December 5, 2024 • 26 mins
In this special episode, Michael and Tessa sit down with our very own Laura Hamill to discuss her new book "The Power of Culture" published by The Economist.
Laura shares insights from her decades of experience studying organizational culture, explaining why companies struggle with culture change and how leaders can build intentional, powerful cultures that drive business success.
In This Episode, You'll Learn:
- Why organizational culture is both critical and incredibly difficult to change
- How unconscious cultural norms shape behavior and resist change
- The vital connection between culture and business strategy
- The "Intentional Culture Circle" framework for cultural transformation
Quotable Moments:
"Culture is like water to a goldfish - when you're in it, you can't even see it anymore." - Laura Hamill
Practical Takeaway:
Culture change is challenging but achievable with intentional leadership focus and commitment. Start by getting clear about what kind of company you want to be from a cultural perspective and how that connects to your business strategy and purpose.
Get Laura's Book:
The Power of Culture is available now from Simon & Schuster!
Learn more about why culture is both challenging and critical to business success, and discover practical frameworks for creating positive, intentional organizational cultures that drive results.
To stay connected and continue the conversation, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn.
And don't forget to check out our previous episodes for more tips and strategies to boost your workplace happiness. You can find them on your favorite podcast platform or on our website.
If you have any questions, comments, or topic suggestions for future episodes, please reach out to us. We'd love to hear from you!
Stay inspired, stay motivated, and stay happy at work!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Michael McCarthy (00:06):
Music, welcome back for another episode of the
happy at work podcast with LauraTessa and Michael.
Tessa Misiaszek (00:14):
Each week, we have thoughtful conversations
with leaders, founders andauthors about happiness at work.
Michael McCarthy (00:22):
Tune in each Thursday for a new conversation.
Enjoy the show.
Welcome to the happy at workpodcast, and today, it's going
(00:43):
to be super special, becausewe're interviewing one of our
own, Laura Hamill, Laura, yeah,
Laura Hamill (00:53):
thank you so much.
It's so it's kind of a littlesurreal, but it's so fun to be
talking with you all about this,and yeah, I did. I did. I wrote
a book.
Michael McCarthy (01:03):
You wrote a book of culture, the power and
published by The Economistthat's big leagues. Good for
you. Congratulations.
Laura Hamill (01:10):
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Michael McCarthy (01:12):
So how did tell us from the beginning? How
did this book come about?
Laura Hamill (01:16):
Yeah, well, luckily, I left a job that I
felt a lot of emotionalattachment to, and I had a
really hard time figuring outwhat I wanted to do next
afterwards, because it was such,it was such an important part of
me and my identity and mycareer. And so I had gone away.
I went away by myself for aweek, and just sort of tried to
(01:40):
process everything. And in thatkind of process, I was
journaling, just writing,writing, writing, writing,
writing, and I just decided notto censor what I was writing and
just kind of let it all out. Andabout three and a half days into
that, I just stopped, nothingelse came out. It was awesome.
Like, it's almost like a purge,right? Like, it just got it all
out, and then I went and tookthis huge nap. I napped for
(02:02):
like, three and a half hours,and I woke up, and it was like I
was 100% clear of what I wantedto do next. And it was multiple
things, but one of them waswrite a book, so and the other
one was actually, and I think Imight have told, I might have
told you all this Well, theother one was do more podcasts,
and I didn't. And it was soonthereafter that you all reached
(02:24):
out to me to be part of thisteam, which was weird, right?
Like, how does? And then theother one was to reboot my
consulting practice, so I sortof I got some clarity that I
wanted to write a book. And thenTessa helped me kind of get some
connections going and I startedthinking about this idea of
writing a book, and I knew thatI wanted to write about culture
(02:47):
that's been my, like, my kind ofunderlying favorite topic in for
a long time now, actually,probably since the late 90s,
that I've loved the topic ofculture. So I'm interested in
it. I'm, like, inherently geekyabout it. I can talk about it
all day long, and I can go onand on about it. And at the same
(03:09):
time, I also feel like I know aton and I know so little, you
know, it's like, one of thosetopics where I'm just constantly
intrigued by it. So those aresome of the reasons. But then
also, and I know you all knowthis, but culture is underlying
most of the problems thatorganizations and so all the
(03:29):
work I've done in lots ofdifferent organizations, whether
I'm focusing on employeeengagement and how you improve
employee engagement, or focusingon well being and how you
improve well being, or how doyou Make better managers and
leaders. Underneath all of it isculture. And so if you think
about how important that is, andthen how little we know about
it, and especially how poorlythe practice of culture actually
(03:55):
is in organizations, you justsay, gosh, there's there's so
much to understand. There's somuch to write about. So I just
see this huge disconnect betweenkind of the science and what
science tells us about cultureand then the practice. So those
are just some of the reasons.
It's just a great it's a great,interesting topic with so much
opportunity for improvement that
Tessa Misiaszek (04:16):
that is, first of all, I am so excited for you
that you have written a book andthat it's out, and everyone from
North America to Europe to allover the world can now access
this book. I think you had yourUK launch date happened a few
weeks ago, but now it'savailable in North America. So
it's just so exciting. But I dowant to dive into some topics
(04:38):
you speak about in the book,sure, because you have some
amazing examples of companieswho get it right and who don't
get it right. And one of the,one of the kind of most
interesting aspects that you,you really discuss in the book,
is around why it's so hard. It'slike people get culture.
Certainly, I understand thepower of culture. You understand
(04:59):
the power of culture is.
