture 449 00:28:40,000 --> 00:28:41,541 eats strategy for breakfast. 450 00:28:41,541 --> 00:28:45,875 And what I was trying to do there was be a little bit cheeky and turn that quote on 451 00:28:45,875 --> 00:28:50,500 its head and say, well, how could culture meet strategy for breakfast? 452 00:28:50,500 --> 00:28:53,250 And then as I was sort of building it out, I thought, you know, you don't, you don't 453 00:28:53,250 --> 00:28:57,666 just want to have the meal in the morning, you want to have culture sort of be the 454 00:28:57,666 --> 00:29:00,375 entire part of the organization. 455 00:29:00,375 --> 00:29:03,041 So then it was, and lunch and dinner. 456 00:29:03,250 --> 00:29:05,000 And then because. 457 00:29:05,250 --> 00:29:10,125 you want to have celebrations for success, it should be at the after party as well. 458 00:29:10,125 --> 00:29:14,250 So, very often I'll introduce the culture eats strategy for breakfast quote. 459 00:29:14,625 --> 00:29:17,625 And what's funny about that quote, and I'll leave it to listeners to do this on 460 00:29:17,625 --> 00:29:23,541 their own, but it's really interesting to go Google who actually said that quote 461 00:29:23,541 --> 00:29:25,916 because it's been misattributed a lot. 462 00:29:25,916 --> 00:29:30,000 And it has this, it's one of those quotes as this winding history where everybody 463 00:29:30,000 --> 00:29:33,166 thinks one person said it, but it actually comes from. 464 00:29:33,625 --> 00:29:35,375 a more obscure source. 465 00:29:36,291 --> 00:29:42,166 But it was sort of taking that quote and saying, when that quote is real, when 466 00:29:42,166 --> 00:29:48,375 culture eats strategy for breakfast, it's usually because the organization has made 467 00:29:48,375 --> 00:29:49,875 a dire mistake. 468 00:29:49,916 --> 00:29:54,375 It's usually because we committed to an acquisition, and all of a sudden we 469 00:29:54,375 --> 00:29:57,791 realize this is not going to work. 470 00:29:58,291 --> 00:30:02,291 Our culture doesn't mix with their culture, or we've committed to a new. 471 00:30:02,375 --> 00:30:08,125 strategic direction and we brought in consultants and they gave us some advice 472 00:30:08,500 --> 00:30:12,541 and we've announced it to everybody and we've announced it to our shareholders and 473 00:30:12,541 --> 00:30:17,000 so we have to go in this direction and yet we realized none of our people actually 474 00:30:17,000 --> 00:30:18,041 want to go in that direction. 475 00:30:18,041 --> 00:30:22,166 It looked great on a spreadsheet but it doesn't look good in action. 476 00:30:22,375 --> 00:30:26,750 And so usually I'll say, you know, who said this and down below the quote it will 477 00:30:26,750 --> 00:30:29,750 say somebody at a low-performing company. 478 00:30:29,750 --> 00:30:30,500 And then 479 00:30:30,500 --> 00:30:34,791 I'll show the other quote, how can we make culture meet strategy for breakfast, 480 00:30:34,791 --> 00:30:37,000 lunch, dinner, and the after party? 481 00:30:37,000 --> 00:30:41,625 And it will say somebody at a high performing company because that person is 482 00:30:41,625 --> 00:30:44,125 not thinking about strategy, absent culture. 483 00:30:44,125 --> 00:30:48,375 They're not making these huge organizational decisions without thinking. 484 00:30:48,375 --> 00:30:55,416 What is the shared values about the way that we work that allow us to do what it 485 00:30:55,416 --> 00:30:56,625 is we're doing? 486 00:30:57,125 --> 00:30:59,500 And, you know, that's where strategic leaders. 487 00:30:59,500 --> 00:31:05,250 get into problems is that they can become seduced by a new strategy, whether it's 488 00:31:05,250 --> 00:31:07,750 one they come up with on their own or whether it's one they see one of their 489 00:31:07,750 --> 00:31:12,750 competitors enacting, without asking themselves, is that actually something 490 00:31:12,750 --> 00:31:14,750 that fits with our culture? 491 00:31:14,750 --> 00:31:18,625 And if the answer is no, that doesn't mean that you can't enact the strategy, but it 492 00:31:18,625 --> 00:31:21,625 means you need to be a lot more thoughtful about what your next step is. 493 00:31:21,625 --> 00:31:25,791 It can't just be announcing the strategy, or I can guarantee you that it's going to 494 00:31:25,791 --> 00:31:26,500 fail. 495 00:31:26,625 --> 00:31:28,375 This reminds me of this... 496 00:31:31,750 --> 00:31:38,666 the talk about work-life balance, which in recent times is more referred to as 497 00:31:38,666 --> 00:31:40,250 work-life integration. 