104 | Future of Work - What Now? | Kevin Empey

Welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast, where I talk to leaders about how internal communications, engagement, and leadership all play a key role in creating amazing and successful cultures.

So the talent crunch, the new employee views of life and costs, I think they're all creating, if you like, along with this content piece in terms of the model that we're aiming for, they're creating, leading to quite a change challenge.

Hello there and welcome to this episode of the Building Better Cultures podcast with me, Scott McInnes. Thanks a million for joining us again. Before we kick into today's guest and have a great conversation, just my usual thanks to our friend and partner Workvivo, who've been a supporter for, God, 20 or 30 episodes now. So if you are looking— and today's actually conversation is going to be very interesting— if you're looking at hybrid working and what you're going to do to maintain or build and grow your sense of connection and communication with your employees, then perhaps Workvivo is worth having a look. Their online engagement platform is suited exactly to that purpose. So, well worth a look at their website at workvivo.com, and we will hear a little bit more from them later as well. Today's guest is actually somebody that's been on the podcast a couple of times. He's a real friend and I know avid listener of the podcast, Kevin Empress. Who is the MD at Work Matters. The reason that we thought it'd be really interesting to get Kevin back today was that he was last on about 15 months ago when we were certainly in Ireland anyway, in the rages of lockdown following a fairly messy Christmas of everybody going out. We had really high numbers, we, everybody was locked back in their homes and we had a really interesting conversation specifically around the future of work, what that might look like. And back then, 15 months ago, it was all kind of still quite theoretical. Nobody quite knew because we were all locked in our houses. Organizations were perhaps scratching their heads, trying to pull together their future of work plans and strategies and what they might do. And they were thinking very much about what the future of their businesses looked like. So 15, 16 months on, I thought it might be interesting to get Kevin back to look at where we are today, to maybe look at some of the challenges and the struggles that organizations have had, or maybe some of the wins that they've had as well, and look at maybe start to think about what might be next as we move forward, perhaps out of this kind of hybrid model and what that looks like going forward for businesses. So Kevin, good afternoon. How are you?

Good afternoon. Thank you, Scott McInnes. And thanks for that explanation to the invitation back. I was trying to work out whether it was because it went okay and you just wanted to have another discussion, or maybe it was so bad that we had to do it over again. So I'm relieved It's the former.

The former. Listen, for those that didn't get to listen to your previous episode, why don't we kick off by you just telling us, just give us a quick bit of background on you and on the work that you do in Work Matters.

Sure. So, yeah, Kevin Empy is my name, and I've been in the people and leadership space, I suppose, now for many years at this stage. But I set up Work Matters in 2017. As a really a specialist future of work consulting and training company. That was the, the, the aim, I guess, at that time, because things were— there was a future of work before COVID um, and, you know, things were changing around the world of work. So, so we were focused on things like, you know, future of work strategy, you know, transition planning, training, and enablement— essentially just helping people think about and navigate the changing world of work. So that's what we've been doing, and I guess the context for that work changed significantly in March 2020. But, you know, there's still quite a lot of those underlying themes and issues along, you know, to do with work and working life that are still there, as it were, so, and reappearing again. So COVID's been interesting, you know, obviously in terms of its effect on what we do, but But really, it's just like everybody says, accelerated some of those topics and themes that we've talked about before.

Yeah, and accelerant was exactly the word that I was thinking, 'cause I think the future of work was always, it was always kind of, it felt a bit mañana. It was always a bit over the next horizon, that never-ending climb to the top of the hill. But as you say, COVID kind of made it real, didn't it? It made it real for people.

Probably on a mass scale. So we certainly, Scott, I mean, if your job was being automated in 2017 or 2016, you knew all about the future of work, right? You're at the sharp end of that. There was definitely things happening around automation, digital transformation, organizations trying to be more adaptive and agile and trying to figure out how they future-proof themselves, et cetera, et cetera. So there was certainly stuff going on, but it was more local. It hadn't quite landed as a sort of mass issue. And so that's what I think the biggest change has been, that we're all going through a similar experience. It doesn't matter what sector we're in, what industry, what geography we're in, we're actually going through a collective experience probably on some of these issues and topics now.