Individually, we get it. Even onteams, it's like, okay, we can
create our team culture. Butwhen you think about, how do you
scale it to an organization,it's like, organizations just
can't get it right, and they'reincredibly challenged by it. And
you know, there's a lot thatwhen you look at big topics like
(05:19):
mergers and acquisitions. A lotof the failures of mergers and
acquisitions with the fact thatyou can't merge culture. Why is
or what did you find, whyorganizations have such a hard
time culture?
Laura Hamill (05:32):
Yeah, what's fascinating about it? It's the
very nature of culture thatmakes it so elusive, so
challenging. And I think becausewe don't talk about the very
nature of culture and thosethose challenges, it's we don't
ever address them. So I'll justgive you a couple, because there
are many, many aspects ofculture that are make it really
(05:54):
hard. The first one is that it'sreally abstract. We don't have
language for it, right? We don'thave a common way we talk about
what does collaboration looklike from company to company?
What does it mean to focus onthe short term versus the long
term from company to company? Wejust don't have good language or
frameworks, and so that preventsus from being able to really do
(06:16):
a lot of research on it, tostudy it, to be consistent, to
be able to compare companieswhen we don't have when it's
really abstract. So that's onereason, another one, and this is
my favorite reason, is thatculture is unconscious. When you
first start in an organization,you actually can see it right?
(06:37):
You start in your first day, inyour first week, you're like,
looking around. Why do people doit this way? Like, what you
mean, nobody asks questions incompany meetings like you mean,
they kind of look away when aleader walks by. Right? There's
all these things that happenwhen you first join a company
that you really can see loud andclear. But once you're there for
(06:57):
a while, you start to learn howit goes down, you start to learn
how things are, and you start tobecome part of it, so much so
that you don't even see itanymore. It's that analogy of
thinking about, does a goldfishknow it's swimming in water?
Cultures like the water thatwe're in, and do we even know
that? I always think it's funnywhen we use animal analogies,
(07:18):
though, like, how do we knowgoldfish don't know that they're
swimming in water, but that'sanother story. But we don't have
an understanding when once we'rein it, we can't even see it. And
if you can't see it, then why isit a problem? Right? If you
can't see it, how are you goingto change it? So a lot of times,
also, to even complicate that,more people who are in positions
(07:42):
of power have come through thisculture, in many cases, right?
They've been they're a productof the culture. They think, not
only do I not see it, but thisis awesome, right? Because it
promoted me, it reinforced andvalidated me, and so there's not
a lot of motivation to changeit. So that's a really important
(08:02):
part of understanding cultureand why it's so hard to change
it also. I'll just give you onemore. There's many, many more,
but let me give you one otherreason why it's so hard. The
other reason is that we can'tjust take what works for one
company and slop it onto anothercompany, right? You can't take a
culture cookie cutter and say,oh, let's take that culture
(08:24):
cookie cutter and put it over onthis company. So take a company,
you know, like books aboutNetflix's culture. Well, that's
interesting, but there's not alot we can probably apply to our
individual, unique company thatwe that Netflix did. So because
there's no culture cookiecutter. You have to do the
culture work yourself. You haveto dig deep. You have to ask a
(08:46):
lot of hard questions. You haveto face a lot of realities that
most organizations don't want toface. So when you have to do
that kind of hard work thattakes a long time, it's really
easy to not do it right. It'sreally easy to say, You know
what? I've got all these otherthings that the board's asking
me to do that actually know howto do, like I know the approach
(09:07):
I should take. Let me go dothose things, and let's just
cross our fingers that theculture thing will work itself
out.
Michael McCarthy (09:13):
I love this, and it really resonates with me
how we don't seem to have alanguage about this fuzzy thing
that we can't see or touch, butwe know it's there. And I'm
curious, what do you think isthe impact of a fake culture
where they say, Okay, we're x,but in reality, we're really
(09:35):
over here. What is the that?
Laura Hamill (09:38):
It's huge.
Michael, I mean, so I have aterm that I'm using in the book
for that very thing, and I callit cultural betrayal. It's just
this idea that, especially whenyou are drawn to an
organization, maybe you mighthear about its values, or read
its values, or think you have anunderstanding of what the
company stands for, or what theysay they stand for, and you
start to work there.
(09:59):
And you start to realize thathas nothing to do with your
experience. So when yourexperience of the culture is so
different from what theaspirations of culture are, that
deep kind of feeling of youbetrayed me. You told me this
one thing, and it's not true atall, and I came here because of
that. It is pretty deep, and itcan really result in in
(10:23):
withdrawal behaviors, wherepeople start to feel resentment,
they start to distancethemselves, and maybe they
believe so organizations, I seethis over and over again, where
companies get that they'resupposed to have values, right?
They're supposed to focus onvalues work, but then they do
that, hire an outsideconsultant, you know, somebody
(10:44):
like me and I come in and helpthem create those new values
attached to their strategy, andthen they just flop them up on
their website, put them up on anice little decal on the wall,
and then check they're done. Andthey don't do the work to make
sure that it's what's actuallyexperienced in the day to day
work behind closed doors. It'sreal.
Tessa Misiaszek (11:06):
So one of the, one of the questions I wanted to
ask because, you know, I wrotethe book on branding, and we
want this a little bit because,again, it's, you can have a
fantastic external brand, butyour people are the should
personify and be the ambassadorsof your brand. And actually, at
corn ferry, we did a we lookedat a large database around
(11:30):
employee engagement and foryounger people, only one in two,
50% would recommend the productsand services of the company they
work for to friends and family,so that's saying that half of
the people who are under the ageof 40 felt comfortable enough,
felt proud enough about thecompany that they work for that
(11:50):
they would actually recommendthe products and services to
their friends and family. Wow.
