Could your company’s most valuable asset be its culture? In this episode, Hilton Barbour, a seasoned marketing consultant, discusses the vital role of organisational culture. He explains how culture shapes decisions, brand identity, and even the ability to innovate. Hilton explores the connection between culture and strategy, providing real-world examples from companies like Boeing and Nike, showing why this alignment is key to success.

Key points:

• Definition of culture and its impact on business success.

• The importance of aligning culture and strategy for growth.

• Leadership's influence on culture within an organisation.

Listen to discover how culture can become your organisation’s hidden advantage.

Competition time!🏆

For a chance to win a free 'Fix Your Culture! This is How.' e-book by Jeppe Hansgaard and Unicorner Hilton Barbour, simply click here and fill in the form with your answer to the question: 

'Describe an action or a behaviour of a company that you have worked for that demonstrated the culture delivering the brand strategy.'

CLICK HERE TO ENTER

🍀Good luck!🍀

About Hilton Barbour

Hilton Barbour’s first love is marketing, which he believes is the growth engine of any organization. From crafting unique value propositions to nurturing distinctive brands (and even creating a few), he has international client and agency experience in driving growth, building loyal customers, and gaining market share. He has worked across both B2B and B2C sectors, leading global brands and feisty start-ups. This diverse exposure gives him a unique perspective on how to build and execute marketing strategies that deliver.

While marketing can drive growth, Hilton believes that only when employees are fully aligned and committed can an organization achieve real competitive advantage. Culture, he feels, is the fuel of creativity, ingenuity, and agility that enable a firm to truly win with partners and customers.

He fiercely believes in the combination of marketing and culture to differentiate—and win—in the marketplace.

Links 

Full show notes: Unicorny.co.uk 

Podcast video: https://youtu.be/yK9AZEdZcNM

LinkedIn: Hilton Barbour | Rachel Fairley

Website: HiltonBarbour.com

Sponsor: Selbey Anderson 

Other items referenced in this episode:

Procter & Gamble

Ogilvy & Mather

MacLaren

McCann

WPP

Robert Sutton

What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture by Ben Horowitz

A behind-the-scenes look at Boeing’s shifting leadership landscape — and its profound effects by Peter Robison, The Seattle Times

Nike Stock’s 11% Reversal Leads Retail Rout by Derek Saul, Forbes

Hilton Barbour: Culture Interviews

Amazon.com Acquires Zappos.com, Amazon Press Center

The collapse of Enron and the dark side of business by Lesley Curwen, BBC News

Rebrand Right: How to refresh your brand and marketing to grow your business by Rachel Fairley and Sarah Robb

Nokia: The rise and fall of a mobile giant By Dave Lee, BBC News

Hilton Barbour’s interview with Microsoft Canada’s Head of HR Cherise Mendoza

Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella, Greg Shaw and Jill Tracie Nichols

3M's 15% Culture | Cultivate & Pursue Your Innovative Ideas

The Legacy of Herb Kelleher, Cofounder of Southwest Airlines by Bill Taylor,

Harvard Business Review

Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts

Playing to Win by A.G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin 

You're listening to the unicorny marketing show, and I'm your host, Rachel Fairley.

Today we're joined by Hilton Barber, a career marketer who cut his teeth working at Procter and gamble and Gray before stints at Ogilvy and Mather, McLaren, McCann and WPP's tech shop banner, among others.

These days, Hilton's an independent marketing consultant based out of Toronto, and you'll hear he's lost none of his passion for business and the practice of marketing. But while marketing has always been his first love, his real passion is what I was teasing you about at the top of today's show, and that is culture.

Specifically, organisational culture. You've heard organisational design talked about on previous episodes. I mean, this is one of Dom's hot topics, right? And mine.

But organizational design is nothing without the right culture to support it, and that is where we're gonna go today. So the very first question I asked Hilton when we got into the studio was, what is culture?

And he came straight out of the starting box at full speed.

