Every organisation has a culture, but not every organisation understands it.

How do you define a workplace culture, let alone measure it!

In this first episode of a two-part conversation, Dave is joined by brand and culture specialist Matt Robinson from CultureNav to explore why this topic has become one of the greatest competitive advantages available to modern organisations.

Drawing on decades of experience working with businesses of every size, Matt shares his journey into organisational culture, explaining why leaders often confuse measures of their culture with employee engagement stats and/or workplace perks, and why genuine culture is reflected in the decisions people make every day.

The conversation explores the red flags and warning signs, highlighting why culture isn't created through mission statements or values on a wall, but through a deeper understanding of people, a focus on collaboration, connection, and empathy and consistent leadership habits and actions.

This episode lays the foundations for Part Two, where the discussion moves into how culture can be measured and developed using data-driven insights.

Key Talking Points

• Matt's leadership journey and how he became passionate about organisational culture.
• What culture means, what it is, and what it isn’t
• Why culture is increasingly becoming a strategic advantage.
• Why values only matter when they influence everyday behaviour.
• Why organisations often misunderstand the culture they have created.
• The importance of humility and curiosity in effective leadership.
• Why evidence should replace assumptions when talking about culture.
• How leaders shape culture through everyday decisions.

So welcome back to the Connected Leadership podcast by Zentano. My name is Dave Morris. And today is a Voices of Leadership episode with my guest, Matt Robinson. More about Matt in a second. Now today's episode tackles one of the most talked about, least understood and hardest to measure topics in leadership, workplace culture. In an era of AI, skill shortages and constant change, has culture become the hardest business advantage to get right? McKinsey's 2026 global research.

of over 10,000 executives found that leaders are shifting their focus away from short-term resilience towards building long-term productivity through AI, but also organizational culture remains one of the biggest determinants of whether any transformation will succeed. So that begs the question, has culture moved from being an HR issue to becoming one of the few remaining competitive advantages? Microsoft's latest work trend research found that 80 % of employees say they lack sufficient time or energy

to do their work effectively. Slightly worrying. Meanwhile, over half of leaders believe productivity still needs to increase. So that creates a fascinating tension. Many organizations are trying to solve overload with AI, but AI doesn't fix poor leadership, low trust, silo behavior, lack of clarity, or a fear of speaking up. Those remain culture problems. And many organizations will say their culture is great. They'll point to engagement surveys and awards and benefit packages as proof. But what if?

much of that data isn't actually telling the truth.

My guest today is Matt Robinson from CultureNav. Matt has spent his entire career working across brand, employee experience and employer value propositions and has become increasingly focused on one big question. What is really going on inside organizations and what is hiding beneath the surface?

In this conversation, we'll explore his journey, how his thinking on culture has evolved, how leaders can move beyond assumptions to fully understand what it is like to work inside their organizations and with that data into hand.

how they can make better decisions. So Matt, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you.

I think it's going to be quite a big discussion today. My plan probably is to do this over two sessions, so we'll explore your journey and your thoughts on culture. And then maybe in part two next week, we'll dive into the work that CultureNAF does in terms of how we measure culture. Fascinating topic for me.

Absolutely is, yeah, absolutely a very deep, a very deep topic too. Yeah.

I'm very deep. So let's start

with your beginnings. If you could answer the first question, which is what shaped Matt's life? Go down to the early days, what was your influences and where did leadership really show up first for you in life?

yeah, good question. Great question, in fact. So a bit of background. I were I born and raised in the Northwest in Cheshire. a bit of a sporting background in my in my younger days. during those younger days, really that's where I suppose I learned lessons in culture, without knowing at the time what they were or how or

Mm-hmm.

that it was in fact culture. So I spent a lot of time playing rugby as a younger as a younger person. and in that playing rugby.

understood the context of I guess culture again without a bit without being able to put the label of culture on that thing. So that was more about when you're playing the game, understanding what's happening, the dynamics of what's happening when it's happening, rather than it being leadership kind of point someone in the direct direction, say, Hey, you go over there and do this and you come here and do this. More understanding the fact that actually what's happening here in the dynamics is about pulling people together and understanding how people work together. So

At an early age, probably you know, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, is where I sort of started to learn that stuff.

Okay, mean sport is usually for a lot of us where we start to, as you said, we don't realise we're learning about culture but we are, we? it's quite, yeah. And did you say when I first spoke to you that you had a vice captain role? So you had a degree of influence over this as well.

Yeah, absolutely. So obviously the captain's the captain, has you know, ha has the armband and everybody kind of looks to the captain. But really the captain's the tali in our team, the the captain was the talisman, whereas I was kind of more the heart and soul of the team. So I would be there to motivate people. I w I was there to get people up and going and pull people together. So where the captain was making the decisions, I was kind of doing the work behind the scenes, so to speak, to pull people together. And it was more a role of, I guess.

Whilst there was a label to it, Vice Captain, it was kind of an unofficial it was official, but it was kind of an unofficial sort of way of working, if that makes sense.