And I think this gets to thefact that the company may be
espousing a great message, butthen, when you look and lift the
hood internally, the culture isnot reflective of those same
values that they're, you know,saying externally. And one kind
of, I think, core piece of thisis the how culture and what we
(12:12):
want to try to convince the CEOthe culture is important, how
culture actually connects tostrategy, and I don't know, get
this old adage correct, but isit that culture eats strategy
for breakfast? Is that it forbreakfast, for dinner, for an
appetizer, whatever the case maybe. So what's your take on
connecting strategic objectiveswith culture?
Laura Hamill (12:36):
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's imperative, right?
You have to do that. There's somany reasons, a couple of them.
One of them is, if we don't dothat, if we don't show that
culture is is completelyrequired, or focus on culture
being aligned with the strategyis required. It's not very
(12:57):
likely you're going to achievethat strategy right, because we
need to make sure that thebehaviors that people are all
day long work in the directionof strategy achievement. And so
let me give you I'll just giveyou this quick example. This is
an example that I use a lot, butit's my favorite example. I was
working at a large tech company,and I just started there, and I
(13:17):
was writing a memorandum, andthis is in the olden days when
we typed that at the top right,we memorandum, and I'm sitting
in my office. Everybody hadoffices for themselves, and
everybody sat in their officewith their doors closed, right?
That's just the way you did. SoI was thinking, Gosh, it would
be great if somebody would readmy memo, because it's new. I'm
new. I hope it's good. Andsomeone's thinking, Oh, what
(13:39):
about my manager? I know he'snot available for me. That which
is telling then I thought about,wait, there's somebody who sits
right next to me. I can hear herclanging on her keyboard. Let me
she's on my team. Shouldn't shebe like, helping me? Right? And
so I go over, knock on the doorand ask her,
and she's still typing. Well,she says, come in. So go in, and
(14:00):
she says, yeah. And so I said,Hey, you know I'm new. I'd love
for you to read this for me andjust tell me what you think. And
she looked at me kind of oddly,and she said, Okay. And so I
said, Okay. And I just sort ofslid it over and left it there.
And then I thought, How muchtime do I give her? So I wanted
(14:20):
to give her plenty of time. Iknew she was busy. I went back
the next the next day, knockedon her door. She's still in the
same place, doing the samething. And I said, Hey, did you
have a chance to look at and shesaid, Yeah, it's fine.
Okay, great, thanks. And Igrabbed it, thinking that there
was some feedback on it, right?
I will go back to my office lookat it, and it doesn't have
(14:41):
anything on it. You know,there's not even, like, a little
smiley, any feedback. And so themessage I got right then and
there was, I wasn't supposed todo that. We don't do that here.
We don't ask each other forhelp. And I continue to get
messages like that from thisorganization.
Conversation that we you're onyour own. In fact, not only on
(15:03):
your own, you're competing withthat woman next door and that
you have to show up better, andyou have to toot your own horn.
In my first performance review,my manager said to me, stop
helping people. You're helpingpeople too much. I want to hear
more about how you are shiningby yourself, right? And so the
(15:24):
thing that's interesting aboutthat is I would love to say I
just said, You know what? That'snot what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna
keep helping people. But no, Ididn't. I learned. I adapted,
and I bet you I was just likethe woman who was next door to
me in no time, in a few months,right? I learned that that's how
we do things. Here we arecompeting. We're standing on our
(15:45):
own. We're individualistic here.
And so I'm connecting it back tothe strategy piece. So the
ironing of this is, guess whatwe were doing as a company?
Guess what our strategy was as acompany at that time, it was
around developing collaborationsoftware.
So this isthe irony, and this is what I
see over and over again, arethese huge disconnects between
(16:07):
what's happening in the day today work, like how people are
kind of pushed to a path thatfits with the culture in their
behavior, and how disconnectedthat can be from what they're
actually trying to achieve. So Iworked with this big insurance
company on helping them withtheir culture, and they were
trying to create a whole bunchof new innovative mark,
(16:29):
innovative approaches in theirmarketplace. And it sort of
sounds like an oxymoron, right?
Insurance Company innovation,but they were trying really
hard, and they had these biggoals around innovation. And
when I first started workingwith them, I was shocked at how
scared people were in the verytop of the leadership team. They
(16:51):
were like scared stiff. Theywere they could hardly talk to
each other. In fact, the veryfirst meeting I had with them to
talk to them about the culturework, I go up to this room where
they're all sitting there, andthey're nobody's talking to each
other, there's like, literallyin their suits and like, just
completely still, and then atthe end of the table was the CEO
(17:14):
and the COO whispering to eachother,
like, holy smokes. What is goingon here. So how can you imagine
that the top leaders are scared?
They're scared of the CEO andthe COO and they're going to
create market changinginnovation. How is that going to
happen? Because I bet you, theemployees feel way more scared
than those leaders did, and sothere's no way that they're
(17:38):
going to be able to actuallygenerate new ideas. Feel
comfortable making a mistake,you know, iterate on new, new
approaches. There's nobody, ifpeople are scared. So that's
what I see over and over again,is these disconnects between who
you say, what you say, you'retrying to achieve, and what the
(17:58):
actual experience is for for thepeople who are in that company,
Michael McCarthy (18:06):
it's so interesting to talk about the
disconnect, because I see it allthe time. When I do consulting,
I always, I always walk out andsay, How are you in business? By
doing this? I don't let it. Idon't know how you're still
surviving. It leads me to mynext question, what happens when
an organization is notintentional about culture?
(18:26):
Because from what I've seen mylimited experiences, they seem
to have just been sleepwalking.