498 00:31:40,875 --> 00:31:48,375 And so you could say the same applies to culture strategy balance, how much we 499 00:31:48,375 --> 00:31:54,125 consider strategy versus culture, into one of culture strategy integration, where the 500 00:31:54,125 --> 00:31:57,083 two need to consider each other. 501 00:31:57,083 --> 00:32:00,250 culture needs to consider where the company is going and what 502 00:32:00,250 --> 00:32:03,250 types of clients it works with in one environment and so on. 503 00:32:03,625 --> 00:32:09,875 And strategy needs to consider what is the small C culture, to use your analogy, in 504 00:32:09,875 --> 00:32:13,250 order to be essentially executable. 505 00:32:13,250 --> 00:32:15,291 Otherwise, it will just be on paper. 506 00:32:15,416 --> 00:32:16,375 Exactly. 507 00:32:16,416 --> 00:32:25,791 I think what is really comforting about strategy is it can be numerical. 508 00:32:26,000 --> 00:32:31,166 And as a result, it provides this veneer of this is objective, this is achievable, 509 00:32:31,166 --> 00:32:32,625 we can do this. 510 00:32:33,250 --> 00:32:36,041 And I love strategy making. 511 00:32:36,041 --> 00:32:37,875 I think it's extremely creative. 512 00:32:37,875 --> 00:32:38,875 It's a lot of fun. 513 00:32:38,875 --> 00:32:43,875 So I'm not degenerating strategy making. 514 00:32:43,875 --> 00:32:50,791 But when it's done in the absence of strong information about the culture, then 515 00:32:50,791 --> 00:32:54,166 it's basically an exercise in fantasy. 516 00:32:54,375 --> 00:32:57,875 As much as those numbers make it seem real, those numbers are completely 517 00:32:57,875 --> 00:33:02,750 meaningless if you don't actually have a sense of culturally, what will this 518 00:33:02,750 --> 00:33:07,541 translate to in people's behaviors and the stories that they're gonna be telling and 519 00:33:07,541 --> 00:33:09,916 the stories that I'm gonna be gathering now as a leader. 520 00:33:09,916 --> 00:33:13,666 And so if that story gathering and storytelling hasn't happened, 521 00:33:13,750 --> 00:33:18,500 before executives go on a strategic retreat and articulate what they're gonna 522 00:33:18,500 --> 00:33:22,875 do for the next five years, it's almost guaranteed that the next six months after 523 00:33:22,875 --> 00:33:26,125 they come back and they launch that strategy, there's gonna be a lot of 524 00:33:26,125 --> 00:33:31,791 heartburn, a lot of rewriting the strategy because that's the moment that, you know, 525 00:33:32,125 --> 00:33:37,375 that plan is going to come face to face with reality and it's going to be proven 526 00:33:37,375 --> 00:33:38,625 that it doesn't fit. 527 00:33:40,041 --> 00:33:46,500 Moving forward, Spencer, what are some of the topics or projects you would really 528 00:33:46,500 --> 00:33:48,916 love to sink your teeth in? 529 00:33:49,250 --> 00:33:54,416 Like what projects in the next couple of years do you think are really worth 530 00:33:54,541 --> 00:33:55,250 exploring? 531 00:33:56,875 --> 00:34:07,416 So I think one of the sort of golden keys to organizational performance and the 532 00:34:07,416 --> 00:34:11,375 first companies that figure this out, I think, are going to have a massive 533 00:34:11,375 --> 00:34:18,791 advantage in terms of talent, much the same way you saw companies like Google had 534 00:34:19,166 --> 00:34:26,625 20 years ago, is figuring out, how can I create a culture 535 00:34:27,166 --> 00:34:32,291 that allows people to be at their best at work while saving enough of their energy 536 00:34:32,291 --> 00:34:35,125 so that they can be at their best in their life. 537 00:34:35,125 --> 00:34:42,625 So you can either see this as sort of a sad reality of life or you can see it as 538 00:34:42,625 --> 00:34:47,625 something really powerful about how we choose to spend our time. 539 00:34:47,625 --> 00:34:53,000 But the reality is, is that the average working, or the average working adult will 540 00:34:53,000 --> 00:34:57,000 spend the majority of their life at work than in any other activity. 