Yeah,

yeah. So, I mean, I think a lot of people though in businesses have influence without formal authority. mean, some people have the formal authority in terms of their position, but others don't, they? But they can still be very, very influential, which has a massive impact on workplace culture. So there's definitely a parallel there, I would say.

Yeah, absolutely. And it and what's what was interesting in the parallel or looking at that parallel really was in that team or in teams that I have played in, it's kind of the bigger characters would carry more influence. And that's the same really in what I've experienced working in culture. You know, if if culture isn't intentionally kind of designed and built, the biggest voices, the biggest characters, the people with the most charisma tend to kind of dominate that stuff. And so looking at that parallel as a vice captain in rugby, it's your job to

acknowledge those characters, but perhaps manage them in ways where they don't get to dominate others because others have different skills and different ways of working. So the parallel does does exist, yes.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think when we first spoke, you said that your journey wasn't just team based, you also experienced individual performance too. So can we sort of dive into that? What did you learn from all aspects of competitive sport that you got involved in? And particularly about what you learned about performance and mindset as well.

Yeah, absolutely. So I mean I was a I was a prop forward. So yeah, you're

Yeah.

kind kinda kind of playing that role that it kind of goes along with it, that you have to get in the gym. you

Yeah.

know, you you can't do that without a bit of heft and a bit of strength. So alongside the rugby, lots of weight training, circuit training, but weight training mainly. And that at an early age switched something on for me.

Okay.

I guess the resistance piece, it's you against the weights, you versus gravity, essentially.

and so whilst the parallel with playing with rugby, I started to do Olympic style weightlifting, so you know, a clean and jerk snatch. and had was naturally quite strong, quite fortunately, and entered entered it, was entered into a competition and won the competition. So I was a junior national national weightlifting champion at an early age.

wow.

and what was interesting with that was the mindset switch from team to individual. So where the team kind of mindset is you're pulling people in and you're looking

dynamics and the context in the moment, the fight with the weightlifting is just with yourself. And you're sure you're fighting gravity, but actually you're fighting yourself. Can you get that weight? Can you add

up here.

a little bit yeah, exactly that. Can you add that little bit more? Where's the performance? Where can you adjust? And all that kind of stuff. And it it's a bit of a mind weightlifting is a bit of a mind game.

Did you, mean, at that point, I mean, I've never performed elite sport, but I guess it's to a certain extent, it doesn't matter what level you play at, when, you know, the more elite, the more tougher the competition, did you have to manage a lot of self-doubt and performance pressure that was actually not put on you by anybody else, but it was created by you effectively?

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And it and it's i i in the moment it could be crippling. You know, say you've just I don't know, let's say you just managed to get a personal best, fabulous. But then the push to drive something beyond your personal best is always there because your best is never good enough in that scenario.

okay.

But also when you kind of reach the limits or you're getting towards the limits, your mindset you start to play games with yourself. You know, the the the voice kicks in of, Well, can you? That's a little bit more than you struggled with the last one. Can you do this? Are you

You

capable?

Are you able? What's your capacity to get this thing in the air? All that kind of stuff. and managing that self-doubt is a very difficult process, you know, and and again, parallels. I've seen that in myself and others through my career in business. You know, self-doubt, people are racked with self-doubt, mask it very well, but when it comes to performance time, that self-doubt will always out.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. We'll get onto workplace culture later on, but I think if you have a workplace culture which is solely driven by performance, these are the sorts of issues that are gonna come up. Rich and I have done a whole series recently on confidence in leadership. And I think this is where confidence starts to ebb away, isn't it? Where, as you said, those doubts come into your mind, you start asking yourself those questions like, am I good enough? What happens if I fail? What's gonna happen to me? All of those types of questions start to ping up in your mind and they just eat away at your confidence.

Yeah, they absolutely do. And it and it confidence is a great word, isn't it? Because people, you know, people are confident. But actually, confidence and performance, I guess, are for me. I guess if you're confident in your performance, then you will perform. You don't have to think about confidence because you're performing. But there's a lot of preamble in terms of I'm confident I'm going to get this done. But then the confidence

Hmm.

ebbs away when actually the challenge occurs. And so there's that whole piece of kind of like,

masking confidence. A lot of people do it. And again it goes back to what I was talking about, people with charisma, big characters. There's a lot of confidence in there. But is it is it justified? Is it real? Can they perform when the time comes? And it and it's and it's that

Yeah.

really that I've seen. I only think myself and others, sort of in my career.

You've obviously seen a lot of different businesses, both in terms of the businesses that you've worked for and now the businesses that you go in on a consultant level. How often do you see real, grounded, sustainable confidence inside cultures?

Not as often as you'd think.

No.

and it's what's interesting with that is you will see, or we I have seen, at a leadership level, and depending on the organization, again, confidence can be a mask. Leaders are

Yes, absolutely.

leaders aren't always confident. They will, you they pr they'll project confidence. They have to. That's part of their job. But at the same time, they're they're wrapped with a self-doubt. And so around a board table, decisions are made and it's all very yes, we'll do this, yes, this is definitely.