I'll tell you what culture isn't, he.

Told me, before citing lightweight LinkedIn cultural conversations on football tables and the like. The classic definition of culture that he gave is essentially how people act, behave and take decisions.

You may not have heard that definition before, with when no one's looking appended afterwards, but he then gave us something much more powerful. And it's a quote, actually, that's most commonly attributed to Stanford Professor Robert Sutton. And it goes like, your culture can.

Be defined by the worst behavior tolerated by management.

That's so powerful. I'm going to remind you of that again as we close today's episode, because it's worth thinking about in the context of your own business.

Now, Ben Horowitz wrote a great book on culture, and more specifically, how to create it, and the title gives us all such a clue. It's called what you do is who you are. It's really no good saying one thing and then doing another, because what you do is who you are.

So let's go meet Hilton properly. I wanted to understand how culture adds value to business. And this is what he told me.

Well, quite simply, if it's about ultimately how people behave, behave towards each other, behave towards everyone in the ecosystem that they work with. Think of that as partners, vendors, suppliers, and ultimately, customers. That's critical.

There's no organization that can succeed unless their culture and their strategy are expertly aligned. And quite often, when people ask me about why is culture so important? For me, it's as simple as this.

You've defined a strategy that enables you to win in the marketplace. But ultimately, your culture, the people inside your organization, have to act and behave in a way that allows that strategy to succeed.

If they don't, your strategy is dead in the water.

Actually, that's when it becomes really obvious. What about that Boeing example we were talking about? Right? So obvious that the culture was in a mess.

Well, Boeing's a great topical example.

And yes, a lot of people have spoken about the distance between where management sitting in Chicago and where engineering sitting in Seattle weren't even on the same page. And that had tragic, literally tragic consequences.

But I think as marketers, there's probably another example, more recent and more topical for us as well.

Everybody is looking at Nike, a brand that you and I have spoken about numerous times and exalted and loved and adored by marketers across the world, but their business is down 11%. Their CEO, Donohue, would suggest that part of that is because of remote working and a lack of innovation inside the organization.

He's probably right. But again, I come back to is the culture they have at Nike allowing their strategy, or what will likely be a new strategy for them to succeed again?

If it doesn't, that strategy will fail. And that would be a dire situation for Nike and for legions of marketers who've grown up exalting and loving and adoring that brand.

I mean, I believed all of this from the beginning, but I realized afterwards that I sort of believed it in a kind of academic way. But I was in a business where the culture was beautiful and it was quite slow, but it was very kind. It was collaborative, it was thoughtful.

Things happen for the right reasons, and they usually worked. And there was a new CEO came in, and within a couple of weeks, it went from being really wonderful to so toxic. I mean, so toxic.

And that's when I suddenly realized that, yes, you're right, it's the culture of how people behave and take decisions, because people would replicate that toxicity from the top. Right, that behavior.

But it was also about the fact that they were making really poor decisions as a result of it, and that it was changed from the top.

The role that leadership had, and then going back to that business many years later and discovering that that sits like a kind of toxic point in history, because culture has a memory, you know, it's like a living organism, isn't it? But it's incredible, the relationship between how people think and feel and do and how the business actually performs.

It's so obvious when you think about it, 100%.

And we as marketers do this often, especially in b two B marketing.

Rachel, an area that you and I have lived and breathed for years is that we'll believe that b two b people are somehow different when they walk in the door of the company that they work for. They're not. They're still humans. And that inherently is the issue at hand.

There's no human in any social situation, and your culture is a social situation, that you don't act and behave in a way that makes you safe. Very few people are going to act in a way that's going to get them dismissed or ridiculed, ostracized or sidelined. That's just not going to happen.

You get the mimicking and the sort of rinse and repeat because it's safe. It's safe to do that well.

And you get the signals and cues from your leadership, I think. Again, back to strategy and culture.