541 00:34:57,750 --> 00:35:03,291 And so if we aren't finding meaning from the work that we're doing, and if that 542 00:35:03,291 --> 00:35:09,625 work is not preserving enough of our human energy so that we can provide meaningful 543 00:35:09,791 --> 00:35:14,375 input in the other avenues of our life, then we're really missing out on something 544 00:35:14,375 --> 00:35:16,375 collectively as human beings. 545 00:35:16,500 --> 00:35:20,000 So organizations that are able to figure that out and whether that's a four day 546 00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:25,291 work week or whether that's, you know, more frequent sabbaticals, 547 00:35:25,291 --> 00:35:29,541 I think that there are going to be organizations that realize that working 40 548 00:35:29,541 --> 00:35:34,666 hours a week is actually not in their best interest or their employees' best 549 00:35:34,666 --> 00:35:39,500 interest, and there's better ways of making this all happen. 550 00:35:39,750 --> 00:35:44,625 And right now, we're just so focused on, this is how we've always done things that 551 00:35:44,625 --> 00:35:45,875 we haven't really changed it. 552 00:35:45,875 --> 00:35:50,291 But I think that the organization that figures out that balance between, I can 553 00:35:50,291 --> 00:35:52,375 allow you to be at your best here at work. 554 00:35:52,750 --> 00:35:56,916 and then that preserves enough energy for you to be at your best at home and in 555 00:35:56,916 --> 00:36:01,541 other areas of your life, everybody's going to want to work for those companies 556 00:36:01,541 --> 00:36:02,500 that can figure that out. 557 00:36:02,916 --> 00:36:07,916 Do you think it's a question of structure like in the Holacracy movement or the 558 00:36:07,916 --> 00:36:09,875 self-management movement? 559 00:36:10,375 --> 00:36:12,916 Or is it softer, more to do with behavior? 560 00:36:13,000 --> 00:36:17,041 I think that there's an opportunity for it to be a mixture of both. 561 00:36:17,041 --> 00:36:23,750 I think the research that's being done on holocracies and even if you think about 562 00:36:23,750 --> 00:36:30,166 research that was done before that on transparent accounting or employee-owned 563 00:36:30,166 --> 00:36:35,000 organizations where there was this idea of how can we push power down in the 564 00:36:35,000 --> 00:36:40,541 organization, those are really fascinating experiments in human behavior. 565 00:36:41,250 --> 00:36:43,625 There's a reason why they haven't been adopted more broadly. 566 00:36:43,625 --> 00:36:47,250 And I don't mean that in a critical way in terms of criticizing the structure. 567 00:36:47,250 --> 00:36:54,416 I think it's more of a critique of, do we give ourselves the audacity to make bigger 568 00:36:54,416 --> 00:36:58,000 leaps in structure and systems? 569 00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:02,000 And so again, I think that that's where organizations are able to figure out what 570 00:37:02,000 --> 00:37:09,625 is the right balance between a system that enables people to live their lives, both 571 00:37:09,625 --> 00:37:11,416 at work and outside of work. 572 00:37:11,625 --> 00:37:16,375 and the behaviors that align with that system that bring it to life in a 573 00:37:16,375 --> 00:37:17,666 meaningful way. 574 00:37:17,750 --> 00:37:21,375 And the organizations that get that balance between the two right, I think, 575 00:37:21,375 --> 00:37:22,750 are just gonna be so far ahead. 576 00:37:22,750 --> 00:37:27,875 And one of the reasons why I've become convinced of that really came out of the 577 00:37:27,875 --> 00:37:29,000 pandemic. 578 00:37:29,250 --> 00:37:34,750 So for somebody like me that studies organizations, and this is sort of a 579 00:37:34,750 --> 00:37:39,541 horrible thing to say, but it's brought a lot of attention to work that I'm doing 580 00:37:39,541 --> 00:37:40,625 and it's... 581 00:37:41,000 --> 00:37:43,916 provided me a lot of business because organizations are coming to me and they're 582 00:37:43,916 --> 00:37:47,916 saying, hey, after the pandemic, we're really concerned about what's happened to 583 00:37:47,916 --> 00:37:49,041 our organizational culture. 584 00:37:49,041 --> 00:37:50,166 Can you help? 585 00:37:50,875 --> 00:37:56,416 So what that means is, is that a lot of organizations were just operating their 586 00:37:56,416 --> 00:38:01,125 culture on autopilot, and then this crisis happens, and most people are working 587 00:38:01,125 --> 00:38:05,291 virtually and they realize, oh, what is actually holding us together? 