Colin D. Ellis's Blog, page 6

On a culture journey

Being on a ‘culture journey’ is one of the most overused metaphors in business. If you haven't come across it before - lucky you! - it’s essentially a way of saying, ‘we’ve started something’, with explicit reference to changing the way work gets done.

Yet, there are three issues that I have with this statement:

The ‘journey’ has been decided for employees whether they like it or not. How many work-related journeys have you been on where the unknown outcome has been one of joy and agency? 

Journeys have to end and culture never does. You don’t get to Land’s End and say ‘right, we’re here, wasn’t that brilliant’. Culture is perpetual. 

It’s usually a way of making false promises. Often it’s in response to a report, or a low engagement score, or someone of influence leaving or - as will become apparent to most of you - implementing new technology that will have a significant impact on, well, everything

The point is, that culture journeys can actually be fantastic endeavours if you invite people to collaborate with you, seek their opinions in the design phase, don’t allow any individual (regardless of seniority) to go off and do their own thing or else dramatically veer away from the things that you are actually good at.

Most journeys however, end up on roundabouts or else are abandoned halfway leaving people stranded without warning. At that stage the journey becomes a nightmare that no one wants to be on and the culture comes to a screeching halt with trust forever destroyed.

If you’re going to go on a culture journey, do it together and never let the air go out of the tyres.

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10 simple ways to show kindness at work

When I reflect on my career as an employee, the kindness of others is something that immediately comes to mind. It’s easy to overlook kindness and focus on the bad experiences that we’ve had, however, for most of us, our working days were shaped by the warmth and compassion of others.

These small moments can change how we feel about ourselves, our days, the organisation and in some cases can change our outlook on life itself. Kindness cannot be underestimated and it’s easy to do!

Here are 10 simple ways that others showed kindness to me, that you can copy:

Active listening without interruption - Give colleagues your full attention during conversations.

Acknowledge contributions publicly - Recognise teammates' efforts to ensure credit goes where it's due

Offer genuine help without being asked - Proactively offer assistance without wanting anything in return

Remember personal details - Remember colleagues' important details that they've shared

Be warm and welcoming - Say ‘good morning’, ‘hello’ or ask how their day is going, with a smile

Mentor without formal structures - Share knowledge or provide guidance especially to younger team members

Give constructive feedback - Frame critiques in terms of growth opportunities

Create safety - Encourage questions and admit your own mistakes openly.

Be flexible with collaboration - Adapt your working style to accommodate colleagues' different needs or personal circumstances

Challenge unkind behaviour - Address microaggressions, interruptions, or exclusionary behaviour when you witness it, rather than remaining silent bystanders.

Of course there were other steps that people took to make me feel welcome, included or to help extend my knowledge. And there were no shortages of coffees, beers, lunches, book and music recommendations too. Yet when it came to helping me to do a better job, these 10 really stand out.

What are some examples of kindness that you have been on the receiving end of?

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The phone

A short reminder that the telephone is still the best way to communicate in some circumstances.

Just because you can email, text or video call doesn’t mean you should. You should always ask yourself ‘what’s the most efficient way for me to get/give this information?’

And in many instances, that will be via a phone call.

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Mistakes

My brother recently sent me a documentary about the UK band Depeche Mode. It was a great trip down memory lane (which is always nice to take) and one statement really struck a chord with me.

When asked about their creative process, former band member Alan Wilder said, ‘we don’t try to eliminate mistakes’, with the inference being that a) nothing will ever be perfect anyway; b) it’s only through mistakes that we learn and c) sometimes your mistakes can actually enhance the work that you’re doing.

This is great advice. In my experience so much time is wasted trying to generate the perfect document, process or else to find technical ways to mitigate every risk. However, the reality is - as humans - we’re prone to mistakes.

A good example would be cybersecurity. A recent study found that human error is the major contributing cause in 95% of all security breaches. Yet everyone of the organisations who were attacked will have had processes in place for keeping its information secure.

We’re human, we make mistakes and organisations should focus less on perfection and more on creating an environment where people not only understand that it’s ok to make a mistake every now and then but also that they’ll help them to learn from it.