And plainly a lot has changed since we last spoke 15 months ago. And you're on the front line of this in many ways, talking to organizations every day of the week. And I wonder, what are some of the big challenges that they faced as we been going on this journey over the past year or so.

Yeah, I recall, Scott, actually you put it nicely the last time we were talking about this in terms of some of the strategizing maybe, planning and preparation, the thinking going on. I think the way you put it was we were marking out the pitch in terms of what this next phase of work was going to look like post-COVID. But we're very— to use that analogy, the game is very much on now, isn't it? And I suppose overall, thankfully, we're not dealing perhaps with the cloud of COVID and the boundaries that that created around work up the last couple of years. But we've definitely moved into a phase, obviously, as everybody knows, I guess we're in this situation now, unlike the COVID years, if you want to put it like that, where we now have the complexity of choice. There's the complexity of choice as organizations, leaders thinking about not just what, type of work model and ways of working we're moving to next, but also complexity in how we progress to that. So those kind of areas really do dictate what's going on. I guess in terms of challenges, there's so many there, but I— and opportunities too, of course, which have to be mentioned, but I'd sort of group them under a couple of things, maybe content and context. And change. Those would be sort of 3 headings. In terms of content, I guess everybody's trying to work through right now, you know, what is the right model, you know, the 3-2, you know, days in the office, all of that carry-on. And we see it, we see it so much everywhere now. Um, but there's a desire to move on, you know, to try to create, to try to try and move and transition to a new model as sort of a, a viable model and ways of working. Um, and also one that's sustainable and productive. Acknowledging the changes that we've seen and the habits that we want to retain, as well as the, the aspects of work and working life that we want to bring back, you know, from pre-COVID times. So, so people are, in terms of content, the what, I feel like people are trying to work through that. And there's different views on that, as we know, and that's playing out in different ways, different examples. But I think that'll settle down. I think we will settle down in terms of that, the content of it. We're in a sort of test and learn phase right now. And people, most people I talk to are open, they're trying something now, they're moving to, to trying to coax people back and, and to create a new rhythm, if you like, and patterns of work in a hybrid context. And remember, we were talking about jobs that can be done in that way. Uh, we'll talk about that, I'm sure, again later. But we're in that sort of, you know, most people talking to, they're going to test and learn with a view to keeping an open mind to review and adapt as we go. So So that piece is complex, but it's there. And I think it will settle down.

Before we move on to the context piece, just in the context of the content piece you were talking about there was interesting. Andrew Bartlow, who was a guest on the previous episode, we were chatting a little bit about this as well, because I'm kind of in your camp on the kind of the test and learn, the experimentation, the keeping an open mind. We've never done this before. So let's see what works. And if something's not working, let's try something different. He was very much interestingly in the other corner, where he was saying, you know, that whole idea of experimenting, of chopping and changing, that's not great because actually what people want is a little bit more certainty. And that's what organizations should be providing. So his, his tack was more decide on the 60/40 or the 50/50 or the whatever and stick with it because then people have certainty about what, about what it is they're doing and what their expectations of them are and all that stuff. But what's your take on that?