588 00:38:05,291 --> 00:38:07,000 Do we have any 589 00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:12,500 shared patterns for what it means to jump on a Zoom call in our organization, and do we, 590 00:38:12,500 --> 00:38:15,625 you know, ritualize that in a way that brings our values to life? 591 00:38:15,625 --> 00:38:19,250 Are we doing things if we're working remotely that make these values come 592 00:38:19,250 --> 00:38:20,291 alive? 593 00:38:20,541 --> 00:38:27,625 So there is this need for organizations to really figure out how to make this work 594 00:38:27,625 --> 00:38:34,541 because people are coming out of that pandemic experience asking themselves, is 595 00:38:34,541 --> 00:38:36,500 this what I want from my life? 596 00:38:36,500 --> 00:38:38,625 is this trade-off worth it? 597 00:38:38,750 --> 00:38:47,250 And you see this whole phenomenon around quiet quitting and purposeful unemployment 598 00:38:47,250 --> 00:38:52,500 where people are just choosing not to go back to work because people are sort of 599 00:38:52,500 --> 00:38:55,375 looking at their options and they're saying, no, this is actually not what I 600 00:38:55,375 --> 00:38:56,125 want in my life. 601 00:38:56,125 --> 00:39:00,250 I want something that's more meaningful, whether that means I'm traveling more or 602 00:39:00,250 --> 00:39:04,541 spending more time with my children or I'm more engaged in a hobby. 603 00:39:04,875 --> 00:39:05,500 And... 604 00:39:05,875 --> 00:39:08,750 organizations that are able to adapt to that reality are going to have an 605 00:39:08,750 --> 00:39:13,541 advantage because they're going to get the most creative, intelligent people. 606 00:39:15,000 --> 00:39:24,750 Do you think this maybe it's now become almost a common saying, which is we need 607 00:39:24,750 --> 00:39:30,375 to be in the office to maintain our culture by the companies that want to go 608 00:39:30,375 --> 00:39:34,625 back or have gone back to fully in-person working. 609 00:39:34,625 --> 00:39:36,000 Do you think it's a... 610 00:39:36,375 --> 00:39:42,541 It's a myth or is it a necessity to be in the office and to maintain culture? 611 00:39:42,666 --> 00:39:48,625 I think that there is some truth to needing to be in the office to maintain 612 00:39:48,625 --> 00:39:49,125 culture. 613 00:39:49,125 --> 00:39:50,666 And this is why. 614 00:39:51,041 --> 00:39:56,666 Because throughout human history, and I'm thinking, you know, if you go all the way 615 00:39:56,666 --> 00:40:04,000 back to, you know, pre-history, human beings figured out how to work together by 616 00:40:04,000 --> 00:40:05,041 working together. 617 00:40:05,041 --> 00:40:11,541 And so we are used to seeing culture in the words that we say, in the tone of 618 00:40:11,541 --> 00:40:12,375 voice. 619 00:40:12,375 --> 00:40:16,625 through our body language, by watching what other people do. 620 00:40:16,625 --> 00:40:21,541 So for example, some of my early research looked at how people are onboarded into 621 00:40:21,541 --> 00:40:23,000 organizations. 622 00:40:23,041 --> 00:40:29,000 And if you look at that broader research, you find that certainly one of the key 623 00:40:29,000 --> 00:40:35,166 ways that people learn is they have mentors, they have trainings, they ask 624 00:40:35,166 --> 00:40:36,625 questions. 625 00:40:36,625 --> 00:40:40,000 So, you know, those are all things where 626 00:40:40,000 --> 00:40:43,875 they might be hearing things and you could get that online. 627 00:40:43,875 --> 00:40:48,291 But notice that like mentorship is not just hearing something, it's watching how 628 00:40:48,291 --> 00:40:53,250 that person moves through the office and who do they talk to and how often do they 629 00:40:53,250 --> 00:40:57,750 stop and interrupt what they were doing to help somebody else do something. 630 00:40:57,875 --> 00:41:01,666 And the same thing with the training, like I'm there in a room with other people, I'm 631 00:41:01,666 --> 00:41:05,791 meeting them, my network is growing at the same time, I'm learning content. 632 00:41:06,125 --> 00:41:06,791 So. 633 00:41:07,875 --> 00:41:11,125 What I was getting to is that a lot of these studies actually show that learning 634 00:41:11,125 --> 00:41:15,125 is not just about hearing and being given written materials. 