Sean Riley:
So with all the fancy introductions out of the way, welcome to the podcast, Jamie.
Jamie Notter:
Oh, thanks for having me.
Sean Riley:
The pleasure is all ours. You gave a presentation at the ELC, Culture Change Made easy, fascinating presentation, and I just had a couple of questions I wanted to sort of tack on to it sort of as follow-ups to things you discussed. And one of the things that I found interesting was kind of touched on is when and why did culture start to become more than holiday parties and things like that around the office. You sort of had a date or a time period when that started. When was that and why?
Jamie Notter:
Yeah. When I look at the history of culture in the workplace, I go back to 15 years ago when companies like Zappos and Netflix were getting attention, and they were intentionally bragging about the attention they put to culture. They were very successful organizations as we know now, but they credited much of that to choosing an intentional culture that was slightly different than others. And so we all started reading about them and then Google and Facebook and other sort of tech cool kids jumped into the fray, became the cultures we all wanted to copy. But the challenge was when you can't really copy their culture because you're not them and you don't have the same issues. So where it really picked up speed was in the last three years because of The Great Resignation. The fact that people were leaving in droves after the pandemic ended and really changing their perspective on what it means to work somewhere and why would I stay here? That's when culture became important to everybody.
Sean Riley:
And that's interesting because that was kind of my next question is how did The Great Resignation have this permanent effect on the workplace and on culture? I understand what The Great Resignation was, but how did it create this sort of sea change?
Jamie Notter:
Well, what was interesting, I didn't see it coming frankly, the permanent part. During The Great Resignation I knew personally people who were like, "Look, I need to be near my family because this is life and death stuff and I got to rethink what am I doing here?" Really that kind of thing. And we were all sort of in that mode. And then 2021, we weren't in that mode anymore as much. '22, '23 people were still quitting. But everyone had that experience of why am I doing this? Why am I showing up at this organization and working here? Because if it's not really valuable to me, I'm not going to do it. And I actually have, this is part of the permanent part is there's more remote work now. So there are more options. There's more organizations you have a chance to work for. But even if you want to stay local, people realized I didn't like that boss that was horrible.
I didn't like that organization that made us do things that were stupid and that made it harder for us to succeed. I just can't tolerate that as much anymore. So I think they've raised the bar permanently in the sense that they realized I actually have more choice than I used to and I shouldn't have accepted the terms that I was accepting before the sort of [inaudible 00:03:25] of the culture. I don't have to do that anymore. And they're sharpening their eyes when they go to interview now and they're trying to figure out, okay, is this really a good culture that I'm going to like?
Sean Riley:
Interesting. So when you say employees have raised the bar, do you kind of mean that they have sort of flipped it where they have more of the power, not the power, but they're able to dictate sort of the terms versus the employer?
Jamie Notter:
I mean, I think so. They don't dictate, fully dictate the terms. Employers still gets to say yes or no. My message to employers is then be careful what you dictate because the people that say yes are going to be people you don't want. If you really want the top talent, then you got to listen to them. This is one of the permanent effects of the pandemic. When we sent everybody home, we gave employees an incredible amount of power, we didn't use to give them that power right. Now they can decide when they work and where they work and how they do it and balancing kids and doctors and everything on their own, their own decisions. Here's the thing about power. Once you give power to people, they don't give it back. The history of humans will tell you that. So that toothpaste is out of the tube. They're used to having that power now and again, I think that's where this discernment comes from. It's like, wait a minute, I have some control over this. Let me ask you about what the culture's like. Let me ask you about how I can be most successful in my role. If you don't have good answers in that, I've already experienced what it's like to manage that during the pandemic. Now I'm going to sort of expect that I have that power even when I'm coming into the office several days a week.
Sean Riley:
Okay, I understand. So then I guess it almost feels like this should have been the first question but I wanted to kind of build up to it, but you being someone that has researched and discussed all this, how do you define culture? You kind of broke it down into four parts, I guess, words, actions, thoughts, and stuff. How do you sort of lay that out as what your definition of culture is?
Jamie Notter:
Yeah. So my basic definition is it's the collection of words, actions, thoughts, and stuff, which is just tangible aspects of work that clarify and reinforce what's really valued in organization. And so the valued piece is at the end of my definition, but it is the heart of it. That's what culture does in an organization, it tells people what's valued here. Because what's valued is what drives behavior. If you've got a very hierarchical culture, it'll make clear to all the employees that you need to go up to get decisions made. You know what I mean? You'll know that even if no one told you that explicitly, you'll get a sense of, if that's the culture here, then I'm not going to go make my own decision. I'm going to run it up the chain and see what happens and if I get approval, I'll go do it. If you have a very flat culture that will become clear to you that it's valued, they value people moving and taking action and doing things without waiting for the permission from up above.
You can have either one. But that culture that what's valued is communicated to me by the words you use, the behaviors inside the organization, the underlying assumptions that sometimes drive that, and then the tangible things like dress code and equipment and office design. All that stuff together will make it really clear what's valued and that's how I'm going to behave, even if it's not what I would prefer. That's the power of culture. It's like, hey, I'd love to be decentralized and run and do my own thing, but I know that's not how we do it here. Culture sort of keeps me in that path, which is why it's so intentional to shape it in a way that makes you successful because it's going to drive behavior whether you shape it or not.
Sean Riley:
Okay, interesting. So then when talking about culture and culture patterns that you discussed, what is the difference between reactive and proactive, I guess transparency?