The certainty piece is so important because people have to plan their lives and their commutes and their childcare and their arrangements, et cetera. And they need that for sure. And I guess the way— a bit of a compromise suggestion there is this idea of freedom within a frame. So the frame is important. We can't just sleepwalk our way through this change. We've got a business to run. We've customers to serve. We've cultures to build. So we do need a frame, some parameters or guardrails, whatever kind of word you want to I see that, and I think that is important for that clarity and certainty piece. But the point is, though, that that experience, that hybrid working experience, whether it's— let's just say it's 3-2, for instance, 3 days in the office, 2 days remote. Let's just call it that for an example. We haven't experienced that before. So how can we say without living it? It's a classic case, isn't it, Scott, of what has to be emergent change rather than directed change because we simply haven't been there before. The experiences that we've had in the last 2 years, for instance, if you even just take that as an example, we didn't know what pure, total remote working was gonna— we might have had some ideas about it, but it was only when we experienced it did we work out the boundaries. Remember we had this issue about always on, we had issues about meeting overload, and we started to develop coping strategies with some of those things. And we also learned a little bit about what we like and what we don't like around work. I mean, people talked quite a lot this time last year about somehow valuing that key-in-the-door moment, you know, that creation of separation between work and— and we wouldn't have experienced that if we hadn't gone through that experience. So my only challenge on the certainty point is that Do we really know how it's going to work? Do we really know what the implications are for productivity, for our customers, for our teams, the culture piece? My suggestion is that we leave a little bit of wriggle room on this because to allow for the experiential realities. But to do that in a very deliberate way, though, collect the data, be informed by data. Don't just sort of sleepwalk into it or drift into it. So it's, I would say, a very intentional phase. And I agree, though, that that can't last forever. That there's some sense— most people I'm talking to would say, look, we're going to try this model. We're going to move on. That's our first approach. We're going to learn from this. And maybe in Q3, Q4, we're going to firm up maybe some further boundaries and parameters. But I think to say we have the answer right now and to dictate that as a final— I think we've seen examples where that has bitten. So the Apple—

Apple.

It's probably a case in point where employees— because one of the issues that that approach doesn't take account of is the employee who has changed in those. It's assuming that the employee will just switch on and off like a light switch in terms of going from one mode to another, where I think we know that that's not the case. Employees have developed their sense of what's important to them around work and working life. And they're very vocal and their voice is coming through right now on that issue. So there's a few more variables in the piece, isn't there, that we probably have to be careful of.

I don't think it's quite so cut and dried as make a decision and run with it and stick with it. Or just, I don't think keeping chopping and changing is the right answer either, but you're right. It's somewhere in the middle, giving people that certainty, that consistency, but also with a feeling that, look, if this isn't going to work, we will tweak tweak and change and morph and test and learn, to use your phrase, as we go. So I think that's probably the space that organizations need to be in right now.

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You said content, context, and change. Tell us a little bit about context.

Yeah, well, I think, I think you've hit on it already. I think one of the context issues is the the variables, if you like, that we're dealing with is the employee and the employee's sense of what they need and want through this and the fact that their attitudes maybe have changed around work. But there's also— there's an anxiety, isn't there, about drifting back to a work model, if you like, from the past that had its problems pre-COVID. And people are anxious about that. And they're slow to let go. Of maybe something. I mean, the great irony is, isn't it, that we're fearful of losing some freedoms that we have established maybe in our work and our life, ironically in a time of COVID when actually we were imprisoned in one sense by, you know, the pandemic, but actually in another way we were sort of liberated in terms of actual thoughts about work and remote and flexible working, et cetera. So people are— so that's the employee variable. And of course, that's feeding into the other context point, which is the talent crunch that we're in. So most folks I talk to are a little bit, employers-wise, leaders, a bit nervous about being so directive about the next or too pushy because they're just concerned that actually that might result in turnover. Now, others are saying, you know what, actually, we'll take that risk because we need to move on. And our brand is such that if we do lose people because they want this ultimate 100%, for instance, flexibility. Well, look, that's actually not going to be part of our future. So we'll take our chances and go through that bumpy patch. But generally speaking, the talent crunch is causing a little bit of nervousness around being too directive, I think. I think that's an important context. And of course, costs and inflation. You know, the price of lunch, commuting. One employee I just heard the other day talked about, I want to see a return on my commute. I am spending— so costs to go to work are no longer a sunk cost that we used to just accept. They're now a discretionary cost because do I go in or not? And COVID, of course. So the talent crunch, the new employee views of life and costs, I think they're all creating, if you like, along with this content piece in terms of the model that we're aiming for, they're creating, leading to quite a change challenge, I guess.