635 00:41:15,125 --> 00:41:19,875 It's also about observing what other people are doing, what are sort of the 636 00:41:19,875 --> 00:41:24,000 unwritten rules, how are people behaving, these values. 637 00:41:24,000 --> 00:41:30,125 And so, if you're working virtually, you lose basically one of the main senses that 638 00:41:30,125 --> 00:41:33,875 we as humans use to navigate our lives, which is like watching what other people 639 00:41:33,875 --> 00:41:34,291 are doing. 640 00:41:34,291 --> 00:41:35,375 We can't really do that. 641 00:41:35,375 --> 00:41:36,625 And if you think about 642 00:41:36,625 --> 00:41:41,875 some of the really poor habits that people have on Zoom, either they show up and they 643 00:41:41,875 --> 00:41:45,291 immediately turn off their camera, and so now you can't see any visual information 644 00:41:45,291 --> 00:41:48,875 about them, or they show up and their camera's on, but their eyes are down and 645 00:41:48,875 --> 00:41:52,416 their hands are, and you get the sense very quickly, they're not even looking at 646 00:41:52,416 --> 00:41:57,375 the camera, they're busy responding to other emails, then that means that all the 647 00:41:57,375 --> 00:42:00,416 cultural information I might be getting from that interaction is severely 648 00:42:00,416 --> 00:42:01,625 compromised. 649 00:42:01,625 --> 00:42:06,125 So I think that there is something about bringing people together. 650 00:42:06,375 --> 00:42:10,000 I think the thing that organizations need to be thoughtful about is, what is the 651 00:42:10,000 --> 00:42:11,666 right cadence? 652 00:42:11,750 --> 00:42:14,041 What is the right intensity of that? 653 00:42:14,041 --> 00:42:19,875 And again, I don't think that the answer is, it requires 40 hours per week to get 654 00:42:19,875 --> 00:42:25,625 the culture right because certainly religions have been able to sustain 655 00:42:25,625 --> 00:42:33,625 themselves for millennia and the often ritual pattern there is once a week. 656 00:42:33,916 --> 00:42:38,666 for like a very small slice of your time to sort of rededicate yourself to that 657 00:42:38,666 --> 00:42:41,666 community and to each other and to a set of practices. 658 00:42:41,750 --> 00:42:45,916 And I'm not suggesting that organizations need to go down to one hour per week, but 659 00:42:45,916 --> 00:42:47,750 I mean, that could be sort of a radical experiment. 660 00:42:47,750 --> 00:42:51,291 Imagine an entrepreneur that says, we're gonna build this organization, we're gonna 661 00:42:51,291 --> 00:42:55,750 pay each of our employees to do one hour of work per week, but that's gonna be the 662 00:42:55,750 --> 00:42:59,375 most fun, meaningful hour of their lives that week. 663 00:42:59,500 --> 00:43:03,625 Like I think a lot of people would sign up for that experience because I can keep my 664 00:43:03,625 --> 00:43:07,500 other job and I can work for this company for one hour a week and they're going to 665 00:43:07,500 --> 00:43:12,250 pay me nicely for that hour, but I'm going to create this like really fun, engaging 666 00:43:12,250 --> 00:43:13,291 way of working with each other. 667 00:43:13,291 --> 00:43:16,625 I mean, you and I should just stop the podcast right now and let's go found that 668 00:43:16,625 --> 00:43:17,166 company. 669 00:43:17,166 --> 00:43:20,916 And you know, like if that sounds good, just saying it out loud. 670 00:43:21,500 --> 00:43:22,291 So yeah. 671 00:43:22,750 --> 00:43:24,250 Yeah, it's very radical. 672 00:43:24,791 --> 00:43:26,625 I wonder what that company would do. 673 00:43:28,041 --> 00:43:33,291 But yeah, it's a great thought experiment to think about building companies' culture 674 00:43:33,291 --> 00:43:34,125 first. 675 00:43:36,500 --> 00:43:44,250 With the purpose of having people fulfilled. 676 00:43:46,250 --> 00:43:50,125 Before you talk about how does the company achieve a purpose and what should the 677 00:43:50,125 --> 00:43:51,625 purpose of the company be? 678 00:43:53,000 --> 00:43:56,541 outside that fulfillment. 679 00:43:56,541 --> 00:44:04,750 Spencer, as we come to wrap the podcast, if you were to whisper to the ear of a 680 00:44:04,750 --> 00:44:10,125 leader who's not intentional about their culture, what would you tell them? 681 00:44:10,500 --> 00:44:13,875 What do you think we need to rethink about culture? 