[00:00:00] Dan: Hello, and welcome back to we, not me, the podcast where we explore, how humans connect to get stuff done together. I'm Dan Hammond. [00:00:13] Pia: And I am Pia Lee. [00:00:15] Dan: You are indeed. And how's everything in your world pair. [00:00:18] Pia: Fantastic. It is all going well. Interesting. Isn't it, COVID is slightly abating and uh, our latest Omnicom. So it's allowing spikes of other news. Yeah. Pretty depressing. W we're seeing human behavior, not at its best, either at a corporate level or at a government level. [00:00:41] So, and that's, yeah it's been interesting. We're going to talk about culture and I guess I'm left at the, as we go into this discussion, God, it's important because we just see the impact of what happens when it's not taken as [00:00:55] Dan: It really [00:00:56] Pia: know, We had a public apology here in Australia to the, by the government, for sexual harassment and bullying in a federal parliament that's meant to be the organization we have trust in. [00:01:09] Dan: Yeah. And I don't even need to start talking about the UK and this sort of party gate thing, while there are a few voices saying, come on, it was just a party, actually. Of course, that reveal. What the culture was and prom, and may still be when you want the government to be focusing on, on, on supporting the civilian. [00:01:29] So it really is important. And there you go. And as you say, in the corporate world um, BrewDog a couple of weeks ago, the brewery, the original craft brewery company, our Scottish beer giant, you know, they they've been rather plagued by scandal. And a couple of weeks ago, it was discovered that they were, what CEO James, what caught admitted to taking shortcuts in shipping beer with ingredients that had not been legally approved. [00:01:54] Pia: Are they legal or illegal? [00:01:56] Dan: I did read some of what those ingredients were. It didn't seem too shocking, but the point is that there was breaking regulations in the U S and one of the former workers told the investigation, the pressure was enormous. Just make it happen, that was the culture. [00:02:11] And that word leaped out at me. And it just really, it reminded me that this is well, culture sounds all. That's nice and fluffy. It. Yeah, it is a really important topic for teams and organizations everywhere. So I'm really glad to be talking about it today with Kevin, from Red Pill. [00:02:26] Pia: Who has got a lot of expertise in this. And I think this is going to be able to really unpick it and pull it apart and then go so what's our responsibility in driving the optimal culture and supporting people. [00:02:41] [00:02:45] Dan: Welcome, Kevin. Thank you so much for joining us on the we, not me podcast today [00:02:49] Kevin: Thank you Don. [00:02:50] Dan: is great to see you. It's great to see it. Kevin, could you give us a quick introduction to yourself? How did you get into this seat today? [00:02:57] Kevin: Oh, wow. So I own an organization called rep hill consulting. I've done that for the last 13 years now. And we. Try to help organizations change their culture. That's the main focus of what we do. We work across most countries in Europe. We're a small operation, but pursuing culture changes our goal. [00:03:19] Pia: And I'm going to ask the question. Why the name Red Pill [00:03:22] Kevin: Red pill you won't be surprised to hear comes from the Matrix movie. [00:03:27] Pia: Ah, [00:03:28] Kevin: And in the movie, Morpheus offers Neo the red pill or the blue pill and the blue pill promises him to go back to his normal life. And the red pill takes him to what Morpheus describes as Wonderland and all he promises him is the truth. So I thought for a consulting company to promise the truth is a bit of a novelty in itself. So. So that's what we tried to do. [00:03:52] Pia: Yeah that one might catch on. [00:03:54] Dan: Yeah, [00:03:54] Kevin: You've never know [00:03:55] Dan: there's a there's yeah, there's a, there's quite a bit of blue pill consulting out there. I think so good on you for taking the courageous path. And I think we'll hear a little bit of that truth later, but it's a great story to given welcome again. As you know, we start by torturing our kind guests um, with a little car conversation starter card game. So I have these three packs in front of me, each of the questions on them, which might be as conversation starter card, read tricky questions. Amber's not too bad. It's medium questions and green, nice, simple questions. Which ones would you like to go for? [00:04:27] Kevin: Dan we're re we're red pill. Come [00:04:30] Dan: it. I love it. [00:04:31] Kevin: It's gotta be red. [00:04:31] Dan: We are to quote, Eddie Izzard, we're going to nearly, we're going to run out of red cards at this rate. Okay. So, one monumental stuff up I made was [00:04:41] Kevin: Goodness. I would say my first day at work ever. [00:04:48] Dan: Great stuff. [00:04:49] Kevin: I arrived. I arrived at the head office of Imperial Inns and taverns in Wakefield, in west Yorkshire. And I was full of myself. I thought I knew it all before it entered through the door. I was speaking to the general manager about what I could offer him, and he proceeded to parade, walked me out into the main office, introduced me to the team, and he basically said, dear everybody. Please can I have your attention? This is Kevin Brownsey. He joined us today and he knows nothing. And I felt about two inches tall. And if I hadn't been so blooming