This safety is often lacking in cultures everywhere, leading to endless emails copying in a cast of thousands or meetings to check every box and when we’re under stress, we’re more likely to make mistakes.

That’s not to say that we should permit people to make repeated mistakes without recourse, however, nobody sets out to make mistakes, so empathy should always be the starting point for helping people to learn.

Our greatest sources of learning are still the mistakes that we make and the experiences we have, so instead of trying to eliminate them, we should embrace them instead. People are people and will always make mistakes.

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Purpose, vision, mission, values and behaviours

Purpose, vision, mission, values and behaviours are all very different - and important - pillars of organisational culture. If you want cohesion, collaboration and a ‘one-team’ culture, then it’s important that you not only get these elements right, but also ensure that they are ‘used’ in the right way.

Training middle managers is the key to a successful culture, so it’s important that they understand this too, as they inform how teams are set up to succeed.

Here is a simple table to explain each - click here if you prefer a downloadable .pdf:

Too often, organisations use these words interchangeably (‘We’re on a mission!’, ‘Our behaviours inform our purpose’) or else their use is purely performative. Both of which serve only to confuse or annoy employees.

In reality, not only are they all essential pillars of the way we work but Millennial and Gen Z employees in particular are actively monitoring whether these elements are practised or not, and choosing to walk away from their jobs if they’re not.

You don’t need to have all of these in play at once (vision and values are the most important from an organisation perspective), but if you do, you need to ensure that they are lived and used day-to-day. Not only will this send a message that you take your culture seriously, but you’ll also generate greater value, loyalty and commitment too.

When you get culture right, everyone wins.

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How to build an AI-ready culture

The jostling between consulting and training organisations for AI transformation programmes has begun. However, rather than the 'technology agility' approaches that they're selling to implement AI, what's required is a change in culture, or 'emotional agility.'

On this episode of the Colin on Culture podcast I provide 5 behaviours that employees need to adopt in order to build an AI-ready culture.

It is also available as a podcast, simply search for ‘Colin on Culture’ on your app of choice.

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So, you want to work for yourself?

I had no desire to work for myself, yet every self-employed person I spoke to pretty much said the same things; ‘You are your own boss, it’s brilliant’; ‘You’ll never look back’; ‘I have a freedom I never thought I’d have’; ‘I’ll be able to retire much earlier than if I’d stayed in a job’.

So when I was passed over for a c-suite job, it felt like the right thing to do.

Yet what I realised very quickly is that very few of people that I talked to, didn’t mention the struggles about becoming self-sufficient:

It’s tough on your personal life - constant communication is required

You lose lots of sleep - there’s no way to switch the stress off

You have to do many jobs - Bookkeeper; Content Producer; Salesperson etc.

You have to offer something unique - you have to demonstrate your difference

People don’t respond to messages - you always seem to be waiting

You have to be consistent - you can’t ‘disappear’ for weeks on end

You must continually evolve - stand still and you become irrelevant

It’s hard not to compare yourself to others - comparison is the thief of joy

Some organisations simply don’t want what you offer - regardless how much evidence you have!

It’s a lonely business - sometimes you just want to be on the team photo

In a recent documentary series on his life Richard Branson said, ‘What people don’t realise with businesses that start from scratch is the very, very thin dividing line between success and failure’ and I have felt that constantly over the last 10 years.

And yet, once you gain some traction, you get into a rhythm, you show up consistently (without fail) and you get the agency that everyone talks about. Time becomes your own, business development gets easier and you start to enjoy the process. And then…you move country and it starts all over again 😂

This is something that one of my best friends, Digby Scott, and I talked about when he visited the UK recently. Here is a short-clip of that interview and if you’d like to watch the whole thing (it’s a conversation we both loved) then you can do so here.

Self-employment isn’t for everyone, but if you understand what you are getting yourself into and devote yourself to the value that it can offer to others, it’s a decision you’ll never regret.

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Being your (nearly) best self

Being your best self every minute of every day is simply not possible. We constantly make mistakes, bad decisions, we lose control of our emotions, we communicate in ways that people don’t appreciate, we roll our eyes, we gossip, we procrastinate and let our teammates down.

This is what it means to be human.