Hmm, which is the third of your three, that whole idea of change. And you spoke about it before in terms of it's not going to be directive change, is it?

Certain elements of it, of course, will be very clear. We have a policy, health and safety, we're going to do this, this is how we're going to do it. But other aspects of it in terms of patterns of work that work for me, my team, and the organization, you definitely can to see a more experimental, we've got to try. And some of the really great examples are seeing where people are being open about this, that they don't have the answer. And they're saying, right, next 2 weeks, we're going to try this. We're going to do a sprint, if you like, in terms of this experiment. And we're going to do it this way. And we're going to agree on anchor days, or this or that, or team days, et cetera. And then we're going to sit down and we're going to reflect on how that went and what we want to keep in terms of the next 2 weeks and what things that were really a disaster. Car crash. The way we handled that hybrid meeting was terrible. And to accept these experiences as good data and accepting that it won't go right first time. So there's definitely that sense of part of this journey is a more emergent sort of feel our way piece. But I suppose— and that's maybe in terms of the logistical side. I guess one thing that strikes me in in the folks I talk to and the manager training we do and that, and hearing people's stories, is the— I'm reminded of that change curve point where change, or any change, involves an ending of something, a transition, usually a pretty messy one, to some new state, and then the new beginning or the new norm, if you like, you know, at a very simplistic level. But it's almost because this has been such an emotive phase for people for all kinds of reasons, and 2 years of pattern building and habit forming, we probably do need to acknowledge in the change management sort of all this that we have to acknowledge the ending, what that ending means for people. You know, at a kind of deep level, it's not just something like a light switch that's going to turn on. If you had been a semi-regular gym-goer, you know, and then you stopped going for 2 years, you'd hardly just get straight back to that, you know, a rhythm and a comfort around your gym schedule, you know.

I can tell you that, I can tell you that from experience.

Yeah, you know, so it's a kind of recognizing that ending piece, which is— there's actually a sense of loss, isn't there, almost sometimes for people, and an anxiety, I said, about the future, the fear of losing some of the freedom So I guess in our change and in our leadership point is just to acknowledge and accommodate that that's going to be— even at surface level, people are saying, oh yeah, I did this and did that. Actually, underneath the surface, uh, people going through, through that, um, that piece. So it's like the John Kotter piece, really, you know, he's one of the gurus around change. Just said, look, if you look at any cases of change in the past, it, it comes down to hearts and minds, right? And sometimes we over overplay the mind piece. In other words, we put in a logical linear approach and we say, right, this is the plan, this is the roadmap, this is the certainty that you talked about. And we just hope that everybody will follow and sort of adapt to that plan. But what we've probably underestimated is the more psychological and emotional side of it, where people are very cleverly looking for any excuse to maybe slow down or disrupt that change. And I think we're seeing that play out now. Most people I talk to say that their transition plans to the office are not going, if you like, as fast as they would've hoped if take-up is not going as much.

Or as planned, or not going as they had planned in that vacuum perhaps of making that plan outside of sometimes insight from people. I think it's really interesting that work that you alluded to there with the endings, the transition and the new beginnings, that work that William Bridges did is well worth listeners having a read of. It's really simple kind of change 101 stuff, but by God, it's powerful. The whole idea that that people won't move on until they've put to bed the things, until they've mourned the things that they used to have. And perhaps that was even things pre-COVID, back when we were in the world of work before, what we might call the regular 9 to 5. So we let them put those things to bed and then we let them put the things to bed from the COVID era, the forced remote working, I think Darren Murph called it in a previous episode, that we let them have those moments and we give them space to be able to do that. So that we can move forward. And I think obviously from a communications and engagement perspective, which is our bread and butter in inspiring change, that whole idea of hearts and minds is so powerful because really it is our hearts that rule our heads. We know that. So explaining the why, we're doing a 3-2 model to use your example, Kevin, but why? Why do I need to come in? What's that going to look like? What's the benefit going to be for me or our customers over and above of what I'm doing today? 'Cause actually, I think I've been pretty good at home. So actually coming into the office isn't gonna really make that much different. So what's the why? And maybe to find the why, it's about going out and asking people, well, why do you think staying at home 100% of the time is a good idea? What do you think more you might get of if you come to the office and integrate with teams, have chats? And I think for me, one of the things that I've been chatting to lots of leaders about recently, particularly around that change area is, actually helping, and this sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud, but helping organizations and leaders particularly to relearn how to structure their working days, how to do work, what work to do and when, because there is nothing that's going to piss off an employee more than spending an hour and a half on the train to come to an office to spend all day on Zoom calls.