Laura Hamill (18:32):
I think there's all different kind of
combinations of not beingintentional about culture,
right? I think there's the onethat we're talking about around
culture, but cultural betrayal,right? When you claim to be
something and, boom, you're sonot. I mean, that's sort of an
extreme version of, you know,not living their culture and not
being intentional. I thinkthere's also sort of the meh
version of not being intentionalabout culture that can also just
(18:55):
be pretty painful to work withmeaning. They haven't really
articulated the culture, ormaybe they have, and they just
don't really talk about it thatmuch. And it's not bad, but it's
also not good, and it's sort ofjust one of those places that
you just go in and you almostbore yourself to death, right?
Like you just feel like, Is thismy life, right? This is all I'm
(19:19):
doing. I actually worked in acompany for a while that was
extremely boring in that way,and there was nothing about the
culture that I felt connectedto. I think I lasted was like
three weeks,and so I was just over it,
right? And so I think that beingintentional is a strategy that
more organizations need to takeon. They really need to think
(19:45):
about what kind of company theywant to be in the future. Where
are they now, and how are theygoing to get there? And that's
what that is part of the bookthat I really focused on, is I
have this approach called the.
Intentional culture circle. Andit was basically a pretty simple
model that I started using in2006
(20:09):
I think, something like that.
And I started using it because Iwas working with some clients
who were saying, like, I get theculture is important, but it
seems so hard. What should I dofirst? And so I put together
this really simple model to useat this, these clients that
basically just to kind of takeyou step by step, start with
this, and then do this, and thendo one more thing after that,
just trying to make it clearthat you can step into it. You
(20:33):
know, it doesn't have to be thisthing that feels so ambiguous
and so impossible that you cannever make any progress on it.
And so this the idea of it isyou just need to start getting
clear, right, getting clearabout what kind of company you
want to be from a cultureperspective, how that's
connected to your businesspurpose or your strategy, while
(20:55):
you need the culture to be thatway. That's the That's the very
first step. And a lot oforganizations have never done
that work by just trying toarticulate that. And then
there's a bunch of other stepsthat are in the book, but yeah,
lots, lots behind each one ofthem. So I you know, as we, as
we start to wind down, because,of course, we want everyone to
(21:17):
buy the book. I i do have a kindof a final question, which is,
we had we spent the last halfhour talking about how hard it
is, and I can imagine, forreally large companies have been
around for decades, if not 100years, that to try to start to
think about changing culture, orshifting culture, even into a
(21:39):
slightly into a new direction,would be really difficult. So my
question is, why are you sooptimistic? This is such an
important thing to be talkingabout, if it's so challenging
for organizations to do? Yes,that's a good question. It's
because I've seen some companiesreally do it right, right, and
I've seen the benefits of it.
(22:01):
I've seen the magic of it. Andthat is, you know, I wanted to
call this book The Power ofCulture for a couple reasons.
One is because and this, wedidn't talk a ton about this in
this podcast, but how importantleaders and positional power
really is to forming and shapingculture. I mean, that's a whole
other conversation. That's a bigpart of why I wanted to call it
(22:22):
power of culture. But the otherreason was because when you get
it right, it's so positive andbeautiful and magical and
powerful when employees feelconnected to the culture, when
they feel inspired by it, butwhen they feel like they want to
be part of it. And so when youcan get it right, it is just
(22:45):
beautiful. In fact, that's thereason why the cover it has
sunshine on it, because I thinkabout the power of culture like
the sunshine, and how what thatcan do to you right, how that
can make you feel. And so that'swhy I'm optimistic about it,
because I do see organizationsdo it right? And I've got some
good examples in the book ofreal companies who have figured
it out. And a lot of it, though,it really requires the top
(23:08):
leaders to understand it, tograpple with it, to do the work
that's required to make culturecome to life.
Tessa Misiaszek (23:16):
You know, I think, gosh, I just had a huge
aha moment, because it'sinteresting. In conversations
I'm having at work lately, we'rethinking about power and and
what does power really mean, andwhat does having power, you
know, what can you do with that,and what should you do with
that? And how do you definethat? And you just really
(23:38):
talking about the power ofculture and that it really, if
you have a change in leadership,and that can be, I would
imagine, an impetus for how toactually really shift culture in
a dramatic way, and if it startsat the top of the house, so that
that was just a huge aha momentfor
Laura Hamill (23:57):
Yeah, absolutely, it's a perfect time to do it
right a perfect time to do it.
So yeah, I that's I love theidea of how much organizations
can radically change theirsituation by focusing on
culture, and that's why I'm sooptimistic about it. It's hard,
hard work, but once you committo it, once you really see it,
(24:17):
you can do so much with it. So,yeah, I think it's a it's a
beautiful topic. It's just oneof those things, you know, the
always get this saying wrong,but if it's the hard stuff
right, it's the hard stuff thatreally makes the biggest
difference. And so even thoughit's hard, companies absolutely
should still do it right. It'sthe thing that's going to make
(24:37):
the biggest difference for theiremployees, but also for the
success of the business.
Michael McCarthy (24:43):
I love how you frame it, that it's really hard.
In fact, when we had the founderof North Face, Hap clop on the
show, he said that culture isusually no one's really
directing it intentionally, asyou mentioned, and it just sort
of like forms like coral.
When it does, it's like cement,and when you get it wrong, it's
(25:04):
awful, and when you get itright, it's incredible. And I
think you make a reallyinteresting case that it's hard,
but it's really worth it,
Laura Hamill (25:11):
and it is doable.
It is doable. I've seencompanies do it.
Tessa Misiaszek (25:15):
I think that there's, there's just so much
richness to what you write aboutand I and of course, now I'm
keeping like the ripple effectof culture, like the way it can
impact, you know, the employeevalue proposition, and the way
you think about the kind oftotal rewards of attracting top
(25:36):
talent to your company to keepgoing. So we'll have more
conversations. For sure. ICongratulations, my friends.