arrogant, right from the outset, I wouldn't have [00:05:29] Pia: that was a lovely, British put down. That was just [00:05:31] Kevin: it was humiliating beyond words, and I shrank. [00:05:34] Dan: And possibly a red pill moment for you, but [00:05:38] Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. [00:05:39] Pia: Definitely. That's a good segue actually. Kevin, so let's let's um, that was a, a bit of a challenge you throw to the deep end. So let's talk about culture and culture's you know, like one of those terms, love, peace and mung beans. We've all got different. We've got, I've got different perspectives on it. So let's dive into it from your perspective. [00:06:00] What is it we are talking about when we talk about culture and why is it so important? [00:06:05] Kevin: Why is it so important is possibly the easier part of that question? You know, Why is it so important because ultimately it enables your strategic execution. It determined what behavioral norms are acceptable. It determines the way you operate as a business. It even influences things like organizational design. But when you ask people, what is culture, you get a very broad spectrum of responses. For some people it's all about values and beliefs. For other people. They describe it as outcome. So when you hear words, like we want a winning culture, we want a performance culture. Well, of course we do. Everybody does. [00:06:50] But what you need to get to is something that you can communicate within your organization in an easy, straightforward way that people can understand. So usually that means taking a step back. Usually it means getting a set of aligned beliefs. Communicated consistently by your leadership team, which translate into the way we work, the way we behave and the design we put into our organization. And indeed the capabilities we choose to build all of these are influenced by culture. [00:07:26] So for us, it's the beliefs that underpin the behaviors that drive the outcomes, not the outcomes themselves. [00:07:35] Dan: Interesting. And people talk about this company has got a good culture. It's got a bad culture. can you split that down a little bit for us? What are any examples of culture, I'm assuming that there isn't a single good culture is there? What what's? [00:07:48] Kevin: I think fundamentally, we shouldn't be too judgmental about cultures. Organizations managed to be successful the world over and there are some incredibly diverse cultures, the world over. So lots of different culture types. If you like can work, can be successful. And I think the critical thing when we start to talk about culture is that it is right for us. So it is enabling us to execute our strategu. [00:08:20] And that's the most important element and so good and bad culture can be a bit of a confusion because we don't talk about good and bad culture. We talk about types of culture. I think that's the easiest way to talk to organizations about it. And then is there a safe environment within which to develop culture? And usually when people talk about bad culture, what they're really saying. Is that this is an unsafe environment and you see things like blame or disrespect or misogyny or sexism or whatever. It happens to be defining a very unsafe cultural environment. [00:09:01] So when we work with people and when we talk to leaders about culture, we try to work on the safety aspect as a prerequisite for the culture change that we're trying to drive in the medium term. If you don't have the safety you're not building on strong foundation [00:09:21] Pia: Okay. So Kevin said, so we're here to talk about teams and we're looking at the, so what's the responsibility of the exec team in setting the tone. And w and what's your observations of seeing this con can there, could the exec team screwed up or get in the way, or could they accelerate it? [00:09:44] Kevin: Absolutely all three. And we see it frequently. I mean, the alignment of the exec team is probably the most critical element of successful culture change. [00:09:57] So just think of a situation where the sales director and the marketing director and the finance director have a different set of beliefs about what good culture should look like. As soon as their teams have to cooperate, we have a problem. If you have very strongly opinionated leaders who haven't got alignment with that colleagues, you can also start to see leaders disappearing down a rabbit hole with culture because no one individual leader can pursue culture change independently. So this whole process of leadership teams getting aligned on a set of beliefs that will drive everything else within their organization is priority number one. And it's where often we spend less time. So the leadership team get together. They see some diagnostic output. They start to define the vision of the future and we don't really work it through. [00:10:58] So what are the consequences for our business? What are the consequences for our employees and for ourselves? And it's often the consequences for themselves that they don't consider enough and these consequences can be fundamental. Yeah. So a guy that's been used to controlling things, making decisions, moving to a more empowered world, yeah. Sounds great. In theory, but can that individual really let go and find another purpose for that role. So the consequences are critical. [00:11:33] And I think the other thing that, that often executive teams, because of the nature of their role tend to do