682 00:44:15,375 --> 00:44:21,625 I would say that the best organizations will win the battle for talent by creating 683 00:44:21,625 --> 00:44:24,416 cultures that allow people to be their best more frequently. 684 00:44:24,916 --> 00:44:29,500 And so what that means for you as a leader is you need to start gathering stories to 685 00:44:29,500 --> 00:44:31,250 understand when your people are at your best. 686 00:44:31,291 --> 00:44:37,916 And if you were to create an organization with the hope that it would be someone's 687 00:44:37,916 --> 00:44:40,916 best job ever, where would you start? 688 00:44:40,916 --> 00:44:43,625 Well, I think that some organizations do start that way. 689 00:44:43,625 --> 00:44:47,166 You know, so the founding story of a company like Hewlett Packard is the idea 690 00:44:47,166 --> 00:44:51,000 that here's these two engineers and they just sort of say, Hey, we like working 691 00:44:51,000 --> 00:44:53,000 with each other, let's build things together. 692 00:44:53,000 --> 00:44:54,750 And it, and it starts there. 693 00:44:55,375 --> 00:44:58,625 The question is like, how much of that is scalable? 694 00:44:58,625 --> 00:45:04,791 Does everybody show up to the organization with that same sense of like meaning and 695 00:45:04,791 --> 00:45:09,916 energy, and you don't know that if you're not gathering those stories. 696 00:45:09,916 --> 00:45:10,625 So. 697 00:45:11,791 --> 00:45:19,125 I think for me, that's sort of like the crux is thinking at the start, what is it 698 00:45:19,125 --> 00:45:21,166 that allows us to be at our best? 699 00:45:21,875 --> 00:45:26,416 And then inevitably as organizations begin to scale, like the focus on that sort of 700 00:45:26,416 --> 00:45:29,791 shifts to how do we win in the market? 701 00:45:29,791 --> 00:45:32,875 How do we get our financials right? 702 00:45:32,875 --> 00:45:35,166 How do we grow past this stage? 703 00:45:35,166 --> 00:45:38,875 So there are a lot of other distractions that can sort of take your eye off of 704 00:45:38,875 --> 00:45:41,500 that and what happens then is we sort of let 705 00:45:41,500 --> 00:45:46,875 culture grow almost unchecked because we just assume, because I know everybody here 706 00:45:46,875 --> 00:45:51,000 and I've hired everybody here, I have a good sense of what the culture is. 707 00:45:51,375 --> 00:45:54,166 But really quickly organizations get to the size where there are a hundred 708 00:45:54,166 --> 00:45:58,041 employees, there are 200 employees, and suddenly organizational leaders wake up 709 00:45:58,041 --> 00:46:02,000 and they realize, oh, I don't actually know everybody and I'm not even sure that 710 00:46:02,000 --> 00:46:04,375 the culture is what I think it is anymore. 711 00:46:04,375 --> 00:46:06,416 And at that point we've sort of lost the thread. 712 00:46:06,416 --> 00:46:10,791 So I think that, again, the thing that I would whisper to leaders is, 713 00:46:11,166 --> 00:46:14,500 The best organizations will win the battle for talent by creating cultures that allow 714 00:46:14,500 --> 00:46:17,125 people to be their best more frequently. 715 00:46:17,250 --> 00:46:23,125 And that means one of your practices as a leader needs to be gathering stories that 716 00:46:23,125 --> 00:46:26,500 tell you when your people are at their best. 717 00:46:27,625 --> 00:46:34,541 And using your paradigm about big C and small C, if you have an unintentional or a 718 00:46:34,541 --> 00:46:42,750 default culture of a fast growing company, you could have the small C eat the big C 719 00:46:42,916 --> 00:46:46,041 for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and the after party. 720 00:46:46,500 --> 00:46:47,250 Exactly. 721 00:46:47,250 --> 00:46:50,875 And I think that there's a lot of organizations where that happens. 722 00:46:50,875 --> 00:46:54,875 And sometimes they are sort of naively intentional about it. 723 00:46:54,875 --> 00:46:58,375 So they'll just say, hey, let that division do what's best for them. 724 00:46:58,375 --> 00:47:02,000 Let this country or region do what's best for them. 725 00:47:02,000 --> 00:47:05,916 And then all of a sudden, they start to think about pulling off some larger 726 00:47:05,916 --> 00:47:09,625 strategic initiative and they realize none of these parts of the company can even 727 00:47:09,625 --> 00:47:11,500 have a conversation with each other. 