Revisiting the Workplace Culture Debate: Who's Responsible?

Transcript

Lachy Gray  00:06

In today's episode, we are trying something new. We are revisiting an episode from season two way back in October 2021. So it's episode five from that season, where we discussed who's responsible for workplace culture. We had a bit of fun in that episode. Not to say that we don't have fun in every episode, Karen, but we talk opposing sides and a battle about and prior to that episode, Karen ran a LinkedIn poll, and she asked who's responsible for culture, and 82% of respondents said everyone 14% said the owner or the CEO, and 4% said HR. So Karen took the easy option and sided with the majority while I took the harder auction and defend the minority who said the owner CEO. So we're going to revisit that briefly now and then we'll play the original episode. So Karen, now that you've had almost two years to think about it, do you now acknowledge that it is this owner CEO who's responsible for culture?

Karen Kirton  01:13

I shouldn't have let you do the intro for this. Yeah, it was really interesting actually to go back and listen to that and a few things stuck out at me. One was using LinkedIn polls so they were really popular. Back in 2021. I don't think I've seen many since then. I think people got sick of it after a while. And I did think, oh, maybe we should run another one. And the other thing in that episode, we actually talked about the whole human resources, title and HR and people and culture and we said we'd do an episode about that. We actually did it so we probably shouldn't put that back on the list. I don't think I took the easy option. Thank you very much. But But no, I do still think that it is everyone's responsibility. But as we discussed, there's a difference responsibility and accountability. And the other thing that we didn't perceive back then was that I could go into chat GPT and just ask the robot the question, which of course I did. So I used the prompt, who was responsible for workplace culture, and I've copied and pasted it into a document because I'm actually quite curious if I go back in six or 12 months for the response change to that. But basically, the robot agreed with me so

Lachy Gray  02:29

convenient.

Karen Kirton  02:31

Convenient. So, you know, said that, ultimately, well, I did actually start with ultimately leaders and managers are responsible for shaping and maintaining the workplace culture, which I agree with, but you know, at the end of that, she says every employee has a role in shaping and maintaining the workplace culture. So interestingly, even the robot didn't quite agree with itself from paragraph to paragraph. And I think that goes to exactly what we were talking about that it is there is an argument for both sides, and it's probably a little bit of Collavate, a little bit of column B. But this isn't about upskilling. So I guess, you know, we take it to the next question of who's responsible for learning culture. What are your thoughts about that Lachy?

Lachy Gray  03:14

Oh, okay. So so you're gonna change the argument is, well done. Yeah, well, I think about it in a similar way. I do think everyone's responsible. I just think you've got to have someone accountable ultimately, because otherwise you had too many cooks in the kitchen. And consensus is a tricky way to make decisions. So I think so. I think everybody needs to be involved in learning culture. I think the, you know, employees and teams need to want to learn need a one to grow. I think that's really important. And they need to be supported in that by managers and leaders. And that starts right at the beginning with the hiring process, hiring people who want to grow and develop who see value in learning, who are open minded and willing to make mistakes and share their experiences, all the way through to onboarding and feeling supported, and getting a sense of how people learn and upskill and that organization, and then that flows through to your time there. I think and I really think it needs to be driven by the owners of the business by the sea level, and ultimately, it's in the company's strategy. So learning is a way to achieve some of the strategic goals for the business for our customers who do this really well. That's what they do. They have a fantastic learning culture and learning is just something that they do. Very similar to the tasks in their jobs. Like they, they're not different. It's not an add on. It's just part of their day to day. And one way to tackle that I've heard recently is with a culture committee, and I've heard of a larger business that does this, which is a group of representative employees from all areas of the business, who are committed to growing the culture and the CEOs on that as well. So wow, that's that's pretty cool. And I think that goes to Saturn Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, who says the CEO and CEO should stand for culture. I think that's absolutely right. So I think we need to be intentional about culture. Otherwise, it doesn't happen on its own. What do you think?

Karen Kirton  05:38

Yeah, I agree. With that. I think intention is completely necessary. And in terms of a learning culture, you know, that is something that would be difficult for employees to say, Well, hey, we want to learn and culture let's implement that. You know, that really does have to come from the top because I think there is a role for that. Top level management teams, co owner, founder board, whatever it might be, to say, well, this is what we want our culture to look like. And then to have what's required within the business to support that as the outcomes are, as you say, having that as part of the organizational strategy as a whole. And then employees are then recruited to that and then they fit that culture and then they can help to continue to grow that culture in that way. I think the culture community interesting, I've been on a couple we're not necessarily with larger businesses, either. Sometimes they are small businesses, actually ran one with the client who at the time had about 80 employees, and we just asked for volunteers. We wanted at least one volunteer from each department, but we wanted volunteers not voluntold. So didn't necessarily get one from each department. But that was the idea. And then we would take to that committee, any of the major people culture HR, but if you want to call it initiatives that were coming out, so prior to implementing a new performance feedback process, for example, we took that to the committee and got their feedback on that. And we will also ask questions of them as well. But like all committees, yeah, that's one example. But it's been a couple but I think like all committees, people get tired of being on it. So I think you know, the way to make that successful is actually have it for a set period of time. So maybe you have it as a 12 month committee and then you have a break for six months and then you do another 12 month one with completely different people. Because I think otherwise it you know, you start losing members, people don't start to contribute as much people get frustrated if they're the only one talking. And I've seen it both ways with the CEO audit or not on it. And I think it depends on what the culture is with the organization to begin with, because I've seen it with the CEO on it where the culture wasn't fantastic. People didn't want to speak up and they actually found they felt like they were in the naughty room. to that meeting, so yeah, so I think that I think they're great ideas, but just a bit of thought in terms of or how do we actually make that work for our business? What are we trying to get out of it? What's the outcome that we're trying to seek? So then we know what we're asking for in terms of people being on the committee. And then we have those ground rules set up from the start. And I think that's a great way to actually be intentional about the culture and say to people, this is what what we're looking for.

Lachy Gray  08:39

Absolutely. I think the main takeaway for me is that that there is an intention to grow the culture and if it's unhealthy, to move it towards healthy and to get buy in and get people excited and interested in doing that because otherwise it's not going to change. Yeah. And I think that needs to be there needs to be represented all through the business realistically for that to happen. Whether that's a committee as you say, or or not. It got to be the drive and it's not one and done thing. It's continuous. The culture is changing. All the time. Every new person that starts and then existing employee leaves, culture is changing. That's a big thing I've learned is that it's an organic thing. It's it evolves, and that can be challenging. It's not fixed. So how do you document it? How do you communicate it what it is how do you identify those behaviors that are that are okay. And how do you identify what, what learning means for that organization and why it's important? I think that's critical.

Karen Kirton  09:48

Absolutely. All right. So let's play the episode and we'd love to hear your feedback and thoughts on who you think is responsible for culture. And you can get in touch to our new link tree, which is Li n k t r dot E if you haven't used it before, and then you have a backslash make it work podcast. Okay, so that's the first bit and now we're going into the app.