is they tend to enhance the culture. So we work through it, we define where we want to head towards, and then we unmasked. As if by, you know, abracadabra, we now have a new culture that we're all working within and this of course is not how it works, because it's a very slow, deliberate process of change. [00:12:04] Dan: And how can we just, maybe a step before that, how do you go about with the team top team? How do you go about deciding, really defining that culture? [00:12:14] Kevin: I think there's two things we do Dan and Andy and they work in parallel. The first is we try to do a diagnostic exercise using a actual loose structure of cultural dimensions. We work with seven cultural dimensions. We ask leaders to respond to some stimulus along those seven cultural dimensions, and we see how aligned they are, how big a change is required from where do we start and where do we need to go? And we ask those questions in the context of enabling strategic execution, not in the context of what would you like. That's really important because that means they have to suspend personal preference and think of organizational strategy, strategic execution. And that in itself can be quite hard. [00:13:07] In parallel with this, we do a series of qualitative interviews. So everybody has the opportunity to express in their language, the culture they perceive. And that enables us to get to a place of understanding. At what level they're thinking about culture. Are they thinking in headlines? Are they thinking in. Are they thinking executional or are they thinking more strategic and how aligned they are as a group. And it's often in the interview process where we pick up the really rich insights that support the data and give us the fuller picture. So we do a from, to in terms of quantitative and we do a, from, to in terms of qualitative. [00:13:55] Let me get them together in a room and we crunch it through and we have some fun. [00:13:59] Dan: So it sounds like a time of much tension. If culture is about beliefs, appear. And I spent a lot of time around time in leadership development, and a lot of that was around behaviors because they're observable, it's sort of the bit of the iceberg that's above the water. How do you observe or get a read on current beliefs? [00:14:18] Kevin: Yeah. I think understanding the linkage between beliefs, driving behaviors and behaviors, driving outcomes is really important. And, for example if you have a belief in your organization, the experimentation and acceptance of failure is critical to making progress. Then the behavior you will probably observe is exploratory thinking. Yeah. We'll explore different ideas and the outcome, ultimately, maybe quite an innovative organization. Now you think of that same belief in reverse. Let's assume that the belief of the organization that is failure is to be avoided. Failure is unaccepted. What happens then is that the behavior becomes one of people avoiding responsibility, playing safe, and then if things go wrong, you start to see blame. Now nobody would sign up to a blame culture. Everyone would sign up to an innovation culture, but do we understand the beliefs that we have to get aligned on in order to get there? And this is where. Really strong differences of opinion around the board table, because what do we mean by acceptance of mistakes? How do we respond when somebody makes a mistake? Because of course that's the critical leadership behavior. [00:15:48] Dan: Yeah. It's a deep conversation. So I know I've noticed on you see a lot of talk on LinkedIn, et cetera, around building a culture where failure is acceptable. And of course, that can be true, but it's actually rather more nuanced than that. Isn't it? [00:16:02] Because it, as you say, what is failure in that sense? And yeah, so it sounds like a real deep dive is required to, to [00:16:10] Kevin: and different organizations done and different functions within different organizations. Have to have this conversation in the context of the business they're in, and you it's very high risk associated with failure. You've got to remove those consequences, but understanding where actually the impact of making a few mistakes is quite low-risk and isn't really going to touch the share price. Then let people explore. [00:16:37] Pia: I was going to ask a million dollar question. So you come into your team as a manager and you're told you've got a few challenges and the dynamics of the culture of the team, but you'll sort it out. Like how do you start becoming in and you're brand new into the organization, the team, what do you need to do to start defining and setting out the more optimal culture, even grasping the nettle and actually even, being able to talk about the fact that it isn't that great? [00:17:10] Kevin: It's a great question. And I always come back to the same start point, and the same question with. Is this team safe? Is it a safe environment? And when you get to a question, as basic as that, you can start to look at different aspects of that question. So firstly is everyone included. Basic human need is everyone included as part of this team? [00:17:39] Secondly, is it safe not to have the answers and to learn, and to ask questions? And if it's not safe to ask basic questions, you're probably not going to develop the capability of this team. [00:17:54] The third area is, are people that are competent able to contribute? Is their contribution valued. And you get in a lot of technical