Yeah.

That is an abject waste of everybody's time. And if anything is gonna sink a hybrid model, it's going to be that. So that whole idea of people learning how to work and planning, being more— I hate the word planful, but I'll use it— being more planful is really, really important going forward.

And I hear those stories all the time. Oh, I commuted in and we were on team calls, et cetera. And the way this is this emergent change piece and collecting data, say, hold on to that moment. That's data. That's helpful. So in other words, that's a good example of your engagement with the office and office life that was not productive. Now, you know, but actually, what conversations did you have? Maybe did you meet up with 3 or 4 people that you didn't even acknowledge from other teams, for instance? So we should talk about productivity because I think productivity in this context is a very interesting piece. But just to finish on your point, I totally agree on the hearts and minds piece, this business to create a vision of work that will attract people to a new future, basically, that's going to be the best of both worlds. And that in our moments together, we're going to create moments that matter, basically, together in the office and online, by the way. We shouldn't forget that too. But we're going to create moments of matter that hold the connection piece, et cetera, that we talk about the innovation, collaboration, And to acknowledge that that's not going to happen overnight. That's going to require us coming in on a wet morning because we've agreed as a team to try it. But an open and honest dialogue with open feedback on this is crucial for collecting that data so that we can kind of tweak the model as we go. Because ultimately the prize here, Scott, you know, must be that we're trying to correct for a model of work that was pretty broken actually pre-COVID. I mean, people were stressed and strained. And the stories that people will tell about getting up at 6 o'clock in the morning to drop a kid off to crèche so that they can beat the commute into an hour into Dublin. And if they miss that window by 15 minutes, you know, they're done, you know, and they're going to be half an hour late. So we're correcting for that, and we're actually trying to collectively, employees and leaders, create a model of work that has flexibility within it that we would have only have dreamed of 3 years ago. But now we've got so conditioned to 100% remote, even 2 days flexibility seems like a sacrifice of some kind. So it's back to this, isn't it? This acknowledgement that this is a complex and kind of emotional, tricky, clunky change experience. And to embrace that rather than to say, oh, somebody had a disaster coming in and been on Zoom calls all day, therefore it's broken, and therefore we have to go back to what we had before or make it mandatory for everybody to do X or Y. I think it's just acknowledging that transition phase and the ending piece is probably helpful here.

Yeah. So when you think about that and you think about us being— so we're now effectively in— when you and I spoke a year last March, 15 months ago, we were kind of starting our way into this phase of work. We're now fully into this phase of work, of hybrid working, or maybe companies moving more to remote and all that kind of good stuff that companies are still maybe struggling with or working their way through. At the expense of panicking anybody listening to this podcast, what's next? What's the next phase of work look like? And when you and I spoke about this before, you mentioned kind of Work 4.0 and that idea of what's the next step? What does that look like? In your eyes.