However, being a good leader requires actual grounded confidence. And it's very I've not seen it very often. There's probably a handful

No,

of times.

it's interesting. mean, Rich and I have spoken about this on the podcast recently quite a lot. We've just launched our own online program about confidence and leadership. And the point we make in that program is that confidence is a skill that you can learn. And the more you try to fake it till you make it or perform it or pretend, that will get found out, particularly when the pressure ramps up, which in a lot of business at the moment, the pressure is ramping up for all sorts of reasons.

So I think it's a really, really interesting issue and it has a direct impact on workplace culture, clearly.

hugely, hugely. If if you have

Yeah, yeah.

if you have leaders who are grounded and confident, the rhetoric is usually it's not hyperbolic. So it will be genuine. Yeah, communication will be genuine. People will believe in leaders. They will f there's more purpose behind people below the leaders. Managers understand things better, things are clearer, things get done quicker. Where leaders are perform being performatively confident, that doesn't that doesn't really follow.

You know,

No.

it the the actions won't follow what's said.

No. So you started off in sport that taught you a lot of things about culture that you didn't know it was lessons in culture at the time, but looking back, you realize it was. It taught you about confidence and mindset management as being a big part of how you perform well. And then I guess you went into the world of work. So just talk about your early career. How did that shape how you think about communication and influence, which is what culture is all about basically, isn't it?

Absolutely is, yeah, it absolutely is. So my early career, I by by by training and by education, I am a graphic designer, I suppose is what you call

Okay.

me. so I went to university, got a degree in visual communication, came straight out as back in a long time ago, nineteen ninety when was that? Nineteen ninety eight, entered the workforce as a multimedia designer. which at the time was a really cool job to have. You know, they were web designers,

Yeah.

they were multimedia multimedia designers.

so spent a couple of years kind of working, not really aware of culture, just kind of knows and knows in a Mac, designing stuff, making stuff. and kind of a couple of years into that, you kind of bring your head up from the minutiae of the internal focus of the work, because the work itself gets easier as you you know become more confident with it,

Yeah? Yeah.

and you kind of bring your head up and then you start to realize people around you a little bit. You start to understand the dynamics of that business and how people operate. And I'm not saying within a couple of years, but

that that comes quite quick, but with the I suppose ability that you as your ability increases with what you're actually doing, you are able to step back a little bit more because you have more capacity to kind of be in the environment. And so the early career was a lot of that, multimedia, web, a little bit of animation. And I did that for about four or five, no, three or four years. Kind of came through that and started to get interested in brand development.

Okay,

yeah.

For for for the fact that you multimedia's what it was and everything else. But actually it's a that's the d one of the delivery mechanisms for a larger thing, and that larger thing was brand. And I got really i interested in developing brands. How what's the purpose behind brands? Why why is somebody building a website for this brand? What's its purpose? What does it do? Why does it do it? So started to ask questions, and then kind of but by by way of career, became a bit of a brand specialist. Read a lot about it, learnt a lot about

Okay.

it, started

started to move my career more towards it, moved out of the digital space and more into the strategic kind of brand development space. And that's really where I started to see I suppose the cultural stuff. Again, aware of the word culture at that point, but not really able to kind of link it into what I was what I was experiencing, what I saw others experiencing.

I'm when you're doing, I mean, I've not done brand development as a job, I came through a professional sales background, but one of the things I had to have in professional sales, and I think I'm guessing that this would apply to your work in brand as well, is you have to start to understand the psychology of influencing other people's behavior. Did you sort of do some study on that, or is it just something you sort of started to realize as you picked up experience on the job?

On the job realization and experience really. It was it was the whole piece of I guess it's growth. You could call it growth. You start you know start small with a career, you're doing something, you move a bit further, you you d take a bit of a pivot, and with that pivot comes a new challenge. And that was those new challenges where I started to kind of see the psychology side of things, where yeah,

Okay.

you can design a brand, you you know, you can spend millions designing brands. But if the psychology behind that brand and the purpose isn't right, then all those millions of pounds are to waste for the fact that

it's not gonna land with the intended audience. So that's where it kind of started to click for me in terms of what's this brand promising? What are they getting?

Okay, interesting. And you used a very interesting word there, purpose. So I know when we first talked, you said at this stage of your career, there was a sort of realization in your head that actually output without having purpose behind it just kind of feels empty to me. There needs to be more to it than just creating output.

Yeah, absolutely that. There's this as a graphic designer, and if any graphic designers you know follow the pod listen to the podcast, they'll get this. we'll be handed a piece of work in their career and we'll we'll be told, can you make that look pretty?

Yeah.

And

it's one of those things where you will receive a huge amount of information, whether it's data or it's a document or it's something really complex. Don't on your desk, just just just make that pretty, make it look really good. It's like, well, there's a lot more to it than just making something look really good. And

Yeah.

so it's the purpose behind what you're doing, what you're creating really, and the promise it gives and how it delivers that promise is what's important there. And so if you kind of fast forward that there to the brands, when you're developing something that doesn't have purpose, where it looks fantastic.