organizations, you get technical people often being overridden by generalists, and it's a really unsafe place for technical people to be, unless this is really understood and explained. So can I contribute? [00:18:19] And then the fourth element of safety is can I challenge? And when I challenge, am I met with a positive reception or am I met with defensively? [00:18:32] So there's these four aspects of safety, which if anyone going into a new team could get a really quick read on these four areas and a pretty, pretty good insight into where they need to begin the process of making this team safe. And then when the team's safe, you can start to think about the more subtle changes that might take the culture in one direction or. But I would always start with a sense check on safety. [00:18:59] Pia: mean that's like a sort of Maslow's hierarchy, isn't it? So that basic need of. Feeling safe and, in that environment. But I guess we must be preloaded with our own bias about what culture needs to look like based on our personality, that would be brought up even which country we resided. We must have a bias towards this. [00:19:19] Kevin: Yeah. A national cultures are really interesting insight into organizational cultures. So, you can almost you could buy, if you do a diagnostic of an organizational culture, you can pretty much identify where that organization originates from, because the way we take on national cultural values into our organizational context is obvious, yeah? We all bring it with us and then we have our own personality and our own biases. And these biases are the critical, one of the critical things to break down. [00:19:55] Often when you go to see a CEO to talk about culture change, That will say to me, Kevin, could, can you help me with this journey I'm on? And I, first question is where does the journey come from and who's defined the journey? Well, I have. Okay. So do you know that it's the right journey for this organization and usually get something like well, it worked previously. And you're suddenly realize what you're into is as a sort of stereotype which a very senior leader may have brought with them from another organization, which is now going to be magically implanted into the new organization and breaking down that bias, breaking down that assumption and getting them to think about what this organization really needs, not what they prefer, what the organization really needs is often when the conversation either goes into orbit or stops. Because some people don't want to hear that. [00:20:53] Dan: This is prompting so many questions, Kevin, but how do you let's get into the brass tax? How do you go about changing it? You've talked about the from, and to once you get, you're really clear about what you want to, how, what are the steps there that you in a team or an organization? [00:21:10] Kevin: So first you do the diagnostic, you do the qualitative interviews, you drive out areas of misalignment or areas of significant change requirements. And they're both important, so if you have people with misaligned views that really needs thinking through talking through and you're into the classic workshopping situation but what you mustn't do in my view is overcomplicate this. [00:21:36] Start where there is an alignment and start where there is a relatively easy stop change process that you can define and get it successful and do some simple aligned, consistent things really well. And when you start this process, think about behaviors and ways of working in parallel. One of the biggest mistakes we see organizations making is they do a lot of work on behavior, a lot of work on defining the behavioral competencies that the organization needs, but they don't do enough work on working practice. Now, if you do a lot of work on, let's say the behavior of the responsible empowerment, but you don't change your decision-making processes, then it's going to be very hard to empower anybody and unpacking some of these decision-making some of these processes and some of these practices can be the sticking point, but you've got to do it in parallel. Otherwise the behaviors are not enabled. [00:22:41] Dan: Yeah, we've used the clarity, climate, competence quite a bit on the show, and I think there's that competence piece that is obviously important, but again, people can ignore those clarity and climate pieces where the ways of working are there as well. [00:22:54] Kevin, if we just zoom into teams now, again in that context, an organization made up of teams, you touched on this briefly. if I'm in a team in China that is in compliance, or if I'm in the states in a, in product development in the same organization, is that a monolithic culture that I have to adopt despite my country culture, my work and my role. W how does, what does that look like at a team level? How does it hit me when I'm in, in the, in one of those, in one of those elements? [00:23:24] Kevin: we like to adopt a phrase, which is what we call tight loose. So when you're defining culture change, What are the two or three things that you want to be in the core, the stick of rock. Yeah. That will run through your organization as consistently as you possibly can and keep these to a minimum, because it's almost impossible to have one single culture across a global organization across all the functional areas and the regions that involves. But what are the things that you're going to be. You're going to talk about your core. And then what are the