A spoken reflection on how toxic workplace culture becomes entrenched over time, why buying tools/software alone won't fix it, and practical steps organizations should take before implementing solutions. The speaker emphasizes the role of long-standing norms, gradual normalization of harm, and recommends 6–12 months of surveys, communications, and focus groups as groundwork for cultural overhaul.
You think, imagine doing that. Imagine working somewhere for a very long time and you have a boss that's done that for five, six years or one or two for a long period of time, you know, that has. Where people are like, wish they're here because, like, it's not that bad. And then new people come on and then new people get owned. You know, it's just how we do things here. And you know what I mean? Like timeless source machines grading A. Some negative culture starts to set in and then that's where you see that sort of, I suppose, that negative, the bad side of conformity. And then it becomes so ingrained. Then it becomes so ingrained and it's. Yeah, like, like that is it. Would it be classical conditioning be the reference here where people just, I mean, when you're in that same position and you're like, okay, it's not that bad, you know, like the frog sitting in the pot and then, then you bring the water to a boil kind of thing and then they're just like, this is fine, everything's fine. Yeah. And I think when I, when you were to talk to me, I'm saying I told. I was like the wrong thing to do. When you have culture you need to work on is go, we're going to now go and buy a piece of software to fix this. You know what I mean? It's like it's not going to do anything. Like, it's literally not going to do anything. People aren't going to use it. Nobody's going to start reporting things more. It's like you have a lot of groundwork to do before you even do anything until it. Automating a brand wasn't automating an inefficient process. And then you're going to maximize this inefficiency. And I think that's where like the how do we. How do you solve for the issue comes back to, well, you have to do a lot of groundwork and people are actually going to have to needle move in a positive direction lightly. And then you bring on the, okay, cool. Are we going to bring these other tools on to like help us continue or increase this improvement? And I think that's where a lot of you see a lot of business get things wrong. And then they look at the tool and they're poking it going, this doesn't work. It's like right on the groundwork aspect. A question for you, co founder. What would you say would be the number before somebody buys and now they've now got to do a bit of an overhaul on their culture. What should they do first? What's the first thing they should do? I would say if you're trying to. If you've identified something needs to change, you should spend between six and 12 months to be surveying, actively doing like. Like comms, actively speaking, doing focus groups, but not with. They won't be, you know, let's just say the bad culture.
