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This episode is part of the Presence project: Presence: Fixing culture starts with your calendar, not your officeYou might think an episode about improv comedy might be a stretch for a podcast about making work better. But in fact as Kelly Leonard explains today the skills of improv comedy are the most important ones that will determine our success at work. Kelly helps to run Second City, the world's famous famous improv comedy club - he believes that improv skills can teach us about what we need in work going forwards. ** TRIGGER WARNING ** includes one brief mention of poetryCheck our Kelly's book

This episode is part of the Presence project: Presence: Fixing culture starts with your calendar, not your officeIn the 2000s a book called Fish! A remarkable way to boost morale and improve results became a bestseller. A small book, it was often used by companies accompanying a video of the same name. Together the two told a story of the culture of the fish market in Seattle, a noisy, bombastic place, but a place that was filled with joy. I first encountered Fish when a firm came to pitch to me when I was working in publishing. They told me that their culture was Fish. There are a few things that stood out from it. The idea of intentionally designing culture isn’t new but this seemed to be explicitly linking culture, emotion and mood. There were 4 principles of FishPlaybe theremake their daychoose your attitude

This episode is part of the Presence project: Presence: Fixing culture starts with your calendar, not your officeThis is the second episode about rituals - the first one is next to it in the podcast feed, it's an interview with Kursat Ozenc about how rituals can be used to create culture. This episode goes into real life examples.Claudia Wallace talks about Crisp Thursday (Connection)Andy Puleston talks about Pizza Meetings (Connection) and Leaving Speeches (Change)Dan Pink talks about Friday Night Experiments (Creativity)Biz Stone talks about Hack Week at Twitter (Creativity)Dr Heidi Edmondson talks about Ten at Ten (Performance)Heidi has a wonderful new book out - Darkness in the City of Light You can also hear the original episodes that each of these extracts came from by click the links above. I have to say that those whole episodes are worth revising. For example, Andy Puleston talks about how effective the culture was at Radio 1 when it was a series of affiliated tribes and he articulates the role that buildings play in shaping cultures. Each episode teaches something special. Andy Puleston is now Director of People & Culture at Circulor, an award winning technology business.

This episode is part of the Presence project: Presence: Fixing culture starts with your calendar, not your officeKursat Ozenc is a product designer who he teaches at Stanford university, He teaches on the subject that we can all learn from which is the idea that culture can be designed. The specific tool he uses to design culture is the creation of workplace rituals. Kursat's Substack newsletterKursat's first book is here and the second, on virtual meetings is here.The reading list for Kursat's course is hereKursat’s book includes the suggestions that: ‘The rituals in our life show what we care about’. Critically then creating rituals demonstrate what our culture values.Kursat gives five use cases for rituals: For changeCreativityPerformanceConflictCommunityIf you like this episode you'll also like the episode that accompanies it - which goes into depth about specific rituals that companies have used. Listen to that episode here.A full transcript of the episode is at the website.

Flow is the state of being in which people become so immersed in the joy of their work or activity “that nothing else seems to matter.”Presence is to be in a flow state of connection with others.Here’s the last discussion about the Happiness TrackSign up for the newsletterEmma’s new book SovereignHBR: The Best Leaders Have a Contagious Positive EnergyHBR: Proof That Positive Work Cultures Are More ProductiveToday is the first of series of podcasts about an idea that needs more consideration in our workplaces. The idea of presence.Emma Seppala is a psychologist and lecturer at the Yale School of Management – she also runs the Women’s Leadership program there. I first spoke to Emma about 6 years ago when I came across her book the Happiness Track. The hypothesis of that book was in many ways the sweet spot of this podcast: the notion that if you make workers happy then they do their better work. Emma had a new book out this week called Sovereign and it felt like a great reason to have a new conversation. The conversation leads into the next block of podcasts which are all about the idea of presence. Over the last 4 years we’ve seen discourse from CEOs about wanting workers back in the office but in many ways they’re putting things the wrong way wrong. A lot of us find ourselves making our way into work and sitting on video calls all day. Or having headphones on because its so noisy. We got home at the end of the day thinking ‘what was the point of that’. When bosses say they want us to be present in the office, what they actually describe is something different. They talk us about us interacting, having ideas, watercooler moments. Bosses say they want us to be present in the office, but what they really want is presence, for us to be in each others company.For me presence is related to flow