Yeah, I know. And there's only so much we can take, isn't there, Alan, in terms of absorption, you know, and how much we could— we've already dealing with such a busy, crowded schedule, thinking too far ahead just kind of wrecks us completely. But I definitely recognize, and I'm experiencing this right this moment, is there's sort of two horizons going on here of work, I would say. Scott, the first horizon is what you might call the 2022 agenda, which is dealing with everything we've talked about, helping leaders and managers navigate this next phase, transition to new work models, try them, this clunky change that we talked about. And hopefully by the end of the year, because everybody needs a little bit of a target, hopefully by the end of the year seeing something that will settle into this more sustainable model and patterns of work, if you like, and ways of working. So I would call that the sort of short-term horizon. But definitely already we're seeing from those who might be further down that path or indeed have been challenged by their boards or their executive teams or their HRDs, CPOs, to actually think about, well, what is sort of coming on the next horizon, the 2023+ if you like agenda. Why that's the case is because people are kind of going, whatever changes we make now need to fuse with longer-term objectives and strategies that we have as a business, as an organization, as a culture. And I give you a quick example of that. One leader who said to me one of his big priorities, 3 big kind of values, if you like, and the second one was being adaptive because they're in such a kind of high roller— forget COVID, forget hybrid, their business, the industry they're in is in such a kind of a state of flux. And change. So what they're saying is that this 2022 experience needs to be an example. We need to create an adaptive work culture that won't just help us deal with the transition to hybrid, you know, in the short term, but actually will create a culture and habits and skills that will enable adaptiveness and agility into the future. So in other words, the prize, you know, is not just about a successful transition in 2022. The prize really is a longer-term prize around adaptiveness. So servant leadership, for instance, empowering teams to come up with their own ways of working. If we have a more directive and command-and-control approach to this phase that we're going in now, what signals are we telling people about for the culture and the style that we want to build into the future? So in this sort of more, I suppose, horizon 2 type of, you know, that's something people are concerned about is how do we fuse the current phase into the future? And there's 2 or 3 things definitely going on right now. And one, I guess, is the creation of the infrastructure or scaffolding, if you like, around making flexible working models work. So in other words, people haven't had time to attend to things like performance management or indeed the technology that, you know, all of the technology isn't in place right now. Performance, rewards, development, recruitment, succession. Scott, you know, actually choosing leaders now, from now on, from today, choosing leaders who are going to be more comfortable with this more flexible world. So thinking a little bit ahead about that sort of supporting, enabling processes, um, is definitely one of that sort of next stage. I know it's not far away at all, but it's, it's definitely something people are looking to, uh, to, to follow up quickly in 2023, um, if not before. Um, but, but a second item that you mentioned, you know, this whole, uh, Work 4.0— there is no doubt that this phase has opened up a new field, if you like, or a new discipline around what you might call future of work strategy, right? So You know, because the transition to hybrid is not just dealing about where work gets done, but it's actually asking questions and raising questions about how we get work done and who does the work, what work we do, and indeed why. And then, you know, maybe we shouldn't be doing certain activities, we should be outsourcing them, or we should be doing other ways of— So the lid has been lifted on the question mark, and this brings in things like thinking about work that isn't necessarily hybrid work. In other words, like logistics jobs, you know, call centers, other jobs, and, you know, frontline job, rethinking how work gets done generally. Um, and maybe joining that work design or work architecture question up with other trends that we know have been there for some time, such as skills of the future, workforce planning, automation, and indeed ESG, the sustainability agenda. So give you a very quick example. So if you look up Unilever, for instance, and you just Google Unilever, Unilever future of work strategy, you'll see an example of an organization saying, okay, there's a longer-term strategy here, not just a short-term. It's not just about hybrid, it's not about flex, it's about ensuring that we remain open to changes to work and skills into the future and not just this phase. So the infrastructure piece, the future of work strategy piece, this whole redesigning— I think two books have just come out in the last month by Ravan Jasiuthasan and Linda Gratton about redesigning work. It's no coincidence that they're out now. Because there's this whole mood around changing work, Work 4.0. We're not going to solve for that in the short term, but we've opened up the conversation and that conversation is going to continue. But a third one, and this is really to your field particularly too, is the longer-term piece on culture and leadership of the future that we want out of all of, you know, prompted by this but informed by other change that we want to see into the future and putting in place maybe cultural leadership and employee experience type strategies to really, I guess, capture the leadership and change management and agility enabling lessons that we've experienced in the last couple of years and make sure that they become sustainable capabilities, you know, not just things that we did in 2021 or '22.

