Every organisation has a culture; it is impossible to exist without one. Understanding, nurturing and amplifying the most effective parts of that culture is a critical activity, but very often one organisations fail at because they asked the wrong questions. So, as an employer, how do you make sure that your culture is enabling you to get the best from your people and helping you to attract exceptional talent to your business?
My guest this week is Andrew Missingham, the co-founder of B&A, which describes itself as the fastest, most creative management consultancy in the world. B&A works with companies to help them understand and nurture their cultures and Andrew has some fantastic insights to share
In the interview, we discuss:
• What are businesses doing to cope with the impact of Covid-19
• The Difference between Culture, Creativity and Heritage
• How do you build a productive culture
• Auditing and optimising
• The importance of behaviours
• What might change in the podcast Covid world
• The increased future value of face to face contact
Subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts
Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from Avature ats, an applicant tracking system that redefines user experience for candidates, recruiters and hiring managers. Just listen to one of the many ways in which L’Oreal USA has improved their hiring process with Avature, as told by Edward Dias, Director of Recruitment, Intelligence and Innovation. Since we’ve been using AVATURE ATS globally, we have been able to massively improve our communication rate with candidates during and following their application. Before, over a million people worldwide would never get contacted, but with the smart optimization and flexible processes, we’ve been able to change that and that’s been a huge achievement. Visit avature.net that’s a V A T U R E.net to learn why global market leaders like L’Oreal choose Avature to extend the candidate experience. From shoulder taps to first day, there’s been more of scientific discovery, more of technical advancement and material progress in your lifetime and mine than in all the ages of history. Hi everyone, this is Matt Walder. Welcome to episode 271 of the Recruiting Future podcast. Every organisation has a culture. It’s impossible to exist without one. Understanding, nurturing and amplifying the most effective parts of that culture is a critical activity, but very often one that organizations fail at by asking the wrong questions. So, as an employer, how do you make sure that your culture is enabling you to get the best from your people and helping you to attract exceptional talent to your business? My guest this week is Andrew Missingham, the co founder of B & A, which describes itself as the fastest, most creative management consultancy in the world. B and A work with companies to help them understand and nurture their cultures and Andrew has some fantastic insights to share. Hi Andrew and welcome to the podcast.
Andrew Missingham [00:02:29]:
Hi Matt, thanks for having me.
Matt Alder [00:02:30]:
An absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Could you just introduce yourself and tell us what you do?
Andrew Missingham [00:02:36]:
My name is Andrew Missingham. I am the co founder at B&A, which is we style ourselves as the fastest, most creative management consultancy in the world. Because I think we are. Actually, I’ll tell you what, it’s no great shakes that as a claim, it’s in a way it’s like saying we’re the world’s fastest snail. Always pick a fight you think you can win. And I’m also a problem solver. Everybody at BNA pretty much does the same job. So as well as co leading it with colleagues, I also do the work of solving problems for our clients.
Matt Alder [00:03:14]:
And what kind of clients do you work with?
Andrew Missingham [00:03:15]:
I think it’s worth kind of stating what the vision of the business is. And then we’ll work back to who the people. We try to serve that vision through R at B and A. Our vision is to create a world of cultural, charitable, profitable enterprise. We believe that the best businesses in the world in the 21st century are the ones that combine the best of those three worlds. They’re profitable insofar as they can self determine and create models that can scale. They are charitable insofar as they really rigorously ask the question why? Why should the world be like this? And why do we endure things or allow things that maybe we shouldn’t? And charitable insofar as it’s benign, the best businesses leave the world a better place than they found it. And cultural insofar as it does two things again. The first one is cultural organizations create outrageous possibility. They create dreamed realities that people make into real realities after that. And also cultural organizations are very much in touch with the world as it is, as people really interact. And so in service of that vision, trying to create a world of cultural, charitable, profitable enterprise. The three words are interchangeable. We work with businesses across the range of, of those three worlds. So we work with charities large and small. People like Marie Stopes International, for whom we wrote their 10 year business plan last year. We work with the Nike’s corporate charity, the Nike foundation and Girl Effect, we’ve worked with them for many years. On the corporate side we work for Nike, we work with Samsung, we work with the developers of Kings Cross Argentina. And culturally we work with people like the British National Youth Theatre, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. We work with punch drunk, frantic assembly, all sorts of people. And it’s that cross fertilization of ideas around that central vision which I think makes our work really rich.