To receive the newsletter and the forthcoming Presence project sign-up hereToday’s top episode goes to the heart of an issue that a lot of people raise with me.They say ‘where do you start when changing a culture’.To some extent it’s what the episode about the hospital trust in Barking was about, going in and changing the culture of a huge organisation.I saw one of today’s guests Darren Ashby speak at an event - talking through the specifics of how his company Business Four Zero tried to change the culture of Tesco. Business Four Zero are one of a group of organisations who work with leaders to change company culture. I know there’s a few of these firms. I attended a dazzling event by one firm called Scarlett Abbot in this field about a month ago. Darren is joined by Atif Sheikh as they talk through the specifics of what they did with firms like Electronic Arts, Aviva and Tesco. They’ve turned some of their work into a book which you can buy here.Some of the things that stood out for me:What’s the number one thing you look for in a high performing culture? How internal are they? How much time are they spending on themselves vs the outside world?Only 28% of workers say they are connected to purposeCulture is what are you committed to as group - emotional commitment of what you want to createValues - before you define your values know that there are 6 core values shared amongst everyone (sometimes called the 6 Pillars of Character - Trust, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship). These should not be your differentiator. These are universal basic expectations. You need to define something differentiatingLeaders' role is to bring energy: Satya Nadella told Microsoft’s execs: ‘find the rose petals in the field of sh*t’So how do you elevate a culture? They introduce 2 or 3 critical behaviours that elevate a culture Might be ‘be kinder’ And they build a process of how you might enact those behavioursFor example Intercontinental Hotel GroupHad switched from being a hotel owner to a franchise businessCEO needed to remove silosWhat did they need? Too many people in the business didn’t understand how they made money - it made spending decisions hard. So they focussed on ‘think return’Additionally it had become complacent, so they decided to ‘move fast’Finally they agreed to ‘talk straight’ with each other

Isabel Berwick is a writer and podcaster who focusses on the evolving state of modern work. I’ve celebrated her podcast Working It many times here (here’s her specials on the 4-day week for example, or her special on meeting-free days was essential listening). I love its ability to react rapidly to the biggest news stories of the moment and to drop a snackable episode midweek.I talked to her about her opinions on modern work, going deep on the rapidly changing world of employment and where we’re going next.Isabel has a brand new book out, The Future Proof Career, which she says is for everyone who doesn’t read books about work but wants to be better at navigating it.Recent episodes you might have missedThe importance of trust at work - and why it's on the declineCharles Duhig on how to be a supercommunicator in your job (and your home life)Can improvements to culture fix a broken NHS trust?The Big Ange effect at Tottenham HotspurFrances Frei on the importance of training managers

How should most of us think about the differences between Employee Experience and Employee Engagement.I first spoke to Emma Bridger, who is the author of a well respected book on this topic and the founder of the EX Space, a learning community focussed on raising the bar in the Employee Experience field.Then I picked the brains of Melanie Wheeler who leads People Communications at Sutherland, a firm widely recommended to me as outstanding in Employee Experience.Get in touchSign up for the newsletter

Charles Duhigg’s bestseller The Power of Habit was the definitive guide to building and sustaining successful habits.His new book, Supercommunicators, grapples with the knotty topic of creating successful interactions with others.It’s a thorough and dazzling read that has many applications for the way we work (and how we live our lives).We talked about:the single biggest thing that builds psychological safetywhy moving conversation out of small talk into deep discussion proves more satisfying than we expecthow teams should use 'who are we' conversationshow we should think about three different types of conversation (are they looking to be helped, hugged or heard?Read an extract of Charles' book here