Laura Hamill (25:44):
Thank you so much.
I appreciate both of you so muchand all your support for this
book, so And for me, thank youamazing.
Michael McCarthy (25:52):
Thank you.
Thanks everyone for listening.
We'll see you next time.
We hope you've enjoyed thisepisode. If you'd like to hear
future episodes, be sure tosubscribe to the happy at work
podcast and leave us a reviewwith your thoughts.
Tessa Misiaszek (26:10):
Are you interested in speaking on a
future episode, or want tocollaborate with us? Let us know
you can send us an email atadmin, at happy at work
podcast.com,
Michael McCarthy (26:22):
and lastly, follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter
for even more happiness. See yousoon. You.
Music, welcome back for another episode of the
happy at work podcast with LauraTessa and Michael.
Tessa Misiaszek (00:14):
Each week, we have thoughtful conversations
with leaders, founders andauthors about happiness at work.
Michael McCarthy (00:22):
Tune in each Thursday for a new conversation.
Enjoy the show.
Welcome to the happy at workpodcast, and today, it's going
(00:43):
to be super special, becausewe're interviewing one of our
own, Laura Hamill, Laura, yeah,
Laura Hamill (00:53):
thank you so much.
It's so it's kind of a littlesurreal, but it's so fun to be
talking with you all about this,and yeah, I did. I did. I wrote
a book.
Michael McCarthy (01:03):
You wrote a book of culture, the power and
published by The Economistthat's big leagues. Good for
you. Congratulations.
Laura Hamill (01:10):
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Michael McCarthy (01:12):
So how did tell us from the beginning? How
did this book come about?
Laura Hamill (01:16):
Yeah, well, luckily, I left a job that I
felt a lot of emotionalattachment to, and I had a
really hard time figuring outwhat I wanted to do next
afterwards, because it was such,it was such an important part of
me and my identity and mycareer. And so I had gone away.
I went away by myself for aweek, and just sort of tried to
(01:40):
process everything. And in thatkind of process, I was
journaling, just writing,writing, writing, writing,
writing, and I just decided notto censor what I was writing and
just kind of let it all out. Andabout three and a half days into
that, I just stopped, nothingelse came out. It was awesome.
Like, it's almost like a purge,right? Like, it just got it all
out, and then I went and tookthis huge nap. I napped for
(02:02):
like, three and a half hours,and I woke up, and it was like I
was 100% clear of what I wantedto do next. And it was multiple
things, but one of them waswrite a book, so and the other
one was actually, and I think Imight have told, I might have
told you all this Well, theother one was do more podcasts,
and I didn't. And it was soonthereafter that you all reached
(02:24):
out to me to be part of thisteam, which was weird, right?
Like, how does? And then theother one was to reboot my
consulting practice, so I sortof I got some clarity that I
wanted to write a book. And thenTessa helped me kind of get some
connections going and I startedthinking about this idea of
writing a book, and I knew thatI wanted to write about culture
(02:47):
that's been my, like, my kind ofunderlying favorite topic in for
a long time now, actually,probably since the late 90s,
that I've loved the topic ofculture. So I'm interested in
it. I'm, like, inherently geekyabout it. I can talk about it
all day long, and I can go onand on about it. And at the same
(03:09):
time, I also feel like I know aton and I know so little, you
know, it's like, one of thosetopics where I'm just constantly
intrigued by it. So those aresome of the reasons. But then
also, and I know you all knowthis, but culture is underlying
most of the problems thatorganizations and so all the
(03:29):
work I've done in lots ofdifferent organizations, whether
I'm focusing on employeeengagement and how you improve
employee engagement, or focusingon well being and how you
improve well being, or how doyou Make better managers and
leaders. Underneath all of it isculture. And so if you think
about how important that is, andthen how little we know about
it, and especially how poorlythe practice of culture actually
(03:55):
is in organizations, you justsay, gosh, there's there's so
much to understand. There's somuch to write about. So I just
see this huge disconnect betweenkind of the science and what
science tells us about cultureand then the practice. So those
are just some of the reasons.
It's just a great it's a great,interesting topic with so much
opportunity for improvement that
Tessa Misiaszek (04:16):
that is, first of all, I am so excited for you
that you have written a book andthat it's out, and everyone from
North America to Europe to allover the world can now access
this book. I think you had yourUK launch date happened a few
weeks ago, but now it'savailable in North America. So
it's just so exciting. But I dowant to dive into some topics
(04:38):
you speak about in the book,sure, because you have some
amazing examples of companieswho get it right and who don't
get it right. And one of the,one of the kind of most
interesting aspects that you,you really discuss in the book,
is around why it's so hard. It'slike people get culture.
Certainly, I understand thepower of culture. You understand
(04:59):
the power of culture is.
Individually, we get it. Even onteams, it's like, okay, we can
create our team culture. Butwhen you think about, how do you
scale it to an organization,it's like, organizations just
can't get it right, and they'reincredibly challenged by it. And
you know, there's a lot thatwhen you look at big topics like
(05:19):
mergers and acquisitions. A lotof the failures of mergers and
acquisitions with the fact thatyou can't merge culture. Why is
or what did you find, whyorganizations have such a hard
time culture?
Laura Hamill (05:32):
Yeah, what's fascinating about it? It's the
very nature of culture thatmakes it so elusive, so
challenging. And I think becausewe don't talk about the very
nature of culture and thosethose challenges, it's we don't
ever address them. So I'll justgive you a couple, because there
are many, many aspects ofculture that are make it really
(05:54):
hard. The first one is that it'sreally abstract. We don't have
language for it, right? We don'thave a common way we talk about
what does collaboration looklike from company to company?
