Tag Archives: culture

Business Podcasts, News

From boardroom to pitch: CEO of the FA shares his secrets on tackling culture

CEO of the Football Association, Martin Glenn, opens up about the rewards and challenges of transforming sport in England, in a recent interview aired by podcast, Culture De-Cooded.

Hosted by strategy, culture and leadership consultant, Charlie Coode, the passionate conversation reveals how Marin successfully transitioned from the world of beverages and biscuits to national sports.

Referring to his entry into the FA as his “delayed midlife crisis”, Martin emphasises the universal principles that underpin all successful organisations, highlighting the importance of a clear purpose, understandable strategy, and sense of urgency to score.

Unpacking the hurdles to be overcome, Martin speaks openly about the courage it takes for leaders to seek help from others, to bring employees and investors on board.

“In a sophisticated corporate, if you talk about culture, you will get listened to… Raising the subject won’t raise eyebrows… But in the world of private equity back in the day in 2006, they thought it was a degree of HR gobbledygook and it was seen as a diversion”, he explains.

Reflecting on his time at both Birdseye and PepsiCo, Martin draws parallels between the worlds of consumer goods and sports governance, explaining how being able to transpose his personal experience eventually led to England reaching the semi-finals of the World Cup.

“The vision was simple”, says Martin: “Uniting the game to inspire the nation”. He realised that people needed to see the FA as an organisation of impact, rather than as a “bumbling Dad’s army”, using culture to deliver a complete makeover of the FA.

Speaking about his success, Martin explains “We haven’t had that level of performance for years. We go into tournaments now looking like we’re contenders […] That’s been the result of a number of things, which cultural change has been key to unlocking”.

It’s not just men’s football that has benefited either. Martin also advocates for women’s football, explaining how we must treat it more like an Olympic sport to ensure equal opportunities from a young age.

Passionate about making all areas of sport better, Martin also acts as chairman of charity The Football Foundation, as well as chairing PGMOL (Professional Game Match Officials Limited) and Chapel Down – Britain’s biggest wine producer.

Regardless of the field, “quick wins are always essential”, claims Martin. This is what ignites enthusiasm. And it’s something he thanks host, Charlie Coode for, having worked under his guidance for 15 years.

A champion of business culture, Charlie launched his own SaaS platform – Culture15 – to allow all kinds of leaders, just like Martin, to measure and track culture with data.

For more information, please visit:

https://open.spotify.com/episode

https://culture15.com

News

62% of women in technology have experienced toxic work cultures within the last five years

  • Toxic environments are identified as the most common factor that put women off tech roles, with 21% citing frequent experiences
  • Only 17% feel that a lot of progress has been made to attract women to tech roles in the last five years

Manchester, UK; 8 March 2022: The majority of women in technology have experienced toxic work environments, with 21% experiencing it frequently. That’s according to Talent Works, the Recruitment Processing Outsourcing (RPO) provider, which surveyed women in technology on their experiences on recruitment and employment in the UK.

The results, released today on International Women’s Day, make for concerning reading, after campaigns like Women in Tech have been running for well over five years.

When asked what puts women in technology off taking a role, a toxic culture was the most common answer (36%). A healthy work culture tops the list of female desires to feel supported in tech (59%), followed by the gender pay gap being addressed (56%) and seeing more women in leadership roles (54%).

An overwhelming percentage of respondents said the responsibility to create organisational change lies with the top (74%), 73% noted that they would be more likely to join a tech firm that has female leadership.

Jacqueline de Rojas CBE, President of TechUK, commented: “Encouraging women into the tech sector is critical. Diverse voices must be at the table when designing our digital future, otherwise we risk creating a world that doesn’t work for everybody. Sadly, these results today show that culture remains the biggest barrier to Inclusion, and if anything, the pandemic has worsened the diversity gap. Against the context of the UK skills shortage, it’s time for organisations to actively create conditions for women and minority voices to thrive and to differentiate through hiring strategies that support diversity and inclusion.”

Elena Hill-Artamonova, Research Manager at Talent Works, commented: “Although there’s been a focus on attracting women to tech roles, the working environments in many organisations are toxic and women aren’t confident that enough is being done to support them. It’s the responsibility of leadership and middle management to create healthy working environments that support women and encourage them to both apply and stay in tech roles. Without this, the industry is at risk of further reducing the number of women in tech.”