It could look amazing, but there's no purpose behind it. There's no real connection, emotion emotional connection behind it. it will it will not land well. It absolutely won't. And that came as I started to move from, I guess, brands, pure brand, into employer brand. Yeah.

Okay.

So I guess you realized that you wanted more than just delivering work, that you wanted more to it than that. And so you went into what, moving into more employee benefits, that type of work, was it?

Yeah, that yes, that's very interesting. So that that came by way of obviously work working in an agency, creative director of an agency. We had a lot of work for one particular client. There was a particular type of work that was different to other types of work. That

Mm-hmm.

work was broadly employee benefits at the time. this is quite a time ago. So it was employee

Yeah.

employee benefits brochures, employee benefits websites, little communicate tactical communication pieces. And that was quite interesting. I thought, well, hang on, the messaging here is different, the audience is different.

It's a captive audience you you're working with because they work for it for an im a business

Mmm.

and you're communicating to that particular audience. Well, this is interesting. So I kind of I kind of got into that and obviously started designing these things, seeing how they were delivered, and then actually seeing the results on the far side of it where money had been spent, time had been spent on producing something of quality that went into

Yeah.

an employer that had absolutely zero effect.

what?

Why was that then?

Well, it's it's for the fact that at the time employee benefits were kind of but they still are in many ways, a tick list item for kind of HR leaders in that come and work for us, you'll get X days off a year, you'll get you know, this many sick days you have, you can do there's a bike scheme, there's this, that come we're a brilliant employer. Well, employee benefits aren't culture. They are they're

No.

the nice to have sprinklings on the top of a culture cake, if you so to speak.

And these employ employee benefits brochures and all these media that were going into these custom these customers at the time, they looked great, but they were broadly ignored. And it's kind of like, well, why why were they ignored? And that's where the the spark ignited for me in terms of what what isn't landing? The design is great,

Right.

the quality is great, the content is great, why isn't this landing? And and that's where the I guess that's where the fascination started with culture for me.

Yeah, I think you said when we first spoke that, you know, because I remember when employee benefits were really taking off and everyone was trying to do it and do it well. But I think you said what you started to realise was it was being used by many employers as a superficial fix for actually issues that were much, much deeper in their businesses, issues around retention, engagement, which sounds very familiar to today's world, to be fair. So just talk about that. How did you get that early exposure to employee engagement and retention challenges?

for your work.

So that that was when I was I moved from that into pure employer branding, which is where we're developing kind of careers websites and you can run it career,

Right.

you know, careers content for these businesses. And the messaging

Right.

in that is very much our culture's brilliant, come work for us.

Mm-hmm.

And in that is where that disconnect happened, right? In terms of this looks great, this is what this business is saying it is, yet on the other side of it, people are leaving and people aren't happy. And the people I talk to in that marketing department doing that work with us.

aren't happy. Why aren't they happy? What's hang on a minute, you say you're a brilliant place to work, but these people say different? Where's the gap? What's going on there? And so that's really, I suppose, where I started to see where you're putting where you're putting effort into these things, into those cultural things, is where the gap is. And in that gap, people were throwing employee benefits. you know, we're a great place to work. Brilliant. I'll join you. Things aren't as expected. I'm off. no no don't leave. Here's a here's a benefit. Here's a perk. Here's another benefit. Here's another perk.

So they were being used as a kind of salve in many ways. A false it's a quick fix. Throw a load of benefits

Yeah.

to somebody, they'll stay for a month, two, maybe three months. But those things are as soon as they run out and employee benefits become invisible really quickly, people will leave if the culture's not right. You can it's much better to have a genuinely objectively good culture without benefits than it is to have one that's really not great with benefits.

So I'm guessing at this point you started to notice a lot more about organizational culture and as you said the gap between what organizations say and what employees are actually experiencing reality. talk to me a little bit about that because I think that's fascinating.

Yeah. So that that employer branding piece really opened my eyes and that's where this came from. So all those career sites, all those all those social content, all the stuff driving recruitment for those businesses were projecting a certain image.

Yeah.

And that image is attracting as many and and the general thinking then was well it attract as many people as you can to recruit. The bigger the pool, the easier it is to recruit. There was a disconnect even there in terms of well, you don't need the biggest pool, you need the most appropriate.

You

So

these things were like casting a very wide net and then sifting through, and that's why you know that's why recruitment cost a lot of money, that's why attrition was extremely high. They were recruiting the wrong people. The recruitment process wasn't designed to get the right people in. And so that was the first disconnect. But that second disconnect goes back to kind of what I just said about the fact that people would join a business based on the promises of that their own research and the promises of what that business said about themselves. we're a great culture, come work for us.

They go through the recruitment process, become an employee, and they find out the reality is very, very different from what was promised. And this has happened, I mean, this has happened so many times, particularly in my in my in my recent work, where I'm talking to people about their experience. And the number of times people have kind of sat down and go, Well, I joined for you know, I joined for these reasons. It looked great. I did my own research and spoke to people. They said it was great, and I joined in this department, and it's terrible. I'm gonna leave. It's kind of like, well, where's the disconnection?