If your strategy says, we need to be innovative and move quickly, and your culture recognizes that it takes seven or eight pieces of paper and 25 signatures and 35 meetings to move anything forward, your culture is inherently dictating that that strategy of nimble and agile and quick is never going to happen. The other classic example is we're a customer centric organization.

Yet the people at the point of contact with customer are unable to make a decision in that moment to solve the needs and challenges of the customer that they're facing. Again, you can't do that.

I get that. But then why should marketers care?

Oh, I adore that question. It's one that I get every day. For me, it's quite simple.

Every day, marketers wake up looking for competitive advantage and differentiation in the marketplace. How can I help my organization grow? How can I gain customers? How can I gain share?

You can't do any of those things if the culture of your organization isn't 100% behind your efforts. A dear, dear friend of mine, Stan slap in San Francisco, has this wonderful line. You can't sell it outside until you've sold it inside.

And I think that's absolutely true.

If your culture isn't committed to innovation or customer centricity or lowest price, insert Amazon, insert Walmart, then there is no way as a marketer, that we're creating messages for the market and for our customers that aren't inherently going to fail when they meet our organization. So as a marketer, to not think that culture is a vital tool and weapon in your arsenal is to miss the biggest competitive advantage you have.

Yeah, but I think that marketers get scared of it because it's not under their control. It's something you have to negotiate and work with others to do. It's not within your domain of responsibility.

And so I think often marketers, they just put their blinkers on and they're like, meh, I could do that. But it's not, you know, it's not mine. Something I have to share. It's just a bit too hard.

Right, sure.

You've done something amazing, though. I mean, I love these. I do my pilates to them.

You have been interviewing some of the leading lights, I mean, literally the movers and shakers across businesses. You've got. There must be at least 60 or something. Now, interviews, I mean, they're phenomenal.

What's the biggest thing that you've taken away from that experience of talking to such, well, people in the thick of it?

Well, the reality is, and I'll go back to a comment you made a moment ago, culture is shared by everyone. But I also remember times that you and I would sit and say, the brand is owned by everyone in the organization. And that is true as well.

So, yes, functionally, we may point to HR or chief people, officers, and say, the humans inside our building are your responsibility.

The truth of the matter is they're the responsibility of the entire C suite, and they're a responsibility of everyone who leads a team inside your organization. Because if the entire company is not rowing in the same direction, and that's the same between marketing, between it, between HR.

Culture may functionally sit within HRDH, but we all have accountability and responsibility to say, how am I fostering in my area, the culture that's going to let our companies succeed? That's a shared responsibility. And for marketing, who does that role externally?

To not play a role internally, again, to me, is an incredibly missed opportunity.

So what difference can a culture make to a business when it is tethered to the commercial reality versus not?

So I'd suggest every day your culture is tethered to your business reality. I think, again, we have discussions about culture and cultural metrics like employee engagement, retention, attrition.

How long does it take to replace a person when we lose them to a competitor? I'd suggest that almost any metric inside your organization is inherently an outcome of your culture.

Look at the number of new products we released last year. Was that in line with the number that we wanted? Look at our call center. Is that related to our culture?

And again, perhaps a classic example is Zappos. Zappos was a culture that Amazon spent over a billion dollars to acquire. Why?

Because Jeff Bezos realized that Tony Hsieh had absolutely captured customer centricity at its heart. Go to Zappos and ask them what they measure. They don't measure call time.

In fact, they've got an award for the person who spends the longest time online with a customer. Why? Because for them, they recognize that that's how they get stickiness, that's how they get customer loyalty, and that's embedded in their culture.

So for me, the sense that your culture is not part of your commercial reality, again, is to undermine its power. It's to undermine its potential and the opportunity that your culture provides.

I think you just said it. It's about the measures that actually matter for your business.

So if you know that loyalty drives revenue and that loyalty requires the person to take the time to solve the problems as they come up, and that that is a driver, then you measure the right things. I think the disconnect comes when people measure things for the sake of it. And that's not the reality of how the business makes its money.