What does it mean to focus onthe short term versus the long
term from company to company? Wejust don't have good language or
frameworks, and so that preventsus from being able to really do
(06:16):
a lot of research on it, tostudy it, to be consistent, to
be able to compare companieswhen we don't have when it's
really abstract. So that's onereason, another one, and this is
my favorite reason, is thatculture is unconscious. When you
first start in an organization,you actually can see it right?
(06:37):
You start in your first day, inyour first week, you're like,
looking around. Why do people doit this way? Like, what you
mean, nobody asks questions incompany meetings like you mean,
they kind of look away when aleader walks by. Right? There's
all these things that happenwhen you first join a company
that you really can see loud andclear. But once you're there for
(06:57):
a while, you start to learn howit goes down, you start to learn
how things are, and you start tobecome part of it, so much so
that you don't even see itanymore. It's that analogy of
thinking about, does a goldfishknow it's swimming in water?
Cultures like the water thatwe're in, and do we even know
that? I always think it's funnywhen we use animal analogies,
(07:18):
though, like, how do we knowgoldfish don't know that they're
swimming in water, but that'sanother story. But we don't have
an understanding when once we'rein it, we can't even see it. And
if you can't see it, then why isit a problem? Right? If you
can't see it, how are you goingto change it? So a lot of times,
also, to even complicate that,more people who are in positions
(07:42):
of power have come through thisculture, in many cases, right?
They've been they're a productof the culture. They think, not
only do I not see it, but thisis awesome, right? Because it
promoted me, it reinforced andvalidated me, and so there's not
a lot of motivation to changeit. So that's a really important
(08:02):
part of understanding cultureand why it's so hard to change
it also. I'll just give you onemore. There's many, many more,
but let me give you one otherreason why it's so hard. The
other reason is that we can'tjust take what works for one
company and slop it onto anothercompany, right? You can't take a
culture cookie cutter and say,oh, let's take that culture
(08:24):
cookie cutter and put it over onthis company. So take a company,
you know, like books aboutNetflix's culture. Well, that's
interesting, but there's not alot we can probably apply to our
individual, unique company thatwe that Netflix did. So because
there's no culture cookiecutter. You have to do the
culture work yourself. You haveto dig deep. You have to ask a
(08:46):
lot of hard questions. You haveto face a lot of realities that
most organizations don't want toface. So when you have to do
that kind of hard work thattakes a long time, it's really
easy to not do it right. It'sreally easy to say, You know
what? I've got all these otherthings that the board's asking
me to do that actually know howto do, like I know the approach
(09:07):
I should take. Let me go dothose things, and let's just
cross our fingers that theculture thing will work itself
out.
Michael McCarthy (09:13):
I love this, and it really resonates with me
how we don't seem to have alanguage about this fuzzy thing
that we can't see or touch, butwe know it's there. And I'm
curious, what do you think isthe impact of a fake culture
where they say, Okay, we're x,but in reality, we're really
(09:35):
over here. What is the that?
Laura Hamill (09:38):
It's huge.
Michael, I mean, so I have aterm that I'm using in the book
for that very thing, and I callit cultural betrayal. It's just
this idea that, especially whenyou are drawn to an
organization, maybe you mighthear about its values, or read
its values, or think you have anunderstanding of what the
company stands for, or what theysay they stand for, and you
start to work there.
(09:59):
And you start to realize thathas nothing to do with your
experience. So when yourexperience of the culture is so
different from what theaspirations of culture are, that
deep kind of feeling of youbetrayed me. You told me this
one thing, and it's not true atall, and I came here because of
that. It is pretty deep, and itcan really result in in
(10:23):
withdrawal behaviors, wherepeople start to feel resentment,
they start to distancethemselves, and maybe they
believe so organizations, I seethis over and over again, where
companies get that they'resupposed to have values, right?
They're supposed to focus onvalues work, but then they do
that, hire an outsideconsultant, you know, somebody
(10:44):
like me and I come in and helpthem create those new values
attached to their strategy, andthen they just flop them up on
their website, put them up on anice little decal on the wall,
and then check they're done. Andthey don't do the work to make
sure that it's what's actuallyexperienced in the day to day
work behind closed doors. It'sreal.
Tessa Misiaszek (11:06):
So one of the, one of the questions I wanted to
ask because, you know, I wrotethe book on branding, and we
want this a little bit because,again, it's, you can have a
fantastic external brand, butyour people are the should
personify and be the ambassadorsof your brand. And actually, at
corn ferry, we did a we lookedat a large database around
(11:30):
employee engagement and foryounger people, only one in two,
50% would recommend the productsand services of the company they
work for to friends and family,so that's saying that half of
the people who are under the ageof 40 felt comfortable enough,
felt proud enough about thecompany that they work for that
(11:50):
they would actually recommendthe products and services to
their friends and family. Wow.
And I think this gets to thefact that the company may be
espousing a great message, butthen, when you look and lift the
hood internally, the culture isnot reflective of those same
values that they're, you know,saying externally. And one kind
of, I think, core piece of thisis the how culture and what we
(12:12):
want to try to convince the CEOthe culture is important, how
culture actually connects tostrategy, and I don't know, get
this old adage correct, but isit that culture eats strategy
for breakfast? Is that it forbreakfast, for dinner, for an
appetizer, whatever the case maybe. So what's your take on
connecting strategic objectiveswith culture?
Laura Hamill (12:36):
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's imperative, right?
You have to do that. There's somany reasons, a couple of them.