Yeah, for sure.

And those would be 3 things that I definitely see being on the next horizon, if you like. Yeah.

Brilliant. And it's interesting to touch on EX, because I think that we talk about, you know, customer experience all the time, but we don't spend enough time talking about employee experience. And that is so woven through whatever organizations are doing now, what they've done for the past 2 years and what they're going to do in the next 5. You know, how do we get people to a place where they really do want to do the best for your customers. I still chat to lots of clients who are still very much all about the customer. And I'm saying, lads, you've got to just rethink that lens and maybe refocus it on the people that work in your organization so that they can focus on the people outside of your organization. So it's interesting you touch on that as a third one. At Inspiring Change, we help our clients to implement sustainable change and drive business performance by putting their people first. We do that through a focus on strategic internal communications, employee engagement, and leadership consultancy. If you're struggling with change or getting your people aligned behind your purpose, vision, or strategy, then get in touch. Simply visit our website at www.inspiringchange.ie for more. Coming back and thinking Thinking about those maybe 3 areas and more broadly perhaps, you talked earlier on about having to help leaders to navigate the today and whatever's next. What skills do you see that leaders are going to need to have in order to really maximize the opportunity for them, for their teams, and then of course in turn for their organizations?

Yeah, there's no doubt that's probably quite a lot of time we're doing right now is spending with leaders, with managers through the training that we're doing and also with HR leaders who are coaching their leaders, their business leaders to help them through that. You find HR spending a lot of time coaching and trying to help nudge their leaders to be doing this, going through this change in the right way because the leadership style and I suppose the whole area of servant leadership really comes to mind to me as being an area of interesting relevance, if you like, as to how the kind of almost the mindset as well as the skill set for leaders, because the style of how we manage this next phase says a lot about the leadership style and culture, you know, and indeed the values, you know, for the future and their intentions for the future. And it's also an opportunity, this phase, to practice some of those. Those skills of servant leadership, more empowered teams, experimentation. I'll give you a practical example. I was just with a group and this lady was telling us about her experience in leading her team. They just announced a particular model that they were going to go through. And she was just explaining in a very authentic way how she was struggling with it as a leader. And she admitted that she said to her team, "Look, the organization has decided to move to this 3-2." saying, look, we've got to move on, to your point earlier. We've got to move on and try this. This is the first time I have done this as a leader. I'm to figure out my personal circumstances too, just like you. But collectively, we have to try to help each other, support each other, figure this out and see what works and doesn't work. And I will— if we run into issues with it, I'll have your back and I will I will champion further change and iterations to this. But I just thought, wasn't that very interesting? And then what she did, just almost instinctively, she said, actually, that conversation triggered a whole wave of insights and personal stories and opinions and ideas from employees. She was like— she said it was like opening up a tap. She just unwittingly opened up a tap because she had been vulnerable and open.

Open.

And I just couldn't help them. We had a chat about this to say, let's contrast that to a leadership example. Let's, like, like a video game, let's go to a different scenario where that leader said, listen, you know, we have this 3-2 model, it's not my fault, it's policy now, and we just have to get on with it. And our numbers are a bit soft this month, so we just have to suck it and, and go. Let's agree in 2 days, and let's— that's it now. Um, and almost closed, a closed conversation as opposed to And I think those two leadership styles contrast. There's different skills in, isn't there, in both of those scenarios. And when you think about leadership of the future, you're kind of going, gosh, option A does sound interesting in terms of a skill set and a mindset that we should be trying to develop and encourage, reward, promote. Because we're going to hit these kind of uncertain, complex changes again. This isn't going to be the last time when we hit a complex business issue or uncertain situation. So I don't know if that answers your question, but I just thought it's raising questions around servant leadership, agile leadership, being open and experimental, but also then knowing when to be more directive as well. So that agility between, if you like, a more traditional approach to leadership, but then knowing the situation to switch on the more open and agility type approach.