Because they spoke to somebody perhaps in a different department or they s or or they they believed the hype and the hype didn't exist. And it that's where the culture disconnect absolutely comes from. It's the external messaging promise promising something that an internal reality can't deliver.

What some of those things that the internal reality is getting wrong then?

So you will see on go on most career sites, they'll you'll you'll see that over a great place to work, we've got a great culture, brilliant career development plans. Join us, you know, you'll have a great career. You join, there are zero career development plans. And that

Right.

th th this is one of the biggest things we've seen. Like people will join a business and they'll go, What great, brilliant, I'm here, I'm gonna go. What what's what what's my what's my plan here? How how how do I advance this company? well oof

work here for a and you become a manager and it's like well that's not a development plan. Where's the training plan? Where's the personal development? Where's the actual plan? You know, there is none. So that's one of the biggest ones is kind of the personal development stuff.

Yeah, I think that's become more important in recent years. I remember when we started work, I I started work quite a long time ago, and I think we didn't ask those questions when we were being recruited. We were almost quite glad to get a job and start work, and we'd expected that if we worked hard for a little while, we might start to climb the ladder a little bit. But I don't think that's the reality in the modern workplace. People come in at younger level now, and they expect you to better tell them, well, how are you going to develop me? That is key question they want answered, isn't it?

Yeah, and it and it's a very valid question. You know, you think it

It is, yeah.

think about how much time we we spend at work. Or particularly as a younger person entering a workplace, you know, you've got a lot of energy, you you want that career, you want to do the very best for yourself. But if that business doesn't equip you with a forward plan for yourself, you're just gonna kind of it becomes a job and not a career, or it goes back to purpose, doesn't it, really?

It does. that's one issue. they were promised development. wasn't there. What other sort of things are you seeing?

so what what are people promising that they aren't delivering? the biggest one, and it's it's kind of exactly what we're talking about, is culture itself. So the

Go on.

num the the the num the number of times you'll see we have a good culture or join to the great culture, and people will get on the far side of that, become an employee. And the culture is absolutely not as it's stated. It's different because organizations are kind of articulating culture as this.

This holistic thing. Our culture is great. The reality is that culture actually exists at personal and at team level. And every everybody's

Yes.

different. Teams are different. So two teams have completely different subcultures and microcultures, which interact in a different way and cause ca cause experiences. And

Yes.

organizations aren't looking at that. So people will join a team thinking this is going to be great for me. And actually they get there and they find out that they're working in silos. They find out that you know they're they've they've got an accidental manager.

They find out that their teammates don't talk to communication's a huge problem and all of these things. And that's the biggest thing that we see is that culture is being used as this huge box of tr box of things. Here you go, you get this. Rather than the the the purposeful lived reality of of what that what's inside that business. That's the biggest thing we see.

So it sounds like from your experience, and I think I would agree with this in my own experience, is that culture, it sort of develops very organically. It's often unmanaged. It's not managed intentionally. And I think you said to me, well, you can't polish a bad culture, can you? That's a good insight. You can't, can you?

You can't I I think you use a different word than than culture, but yeah, yes, yeah exactly. You you can't. You can't, but people do. Most most organisations do. If you go on Glassdoor's a great one, it's a great one. It's where people go to have a good moment, right? But if you go and have a look on Glassdoor and you find a business that promotes itself as having a fantastic culture, if there

Yeah.

are enough reviews, kind of middling to lowish reviews, that tells you everything you need to know about what's going on.

leave. Yeah, there's still a level

Hmm.

of polish. And it's it's a waste of time, time, resource, and money for that business. So they're paying somebody to actually build and design and build a website, design and design and manage a yeah an applicant tracking system, all these things, recruitment processes, people that work at HR resource. Brilliant. I'm going to track that and then it's it's not that it just doesn't land. It's a waste it's a waste of time and money. So polishing that culture it again, it's probably better if you go out warts and all.

You kinda say, Well, we we're okay. We're we're working on it rather than we're brilliant. It's

Yeah.

it's a case of it's a case of the most businesses I've seen and we work with overpromise and under deliver on culture.

Interesting. So I guess that begs the next part of our conversation, which is what leaders get wrong about culture. And I think we should probably challenge some of the most common assumptions. So what do you think leaders typically get wrong when they assess culture? I think that's a good question to start next.

yeah, they think it's an HR initiative for a start.

Right.

so culture, yeah, that's HR. That that doesn't have a place at the at the at the at the board in the boardroom. It's HR, let HR deal with it. And because HR

Right.

are always seen as a kind of a cost centre, it never gets funded, it just sat there and it's kind of like HR will run out of gate engagement surveys just to be able to prove to leaders that the culture is good, bad or indifferent. That's the first thing. They're not they don't take it seriously. It's seen as soft and fuzzy.

Yep.

I guess the second the second thing we see is a huge red flag, massive red flag, is when leaders and HR say, we're like a family. It's it's it's one of

Okay, yeah.

the biggest things that we see. It's like, we're like a family. It's like, really? So you fight at Christmas. Really?

I was going to say

a lot of families are dysfunctional so is that...