things that are looser? What are the things like execution, for example, might be looser in certain countries or functions or business types, where you can allow some autonomy to your local organization to put their flavor on it, their spin on it and their market context on it, which is at the end of the day, what most businesses are facing. [00:24:24] So we like this tight loose idea. Don't overdo the tight and don't allow the loose to be a complete redefinition of what good looks like, but have a combination. So the teams on the one hand feel as though they're part of a big organization with an overriding vision and culture, but at the same time feel as though they have a little bit of local autonomy interpretation and that the organization recognizes that they may be in a fairly unique situation or a unique market with differences. [00:24:58] And then the complication is where teams come together. So if you have a, an Asian team, let's say in procurement, working with a America marketing team, you got to bring these teams together to work through the empathy, work through the understanding of why the other group are working the way they are and vice versa. So we tend to find tight, loose empathy is a nice sort of triangle for working through the differences that have to exist. [00:25:32] Pia: And it strikes me, Kevin, I'd be interested to know your thoughts around this, that, you know, when teams are under pressure to deliver they're a little reticent to talk about these types of things, and they're sometimes not even very good at being self-reflective or being able to shift out of if I'm really direct a bias to just deliver a, make it okay for me in a team, in an organization to get paid, keep my job, everything's going okay. And I'll go and I'll dip my toe in the water, we'll talk about this, but I don't commit to it. Now that's a little harsh, but everyone is under pressure at the moment. I mean, I'm way off on one. Or is that something that you see that is hard sometimes to broker that lap, that deeper level of conversation? [00:26:26] Kevin: It's spot on. And this is when you often realize that what leaders want isn't A culture change it's success. And you've got to believe that the culture change enables that success. If you don't believe that one causes the other, then when times get tough, you'll just revert to high pressure leadership methods to, to drive results in the short term. And we see this a lot. So, when the pressures on the behaviors change. [00:26:59] Now, if you believe that the culture drives the outcome, so the beliefs, the behaviors, the outcome again and you're aligned on that belief and you've embedded the culture change in everything you talk about. When you talk about performance, then the behaviors you want to see in people are just as important as the results they deliver. [00:27:22] And this is the hardest. For often for leaders to take, because if you ask for behavioral change, but you only recognizing reward results, then you will get the behaviors that drive results. You might not get the behaviors that are sustainable to drive. Innovation capability for the long term, if that's what you want to achieve. [00:27:49] So what leaders recognize, what leaders reward and how the outcomes they want are embedded in the way they work is critical. But this short-term long-term and culture's longterm. Results tend to be short temr. And we often fall off the horse of culture change to drive the short term result. And then we're back where we started because we compromised our [00:28:16] Pia: We're obsessed by it. And sometimes we pay lip service to it being important, but the seduction to get the results is too strong. And that's that's what we re divert to. And with some pretty horrible consequences. I mean, we had a public apology in Australian government today, based on uh, a culture that is around sexual harassment and, It hasn't changed and yes, we get an apology, but that, quite frankly, to what does that mean? And there's been some quite rightful pushback on that, because again. it's are we walking the talk? And we could talk culture, but how do we actually deliver it? That's pretty important [00:28:55] Kevin: Yeah. Are we throwing headlines out there, are we have we read a, an article, read a book, saw the Ted talk? Are we throwing the headline out to the organization as an announcement or are we changing our own beliefs? You take safety for an example, you take this concept of psychological safety. A lot of leaders will say this is a safe place. They'll announced that it's a safe place. I, it's okay to make mistakes. We want to share and learn from our mistakes. But what they don't often do is share their own mistakes. That's when it becomes really safe, when the guy who is the leader of the team says, guys, I messed up. This is what I learned. [00:29:34] Pia: So that must be the power of example, Kevin. I mean, not really must be the power of example must be one of the biggest catalyst for culture change. So if we We had some lovely examples of the UK government recently in the press. But when you set things that are, you know, and you don't live by them and you don't deliver them, then you get a culture gap, don't you really between what we say we want, but what we're actually what we're leading as an example. [00:30:01] Kevin: It's great point. And we always say that, in a client situation, we say culture is for everyone or for no one. You can pick and choose by level or title