728 00:47:11,750 --> 00:47:17,500 So if you allow small C cultures to sort of grow unchecked without any sort of 729 00:47:17,500 --> 00:47:21,000 connection between with the big C culture, then you'll just have a set of 730 00:47:21,000 --> 00:47:23,750 subcultures that are going to be at war with each other. 731 00:47:23,791 --> 00:47:27,791 If you focus too much on a big C culture without having any small C cultural 732 00:47:27,791 --> 00:47:32,541 experimentation, then you'll have people that are so focused on protecting 733 00:47:32,541 --> 00:47:35,875 alignment with the big C culture that they're completely unable to change as 734 00:47:35,875 --> 00:47:36,625 well. 735 00:47:36,625 --> 00:47:40,166 So you need to have this middle ground where we have an understanding of what the 736 00:47:40,166 --> 00:47:41,625 big C culture is. 737 00:47:41,625 --> 00:47:45,500 And we're enabling some level of experimentation with the small C that 738 00:47:45,500 --> 00:47:46,541 brings that to life. 739 00:47:46,541 --> 00:47:49,250 And there's sort of a constant flow between the two. 740 00:47:49,250 --> 00:47:54,041 So you can almost think about it visually as sort of a tree and the relationship 741 00:47:54,041 --> 00:47:56,750 between the canopy and the leaves and the roots. 742 00:47:56,750 --> 00:48:00,375 So if the big C culture is the roots, like this is what we're growing from, 743 00:48:00,375 --> 00:48:04,541 those roots will die if they're not getting light and energy from the leaves 744 00:48:04,541 --> 00:48:05,625 up above. 745 00:48:05,625 --> 00:48:09,041 And those leaves are gonna grow in sort of different ways, depending on what part of 746 00:48:09,041 --> 00:48:12,125 the tree they're in and what part of the sun they face. 747 00:48:12,125 --> 00:48:14,000 And so that is a living system. 748 00:48:14,000 --> 00:48:16,500 And we need to be thinking about culture is that same sort of way. 749 00:48:16,500 --> 00:48:21,125 And I think that the nice thing about using those sorts of metaphors like a tree 750 00:48:21,166 --> 00:48:26,375 is that it requires that same sort of care and nurturing from a leader. 751 00:48:26,375 --> 00:48:29,291 I can't think about the culture from an engineering perspective. 752 00:48:29,291 --> 00:48:30,791 Like I put it in place. 753 00:48:30,791 --> 00:48:34,500 and then it runs and it just works like a bridge and people just cross that bridge 754 00:48:34,500 --> 00:48:38,041 and I have the tolerances built in and that bridge is going to work. 755 00:48:38,041 --> 00:48:41,375 I have to think about it as something that's growing because it is. 756 00:48:41,375 --> 00:48:48,250 If the organization and the culture isn't constantly reinvesting in itself and 757 00:48:48,250 --> 00:48:52,750 experimenting with what works, there will come a moment as there is for every 758 00:48:52,750 --> 00:48:56,541 organization where there's a disruption in the environment that's going to cause the 759 00:48:56,541 --> 00:49:00,125 organization to shift and cultures that are agile. 760 00:49:00,125 --> 00:49:01,125 we'll be able to do that. 761 00:49:01,125 --> 00:49:07,166 And there's actually sort of recent study that's brilliant by some of my colleagues 762 00:49:07,166 --> 00:49:11,250 at the University of Berkeley, California, where they looked at exactly this and they 763 00:49:11,250 --> 00:49:16,625 showed in recent market downturns, the organizations that were best able to 764 00:49:16,625 --> 00:49:21,250 perform during those downturns were organizations that had as one of their 765 00:49:21,250 --> 00:49:23,750 values, change. 766 00:49:24,125 --> 00:49:29,000 So if change is sort of part of who we are, then when something dramatic happens, 767 00:49:29,000 --> 00:49:34,250 we're actually able to be agile and to shift to meet what's going on with that 768 00:49:34,250 --> 00:49:35,041 change. 769 00:49:35,125 --> 00:49:38,375 and even be anti-fragile, if you can. 770 00:49:39,625 --> 00:49:44,291 The metaphor is brilliant, Spencer, and you could even look for pictures of 771 00:49:44,291 --> 00:49:49,875 malformed trees to make your point, because I think then it will be really 772 00:49:49,875 --> 00:49:50,625 graphical. 773 00:49:50,625 --> 00:49:53,000 I think it's so intuitive. 774 00:49:53,625 --> 00:49:54,875 So intuitive. 