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you don't get to choose

you you don't get to choose your family, but you do get to choose with who you work with. And so that familiar kind of we're like a family, it's it it's an absolute red flag because it's essentially a mask that allows ropey behavior, sketchy behaviour, we're like a family. Well, if you're behaving like a family, people will fight, people will argue, people will fall out, you know, all

Yeah.

this kind of stuff. Yet that we're like a family badge is almost used as a as a kind of like

I think what they're trying to say is we're we're a perfect family. With the we' we're we're the picture perfect family. It's it's absolutely not the case.

Mmm.

something else they get wrong, as we kind of touched on, was was benefits. Throw benefits at something.

Right, okay.

If it's not working, throw benefits at it. They don't stick. They absolutely don't stick. I think I can't remember the st statistic, but EAP, which is employee assistance programs. So people who have personal challenges, if you have an EAP program, you can pick up the phone, you can talk to somebody about something, you can get help, you can get personal help with stuff. they are not used at all for the fact that in the majority of cases employees have to go through a line manager or an HR director.

to get to that EAP, to get to that assistance. And the assistance itself isn't always isn't always adequate for purpose. And so through

Right, okay.

but it's used as a badge, yeah, well being is great here because we've got an EAP EAP program. There's nothing wrong with EAP programs in and of themselves.

No.

But it's when they're used as a badge of, look, we look after our people we have an EAP system in place. It's another one that kind of kind of gets wrong. The biggest one, and it's a real bugbear in mind

Is engagement surveys. Leaders will

Go on.

use engagement surveys to prove they have a good culture. The problem with this is the surveys are usually underdesigned, so it'll be a bunch of numerical questions you and usually extremely long, they'll be like 30-40 questions long. And they will ask random questions, but they are based essentially the question sets of vanity metrics. So what comes back to that leadership is.

X percent of people agreed that this is a good place to work. Y percent of people said, Yes, they love working here. And those

Yeah.

questions they mask everything because they're surface level and they're vanity based. So that's one

Right.

of the biggest things they get wrong. Because we we we we have we have a customer who had a particular score when we engage with them and it was it was exceptionally high, it was excellent. It was almost almost

Okay, yeah.

almost an unattainable score. I'm not gonna say the customer nor the score, but

No, no, no.

an exceptionally high score and the leadership team were over the moon. It's proof. We're brilliant. we went in and we kind of we did what we we did what we do. The score halved because we actually went underneath their survey and out and talked to people. The score halved which obviously people weren't happy with. But but the fact is that's the gap between what's what leaders are doing to measure culture and what culture actually is. So there's this huge disconnect at the moment.

an understanding of culture itself too. Who who actually can stand up hand on heart and say what workplace culture is?

I'm sure we can come up with a whole raft of definitions, Matt, about what it is. What would your definition just out of interest be? How would you define it?

I keep it as simple and as high level as possible. So essentially how things get done around it. That's that's broadly that's broadly it. without getting into academic models and without getting into research

Yeah, yeah, yeah

and all that, it's the simplest explanation I feel works best for culture. and interesting when we talk to people in businesses, we ask them specifically about the culture and we don't position what it is, because we want to understand what's what's that person's under understanding of.

word culture in the context of work and we have

Yeah.

the responses we've had, it's just clear, culture is not defined. So if people aren't defining culture and managers aren't defining culture and leaders aren't defining culture, well what what are they measuring?

Yeah. Well, two things leap out for me in listening to you explain all of that. One is that seems to be a lack of real evidence behind some of these cultural claims that are made. think you said that a lot of it is surface level evidence, which, you know, may or may not be reliable and accurate. And the other thing, and probably more worrying, is that our leadership teams, and I mean particularly senior leadership teams, because obviously they set the tone for all of this.

Are they often avoiding very uncomfortable truths?

Excellent question.

You

I obviously can't answer for all leadership teams, but

No, no, of course not.

In your experience I'm saying, in general terms.

yes. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, that's just yes. Yeah.

This goes back to the point we talked about earlier about confidence. Ground grounded

Yeah, okay.

confidence. The leadership teams who who are genuinely confident, grounded in in a grounded way, are actually looking for the uncomfortable truths. Because the uncomfortable

Okay.

truths is where the uncomfortable truths is where change change happens. That's where change happens. But the percentage of those leaders who are confident and grounded are able

To look at an uncomfortable truth and not take it as a criticism, very few and far between. The majority of people I've seen, in my experience, will avoid that, hence the vanity matrix. Additional to that, kind of reporting those truths up always gets a little bit squiffy too, for the fact that

Somebody somebody at board level make a decision about a particular project, it will be handed down to the managers, managers will hand it down to the people who do the work, people will do the work, something mu a deadline might be missed, something might go off. It won't be delivered as intended. Yeah, it'll be reported up as it is being delivered as return as intended. For the fact that nobody wants to put the hand up and go, Whoa, that there's a problem. And so man

Mmm.

managers will buffer buffer the truth to leaders.