or function. And this is why the consequences of culture change are often not obvious to leaders when they embark on the process, because the bit about consequences for the leader themselves, the leaders themselves and the responsibility they have for that is, is fundamental, because as soon as you behave in a way contrary to the way you're asking everyone else to behave, then you know, the whole process because. It becomes pointless in the eyes of employees, [00:30:46] Dan: We're in definite danger of delving into UK politics right now. So, Kevin [00:30:50] Kevin: promise you. [00:30:51] Dan: Steer well the way Kevin you've challenged, you've given us a lot of challenging ideas. I think it would challenge people's perceptions around around culture and really useful direction. You talked about the danger of falling off the culture horse. How can our listeners get on the culture horse, if you don't mind that terrible segue? What could a team do to start a conversation? Of course they can connect with you. How could they do something just to get that conversation started within the team? [00:31:18] Kevin: I think just having a conversation within the team with, or without the boss present initially some teams prefer to have an open conversation facilitated by somebody else. Just on the topic of. Is it safe not to have the answer around here? Is it safe to challenge each other? And if the answers to these questions are no, then you know you've got some fundamental values to change within within this particular team. And the thing about safety is not the same as trust. Trust is between two people. Safety is within a group. You only need one person in that group to respond badly in a situation or negatively towards another person for that group to be unsafe. [00:32:07] And this is where teams have to work this through as a team. And it's usually a combination of one-to-one discussions with somebody like me or you, combined with some facilitation discussion in the group. And then emphasis on future rather than past. I think this is the, this is often the mistake that people make is they go so much into things that have happened in the past and we go round and round the same circle trying to analyze it. And you say the same stories come up time and time again. We don't switch into future mode anywhere near quickly enough. And one of the interesting things about culture is often even in merger and acquisition situations, the idea of what the future should look like is much more aligned than the idea of what the past is look like. So where we've come from or experiences we've had, but when you ask people about the future, it's much easier to get into an aligned positive discussion. [00:33:17] Dan: We've definitely found that the future's a uniting force, isn't it for even quite desperate groups. Yeah. We've definitely experienced that ourselves, haven't we Pia, in our work with teams? [00:33:26] Pia: And I think uh, I think it was Drucker once said was it culture eats strategy for breakfast, and probably lunch and dinner actually, but you can have the best laid plans, but culture, something that we need to take really seriously and actually see that our behavior as a team leader is instrumental in creating it. So rather than blaming your team members, you should be turning the mirror back on yourself to see how you might be creating it and creating that conversation. And I think that's, what's been really illuminating. Kevin is that future picture, that accountability, we can't blame anyone else. [00:34:05] Kevin: Absolutely. And again, it's one of the biggest mistakes organizations make moving from the executive leadership team into the heart of the organization too quickly. You know, spend time as an executive leadership team really, really working through these beliefs, really working through these consequences. How are they going to hold each other accountable? So how are they going to call it out when one of their own, one of the other board members, for example, behaves badly? And it's getting to these sort of feedback relationships, and in the moment catching themselves in the moment when you have a really mature approach to this type of change. [00:34:48] And then people see it, they see an alignment, they see a consistency, they know now that they can trust these behaviors. And it's not just one individual doing what he wants to do. It's an aligned group of leaders believing in what they're saying, doing and how they're behaving. Uh, We have a phrase which is a culture enables strategy and. It's not about building a comfort zone. It's not about personal biases. It's about executing our strategy [00:35:20] Dan: A wonderful place to leave Kevin, thank you. Sort of connecting back to the, what the, what our teams are trying to achieve. You've taken this word culture and really picked it apart and helped us to aluminate for teams practically what they can do to get stuck into it. So thank you so much for joining us today on We Not Me. [00:35:39] Kevin: Oh, you're welcome. Thank you, Dan. you Pia [00:35:41] Dan: Yeah, Kevin's experience has really organizational it's spends a lot of time with top teams. And, but I really think that there's this translates into every team, doesn't it? This question of culture some of the things he's talked about from his own experience and research, I think we, we can translate those into any team anywhere to really think about this important topic. [00:36:08] Pia: Uh, without a doubt, I