Colin D. Ellis's Blog, page 2

Better teamwork through talking

There are a number of different reasons that clients approach me (and others) for help in building vibrant team culture:

Leaders are looking for a renewed sense of purpose

Different goals require refreshed ways of working

Toxic elements have had a negative impact on the day-to-day working

Start-ups need something different to grow and scale

Managers need to skills to be able to get the best out of teams; and

We need a way of talking about culture so we can do something about it.

This last point is one of the most overlooked and yet one of the simplest things to address.

Culture is still seen by some as this ethereal, intangible force that only consultants like me talk about to generate book or workshop sales! Rather than it being THE key determinant between success and failure, regardless of which industry your company operates in.

Culture (or teamwork - they are one and the same thing) is driven by purpose, vision, values, relationships, communication, behaviours, collaboration, innovation and many other sub-factors that are practiced without thinking every single day.

Therefore improving the way you work relies on being able to talk about it, openly, in a way that generates understanding and prompts action. It sounds obvious but most teams still don't know how to do it.

Yet, when we are able to talk about culture, name it, identify where we are at and talk about the practical (not theoretical - ‘we need to start living our values’) things that we need to do to change the underlying conditions that will generate the conditions for success, it has immediate impact.

That’s why I have created this free video course - previously available as a podcast - that anyone or any team can watch to transform the way that they think and talk about culture.

It’s just over an hour in length and broken down into 7 modules, available for you to do at your own pace and in your own space.

You can find the course here: 

Lasting change can only ever be achieved through efficient communication and committed action. Take the course and improve not only the way that you talk about culture, but the way you get things done.

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The long list is never satisfied

I won’t lie, I'm a recovering list addict.

We moved house recently and I revelled in the opportunity to create a list of things to do. I use Google Keep to make my lists and I prefer a check box approach, where I tick things off as I go along.

Yet, at some point after making such a list I always feel a sense of overwhelm. Sure, when it’s written down you can plan what needs to be done and this gives you comfort, yet, it also brings into sharp focus the sheer weight of work that needs to be completed.

It’s also a reminder that I hate moving house 😂

Many of you will feel the same in your working day, especially if your list has more than 10 things on it! You might want to start your week off in exactly the right way. Clarity about what needs to be done, possibly written in priority order, maybe even with someone else’s name written down as someone to speak to.

Then a coffee or a tea, then onto work.

But first, email. Then a meeting. Then another drink and before you know it, it’s 2pm you haven’t ticked a single thing off and have managed to add four more things to the list!

Sound familiar? The long list is never satisfied. Like ivy, they grow without us noticing and before you know it, you can’t get out of the door!

If you want to be productive, the answer is to only capture those things on which you either have the capacity for or can take immediate action on.

We feel that there’s comfort in the long list. We tell ourselves it's good to get everything written down, that at least we can see what's in front of us, that we know what needs to be done.

Organisations make a habit of it too, creating endless strategic priorities that fill spreadsheets and paralyse action.

Yet, the long list stands in the way of productive work. It’s a proactive way of procrastinating. Every minute spent list making is a minute not working. ‘But Colin,’ I hear you say, ‘it’s a way of organising my work.’

If you’re good at making a list and getting to it straight away, then keep going. If not, then write down the 3-5 things you need to get done and then clear other time-wasting activities out of the way and get to reducing the list. (See here for more information about George Miller’s groundbreaking ‘Magical number seven’ (7+2) law on short-term memory.)

The long list creates an illusion of control whilst actually preventing you from having any. It's something that feels like productivity but delivers action paralysis. When your team starts a meeting by reviewing a 20-item action list from last week with 15 items still open, you're not managing work. You're encouraging anxiety.

The paradox is this: the shorter your list, the more you'll complete. Three things finished beats ten things started every single time.

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Avoiding bad news

The goal of any culture survey is to get a view - from the coalface of where work happens - of the ‘feeling’ that people have about the conditions within which they work.

If you have invested in your culture throughout the year and your leaders are role models for the kind of organisation that you want to become, then the feedback will be positive, even about the changes that need to be made.

If you’ve done nothing, then expect bad news. Then expect it again and again until you fundamentally change the way that you do things.

Sticking plasters don’t change the ‘feeling’ in fact, they generally make it worse. If you’ve taken the time to ask the questions, then you have to take the time to come up with a new set of actions that satisfy - in the short and medium term - those that provided the insights.

The only way to continually avoid the bad news that surveys provide is to proactively build a workplace that people want to be part of. Never forget that you get the culture that you choose to build; and those choices will always be evident in the answers you receive.

Find out what kind of culture you have right now at www.fiveculturesquiz.com

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The org chart

Hours are spent drawing organisational hierarchy charts to show the 'decision-tree' - who reports to whom, who sits at the top, who occupies the middle and so on.

Yet, these pictures never reflect the reality of work.

In truth, hierarchies and the cultures they serve are messy, especially where the work is complex. Cross-functional projects, matrix management, secondments - they all expose the structure as fiction.

