Latest / Two in Twenty / Shaping culture and building behaviours

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Shaping culture and building behaviours · Two in Twenty

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Two Includes, the news podcast from the team at White Marble Consulting.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Kirsten Hastings, head of content at White Marble.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: In each episode, I will be joined by two industry experts to list a little investment marketing issues, challenges, and industry trends.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Joining me in this episode are David Bruce, Programme Director at the London Business School and co-creator of the QI Index.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: And Esther Armstrong, Associate Director at White Marble.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Over the next 20 or so minutes, we will delve into the topic of culture, specifically how companies can measure and monitor it, why employee engagement surveys are not necessarily the best way to do it, and how to engage and bring along the culture naysayers.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: First and foremost, for our listeners who might not be familiar with the QI Index, David, can you give us a quick overview of what it is and how it applies to corporate culture?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Kirsten.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Let me just start by saying where the idea for the QI Index came from.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it came when I noticed that teams that seemed very diverse with different backgrounds, nationalities, gender, etc., approached new problems in very similar ways.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so to cut a long story short, it led me to explore the impact of what I call cognitive diversity, differences in the way in which people respond to and interpret change, differences that are they're not determined by our what I would call social or identity diversity, but nonetheless they're very real differences between us.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: And why is this important when we think about organizational culture?
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think the reason is because the biggest challenge to successful organizations is to remain successful in a world, of course, which is changing rapidly around them.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the aspect of their organizational culture that will enable them to do so is the extent to which they can surface and harness diversity in the ways in which people respond to change, because that's the challenge.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that is what the QI index measures: the extent to which cognitive diversity is surfaced and applied successfully to new adaptive challenges.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Culture can often feel like a term people have different interpretations and understanding of.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: So, for the purpose of this conversation, David, what is your definition of culture?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the kind of clue is in your question, because as your question suggests, nobody really kind of knows what it is.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: If you ask 30 people for their definition of organizational culture, you kind of get 30 different answers.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And to an extent, they're all right.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: The second reason that I don't trouble myself too much with the definition is far from being a problem in the way in which many people talk about culture, particularly when it comes to change, an organization's culture is in fact a fantastic asset.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's the foundation for the many historical achievements of the organization.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: They wouldn't still be around if there hadn't been fantastic uh achievements over time.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, while I'm not concerned with defining organizational culture, and I certainly don't want to make it a culprit for organizational failure, I am concerned with behavior, with our habits.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we should talk less about organizational culture and start focusing and talking about behavior, something that actually we can all change and we're all responsible for.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: And also we can define, we can describe it, we can see it.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: And the QI index is a way of identifying the behaviors that are supportive of agile, innovative, and adaptive organizations, and of course, those that are not, those that get in the way.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it's about setting and understanding and learning new behaviors and new habits.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: Esther, I could see you nodding along there.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Do you agree with that or do you have a definition of culture?
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: I do not have a definition.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I agree with David in the sense that I think in some ways it's easier to talk about what culture isn't as opposed to what it is.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I think to me, culture isn't fixed, can't be fixed, which is why it's so important to measure it.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think it's less important, as David says, to fixate on what it is, more on what it isn't and how we can and cannot influence it.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: I certainly don't think culture is something that is imposed from above.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: That is a key differentiation from strategy, for example.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I think because of that, the fact that individuals within an organization can have a lot of accountability for their own behaviors and therefore their impact on a culture, it's a very empowering thing as well.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: What we're seeing a lot of is companies becoming signatories to various initiatives, for example, the PRI or B Corp, which, as Esther was mentioning, there tend to sit as priorities more for like the senior management and within strategy and don't necessarily filter down to the broader workforce.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: So, David, do you think that companies are wrongly conflating evidencing sort of like ESG commitments with building a positive culture?
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: I I want to be positive about this and these initiatives.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think it is a good thing that more attention is being paid by organizations to frameworks, uh policies, etc., that support and encourage sustainable practices and operations within organizations.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, I think if a board starts to think that you know certain standards and trying to achieve or comply to certain standards is the same as having a positive culture deep within the organization with respect to sustainability, then I think they're delusional.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: You can hit targets in many ways and you can comply with regulations and frameworks in many ways.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: But the question is, it really deeply embedding the behavior and the mindset that you're seeking to, and is it sustainable?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the gap that actually needs to be addressed is in seeing principles for responsible investment, B Corps, etc., uh, not as compliance, not as a compliance issue, but actually as a value creation opportunity.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that means I think engendering and reinforcing behaviors of curiosity, experimentation, resourcefulness, and reducing reliance on behaviors of control, conformity, and direction in order to get things done.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: We ourselves are in the process of applying for B Core status at White Marble.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, there's a it's a huge undertaking, and there's an awful lot of work that goes into it.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: But as we were going through the process, we realized some of the gift that it gives you in terms of making you focus on certain aspects of your workplace, of your culture, and by making you look at those things and think about them, then addressing if there are potentially problems that are preventing you from having a very generative or harmonious culture in the workplace.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: Clearly, these things aren't supposed to be entirely introspective, and you need to think about your impact on the broader world as well.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_02: And with clients that we've worked with on stewardship submissions, for example, the ones that we find do their do the best and find it most easy to submit these in an authentic way are those that are doing it in a genuine fashion and not purely doing it for that tick-the-box exercise.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned measurement there, Esther.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: So what is the best way for an organization to measure or to gauge that sort of culture or the behavior within its organization so that it can get a sense of where it is and where they want to take it?