think all of what he was saying was translatable and really what you're asking yourself, the question is, how do I set the tone? What is it as a team member or as a team leader, do I contravene the culture of the organization? Do I stand by, do I let things slip? it takes courage, I think is what I'm hearing from this and a different type of conversation. It's easy in being busy and being task-focused to let things slip just like the BrewDog. I don't think that was intense. I don't think people that we understand this, from Brooker Rutgers, Bredman, we're not innately evil, but we do take shortcuts and they have horrible consequences. [00:36:50] Dan: But yeah. So, and I think that that piece, he mentioned about that foundation of psychological safety, again, being vital that you can, people speak up. We talked about a few political and business situations in the top of the show and can people speak up safely in those situations? I think is the is really crucial. [00:37:09] I think the other piece that really struck me was couple of things that the teams can have these conversations, and it's a really practical thing for people to sit down and talk about their beliefs, talk about the culture that they need. And don't shy from that. And um, you know, even family can talk about it, but don't shy away from that and keep focusing on the everyday, but really have these conversations. That, that, that struck me as something that any team could spend time doing to really connect more closely. Once that safe environment has been created. [00:37:40] Pia: And sometimes you don't know all the answers. I had a lovely well with my family, where my daughter is saying to me, it's very annoying when you ask me questions about my day at my day at school. And because I've already answered to my other mom. And I don't want to have to repeat it and I'm going yes, but then, so we can either have a culture around the dinner table where I'm not interested and that's more annoying or I'm showing you that I, that I'm interested in. I care. And that's where I'm coming from. [00:38:13] Dan: the good example of where two beliefs are clashing a little bit. And I've obviously you could have an email distribution list between the three of you make it already efficient, but that's not quite the point is it? The until that point the, another one that struck out struck me was, if you is the impact on self as well. If you're shifting towards a culture, that's not just, oh, I'm going to enjoy this culture. You may have to make transformations yourself. If you're naturally, you've got the answers you're an expert and you want to move to a more curious exploratory culture, where you can be challenged and be more experimental, you have to make personal changes there. It's not. And so really face those face, those challenges. So that was something that jumped out for me that it's it comes down to the individual to transform as well. [00:39:00] Pia: Absolutely. And that takes courage. It appears simple, but it's not easy, But does it is a conversation uh, I think is a absolutely crucial one for all teams to be having. Otherwise you're just trying to achieve a series of tasks in a vacuum and probably not feeling very happy and engaged in the process. And we all know that feeling of when you're with a real high performing culture, it's just an extraordinar feelingy [00:39:27] Dan: And when it's there and you know what, then when that culture's met, I know just delving into politics for a moment, but I've often thought in the last couple of weeks, the party gate here in the UK, which we've mentioned, there's a moment probably when someone said let's take. Boris a birthday cake and sing happy birthday to him. When someone, if the culture was safe enough, and the culture was really about following the COVID rules, someone would said, no, he'd hate that. Don't do it. That breaks the rules. So you can it's self policing. It's not up to just the leader to if it's working, it comes from everywhere and the standards, you walk past the standards you accept. So it's on all of us and every team members, every team member to to keep it on track. So, yeah. Fascinating stuff. So culture sounds [00:40:10] Pia: It's hard. It is age rock-hard [00:40:13] Dan: Exactly great. So, really just a topic and I hope that people is taking a lot away from that. Pia who have we got on the show next week? I think we got a bit of a change of gear. [00:40:22] Pia: We've got a Tiffin. We're putting the heat up. And sorry. It was [00:40:26] It's It's a, that's a motto. That is, but the reason I'm saying that is we are, we're talking to Sandy, who is a female firefighter and really wanting to know what's what goes on in that team. You know, you're sitting in the firehouse, waiting for the call, what's it like? And what's that experience like working also mainly with a male team. So I, I think it's going to be really insightful. And she's gonna have lots of stories to tell. [00:40:58] Dan: Wow. We're going straight to the frontline and and yeah, that'll be a fascinating conversation. I cannot wait. And, but that's it. For this episode, you can find show notes and resources at squadify.net. Just click on the We Not Me podcast link under Resources. If you've enjoyed the show, please do share the love and recommend it to your friends. [00:41:16] We not me as produced by Mark Steadman of Origin. Thank you so much for listening. It's goodbye from me. [00:41:22] Pia: and it's goodbye from me.