It's just a measurement. So, for example, did you stick to the script? Were you only on the call for a certain amount of time? You can measure all these things.

But if the commercial reality is that that is not what drives the revenue and the recurring revenue, then what are you doing? So I wonder whether everything is tied to a commercial reality, but just not necessarily the one the business actually needs.

We, again, are circling the same conversation around strategy and culture.

You and I have worked in numerous environments where we create very slick marketing dashboards that look wonderful, and they've got things that go upwards to the right, and they've got things that look like they're growing over time.

And we have discussions about LTV versus CAC and all of these wonderful things where I might question if the dashboards we create are inherently about the metrics that really matter or if they're performative versus about our performance. And therein again, comes back to why should marketing care? Marketing is at the center of the commercial engine of an organization.

So for us, we need to, with every action that we take, say, how is this commercially benefiting the enterprise? And what role does culture, our people, play in driving that metric?

We both had the opportunity to work on really successful brands or brands that needed turning around to be successful. But we've also worked on brands where, I mean, they sort of died in front of us. You worked on Enron, didn't you? As an agency side?

We both worked on Nokia.

Truth be told, when my fascination with culture began, it really was looking back over my career, both as an individual inside organizations and saying, where did I thrive and where did I struggle to survive? And culture played a significant role in answering that question.

But by the same token, looking at the clients that I'd worked with, very much the same thing. So Enron was a significant moment for me. It was an organization that at the time was lauded by some of the best business thinkers in the world.

Gary Hamill wrote about Enron as this is the organization that will define businesses for the next 50 years. Working inside that organization, I've never seen more alphas in one room than any other situation.

However, as you looked at that culture and as you looked at what they were trying to do, it was abundantly clear that for them, they thought the rules didn't apply to them. And I might suggest that history proved them wrong.

I mean, they definitely set an imprint for the future, didn't they? They left a legacy, which is not exactly the legacy that they thought about.

I've been reflecting as well, because I'm writing this book with Sarah Robb.

And just thinking back, like, even our experiences at Nokia, I remember we went for a meeting that was supposed to last a couple of hours and we were there a couple of days because everybody had to have their say. And then I remember afterwards, somebody coming up to me to say, right, shall we decide what we're going to do now?

And I was like, well, what was that all about?

Absolutely.

I just thought to myself, my God, how do you get anything done? Like, the market is moving so fast, smartphones were starting to come in and market was moving so fast.

And it's like we've just spent two days you know, with no real conclusion.

My experiences at Nokia were not significantly different. And I think again, as I reflect back on that, this was an organization that mistook consensus for collaboration.

And I think therein is probably an interesting definition moment for anyone listening to this. Do you work inside a collaborative organization or do you work inside a consensus driven organization?

Because the decisions you make will differ significantly depending on how you define it. But Nokia was a phenomenal example. This was an organization with over 80% of global market share. That is a dream for any marketer.

But the ability to innovate and more importantly get those innovations to market to the customer was where that consensus driven culture actually collapsed upon itself. It wasn't the fact that they didn't have everything that the Apple iPhone had. They just didn't get it to market fast enough.

And if I may, going back to what we said earlier, there are echoes in that from what everyone is saying about Nike at the moment, that their inability to get their innovations to market in the way that they've been famed for for decades is why they are losing share and why they are losing popularity at an alarming rate. Again, culture.

Yeah, culture. You've got an amazing interview with HR leader at Microsoft.

The interview was fantastic because the way that that culture at Microsoft was turned around is, I mean, it's subject to books, but it's fascinating, isn't it, that leadership, that focus on culture. I think Sachin, he's even said that he was like the kind of chief culture officer or something, didn't he?

Well, Sachin Nadila is probably the poster child for doing culture reframing at scale. And his book hit refresh is an absolute must read for anybody who either works in technology or works in culture or, or in marketing for that matter.

And I think the phrase that sort of coined it for me was we need to move from an organization of know it all to question it all.