One of them is, if we don't dothat, if we don't show that
culture is is completelyrequired, or focus on culture
being aligned with the strategyis required. It's not very
(12:57):
likely you're going to achievethat strategy right, because we
need to make sure that thebehaviors that people are all
day long work in the directionof strategy achievement. And so
let me give you I'll just giveyou this quick example. This is
an example that I use a lot, butit's my favorite example. I was
working at a large tech company,and I just started there, and I
(13:17):
was writing a memorandum, andthis is in the olden days when
we typed that at the top right,we memorandum, and I'm sitting
in my office. Everybody hadoffices for themselves, and
everybody sat in their officewith their doors closed, right?
That's just the way you did. SoI was thinking, Gosh, it would
be great if somebody would readmy memo, because it's new. I'm
new. I hope it's good. Andsomeone's thinking, Oh, what
(13:39):
about my manager? I know he'snot available for me. That which
is telling then I thought about,wait, there's somebody who sits
right next to me. I can hear herclanging on her keyboard. Let me
she's on my team. Shouldn't shebe like, helping me? Right? And
so I go over, knock on the doorand ask her,
and she's still typing. Well,she says, come in. So go in, and
(14:00):
she says, yeah. And so I said,Hey, you know I'm new. I'd love
for you to read this for me andjust tell me what you think. And
she looked at me kind of oddly,and she said, Okay. And so I
said, Okay. And I just sort ofslid it over and left it there.
And then I thought, How muchtime do I give her? So I wanted
(14:20):
to give her plenty of time. Iknew she was busy. I went back
the next the next day, knockedon her door. She's still in the
same place, doing the samething. And I said, Hey, did you
have a chance to look at and shesaid, Yeah, it's fine.
Okay, great, thanks. And Igrabbed it, thinking that there
was some feedback on it, right?
I will go back to my office lookat it, and it doesn't have
(14:41):
anything on it. You know,there's not even, like, a little
smiley, any feedback. And so themessage I got right then and
there was, I wasn't supposed todo that. We don't do that here.
We don't ask each other forhelp. And I continue to get
messages like that from thisorganization.
Conversation that we you're onyour own. In fact, not only on
(15:03):
your own, you're competing withthat woman next door and that
you have to show up better, andyou have to toot your own horn.
In my first performance review,my manager said to me, stop
helping people. You're helpingpeople too much. I want to hear
more about how you are shiningby yourself, right? And so the
(15:24):
thing that's interesting aboutthat is I would love to say I
just said, You know what? That'snot what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna
keep helping people. But no, Ididn't. I learned. I adapted,
and I bet you I was just likethe woman who was next door to
me in no time, in a few months,right? I learned that that's how
we do things. Here we arecompeting. We're standing on our
(15:45):
own. We're individualistic here.
And so I'm connecting it back tothe strategy piece. So the
ironing of this is, guess whatwe were doing as a company?
Guess what our strategy was as acompany at that time, it was
around developing collaborationsoftware.
So this isthe irony, and this is what I
see over and over again, arethese huge disconnects between
(16:07):
what's happening in the day today work, like how people are
kind of pushed to a path thatfits with the culture in their
behavior, and how disconnectedthat can be from what they're
actually trying to achieve. So Iworked with this big insurance
company on helping them withtheir culture, and they were
trying to create a whole bunchof new innovative mark,
(16:29):
innovative approaches in theirmarketplace. And it sort of
sounds like an oxymoron, right?
Insurance Company innovation,but they were trying really
hard, and they had these biggoals around innovation. And
when I first started workingwith them, I was shocked at how
scared people were in the verytop of the leadership team. They
(16:51):
were like scared stiff. Theywere they could hardly talk to
each other. In fact, the veryfirst meeting I had with them to
talk to them about the culturework, I go up to this room where
they're all sitting there, andthey're nobody's talking to each
other, there's like, literallyin their suits and like, just
completely still, and then atthe end of the table was the CEO
(17:14):
and the COO whispering to eachother,
like, holy smokes. What is goingon here. So how can you imagine
that the top leaders are scared?
They're scared of the CEO andthe COO and they're going to
create market changinginnovation. How is that going to
happen? Because I bet you, theemployees feel way more scared
than those leaders did, and sothere's no way that they're
(17:38):
going to be able to actuallygenerate new ideas. Feel
comfortable making a mistake,you know, iterate on new, new
approaches. There's nobody, ifpeople are scared. So that's
what I see over and over again,is these disconnects between who
you say, what you say, you'retrying to achieve, and what the
(17:58):
actual experience is for for thepeople who are in that company,
Michael McCarthy (18:06):
it's so interesting to talk about the
disconnect, because I see it allthe time. When I do consulting,
I always, I always walk out andsay, How are you in business? By
doing this? I don't let it. Idon't know how you're still
surviving. It leads me to mynext question, what happens when
an organization is notintentional about culture?
(18:26):
Because from what I've seen mylimited experiences, they seem
to have just been sleepwalking.
Laura Hamill (18:32):
I think there's all different kind of
combinations of not beingintentional about culture,
right? I think there's the onethat we're talking about around
culture, but cultural betrayal,right? When you claim to be
something and, boom, you're sonot. I mean, that's sort of an
extreme version of, you know,not living their culture and not
being intentional. I thinkthere's also sort of the meh
version of not being intentionalabout culture that can also just
(18:55):
be pretty painful to work withmeaning. They haven't really
articulated the culture, ormaybe they have, and they just
don't really talk about it thatmuch. And it's not bad, but it's
also not good, and it's sort ofjust one of those places that
you just go in and you almostbore yourself to death, right?
Like you just feel like, Is thismy life, right? This is all I'm
(19:19):
doing. I actually worked in acompany for a while that was
extremely boring in that way,and there was nothing about the
culture that I felt connectedto. I think I lasted was like
three weeks,and so I was just over it,
right? And so I think that beingintentional is a strategy that
more organizations need to takeon. They really need to think
(19:45):
about what kind of company theywant to be in the future. Where
are they now, and how are theygoing to get there? And that's
what that is part of the bookthat I really focused on, is I
have this approach called the.