Matt Alder [00:05:31]:
Obviously we’ve been living through a time of dramatic change in business for the, at least the last decade. But, but, but really the, the last few months has been kind of absolutely unprecedented in terms of disruption and things have been going on around the world. How, how are you seeing companies adapt to that in interesting, in interesting ways? What, what have some of your clients been doing to deal with and cope with the situation that we all now find ourselves in?
Andrew Missingham [00:06:03]:
We found that there is a fight or flight split between the businesses that we’ve seen. The flight is, you know, where people basically retreat from the changes and hunker down and furlough large amounts of staff and try to try and either through necessity because their balance sheets were poor and so they haven’t got the leeway to be able to See it through or they would prefer to preserve cash for another day. And those ones, very much, as I say, there’s a retreat or there’s a certain amount of paralysis that’s happened to those organizations or businesses. And some you just can’t do anything about. If you’re an arts organization who run a large annual festival and you can’t do that anymore, that is an enormous amount of your income gone in one fell swoop. Or if you’re an airline or if you’re various businesses like that, the other ones that we have seen are basically fighting it. And they are aggressively, in the best sense of the word, looking to innovate with their business model, looking to diversify their revenue streams, looking to deeply invest in their people at a time when their people have less client centered work and are basically preparing for a new era and a new tomorrow. Be that things that will go back to how they existed or more presciently and more importantly to be prepared for the things for which this will presage. And I’m not, I won’t use the, the phrase that is a cliche. I’m really going to try and avoid it. The things which will be commonplace and after this crisis has abated. And so yeah, it’s very much two sides, Matt.
Matt Alder [00:08:27]:
So I want to come, I want to come back and talk about the, the post Covid world a bit later on in our conversation. Before we do though, really interested in sort of digging deeper into your thoughts and, and what you do. So you do a lot of work around culture and building culture. What is culture as far as you’re concerned?
Andrew Missingham [00:08:48]:
I think that culture is a set of behaviors that people in groups coalesce around. And so culture abhors a vacuum. You can not have no culture. Every organization, every collection of people who have behaviors that have coalesced in some way or are recognizable in some way will have a culture. And so the question for me, do you allow that to happen and just take place? Because as I say, a culture abhors a vacuum. Or do you proactively ask yourself what kind of culture do I want and what kind of culture best serves the direction I’m trying to take this group of people or enterprise or whatever it happens to be in. I think it’s interesting, Matt, to contrast it with two other words to give you an idea, a better idea of what culture is. Culture is creativity and culture is not heritage. And so let’s split those up. Creativity is the process of having new ideas that have value. That’s not My definition, that’s Ken Robinson’s definition and I think it’s a really useful one. And so this idea of having novel things that you do or try, what happens, what makes creativity into culture is when people start to get behind it in number. I’ll give you an example. Let’s say LARPing, live action, role play. It’s creative. When someone says, you know what? I love world of warcraft or Zelda or whatever so much. I’m going to go to a thrift store and I’m going to buy a plastic sword and I’m going to get a helmet and I’m going to call up a couple of mates and I’m going to say, why don’t we do this in the park? Live? That’s creative. That’s creativity. It becomes culture when you’ve got a website and maybe you’ve got a sponsor or maybe you’ve got a grant from a local authority or from an arts grant making organization and then Jimmy Carr starts making jokes about it in 8 out of 10 cats and there’s a larping correspondent in the New York Times or whatever, that’s culture. Because culture then becomes heritage via very often quite an uncomfortable portal. What happens is heritage is by definition the culture that a society decides to preserve for the future. And heritage culture, the bit in between is when people go, you know what, we’ve moved on with larping. Can we change it up a bit? And some people go yeah, yeah, we need to move on. And some people go, no, no, no, no, you can’t do that. You’ve got to preserve what we had before. We’ve got to go back to the old school and eventually there will be a museum for the preservation of larps or whatever it might be, or a society for the preservation of LARPing or whatever. And you see that in businesses, people are constantly in businesses going what’s our culture? When sometimes they mean how are we fostering creativity? And sometimes they mean what is our heritage? And it’s obvious with some businesses the heritage of Coca cola is Santa wearing red polar bears. I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. The dynamic console curve, etc, etc. The question really is how do they use that to inform tomorrow’s creativity and how do they celebrate the culture that they have now via the creativity that they celebrate and encourage?
Matt Alder [00:12:27]:
I mean that’s. That’s really interesting. And that’s. That. That’s such a. That’s such an interesting example as well. I mean, I suppose you’ve you’ve effectively asked my next question, which is how do companies build a culture that’s productive? We’re working on the assumption that. Not the assumption on the fact that everyone has a culture whether they like it or not. How do you build that into something that is productive for that business or that organization?