You can't force this complexity to conform to a picture. True organisational agility lies in meaningful relationships and understanding how collaboration actually works.

Culture is determined by interdependent people working in small groups that follow the values of the organisation to work towards a common goal; not independent people worried about ‘where they sit’ on a structure to get the best for themselves.

Organisation charts serve administrative purposes - job grades, team membership, formal responsibilities. Yet, they tell you nothing about how work actually flows.

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From burns to brotherhood

In 1941, six burned RAF pilots gathered around a bottle of sherry in Ward III at Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead. They'd survived flames that consumed their Spitfires and Hurricanes, but faced a different kind of battle: enduring pioneering plastic surgery from Kiwi Sir Archibald McIndoe and reintegrating into a society that might reject them.

They called themselves The Guinea Pig Club, acknowledging that they were experiments. McIndoe's techniques were untested. Some worked, some didn't. But every failure became learning, every setback a step forward.

What made this group extraordinary wasn't just their courage under fire, but their collective refusal to be defined by their disfigurement. They created an environment where psychological safety preceded the term by decades. Ward III resembled a social club more than a hospital. Beer flowed freely. Rank disappeared. Vulnerability became strength.

One of their members, Warrant Officer W.G. Foxley even became a movie star in the classic war movie, The Battle of Britain. 

The townspeople of East Grinstead in Sussex, England played their part too. McIndoe counselled them to treat the men normally, without staring or pointing. They invited pilots for drinks, reserved cinema seats, and opened their homes. East Grinstead became 'the town that didn't stare', demonstrating that acceptance requires active effort, not passive tolerance.

By war's end, 649 members belonged to the club. Their legacy isn't just medical advancement; it's proof that camaraderie is built on psychological safety, shared purpose, and the courage to show up whilst carrying visible scars.

Membership was considered an honour. Because sometimes the hardest battles create the strongest bonds.

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Piling on the good

When team members make mistakes or miss deadlines, people are quick to roll their eyes or trade negative messages. Yet when someone delivers exceptional work, the silence is often deafening.

This workplace version of the social media 'pile-on' - where people rush to criticise unfairly - destroys psychological safety. 

Research from Google's Project Aristotle found that teams with high psychological safety outperform others by 12%, yet most organisations inadvertently reward the critics (those that ‘shout loudest’) whilst ignoring the quiet creators.

The answer isn't complicated: pile-on the good work being done instead.

When you witness someone doing something courageous, creative or collaborative, don't just acknowledge it privately, amplify it publicly. Bring knowledge of their work to senior leadership with specific context. Raise it in team meetings. Create a Slack or Teams channel dedicated to celebrating wins, not just logging problems.

This isn't about forced positivity or participation trophies. It's about deliberately building the cultural habits that high-performance teams share: they notice excellence, they name it, and they multiply it.

The impact extends beyond the individual being recognised. When you publicly celebrate someone's achievement, you signal to the entire team what ‘good’ looks like. You give others permission to be equally bold. The team's energy from threat detection to opportunity seeking and its collective mindset from fixed to growth.

Our workplaces are already full of negativity. Choose to pile-on to the good instead, and watch what your team becomes capable of.

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Working outside our comfort zone

The Yerkes-Dodson law demonstrates that performance increases with moderate challenge up to an optimal point, beyond which it declines. This foundational research established that working just outside what we consider to be comfortable produces peak performance.

When I work with teams and individuals and talk about the nature of engagement and its relationship with performance, I always stress two points.

Firstly, it’s incumbent on the organisation to provide its employees - regardless of what they do - with a sufficient level of challenge and/or development. Not only does this generate emotional capital between leaders and employees, but also it demonstrates the organisation’s commitment to improve those that they employ.

In my 10 years of working with organisations I've never met anyone, regardless of age or experience, who doesn’t want their organisation to invest in their development. Either through opportunities to do something different, structured learning or coaching.

Secondly, it’s incumbent on the individual to want to improve at what they do. This not only means remaining focused on what they’ve been tasked with doing, but also investing their own time and energy (sometimes outside what may be considered as ‘normal’ working hours) to develop their skills. 

In this short video David Beckham describes how Eric Cantona routinely stayed after training to perfect his technique; deliberate practice that distinguishes elite from good players.

Of course, the organisation culture has to support not only learning, but also any time that we choose to develop ourselves. Sometimes organisations will fund outside learning, other times members of staff will devote extra time to help those who wish to better themselves (the Manchester United coaches will have supported the players who stayed later).

Researchers Kiknadze and Leary found that individuals who valued pushing themselves out of their comfort zone demonstrated greater confidence in their ability to perform tasks that fell outside their comfort zone, and showed reduced anxiety.

Researchers Woolley and Fishbach also found this to be true.

Research from Josh Bersin underlined this analysis. When his team asked 2400 employees what inspired them and made them happy and work harder, the top three factors were:

The work itself - within the comfort zone

The opportunity to grow and learn - outside the comfort zone

The company culture - the environment that supports learning and growth

This sounds straightforward, yet organisations consistently get the balance wrong.