And I think for anybody who ever worked with Microsoft during the heydays of balma, et cetera, et cetera, and to see the significant difference in how Microsoft people would show up to meetings in those days to how Microsoft people show up to meetings these days is day and night.

But they're in that shift in the culture, that shift in the orientation from the leadership all the way down through the enterprise changed how they were perceived by customers.

And instead of being something that people felt forced to, they actually felt that they wanted to invite Microsoft to the conversation because that dynamic can change so significantly.

We'll put a link to that episode of that interview, we'll put it in the show notes, because I think it's a must listen. So why should marketing care about culture?

Simplest terms, it's really your only sustainable competitive advantage. That is, if your culture is aligned to your strategy. And I use those words deliberately. Sustainable, competitive, advantageous.

Think of everything that you do inside your organization, and for a moment consider how easy it is to mimic or copy most of that. What can't be copied is your culture and how your organization makes decisions. No other organization can do that to the best of their ability.

So if you have a culture that can adapt to your strategy, that is a competitive advantage you want to hold on to for dear life.

I buy that completely. But why does HR think it's their responsibility?

I think, in truth, some of the greatest HR people that I've ever worked with fundamentally understand and spend as much time as they can creating exactly the type of culture I've been talking about through this entire podcast. Their function obviously is under tremendous pressure. Like marketers are look at everything from return to office.

Look at things like hiring, look at things like AI and the impact and how that's fundamentally changing the landscape of how employees and employers interact. So HR have a significant amount on their plate as they to grapple with exactly the same types of things that marketing is held to.

How do we create a thriving enterprise where what we set as our strategy is actually able to be executed?

So I think the greatest organizations are ones where marketing and HR have a deep respect for each other, have a deep understanding of each other's competencies, and care very deeply about working in partnership versus silos to create that kind of environment, that set of conditions internally where people can act, behave, and ultimately make decisions that move the strategy forward. That to me is a mature, thriving organization.

Marketing and HR connected at the hip, creating the environment where the entire organization can succeed.

There are some businesses that do that brilliantly, aren't there? Like I think we've talked about three m before, we all wish we bought shares early. They have that as their culture, right?

And it comes down to this sort of idea of discretionary effort that having a culture that thrives like that brings.

Well, one of the most phenomenal moments that I've ever heard. And as a marketer, you can appreciate this turn of phrase. I heard a keynote speech from the head of innovation at three MH.

Now this is the organization renowned for post it notes and all of these great things. And he said, I know I've done my job when I can increase the share of shower for everyone on my team. And that to me, I was astounded.

I'm like, what the frig is sheer of shower? He then went on to describe it as if I create an environment.

We curious people recognize that their curiosity is actually desired, wanted and expected.

Then I will create an environment where they will think about the business, their discretionary effort, not what we pay them for from nine to five, but they will actually likely be thinking about our business in the most creative setting we know of in the planet. And that's your morning shower.

So for him, he said, if I create an environment and a culture where I can increase the share of shower, I have done my job perfectly. And that phrase has always stuck with me over the years.

How do you activate a culture?

It is not without its complexity. And often that's one of the first rejoinders that comes back. Culture is so big, it's so amorphous, it's so difficult to put your hands around.

And there is some truth to that. But I think ultimately the simplest thing is what is our expectation for our strategy to succeed?

And I know I'm now being overly simplistic, but that's the ultimate reality. And I think there's organizations, and we can debate whether we think their cultures are fantastic or not. But you can look at Walmart.

Their strategy of everyday low prices means that that flows through the entire organization.

And yes, we can bemoan and criticize them for how poorly they pay their people and the fact that their people actually struggle, but in some way, that is a reflection of their strategy. By the same token, we can look at Southwest Airlines on the other side of that equation.

And their strategy, as envisioned by Herb Keller, their founder for many years, recognized that to differentiate in the value side of the airline business, they needed to differentiate on service. The Legion of stories about customer service at Southwest Airlines was again a direct reflection of the culture actually moving the strategy forward.

