L&D TV VIDEOS

The inquest into the tragic death of 19-year-old Royal Artillery Gunner Jaysley Beck has cast a harsh light on the pervasive issue of sexual harassment within the British Army. On BBC Radio 4’s The World at One, one woman, an anonymous former Army officer, described how the Army culture means that women have to manage male egos to get by. This means women need to do a lot of emotional work merely to exist in that space. So, an assault can be catastrophic because their resilience is already low.

If, like me, you’ve worked with clients whose workforce is based in foreign countries you’ll be aware of the challenges of creating content that works for an international audience. I recently discovered the Culture Factor’s Country Comparison Tool which is free and a great help with this problem…

When things go awry in an organisation – bad attitudes, non-compliance, or even a toxic culture – it can feel like trying to steer a sinking ship. These problems can be costly, whether through reduced productivity, legal risks, or even accidents. The instinctive response might be to clamp down with heavy-handed initiatives and training to enforce compliance. That might get you some results, but it rarely creates lasting change. Why? Because a top-down approach often reinforces an “us vs. them” mentality. What’s really needed is culture change – a fundamental shift in how the organisation relates to its people.

In the post-mortems of the 2024 US Presidential election, one accusation rings out repeatedly: that the wealthy, college-educated leaders of the Democratic Party struggle to speak the language of the working-class people they aim to represent. Trump, on the other hand, speaks in a way that resonates with that audience.

A bottom-up management style is on the rise. It’s a great fit for creative teams; and for places where collaboration is key; it suits remote working; and with AI ever more present in the workplace it capitalizes on the humanity of the human resource. But, the transition from a top-down to bottom-up management culture is more than just a procedural change – it’s a profound transformation in the way people think and behave throughout the organisation. To help facilitate this transition, I’ve developed an innovative technique called Drama for Change. In this article, I share how Drama for Change supports and drives this cultural shift…

Julia knew the culture wasn’t right. As a new HR manager in a legacy male-dominated organisation, she’d already noticed some examples of everyday sexism that made her feel uncomfortable. It’s not that there was a bad attitude at the top, but with what she’d seen, combined with her knowledge of the evidence that formal reporting rarely works to reveal bad behaviour, she knew an intervention was needed…

A few weeks back, I reviewed a book – The Social Brain – by Tracey Camilleri, Samantha Rockey and Robin Dunbar. It takes Dunbar’s academic research and theory about the evolutionary psychology of how human groups work and, focussed on the co-authors’ knowledge of large organisations, applies it to the working world. I love that book, but I’m the kind of guy who really appreciates a VERY high-level distillation of principles to work by. So, I thought I’d return to the book and see how well I could achieve this.

Toxic culture looms large right now. The headlines are full of toxic masculinity and the abusive behaviours it has led to. And of politicians behaving toxically – breaking laws, denying wrongdoing, and promoting policies designed to win headlines rather than improve things. In the meantime, the UK has recently seen the CBI, the Metropolitan Police and the Department for Education all accused of having toxic cultures. The Australia Parliament House is under scrutiny following reports of sexual harassment and assault. In the US, video game company Activation Blizzard is facing accusations of widespread discrimination and harassment against female employees.

In this newsletter, I review an authoritative text that takes an often overlooked body of scientific knowledge of human societies and applies it to the real world of large organisations. In the development of Drama for Change, my method for impacting organisational culture with a campaign based around a pertinent video drama, I studied the work of Robin Dunbar, the Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at Oxford University, in-depth and clung to it almost talisman-like to help me see the wood for the trees. So, I must confess I felt a little jealous when I discovered The Social Brain, in which Dunbar collaborates with business experts to apply theory to practice.

This newsletter focuses on my review of the recently published book The Secret of Culture Change, which is about top-level management’s use of stories in culture change. I was excited to read this book as it is one of the few I’ve found that methodically links organisational culture change with story and storytelling. My ideas about culture change are predominantly bottom-up, while theirs is top-down. But, as you will see, things are never that simple.