Intentional culture circle. Andit was basically a pretty simple
model that I started using in2006
(20:09):
I think, something like that.
And I started using it because Iwas working with some clients
who were saying, like, I get theculture is important, but it
seems so hard. What should I dofirst? And so I put together
this really simple model to useat this, these clients that
basically just to kind of takeyou step by step, start with
this, and then do this, and thendo one more thing after that,
just trying to make it clearthat you can step into it. You
(20:33):
know, it doesn't have to be thisthing that feels so ambiguous
and so impossible that you cannever make any progress on it.
And so this the idea of it isyou just need to start getting
clear, right, getting clearabout what kind of company you
want to be from a cultureperspective, how that's
connected to your businesspurpose or your strategy, while
(20:55):
you need the culture to be thatway. That's the That's the very
first step. And a lot oforganizations have never done
that work by just trying toarticulate that. And then
there's a bunch of other stepsthat are in the book, but yeah,
lots, lots behind each one ofthem. So I you know, as we, as
we start to wind down, because,of course, we want everyone to
(21:17):
buy the book. I i do have a kindof a final question, which is,
we had we spent the last halfhour talking about how hard it
is, and I can imagine, forreally large companies have been
around for decades, if not 100years, that to try to start to
think about changing culture, orshifting culture, even into a
(21:39):
slightly into a new direction,would be really difficult. So my
question is, why are you sooptimistic? This is such an
important thing to be talkingabout, if it's so challenging
for organizations to do? Yes,that's a good question. It's
because I've seen some companiesreally do it right, right, and
I've seen the benefits of it.
(22:01):
I've seen the magic of it. Andthat is, you know, I wanted to
call this book The Power ofCulture for a couple reasons.
One is because and this, wedidn't talk a ton about this in
this podcast, but how importantleaders and positional power
really is to forming and shapingculture. I mean, that's a whole
other conversation. That's a bigpart of why I wanted to call it
(22:22):
power of culture. But the otherreason was because when you get
it right, it's so positive andbeautiful and magical and
powerful when employees feelconnected to the culture, when
they feel inspired by it, butwhen they feel like they want to
be part of it. And so when youcan get it right, it is just
(22:45):
beautiful. In fact, that's thereason why the cover it has
sunshine on it, because I thinkabout the power of culture like
the sunshine, and how what thatcan do to you right, how that
can make you feel. And so that'swhy I'm optimistic about it,
because I do see organizationsdo it right? And I've got some
good examples in the book ofreal companies who have figured
it out. And a lot of it, though,it really requires the top
(23:08):
leaders to understand it, tograpple with it, to do the work
that's required to make culturecome to life.
Tessa Misiaszek (23:16):
You know, I think, gosh, I just had a huge
aha moment, because it'sinteresting. In conversations
I'm having at work lately, we'rethinking about power and and
what does power really mean, andwhat does having power, you
know, what can you do with that,and what should you do with
that? And how do you definethat? And you just really
(23:38):
talking about the power ofculture and that it really, if
you have a change in leadership,and that can be, I would
imagine, an impetus for how toactually really shift culture in
a dramatic way, and if it startsat the top of the house, so that
that was just a huge aha momentfor
Laura Hamill (23:57):
Yeah, absolutely, it's a perfect time to do it
right a perfect time to do it.
So yeah, I that's I love theidea of how much organizations
can radically change theirsituation by focusing on
culture, and that's why I'm sooptimistic about it. It's hard,
hard work, but once you committo it, once you really see it,
(24:17):
you can do so much with it. So,yeah, I think it's a it's a
beautiful topic. It's just oneof those things, you know, the
always get this saying wrong,but if it's the hard stuff
right, it's the hard stuff thatreally makes the biggest
difference. And so even thoughit's hard, companies absolutely
should still do it right. It'sthe thing that's going to make
(24:37):
the biggest difference for theiremployees, but also for the
success of the business.
Michael McCarthy (24:43):
I love how you frame it, that it's really hard.
In fact, when we had the founderof North Face, Hap clop on the
show, he said that culture isusually no one's really
directing it intentionally, asyou mentioned, and it just sort
of like forms like coral.
When it does, it's like cement,and when you get it wrong, it's
(25:04):
awful, and when you get itright, it's incredible. And I
think you make a reallyinteresting case that it's hard,
but it's really worth it,
Laura Hamill (25:11):
and it is doable.
It is doable. I've seencompanies do it.
Tessa Misiaszek (25:15):
I think that there's, there's just so much
richness to what you write aboutand I and of course, now I'm
keeping like the ripple effectof culture, like the way it can
impact, you know, the employeevalue proposition, and the way
you think about the kind oftotal rewards of attracting top
(25:36):
talent to your company to keepgoing. So we'll have more
conversations. For sure. ICongratulations, my friends.
Laura Hamill (25:44):
Thank you so much.
I appreciate both of you so muchand all your support for this
book, so And for me, thank youamazing.
Michael McCarthy (25:52):
Thank you.
Thanks everyone for listening.
We'll see you next time.
We hope you've enjoyed thisepisode. If you'd like to hear
future episodes, be sure tosubscribe to the happy at work
podcast and leave us a reviewwith your thoughts.
Tessa Misiaszek (26:10):
Are you interested in speaking on a
future episode, or want tocollaborate with us? Let us know
you can send us an email atadmin, at happy at work
podcast.com,
Michael McCarthy (26:22):
and lastly, follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter
for even more happiness. See yousoon. You.
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