Other great examples, four Seasons.

A great canadian, iconic canadian brand differentiates on their culture and more importantly, how their culture delivers super premium guest experiences. So I think there are numerous ways, numerous examples of looking at what your strategy requires, classic one, is always innovation.

So how are we able to ensure that our people can be as creative and as innovative inside our organization? And what processes, systems, leadership, rewards, recognition, have we got in place that stands in the way of that happening?

What I'm thinking of when I'm listening to you is that I've worked in cultures where they really want to become very innovative. They want to create products rather than playing Pac man and acquiring them, essentially, but they value tenure.

And so what you end up with is people who have only really worked in one company, and where the kind of politics of the culture of who knows who, and all of that is much more important, actually, than fresh ideas, fresh ways of thinking, different models, different. And so you have to think quite hard about how you've set everybody up to actually achieve what you're asking them to do in that strategy.

I mean, that's ultimately what we're talking about, is how you shape a culture to make what you want to happen happen, to make it possible. I dont know that leaders always do that.

I think sometimes they think of these things as separate, that the culture is one thing and the strategy is another.

William likely millions of organizations around the world that have that exact struggle. I think, Rachel, you bring up a phenomenal, a daily example, probably around the world.

But you're right to say we want an innovative culture and to proclaim that great ideas can come from anywhere. And then every innovation meeting goes on and on.

And then there's a moment's pause, and everyone looks to the head of the table, to the most tenured or the most senior person in the room, and says, so what are we going to do now?

That story is a cliche, but it's also because it's true, I think, that the biggest struggle, and fortunately, this is a conversation that is increasingly gaining momentum and gaining volume, the greatest leaders are the ones that have the self awareness to understand and the vulnerability and the humility to understand that they may be a contributing factor to the culture not being what is required.

The organization's that have the most potential for success moving forward, in my opinion, are those that are prepared to look internally and actually audit the culture that they have and say, what systems, what processes, what ways of making decisions, what leadership, what capability and capacity do we have internally?

And I would, again, and this is my flag waving canadian in me, I would urge every marketer to read Roger Martin's playing to win, which I consider some of the most definitive strategy writing out in the marketplace. And Roger is quite clear about the role of culture in facilitating any strategy to occur.

I'm always surprised and a little saddened that we will spend hours and days doing a financial audit of our organization, which is actually the outcome of every decision we've made. And yet we'll spend no time doing a culture audit to determine how we actually make the decisions that ultimately end up on our balance sheet.

If we spend as much time doing a culture audit, as we do doing a financial audit, I strongly believe more organizations would be stronger, would be better, would be more innovative, would be more customer centric, and ultimately more likely to win in the marketplace.

So when I do that kind of work, I always look for three things. I don't know about you, but I always look for three things.

One is, do people know how to recognize something that is like a hygiene thing that needs to be fixed?

So for example, the phone's ringing and they don't get answered or the emails don't get responded to or the tickets don't get closed or whatever, but the sort of things where you're like, oh my goodness, people, that's basics, right? And then, so I think of those as hygiene things.

And then the next thing is things that are improvements where you can come up with really innovative ways to improve the experience. And often that's about accelerating the transition. So how do you get somebody from putting stuff in a basket to actually buying it?

Or how do you get somebody who's bought something to make the full use of it, but it's that kind of accelerant to get the pipeline, to get the revenue moving and the customer satisfaction moving. And then the third thing I look for is do people know how to recognize what is the antithesis of the brand?

So if you are all about speed and yet your product takes an age to set up, to download, to install, to like, oh my God, it's still trying to get it set up, then that's a problem.

So I often ask questions that are just seeing whether somebody feels that they're empowered and knowledgeable in their job for how to fix the hygiene, make the improvements, and really take the things that are the antithesis of the way their business wants to be out of the equation. And that, to me, always tells me how connected the strategy and the culture really are and where the problems lie.

The things that you have experienced, where you're like that, oh my God, that.