And I think it's that ability to be not just in terms of business model, but in terms of leadership approach. When do I have to be more directive? When do I have to be less directive? I don't think that probably in the two examples there, I think there's probably room for both of them.

Exactly, exactly. And different situations, you know, Situational leadership.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But just, I'd probably, like you, I'd probably err towards the slightly more open, vulnerable, emotive leadership style, but that's just what floats my boat in the world of work that I work in. But there are going to be times and places and needs to have that slightly more directive, maybe less emotive version. But yeah, that flexible leadership style is going to be key. Conscious of time, last question. We're hearing lots about the impact that all of this is having and is going to have on organizational culture and a sense that, particularly from senior, very senior leaders, God, if we're going to fix this organizational culture, we just have to get people back into the office. What's your take on that? What do you think? What impact is all this going to have on organizational culture and organizations? And what's perhaps the one thing that you think would really help organizations to start to see past that, see how they could start to create an organizational culture in this new context?

And I hear some of the piece, and I also hear people challenging to say, don't be so patronizing that culture is something that only happens in the office. So I'm hearing people's stories coming from young young people who say, "Oh, we're not eligible for some of this flexible working because they think we have to be in to get all this osmosis learning from and role modeling, et cetera." And I said, and they're saying, "Well, how can we watch the habits and behaviors of leaders if they're not even here?" So, you know—

So they're in the office, but the people they're supposed to be learning from are not in the office.

Yeah, exactly. So I suppose what I'm saying is challenging a little bit sometimes is this idea that culture can only exist in person. And isn't it coming through so clearly from the work we're doing actually that I think organizations sometimes have struggled with the area of landing things like values and real sort of cultural priorities, genuine expressions of what we value and why. And I think we've tried to express that in wonderful ways and very artistic ways in the past, but In one of the modules we do around the manager enablement, it's around expressing values through hybrid working. And it's very interesting listening to the managers that they are actually leaning on their values more than ever to justify why they are maybe, you know, deciding on one pattern versus another, why we need to be in the office on occasion versus not. And they're leaning on their values around maybe connection, relationship building, customer first, or whatever it might be, innovation, Adaptability. And actually, the transition to hybrid and figuring out ways of working that are going to work for our customers and for the team has actually been helpful. It's a helpful time for us to really double down on the values piece because actually we have to be very real and very practical and earthy about what those mean. So people are figuring out what does a value look like, not just in person, but in in hybrid. Like diversity, classic one, where people are trying to work out, well, what does diversity and inclusion actually mean in a hybrid context? And you're getting feedback from staff to say that, do you know what, I actually feel more comfortable with this organization and part of this organization remotely. Because when I go into the office, I feel I can't be myself, express myself, whether that be because of my orientation, my dress, my whatever I want to do. I feel I have to conform. Conform to what the groupthink is in the office. And it was a very interesting kind of pushback that culture is not always expressed through the physical experience. And actually, if we just help though to have to spend time on what these values actually are and what they look like in reality, both remotely and in person, that's when the culture will be seen to live and be seen to be taken seriously. I think it's actually an opportunity to reset culture, if you like, and reaffirm bits that we like. And also maybe lose some of those values that we said were important, but actually we are proving that actually they're not.

Yeah. And I think, you know what, that whole idea of doubling down on your values now and actually using them is so So, so powerful, but also perhaps, we're working with two different organizations at the moment on their values with their teams. And this is a prime time to maybe look at and review your values to check either A, to your point, do we actually use them? Do we live them or not? And actually, if we do live them, are they still right? Are they still relevant in the context that we work and live in now versus the context that we worked and lived in? 5 or 8 or 10 years ago when those values were first agreed. So, yeah, for me, values are categorically at the core of every single culture. They are the underpinning of your culture. So, listen, Kevin, it's been an absolute pleasure. We're going to leave it there based on time. But as always, love chatting to you, love the insights. I hope the listeners will too. And hopefully, we'll see you on again soon.

Great. Yeah, let's not leave it till 13, 14, 15 months. No. Let's try and beat that next time.

Thanks, Scott.

We won't.

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