Andrew Missingham [00:12:57]:
Okay, I’ll give you two things that we found. The first one is in 2017 and then we had another go in 2019. We surveyed businesses employing over half a million people and we found very strong evidence from business leaders. Those are the people who filled out the survey. We found that there are three things that determine a healthy culture. Sorry. There are three things that determine a healthy business. The first one is the quality of your product or service. Obvious. The second one is the relationship that you have with your clients or customers. And the third one is business culture. And you very often ignore business culture in your good times and rely on it in your bad times. It’s like a water butt. It’s like a water butt that you fill up in the rainy season or in the winter and then in the dry season or the summer you actually to call on it unique behaviors that are benign, reinforcing and helpful. That’s very often the time when you have to ask yourself of the kinds of people that you employ background there, the kinds of behaviors you think are useful to have around the pace at which decision, how fast or slowly. It’s neither one thing nor the other is good or bad is useful. The traditions that you have. Traditions. My favourite definition of tradition was given to me by a woman called Ros Rigby O B E. And she said a tradition is something that you want, that you’ve done twice with the intention of doing it a third time. So it’s a very inclusive definition of a tradition. So the traditions and protocols that you create where power lies and where does it really lie? Does it lie vertically in an organogram or does it lie with the person who can open the door on a Sunday and get work done? Does the power lie with the first people and the last people in? And I think it’s been really useful in Covid times, this total redefinition of what an essential worker really is around the people who are essential to get making everybody productive. And so there are a number of others, but basically what you do is you need to do an audit. And B and A, we have eight of those metrics as part of our process called the culture dividend, which is our trademark process for taking organizations through a period of cultural Inquiry and then transformation. And then once you have discovered, firstly, where your intention is going to be, in other words, how you are aiming to be productive, and it’s a really good word, you use them as opposed to, you know, profitable or whatever. You have to define what’s the productivity that you’re after. And you’ve done that culture dividend audit, you then say, okay, this is a lever which we need to pull harder. And, you know, and this is something that, you know, actually it’s more like channels on a mixing desk, actually. You know, things are already recorded, and your question is, what needs to come up in the mix? You know, what sounds good, that you need to push a little harder. We very often look in cultural inquiry for bright spots. You know, what are the things that are good that could be great? You know, and so then the culture dividend process involves a series of interventions and some tracking about how you can create those habits and those behaviors which reward the most productive kinds of behaviors you’re trying to inculcate.
Matt Alder [00:16:34]:
I mean, that’s really interesting. Could you give us. Could you give us an example? I mean, I know, for example, is it something that you’ve done with your. With your own business? It would be interesting to sort of hear how that actually might work in practice.
Andrew Missingham [00:16:47]:
Yeah, we’ve done this with a number of businesses in the UK and the US Taking them through a whole culture dividend process. And at bna, I think that, you know, we are very much kind of of the Marie Curie school of medicine, where we always operate on ourselves, we always take the medicine ourselves. And so we created a system of badges. For there are 16 badges which are about the behaviors which we believe are important for our team members to be fully functioning BNA team members. Now, let’s get this clear. The goal is not for everybody to win all the badges. I think that, you know, Cub Scouts and Girl Guides who were the ones who won all the badges were always kind of a bit odd, in my view. You know, it was. I always felt that the. The central idea of those, you know, scout and guide badges was you win the ones that you can excel at, you know, and you create the diversity between people. And so at bna, what happens is these badges, and I’ll name some in a moment, they are awarded by your peers after you finished your probation, and you get awarded three, which are your kind of unique mixture of talents that you particularly major on and bring to the team. And so they’re ones like analytical, caring, articulate, open down with the kids, honest you know, there are whole load of behaviors detailed. We don’t ask people to get the same badges. That’s not what we’re interested in. We’re interested in the similarity that people have humanly as values, but the diversity of experience and perspective that people bring.
Matt Alder [00:18:41]:
And how, how does this all work at the moment when we’re going through this pandemic and vast amounts of people are working, working remotely and working, you know, in kind of a highly, highly stressful, highly stressful environments. And also, what changes can you see happening in the, in the post Covid world of how people think about, think about the culture within their business?