One of the core realizations for many of the leaders that I've interviewed in those culture interviews you referenced earlier is understanding that if everyone inside the organization is not aware of what the strategy is, and more importantly, not aware of their own individual contribution to that strategy, there is no way that the culture will ever align to the strategy. And again, I think we lose sight the more senior we get inside an organization.

We forget that because we've read a strategy deck or seen a marketing plan a thousand times, that the person at the call center, the person at the retail store, the person building the product, the person servicing the product recognizes and understands that strategy and more importantly, recognizes how their own individual behaviors, actions, and decisions contribute to that.

So at the risk of being glib and overly simplifying it, one of the first things is always, how universal is the strategy understood by everybody who touches it?

Yeah, and that's why I love that tv show, by the way, the one where they send the CEO undercover, you know, and they go off and they experience what it's really like working in the business.

And there's always a moment where they're like, oh, my goodness, I didn't realize it was so difficult, because if you're in the thick of things making all the decisions, you so know what's going on. But if you're down in a depot or, you know, a shop or, like, even in a different corridor of the same building, you're not party to all of that.

And so your experience is very different. The way you feel about and think about making decisions is different.

One of the biggest struggles that I think every organization is facing, and again, wilt we see it played out in the media and in LinkedIn daily, is this return to office conversation that's happening at the moment.

And legitimately, if you put aside all the clickbait headlines, inherently, at the center of it is this conversation around trust, the trust between an employer and an employee. And quite rightly, many employees are saying, during the pandemic, you were comfortable and you trusted me.

During a time where many organizations saw record growth and record profits, you trusted me to do my job sitting in the lounge.

Now that the pandemic is over, and now that some of that business growth may have softened and our profits may have gotten sluggish, you're telling me that I need to come back.

I need to commute for 2 hours, come back to a downtown, call, spend 20 pound on lunche to come into a building where historically, I wasn't always my most productive. And you're telling me that's the answer?

My question to that is always two things. One is, is it because they've invested so much in real estate, they need to use it?

And the second thing is, is it a generational problem that the leaders don't know how to manage in that remote way? And they coped with it because they had to for Covid. But they want to see you. They want to see you in front of them at your desk.

Those are the questions I ask myself. This is like a new era, I think, that is emerging, and I think everybody's shaping it. So Hilton, what's next for you?

I mean, obviously you're on my speed dial for anything to do with culture, but where can listeners get in touch with you? How can they get help?

So you'll find me opining and moaning and droning on in LinkedIn. You can always find me there. Hilton Barber, you do not drone.

I am going to just refute that straight away. I find your stuff is really useful, actually, and I bookmark. So great, okay, so people can find you on LinkedIn.

And then you've got a website, haven't you? Hiltonbarber.com. and then we will put a link to the, to the podcasts for all those interviews you did, because that is a mine.

It's a treasure trove of insight from people who are right in the middle of doing that kind of work and what they're learning from it.

And I, I think that's fantastic when you can share what you're learning, almost whispering to yourself a year ago and going, if you'd have known this, you'd have done things differently and better. You know, I think it's fantastic.

Thank you for this conversation, and thank you for being a marketer who believes in the power of culture. I've got to tell you, it is a genuine passion of mine because I do think it is the most underutilized resource that we have at our fingertips.

And I do think as a marketer, we need to lean into it in collaboration with our partners in HR and our partners in it to really create a thriving culture where our enterprises can succeed.

And there you have it. Massive thanks to Hilton for the time he spent with us and the wisdom that he shared.

Your homework this week, Unicorners is to channel the quotes that we started with. So Robert Sutton said, culture is the worst behavior tolerated by management. And Ben Horowitz said, what you do is who you are.

Spend some time thinking about both of those and really how they apply to your business and what changes you could realistically make to improve the experience to make you more effective.

Thanks for listening, and if you've liked the show, please review us on your favorite podcast platform and subscribe to make sure you never miss a moment. Thank you for joining unicorny.