Jamie Notter:
Yeah. So the culture patterns is the stuff that's coming out in the book and is the research we've doing in the last few years, and it's this underlying tension between things that your culture values. So most cultures value transparency, like they value sharing information. It's a good thing. What I found through our research is that there's a bit of an imbalance. While we love to share information, we tend to do it reactively. If you come and ask me for information, I will gladly share it with you. I'm not going to hold it back. I love transparency, of course I'll give you the information. But I wait. I wait until people ask and most people wait until they ask because if I wait, then I get to control the information a little more. We love to share information, but we more so like to control it.
The organizations that don't have that pattern, they know how to get information out proactively. Which means I give information up even though I don't know who's going to read it or who's going to use it or how they're going to use it. I'm giving up control, but I get it out there before they need to ask. So the information's in people's hands at the right time, right information at the right time so people take action. That's proactive transparency and most cultures are not as good at that. Some are and I've seen it, and again, we have case studies of organizations that do a really good job at that. But that's the pattern is we'll do a little bit of proactive, but it's mostly reactive. And so we call that pattern lagging transparency because you're sharing information, but it's often too late.
Sean Riley:
Okay. Well then I think you had eight culture patterns, but there was two that you highlighted as the most disruptive. I think it was collaboration and innovation. So I guess could you give us an overview of the eight, but then sort of discuss the two that are really the ones that are the most disruptive?
Jamie Notter:
Yeah. So there's four that we cover in the book. I call them the big four, and that's transparency, which we just mentioned. Also, agility, we call that heavy agility. We move forward, but we don't make sure our work is effective. And collaboration, innovation, which I talked about. And then agility, transparency, collaboration, innovation, those are the big four. And I call them big four just because they're really more prominent. When I go into organizations, those are the ones they notice first, those are the ones they want to work on. The other four are around growth, which is how you develop your employees and connect to the community. Inclusion, can people be their whole selves? Do we include people from different layers in the organization when we do planning and strategy? Solutions, which is about how do we balance internal focus versus external focus and customization versus standardization.
And then technologies. Technologies is are we embracing digital transformation both at a concept level and how are we doing investing in tools around technology? In all of those cases, there's a kind of imbalance. Those four, I don't know, I refer to them as a little more advanced. They're kind of deeper culture work. Transparency, agility, collaboration, that's stuff you can just get at right away with some simple, simple solutions. The other ones take a little bit more work. So they're important, but I'd rather you deal with the big four first. That's why I put those first. Now, collaboration and innovation I talked about at the conference. Pattern on collaboration is awkward collaboration, this is where we value collaborative individuals. People as individuals collaborate with each other easily, but not collaborative groups. So either departments or layers in the hierarchy. They do collaborate, but were not as effective at it, so it's kind of awkward.
That was one of the first patterns when I described it, and actually someone came up to me at the conference and said, "Oh, yeah, that's us". That's the experience people have when they hear awkward collaboration. The innovation was actually the first pattern I saw in the research. It was really glaring in the data, and that one is about we value the concepts of innovation more than the practices. We are talking the talk, we focus on the future, we care about creativity, but we're not walking the walk. We don't run experiments, we don't take risks that are appropriate, failure is not considered okay. You'll never really get true innovation, really unlocking new value if you're not running those experiments, trying things, getting them wrong, learning from it and that kind of thing. You need the concepts too, but you need the practices and we're a little behind.
Sean Riley:
Okay, very interesting. So I think the other thing that I was really interested in is you had this myth that you discussed, is what is the biggest myth that you find around culture change? And I think you use collaboration and innovation as kind of examples. Could you touch on that a little bit?
Jamie Notter:
Well, there's a long list of myths I have about culture and culture change actually. And so I'm not even sure if this is the one you're referring to, but for me, the biggest myth around culture change is that it's difficult and that it takes forever. An association CEO years ago, I can't even remember if I mentioned this in the talk, she was at a conference and she announced and she was a part of a panel. She said, "You know it takes eight years to change a culture". And I'm thinking to myself, "Wow, that's weird". And I look around and everyone's like, "Ooh, eight years, I'm writing it down". I'm like, "No, it doesn't take eight years to change a culture". In fact, you can change your culture in a matter of months. Maybe not in a transformative way, but you can change it. And in fact, there is no end date on culture change.
You should be constantly changing your culture based on the changing environment. Your culture should be driving your success. If it becomes much more competitive in your environment than it was before, you may have to change your culture to get some different behaviors. To move faster or whatever it is. So culture change should happen all the time. It doesn't take eight years. I did have one organization that I knew that transformed their culture in 12 months. Really they had a culture of fear where the only time management came on the floor was when they were firing somebody like that kind of environment. A year later, they were happy, they were supportive, they were supported by management. It was just a complete turnaround. I didn't do that turnaround with them. I came in after the year had passed, so I'm taking the CEO's word on the transformation, but it was an impressive story.
But I remind people, I said, "Wow, that must have been a pretty heavy lift". He's like, "Oh yeah, we had to fire the entire management team". So I'm not saying it's easy to totally transform in a year, but it can be done. So I sort of throw the timelines out. It's like you shouldn't be looking at how long this is going to take. You should be looking at what needs to change that will improve our results. That's it. And then keep iterating on that and running more plays in your playbook, which is the metaphor I use. Just keep changing and tightening the alignment of your culture with those behaviors that drive your success. And you start doing that, that's when the top talent starts coming to you. Right? That's my core argument around cultures. If you really get culture, not 100% that's probably out of reach, but really aligned, then the reputation will get out there. That's an awesome place to work.
Sean Riley:
Well, that's perfect. And I think that's a perfect button to put on our little discussion here today that the word will get out there if you do it correctly. So I want to thank you again, Jamie, for taking time out of your day to come on the podcast with us.
Jamie Notter:
Oh, happy to do it.