Andrew Missingham [00:19:08]:
Yeah, I think that now is the time when, remember I said about in difficult times you rely on the strength of your culture. I think that it has been a real revealer of organizations which have poor or under leveraged cultures. I’m thinking of, you know, hotels that when they shut down have basically thrown everybody out onto the street. Compared to other hotel chains which have given over spare rooms to essential workers or to homeless people or whatever it might be. I think that every business of course is a human business. The question is, how do you treat your people? Now is a time at BNA where what we’ve done is we’ve instigated two meetings a day from the start. One was a city huddle. We have offices in three locations in Shanghai, in London and Portland, Oregon where you meet at the beginning of the day and just check in how people are humanly at the beginning of the day. And the other end of the day we join two of our teams together. So there is an international huddle where we do the same sort of thing and finding out how people are. There is of course a chance to talk about the work. This is really important as well, Matt. The culture’s in the work at a workplace. The culture is forged in the work that you do. Culture is not, you know, dress down Friday, you know, around a ping pong table. Right. It’s forged in the work that you do and how you treat people during the work that you do it. So of course when we talk about how people are, the thing that unites us is the work that we do. We’re, we’re colleagues and so we talk about that stuff but in the context of how people are going through these changes. And then of course we’ve had to make a few changes which actually have changed my mind on a few things. I used to be very skeptical of working from home. I felt that people learned from the culture of the organisation by Being in a shared space. And they also had a responsibility to contribute their voice to the shared space. So they had an obligation to be there, to be able to build that culture. I’ve actually changed on that one now. I’ve seen B and A’s culture maintain and in some ways strengthen through this. With people working at home, the challenge is some people’s working environments are very different. You know, our youngest team member, you can see his bunk bed, you know, behind him, you know, as opposed to, you know, people. I’m in my 50s and I’m lucky to have a house with a garden. And so, you know, this kind of thing is different. But again, I think going back, one of the changes we’re going to make is we’re going to say anybody who wants to work from home can. That’s fine. You’ve got to join the meetings virtually if that’s, you know, what you want to do. But if that works for you, when you want to do it, you can do that. The other change we’re going to make is we’re going to make as an organization that works across the world, you can pick either a local day or a city day as your working day. And so if you want to work a London Shanghai day, you’ll get up very early in the morning and you work through to about kind of London lunchtime. If you want to work a London Portland day, you’ll do the opposite. You’ll work from about lunchtime to the evening. And again, that brings us together as a global team. But also it’s more humane, you know, to, to the people in terms of, you know, when you can best do the work you need to do.
Matt Alder [00:23:04]:
So in terms of, I suppose, you know, making. Making predictions about the future is, is always, is always difficult at the moment, it’s particularly difficult. But just give me your view on perhaps sort of broader changes that we’ll see to business coming out of this. Other than more and more companies sort of adopting working from home and thinking about more creative ways of collaborating, what else is going to change and what do you think is going to stay the same?
Andrew Missingham [00:23:35]:
Yeah, I think that one thing is imagine tomorrow you and me, Matt, were able to wave a magic wand and put everything back to the second week of March. So we’re pre lockdown globally, except for China. So let’s say, let’s rewind it back to the end of last year. We’re pre Covid. We have a pre Covid state. But we’ve been through what we’ve been through. I Honestly think that if anybody was to say to me, andrew, I’d like you to get on a flight to come to a meeting face to face, or Andrew, I’d like you to get in a car and come and meet me face to face, I would at least have the conversation is it necessary? And I believe that’s going to be one of the major changes. It’s such an obvious one, but such a simple one. But I think that people are going to have the concept of virtual working and virtual conversation is much more a possible and sometimes desirable choice to take. And that will play itself out in very many ways. But I think that will be here to stay. What will go back is the. Which is countervailing to that is the premiumness of face to face human contact. And that’s because one listens with all one’s available senses. You know, if you have all five senses, you will listen with all of those five senses. And so people listen with all of their available senses and take in many, many things, both not just when they’re meeting people, but on the journey and you know, and on the way back and you know, if you, you know, I think that having. So I think what happens interestingly is that virtual contact, it’s like FOMO on social, on social media, virtual contact makes the face to face more and more premium. So the more that you tweet or insta post or whatever an event that you’re actually at, the fraction of the actual tickets for that thing become a smaller and smaller fraction by dint of the more that you, you amplify it virtually. And I think therefore the sharpening of the value of face to face contact is going to be one of the other outcomes.
Matt Alder [00:26:10]:
I couldn’t agree with you more, Andrew. Thank you very much for talking to me.
Andrew Missingham [00:26:15]:
It’s been a real pleasure, Matt.
Matt Alder [00:26:17]:
My thanks to Andrew Missingham. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow us on Instagram. You can find the show by searching for recruiting future. You can also listen and subscribe to the show on Spotify. You can find all the past episodes and search them as well@www.recruitingfuture.com. on that site you can subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about working with me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join. This is my show.