Often I’ll hear leaders talking about people being outside their comfort zone for extended periods, in order to achieve sustained results. However, the research shows that when we experience this discomfort for too long, it has the opposite effect and starts to become demotivating.

We want work to feel taxing, but not too taxing, for too long. Or as Kiknadze/Leary say ‘to the point of distress’. When we feel forced to undertake tasks - often without guidance or support - that feel like too much of a stretch for our existing capabilities, not only does it lead to anxiety, stress and a loss of confidence, it also undermines our current performance.

The response from leaders is often to say that we are ‘struggling with the extra workload’ when the reality is that the discomfort is generating feelings that may lead to a fixed mindset, where we tell ourselves that we are incapable of doing the work.

The Yerkes-Dodson law demonstrates that when we operate a little outside our comfort zone, it does wonders for our mindset, motivation and commitment to work more closely with our teammates. But when we spend extended time there, it can impair how we feel about ourselves; and that’s a zone that none of us want to find ourselves in.

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Great talkers are little doers

Every organisation has them. Leaders who deliver inspiring speeches about culture change, then disappear back to their offices. Managers who champion collaboration in meetings, then hoard information. Executives who promise transparency, then make decisions behind closed doors.

Talk is seductive because it feels like action. It isn't.

Culture isn't built through declarations or town halls. It's built through consistent behaviour, difficult conversations, and uncomfortable decisions. When leaders talk about psychological safety but punish failure, employees notice. When organisations announce ‘people first’ values but measure only financial metrics, teams disengage.

If you want to build a sustainable high-performance culture then you need to stop talking and start doing.

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Systems and tactics

Systems and tactics provide a basis for success.

They provide the structure, clarity and repeatable approaches that drive results. When they work, teams thrive. When they don't, performance suffers.

The mistake I see many making is in assuming that what works today will work tomorrow.

Too many organisations or leaders cling to outdated approaches because they delivered success in the past. They ignore competitor moves, shifting markets, changing team dynamics and evolving customer expectations. This complacency kills momentum and leads to stagnation.

Cultural evolution demands that you regularly review, revise or replace your systems and tactics. Not because they've failed, but because the conditions around them have changed.

Success isn't about abandoning what works, it's about improving what does before you're forced to.

The question isn't whether they are good. It's whether they're fit for the world you operate in today. If you're not asking that question, you can bet that your competitors are.

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The importance of critical thinking

In 1987, the National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking, defined it as follows:

‘Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualising, applying, analysing, synthesising, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.’

In our information-rich world soon to become dominated by artificial intelligence prompted answers, the ability to critically think has never been more important. Unfortunately, it’s not a skill that we are automatically born with, most of us need to learn how to do it.

It’s not enough to have access to information, experience or even a ‘process’ for thinking. The information needs to be analysed objectively, questioning assumptions, and evaluating evidence before forming judgements. It requires time to think, intellectual rigour and self-awareness to recognise biases whilst systematically reasoning through problems to reach sound conclusions.

When we suffer from attention poverty, caused either by a relentless cycle of ‘busyness’ or an inability to focus as a result of distractions, our ability to critically think is diminished. We default to cognitive shortcuts and surface-level ‘processing’ rather than the deeper, slower analytical thinking that critical thought requires.

One such shortcut is the use of AI. Defaulting to a ‘machine’ to do our thinking for us may seem like a time-saving way to get things done, yet it introduces risks that can have far-reaching consequences not only for our own intellects, but also for our reputations and future careers too.

However, the primary risk is cognitive atrophy. If we consistently outsource our critical thinking to AI, we lose the muscle memory of rigorous thought, making us less capable of independent judgment when it matters most. 

Over time, this creates a dangerous dependency where we lack both the confidence and competence to challenge AI outputs (which need to be continually checked), question underlying assumptions, or think through problems when the technology isn't available.

I’m also starting to see a flattening effect on organisational thinking. When teams rely on AI for analysis and problem-solving, they risk homogenised perspectives and the loss of the productive friction that comes from diverse viewpoints.

The messy, intuitive, context-rich thinking that emerges from healthy friction, debate and collective sense-making gets replaced by algorithmically-generated ‘answers’ that may be coherent but lack the wisdom that comes from lived experience and emotional intelligence.

Perhaps most concerning for individuals and the cultures that they’re part of is that if people stop practicing critical thinking (or else lack curiosity with what they’ve been presented with), they become passive consumers of information rather than active contributors to knowledge and idea creation.

This fundamentally undermines collaboration, reduces accountability, and creates teams that wait to be told what to think rather than wrestling with complexity together.

This isn’t doom-mongering, I think it’s a warning worth heeding.

Use technology to aid the thinking process, not replace it. Turn off distractions to provide yourself with time to think and debate. Don’t rely on assumptions and learn from your experiences. Challenge what you're told and enjoy the discomfort of not having immediate answers.

Shortcutting your thinking will make you replaceable, which is exactly what the technology companies want.

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