775 00:49:55,750 --> 00:50:03,000 So as we close, you told me about a broken jaw. 776 00:50:03,875 --> 00:50:13,125 iguana pets and Neruda being your favorite poet and I'm gonna guess I'm gonna guess 777 00:50:13,125 --> 00:50:20,541 that the broken jaw is true that Neruda is your favorite author and that you have a 778 00:50:20,541 --> 00:50:25,291 different pet which is also unusual but it's not an iguana that's my guess 779 00:50:25,375 --> 00:50:27,750 All right, so you are really good at this game. 780 00:50:27,750 --> 00:50:29,166 So you are right. 781 00:50:30,625 --> 00:50:34,666 So we actually do have an iguana, but the iguana is my son's pet. 782 00:50:34,666 --> 00:50:35,916 It's not my pet. 783 00:50:37,625 --> 00:50:39,416 So that was the nuance there. 784 00:50:39,416 --> 00:50:44,875 Yep, but I did have this like crazy accident where I broke my jaw and Neruda 785 00:50:44,875 --> 00:50:46,750 is my favorite poet. 786 00:50:47,416 --> 00:50:51,000 What's one quote from Neruda that you recall if at all? 787 00:50:51,250 --> 00:50:55,125 or what you like Neruda from Neruda. 788 00:50:55,500 --> 00:51:02,375 yeah, so Neruda has two books that I would actually recommend to executives. 789 00:51:02,375 --> 00:51:07,500 So one is the Book of Questions, which is just a series of questions that are sort 790 00:51:07,500 --> 00:51:10,875 of magical and allow you to appreciate the world in a different way. 791 00:51:10,875 --> 00:51:15,500 And I think question asking is one of these keys to developing a culture. 792 00:51:15,500 --> 00:51:19,791 And, you know, notice that, like, as a story gatherer, I said, what executives 793 00:51:19,791 --> 00:51:23,625 need to do is ask people, tell me about a moment when you were at your best. 794 00:51:25,000 --> 00:51:28,375 So that's sort of a brilliant book that I think is super applicable. 795 00:51:28,375 --> 00:51:33,750 The other one that I love is Odes to Common Things. 796 00:51:34,125 --> 00:51:41,125 And in this book, he'll write poems about sort of the beauty of an onion, the power 797 00:51:41,125 --> 00:51:42,916 of the word thank you. 798 00:51:43,250 --> 00:51:46,791 And one of my favorite odes there is Ode to My Socks. 799 00:51:47,000 --> 00:51:53,166 And he talks about how socks can be this sort of brilliant thing because 800 00:51:53,250 --> 00:51:56,750 you put them on and they're sort of beautiful and they make your feet look 801 00:51:56,750 --> 00:52:00,375 beautiful, but then they're also meant to be worn out as well. 802 00:52:00,375 --> 00:52:04,875 And it's that sort of like duality of this can be something that is extremely 803 00:52:04,875 --> 00:52:09,041 functional, but then I wear it out and I can have this gratitude for it. 804 00:52:09,500 --> 00:52:14,375 And that sort of dual meaning that you can capture from even common things I think is 805 00:52:14,375 --> 00:52:20,125 important as we try to look at life and just appreciate that in the. 806 00:52:20,625 --> 00:52:25,666 the mundane contours of our lives, there's still beauty and meaning, even in a pair 807 00:52:25,666 --> 00:52:26,625 of socks. 808 00:52:26,875 --> 00:52:32,125 beautiful and humbling and down to earth in a literal sense. 809 00:52:33,541 --> 00:52:35,250 So Spencer, it's been a pleasure. 810 00:52:35,250 --> 00:52:36,666 I learned a lot. 811 00:52:37,666 --> 00:52:40,625 I love your big C versus small C paradigm. 812 00:52:40,625 --> 00:52:49,625 I hope it really gets, you know, in the headlines of all management publications 813 00:52:49,625 --> 00:52:56,375 because it just highlights how the intended culture is. 814 00:52:56,875 --> 00:53:04,125 often so different to the ground truth and just brings the need for intentional 815 00:53:04,125 --> 00:53:07,250 culture to the forefront. 816 00:53:08,125 --> 00:53:12,041 So thank you for being with us, sharing your wisdom, sharing your research, 817 00:53:12,041 --> 00:53:13,875 sharing your life stories. 818 00:53:15,541 --> 00:53:23,375 And to everyone listening, thank you for being with us. If you like 819 00:53:23,375 --> 00:53:25,625 to not miss any future episodes. 820 00:53:25,625 --> 00:53:31,291 You know what to do, you hit subscribe, leave a comment so that future listeners 821 00:53:31,291 --> 00:53:33,250 will know what to look for. 822 00:53:33,500 --> 00:53:36,625 And as I like to say, keep leading. 823 00:53:37,500 --> 00:53:37,791 Wonderful. 824 00:53:37,791 --> 00:53:38,791 Thank you, Andreas.