And that's a problem in in and of itself. Le one leaders most leaders many leaders, I say most, many leaders don't want to hear an uncomfortable truth about their business. It's difficult to hear, it's difficult to take. Most managers won't want to report one

No, no. But I mean, if we're going to have this grounded confidence in our businesses, that relies on humility. And by humility, I mean a very objective opinion of where we're strong, but where we've got gaps, where we've got points where we could be better. And it's owning that warts and all, isn't it? The good and the bad together. And I think we get too many people maybe that are a bit, for whatever reason, driven by ego in leadership where...

As you said, they don't want to hear that stuff. Now, not everybody, clearly, but that is quite common, whether we like it or not, whether people

Right.

listen to think, agree with us or not. That is my experience, it's also your experience as well. Yeah. Yeah.

One hundred percent. Yeah, one hundred percent.

And it and it it is interesting that and I've noticed it is changing, it is changing over time. you know, le leaders I think are becoming more open to it for the fact an uncomfortable truth is a is a reality. Nobody's making that stuff up, it exists. And if you

Yeah.

if you if you want to improve you know, want to want to get an outcome for for your organization, you need to tackle that uncomfortable truth. If you don't know about it, you can't tackle it. And so there is a bit of a change of foot. it's slow.

But it has changed, you know, the last four or five years. I've certainly seen leadership teams being more open to listening without judgment.

So

that's got to be a good thing, isn't it? And I do wonder whether some of the world events that we've been putting up within recent years where it has created so much uncertainty and ambiguity and, know, topsy-turviness in our businesses that maybe people are just thinking, look, we need to get under the skin of all this and we don't have all the answers. Let's be honest about it. We don't have all the answers. Let's dig down a bit deeper and find out what's really going on. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, ex exactly

that. Exactly that. It's that willingness, I think, willingness to look at what's actually happening. Because most of the time it's not as ugly as people think.

No, no. So guess the next question for me would be if we go from the subjective to the objective and consider how we move from opinion into what's really going on in reality, how do you turn culture into something which is measurable and real in a business?

Golden question. yeah, it's it's difficult to do because you have to overcome the barriers that are in place. So one we have to over overcome what's already now the engagement surveys, this stuff that's been around for donkeys years that people believe is culture. You have to get underneath all that. And so the first hurdle is kind of positioning that as what it is, and

Mm-hmm.

then getting getting in there. So

The first thing you have to ask leaders and businesses is, okay, you've got your engagement surveys, but where's where's the real evidence of culture? Where are you getting this evidence from? Because your engagement survey isn't it. So how can you objectively say your culture is good if you don't have the numbers behind it to be able to evidence that? And usually that's a kind of hands in pockets whistling moment for most leaders that be like, Well, actually we don't have the data. So

Okay.

this this is about getting down to in the weeds of what

Of a people's experience in an organization. talking to people, going and talking to everybody in an organization to understand their experience. Because it's the cultural pillars that drive those experiences. And so it's by talking to people, we get to understand and see and hear the stories that are have come from those pillars. And it's from that you can then not generate the data, that is the data itself, the qualitative database that you can.

feedback to leaders and say, here's the unfiltered truth. This is this is this is real. And the way we go about that, rather than gathering data, what we're looking for in that stuff is really it's about behaviors and habits, repeating behaviors and habits. It's it's not

Yeah, yeah.

about grand statements. It's not about what people say. It's about what people do and how they feel because of it.

Yeah, I guess it reminds me of that TV program that I used to watch, Undercover Boss, where you'd have somebody very senior, almost get in disguise, go into the front end of their business and suddenly realize, my God, this is what it's really like inside my business. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. It's it's

e it's exactly that. And you know, one of one of the most interesting things I've I've found is values. Or organize

Okay, yeah, say more.

organi yeah, organizational values. So you know you'll you'll go to a a saying a leader, go to a leader, what are your values? it's it's this, that and the other. Brilliant. Okay. Why why'd you have those values? Well, because we are those things. Brilliant. Go and ask people what what are your values? If you go all the way down to

the from the boardroom all the way down to the newest hire and go, you know, okay, so this business has values. What are the values? Well I can tell you they're A, B, and C. Great. What do they mean to you? Well they mean

Yeah, yeah.

and they'll trot out they'll trot out what they've been told in the HR P PowerPoint deck. But it's getting underneath

Yeah.

that and going, okay, well that's that's great. That's turning the party line. But what do they mean to you? How how do the values in this business actually impact your behavior? How do they drive how you behave when you come

Yeah.

Are you

even are you even as an individual aligned to those values? You joined joined this business for a career, but the values might be in conflict with your own personal values. How'd you reconcile that? So there's a whole piece around values and understanding experience and the behaviors, I guess, the impact behaviours and habits that values drive at the at every level of that urbanization is a fantastic base of evidence to feed back and say, well, it it your values are generating these conflicts and these alignments.

And th these are the gaps between them and this is what you can do in the middle.

