Charlie Sull, Co-Founder of CultureX and Cultural Researcher at MIT, talks in detail about the importance of effective cultural measurement. Charlie shares the key research findings of what makes a positive culture and why most traditional cultural measures simply don’t work.

Overall, Charlie’s message is clear:

• Culture matters

• Culture is a significant driver of any organisations capacity to create and deliver value

• Most cultures are not where they need to be

• However, with senior buy-in and effective cultural measurement this can be easily addressed.

Read my personal learning nuggets from this conversation - Link

In this absorbing conversation Nilesh Makwana, co-founder and CEO of illuminance Solutions, shares a key truth upon which to create organisational culture: that deep down we are all the same, all part of humanity.

Nilesh talks about how his extensive global travels and the experience of coming to Australia as an international student and the requirement to integrate into a new culture forced a deeper sensitivity and appreciation of allowing culture and diversity to flow, and in doing so allowing creativity to emerge.

For me, one of the most interesting points to emerge in this conversation was the suggestion that the true face of the culture of an organisation, at a point in time, only reveals itself through its behavioural responses when the pressure comes on in challenging times, not necessarily when things are going well.  

This got me thinking about how this could signify a general ‘bluntness’ or blindsightedness in the general capacity and sensitivity to read and manage culture in low pressure situations, if we are dependant on high-pressure events to really read culture.

This suggests two interesting potential solution avenues:

1. develop greater cultural sensitivity in low pressure periods

2. organisational cultural pressure testing

To read my other personal learning nuggets that I took from this episode, please go to: https://open.substack.com/pub/brynedwards/p/culture-deep-down-we-are-all-the?r=k8517&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

In this wonderfully human conversation, Louise Forster, CEO of Advocare, and I explore how culture can act as a ‘hard drive’ storing the full impact of an organisation’s prior journey and how the unseen aspects of culture reveal themselves.

What shines brightly in this conversation is how connected Louise is to the people around her which provides many great stories and examples of just how culture plays out.

The conversation also provides a great insight into the responsibility of the CEO role to balance the management of culture and drive performance of an organisation.

To read my own personal learning nuggets that I took from this episode, please go to: https://brynedwards.substack.com/p/what-is-stored-in-your-culture-louise#details