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there is no single way.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, previously, historically, a lot of companies will have relied upon these employee engagement surveys, for example.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I think we've all sat in companies where init pings into your email inbox and you know kind of rolled our eyes a little bit and thought, oh, here we go, the biannual employee engagement survey.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_02: What is this going to affect?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_02: What is the point of it?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so I certainly don't think they're necessarily the best way.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it's critical to say there's no definitive right or wrong culture.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_02: But the way that we look at it is that it has a huge role to play within your brand, for example, from a marketing point of view.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: How can you talk about certain brand attributes if you have no way of knowing that they're 100% true or no way of measuring their authenticity?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: We thought it was imperative on us to find ways of measuring culture.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: And the QI index is one of those tools that we've landed upon.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: The fact that you can measure both this cognitive diversity that David's discussed and psychological safety, which again, within some of the businesses that we work with and within the finance industry more broadly, you wouldn't necessarily always think that there was a measure of psychological safety and that ability to speak out or put your head above the parapet.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think the question is where and what should we measure?
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: And in my view, we should focus on, as it you'd expect me to say, the quality of interaction, which is what QI stands for.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we should measure it within our teams because that's where culture takes place.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And this is, I think, trying to make it very grounded and angry in what's actually going on in our daily lives in organizations.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: So culture takes place in the way in which we actually interact, treat each other, and respond to each other, and the interactions between people.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that, of course, is where each and every one of us has the opportunity to impact positively or negatively outcomes for others within our team, uh, across our organizational structures, and ultimately, of course, for our customers or andor our communities.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I think, and and and Esther mentions rightly the importance of psychological safety.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I often say you can have all the cognitive diversity or social and identity diversity in the world, you know, in your room, in your team, in your organization.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: But if you don't have psychological safety, and that is people feeling confident that they can speak up, express themselves, contribute in the way that they see as best and useful without fear of sanction, without fear of ridicule or embarrassment or loss of respect, loss of face, etc., then you may as well have no diversity because it will just go with the dominant culture or the most dominant person and so on.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: So these things have to go together.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what the QI index tries to measure and help people to build is both rich diversity, but strong psychological safety, so that you can really benefit from that.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that you can measure.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it happens within when any two or more people get together and interact.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why I say focus on the interaction in teams.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: There are some companies, especially within financial services, that do just have that reputation of being difficult places to work.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: But their brands are so widely recognized and they come with a level of cachet that you know recruitment isn't necessarily an issue.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Retention might be.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: But are there just some instances where people just have to suck it up and live or continue to work in a negative culture if they want the benefits of working with that brand?
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Justin, I think that the competitive advantage for the future, and well, the future and for a long time to come, is going to be about organizations' ability to mobilize intelligence.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't mean artificial intelligence, and I know there's a lot of talk and debate about AI or ADI at the moment.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we should remain focused on how we mobilize human intelligence, and that requires an environment in which the dominant behaviors are, as we've discussed, you know, curious, experimental, resourceful, flexible, appreciative, and encouraging.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it absolutely remains critical that if you want to attract, retain, and mobilize the intelligence of people, you have to remain focused on those aspects of your organization, what it's like to be there, uh, the brand, the internal brand and experience, as well as the external brand and experience.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's not going to go away.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the competition for the kind of scarce human insights, intelligence and capabilities is only going to get more extreme.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: Every movement, every goal to change always attracts naysayers.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: So what do you do when you're an organization and you want to set up these committees and you want to make these changes, but there are people sitting there saying, What's the point?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: We have day-to-day work that we need to get done.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: This is a distraction.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: This shouldn't be a priority.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: How do you bring them on board?