I think as you said about employee engagement surveys and the like and some of the benefits packages and what have you, being traditionally been an HR thing. Values is another one that's what HR sort out. That's not true. Inside a business, the senior leaders must not only embrace them, but they must understand how to behave along in line with them. And they must consistently hold each other to account to do that.

because that's how it starts to trickle down to everybody else, isn't it? And again,

Yeah. Yeah.

that isn't, I think it's getting better in terms of people realising the importance of it. I still don't see it actually becoming the real way that things work around here.

Mm. Yeah.

Exactly that. You you just said something fantastic actually, to hold each other accountable for it.

Yeah. Yeah.

So le leaders can talk the talk and they can look like they're walking the walk, but ultimately being held accountable for how for your own behaviour as a as a leader and how that then is modelled through the organisation is critical. And I don't think that's enough of I guess leadership being accountable to each other, calling each other out on things they may have done or may maybe not have done or

their alignment to a to a particular value or why that value is driving something that so that the the holding accountable piece I haven't seen a great deal of.

No, and it's interesting because I'm sure a lot of people talk to you about they want better performance in their business. We certainly talk to people who want that. But actually when you dig deeper and say, what's accountability like in your business? How does it work? That's often where the first problem occurs is that they want performance, yet they don't really do accountability very well. Well, how are you going to get performance if you don't hold people to account? And that's not just behavior, that's for tasks, goals, whatever it might be.

That piece is often missing, that accountability focus is missing and it's missing from the top down. Not just in the middle down, but from the top down.

Couldn't agree more. Yeah. Yeah, couldn't

agree more. And and interestingly, that stuff actually that accountability doesn't seem to be connected. Well the accountability might be connected to operational stuff, but culture seems to not be connected to operational stuff. It still seems to be seen as this nebulous thing that exists outside of outside of operational reality when actually it drives operational reality. So yeah, the val the values piece and the alignment piece and the accountability piece are critically important.

like I say y they I I have seen it is getting better. People are more open to it now, to kind of see how these things happen and how how you get performance by actually being a bit more holistic than cracking a whip and going, Work harder, more heroics.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah. So as you said, values must be lived. They mustn't just be stated somewhere on a slide pack or a website or wherever it might be. You need to get this alignment across all levels of an organization, not just middle down or even just at

One hundred.

the coalface. And I guess the most important thing is if you're in a leadership role, particularly a senior leadership role, is you have to create conditions for that truth that you're talking about to surface.

therein lies the problem, I think.

Yeah, there we do. I mean, essentially what we're talking about here is psychological safety. and that is a it's a huge thing. And no matter I say no matter, it's that's a huge assumption. in some but in some organizations we've experienced it where leaders will say, This is a safe space, you can you can feed you can give us feedback, we're open to it. But in those organizations, some nobody's gonna go and talk to the CEO about the things that they're experiencing day to day that feedback doesn't

So you have to, as a leader, be you have to foster or engender a culture of that feedback without judgment. And you have to you have to model it at the top. You absolutely have to model it at the top. Otherwise your senior management team below you won't.

No, that's fair comment.

Yeah, and you have to kind of you have to and the accountability piece stands, you know, if you're that leader and your senior management team aren't fostering that genuine safe feedback loop, you have to hold them accountable. You can't just you can't just hand it off to them and go, Well, I'm behaving in this way. You must behave the same way. It's kinda like well well, what is it you're doing to make sure that you're getting the feedback we need to improve performance?

Yeah, it's interesting. I we've got we have got some clients at the moment we're doing work with where they are delving quite deeply at senior leadership level into holding each other much more to account on behavior, getting real, genuine, honest feedback from each other about how they see their behavior. And that's what you need. mean, not enough businesses over the years I've seen that happening, but some of the ones we work with are definitely wanting to do that and are asking us to help them do that. And I think that's really, really encouraging. I just need to have it.

lot wider I

Yeah, yeah, it is. I think

I think the need do you know what? I think the need for that kind of level of of openness and coaching at all levels of the business is sorely missing in most businesses.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, Matt, well, we're into sort of three quarters of an hour of today's conversation. I think I'm going to call today's conversation there. We'll come back in part two, which we'll release next week, where I want to dive into your current work with the culture nav business that you work for and how

Mm-hmm.

you actually start to create some of this decision intelligence that we're talking about, how do we really get under the skin of our businesses. But if you're leaving somebody with a thought for the next week,

as they wait for episode two to exist, what would be your sort of two or three things to say, take this away, have a think before you listen to part two?

I guess the biggest thing for me would be culture's everybody's job. It's not just it's not just on leaders and it's not just on HR and it's not just on senior managers, it's on everybody. So from the person that just joined yesterday, right the way through, if you're having a moan about culture, I don't like this because the culture's rubbish, but

You

if you're having a bit of a moan, unless you are taking the actions to improve that for yourself and others.

then you're not you're not you're not in the game. So you need to think about how you're thinking, how you're contributing to that culture yourself. It's not any one person's job, it's everyone's. I think that's that's probably the biggest takeaway.

Okay, brilliant, yeah, yeah. Okay, Matt, well thanks for your time today. We'll have a, say, a break. We'll be back next week with part two. But for the time being, Matt, thanks for your time.

Great. Thanks so much, Dave.