What matters more is that we start and end every day with good intentions. That we try not to make the same mistakes again and again, that we listen, we learn, we show humility, we’re mindful about how we (and others) feel, we contribute and that we maintain our humanity when all around us are losing theirs.

No-one has been or ever will be perfect, but if you try to be your (nearly) best self every day, then that’s something to be proud of.

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Spaced learning

A friend of mine asked me recently why I’d moved to writing a daily blog. My answer was ‘spaced learning’. This is something that I’ve tried to practice myself over the last 10 years and found it to be really effective.

Unfortunately it has nothing to do with the fantastic TV show, Spaced (more’s the pity) and you probably know it as ‘little and often’. It’s an approach that leverages the spacing effect, a phenomenon supported by research, which suggests that the brain encodes memories more effectively when small pieces of information are processed with rest periods - in the case of my blog, one full day - which leads to greater knowledge durability.

The key benefits of this approach are:

Improved memory and retention of information

Enhanced engagement - as a result of not demanding too much of your attention all at once

Consolidation of knowledge - constantly building on what you already know

Reduced overwhelm - all those 1000-word blogs and hourlong podcasts weigh heavily on you!

Flexibility - you get to choose which pieces of content require your attention

In the attention-poor society that we now live in, spaced learning is far more effective than cramming occasional marathon sessions. Start small. Dedicate just three-five minutes each morning to reading, reflecting, or learning something new. Your future self will thank you for building this sustainable habit.

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We're still in the AI propaganda phase

As you would expect of someone invested in the future of work, I’ve been experimenting with AI over the past 9 months. Specifically to help with research.

Finding verifiable data and case studies to reinforce my writing (which I will never outsource to either machine or other human!) has long been my most time-consuming activity.

I have lots of ideas, but - as readers of my newsletter will testify to - I only present them as facts, if I can provide peer reviewed studies that show them to be so. Otherwise, they are opinions to be challenged.

I have seen some time-saving in this work, especially recently, as new AI models have been released that provide actual links for me to click through, rather than having to use Claude/ChatGPT etc. as a reference tool and Google as the search engine.

Yet still I find myself having to check everything that AI presents to be as a fact.

Last week I was writing a blog about how to make culture change easier (I used road signage as the case study, based on a visit that I’d made to the Design Museum in London and the subsequent idea that it presented).

When I asked for research on cognitive load and how visuals are processed differently to text it presented me with links to articles through which I was able to get to the research. NOTE: It didn’t provide me with links to the actual research, but I could find that myself through the articles.

At the end of the conversation, Claude then made this statement; ‘Research overwhelmingly supports that when information is presented clearly, consistently, and with cognitive processing in mind, comprehension and action improve dramatically.’

Intrigued, I asked it to provide me with the information that demonstrated this statement to be true. Claude’s response was as follows:

The conversation continued:

Yet, after spending about 45 minutes searching and reading high-level reviews of the foundational research, it was still difficult to say with absolute clarity that ‘Research overwhelmingly supports that when information is presented clearly, consistently, and with cognitive processing in mind, comprehension and action improve dramatically.’

So my next question was obvious:

This exchange reinforces the fact that whilst AI has undoubted benefits to us in the future, it can’t be fully trusted, yet. The fact that the tool itself is telling me to check all of its work is a sign of that.

We’re continually being told that the technology will continue to improve - and tech companies are so confident of that they continue to cut jobs as a result - but we’re still in the 'Propaganda Phase’, where they promise a lot but the product doesn’t fully deliver. However, this is normal when it comes to new technology.

Amara’s Law, named after its creator Roy Amara, states that ‘We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.’

Research company Gartner and researcher Jackie Fenn incorporated this into their ‘Hype Cycle’ which I use when organisations seek immediate cultural transformation as a result of new technology implementations. It looks like this:

With AI being included in every sales pitch I’d say that we’re almost at the ‘Peak of Inflated Expectations’. Although talking to people about AI at a workshop last week I’m starting to see a fall into the Trough of Disillusionment! 

I for one hope that we get to the Plateau of Productivity very soon as fact-checking the work of AI is becoming more time consuming than spending hours searching for the research itself!

To find out more about how to spot and address the signs of toxic culture, grab a copy of Detox Your Culture here or wherever you buy your books.

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