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: How do you bring them with you on the journey?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: I would start with saying that I've been there, I've been an ASAR or I've been a critic.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: I think we all have.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: Not necessarily around this particular topic, but around a particular project or initiative that's kicking off within an organization or business that I've worked for.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_02: I think the way that, excuse me, we've always approached it, we've always approached it within White Marble is to do pilot projects or test projects.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: What can you get the buy-in for?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have to go from crawling to running.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think if you can do a small pilot project within an area of your business that you have control over or that you have control of the budget for, then through doing that, you can then get the evidence, the data, the rich insights of which to present to naysayers to then say, you know, help that do the convincing.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's pilot projects, it's controlling what you can control, it's using data and insights and examples because until people can see it in the flesh, it's very hard for them to understand it, I think.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you see, you know, kind of managing and measuring your culture as a kind of committee-based process with reports and data and bar charts and so on.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, again, I think you know, we're missing the point.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the things that's been very interesting with the QR index and all the data that we have is that two of the uh we ask people about their emotional state um as well as their behaviors and so on, is that the words commitment and pride are the most commonly selected words.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: And yet we spend all this time on engagement surveys as if there's some problem that people aren't engaged, they don't want to turn up, they don't want to make a contribution, and so on.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's nonsense.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, 99% of people, 99% of the time, get out of bed in the morning wanting to make a positive contribution.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: We sometimes just organize ourselves in a way that makes it almost impossible for them to do so.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: And just going to the point about naysayers is that if we're genuinely trying to create new value, we're going to go into uncharted territory, which means by definition we don't know to start with the best and the right way.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, calling someone a naysayer maybe is actually denying the fact that there's somebody who sees things differently.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if you combine that with the basic premise that most people want to make a positive difference, now we have the grit in the oyster, which is we have a challenging, uh new journey to go on, some new problems to solve, and we have some different perspectives.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Thank goodness, because somewhere, if we can have the right quality of interaction between those different perspectives, we can learn and work out and experiment to find what works and find our way forward.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I think even sometimes the language that we use is undermining the potential to harness and explore disagreement to create new value.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: That's such a good point.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: I hadn't really thought of it that way.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_02: Having a critical opinion doesn't need to be a bad thing and actually might end up at a much stronger result in the end because you've you've had that diversity of thought and opinion.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, exactly.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: I said that's we, you know, we we talk a lot, don't we, in organizations, about the apparent importance of diversity.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then if we're surprised that people see things differently and disagree with each other, we're kind of shooting ourselves in the foot.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not easy then, and that's where I think you know what we're talking about, this quality of interaction is so important, because otherwise that disagreement becomes conflict, as opposed to the grit in the oyster to create new insights and new options and new choices.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: Is there a department within an organization that should assume responsibility for culture and for behavior?
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: And where is it that you think that they should sit?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Can I give you a very short answer?
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: Please do.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: The very short answer is no.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: The slightly longer answer is absolutely not.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: And if I wanted to add a little bit more to that, I would say that it's all of our responsibility in an organization to think about how we want to show up, you know, what we're looking for from others.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where feedback comes in.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a constant dynamic, that's not a once a year performance appraisal thing.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: That that might be useful, although many performance appraisal processes aren't very actually productive, but they could be.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, feedback is is the lifeblood of performance uh and that dynamic that Esther's mentioned that we live in.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, don't outsource it to a central department.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: And finally, are there any thoughts or tips for our listeners about you know culture or about behavior that you think that perhaps we haven't covered today?
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: There's no quick fix.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's not something that, you know, five hot tips on culture is instantly going to transition your business or your organization.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think it requires patience.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: I think it requires commitment, as David said, but that's something that most employees have in space if you give them the chance and the opportunity.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's a little bit all the time, is probably my main tip.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by a little bit all the time is you know, give feedback and ask for feedback regularly.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not about a one-hour session, that can be about a good, well-constructed five-minute conversation.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Put uh processes in your meetings, which are maybe it's five minutes again at the end of a meeting, which is just a review of not what did we achieve in terms of you know the agenda and the decisions we made or whatever, but how did we do it?
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: How do we feel uh you know that we're working together?
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe thinking about some techniques that build uh inclusion.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because include if you're gonna talk about diversity and the importance of diversity for performance, uh, you can recruit for diversity, um, you can set up diverse teams, and as we said, but if you don't have a way of working together, that diversity can really come to the fore, then you're not gonna benefit from it.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: So uh you can easily have a decision made, but only three or four people have really contributed, and people assume okay, well, maybe no one had anything to say, or maybe they're introverts, or whatever.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: But there are simple processes you can do in any discussion, any meeting, just to make sure everybody has time to think and everybody has their contribution.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't mean they'll all be accepted, but they've all made their contributions.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: So little processes, little timeouts to review how we're doing, and you know, making feedback part of your daily kind of you know, processes and engagement is very powerful.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that brings us to the end of our episode.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: My thanks to David and Esther for sharing their insight and expertise.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: If you have any questions about measuring and improving corporate culture or any other topics in this podcast, please do get in touch using the contact details in the description.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: You can subscribe to this podcast through Apple, Google, and Spotify.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: If there are any topics for investment marketers you would like 2 in 20 to cover, please do get in touch.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: You can also find episodes from our earlier podcast, Aim High, on Apple, Google and Spotify.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time.