The application process also has a considerable impact on whether women in technology apply for a role, with 66% of respondents being confident that they can spot a toxic work environment during the application process. 52% of women also feel that companies create gendered job adverts (for example, using masculine and feminine words).

“At a time of intense skills shortage in technology, companies are neglecting some of the best talent right here, and the solution might be a cultural change and hiring more women to lead the charge from the top,” Hill-Artamonova concluded.

News

Using OKRS to transform business in a new working environment

Managing the challenges of rapid business growth while also adapting to a hybrid world of working forced by the global pandemic will be among the topics raised at this year’s international OKR Forum 2022.

National business coach Peter Kerr will highlight how the business management framework tool of OKRs can help overcome the challenges faced by hypergrowth companies, while also helping create a strong team culture to establish resilience to adapt to new ways of working.

Peter Kerr, MD of the rapidly expanding UK-based specialist coaching consultancy AuxinOKR, will be a key contributor to the OKR Forum event, being held virtually on February 3. He will be talking to Lavanya Gopinath, director of operations at Chargebee, about the challenges of rolling out OKRs across a global tech business with a geographically dispersed workforce.

The OKR Forum is the fourth event of its kind featuring a mixture of keynote speakers, expert workshops, and case studies of OKR implementation. Delegates can learn from international brands such as LinkedIn, Colgate-Palmolive, and Renault on how to engage teams for better outcomes with the agile goal and performance management framework, known as OKRs.

AuxinOKR, which has clients around the UK and overseas – including SAP, ASOS, Which?, Bitstamp, Chargebee and South African bank absa – has a proven record of helping ambitious companies and organisations establish an OKR strategy that enables them to achieve their goals.

Chargebee is a leading international subscription billing platform on a fast-track trajectory powering some of the fastest-growing SaaS and subscription-based businesses in the world. The company, valued at $1.4b in April 2021 has more than 3,000 customers across the US, Europe and rest of the world. Digital transformation has accelerated the opportunities for Chargebee, and the company saw OKRs as a tool to drive cultural change across the business.

Peter Kerr says: “Chargebee is a fabulous company with a great product. Digital transformation across more companies has created huge opportunities for Chargebee but they recognised they needed to change themselves to become a stronger, more agile, and resilient business.

“Chargebee saw OKRs as a way to create a focus and clarity across the entire business, spread across several countries. OKRs have helped establish a new culture, one where everyone is clear about the company vision and key goals and their roles in helping achieve growth and success.

“And, of course, this was made even more challenging by being implemented during a pandemic. OKRs helped Chargebee accelerate the push for collaboration, transparency and understanding during this difficult period.”

This year’s OKR Forum online event will feature world-class OKR experts such as Ben Lamorte, Felipe Castro, Francesca Nardocci, Melanie Wessels and many more, along with leading international companies.

For more details visit: https://hopin.com/events/okr-forum-2022/registration

News

Secrets to achieving authentic leadership are laid bare in new book by Paulina Tenner

Unprecedented global events of the past two years have led many organisations to reflect on whether there are better ways to operate, to seek out a new path that is profitable, yet wholesome. One discussion gaining popularity is how feminine and masculine principles in leadership can be integrated together and who better to lead this discussion than a successful business leader who also happens to be a former Stripper?

In Laid Bare: What the Business Leader Learnt from the Stripper, Paulina Tenner presents a unique perspective on emergent social change in the world of work. A true trailblazer, Paulina challenges the status quo of how companies are set up and scaled and proposes a truly radical alternative of financial transparency and self-set pay. Practicing this approach in her own company, GrantTree, over the last decade, Paulina has built a team of 50 and raised over £200m for more than 600 technology start-ups and bigger companies.

“Being a stripper taught me more lessons than I could possibly imagine, a lot of which I’ve been able to apply to my business life. It also fed into my development as a leader. It helped me reclaim a different way of relating with my feminine part and therefore a different way of being and acting in the world. I became more open-minded and, at the same time, more whole as an individual,” explains Paulina.

“My approach has shown that it is indeed possible to create a workplace which combines focus on wellbeing of staff with profitability, where you are able to increase retention of staff and attract top candidates to your company because of outstanding culture. Workplaces are changing forever as Gen Z workforce demands more benefits to do with a wholesome company culture, so don’t be left behind!” adds Paulina.

Laid Bare : What the Business Leader Learnt from the Stripper (£12.99, John Hunt Publishing) is written by Paulina Tenner. The ebook is available to buy now on Amazon with print copies available from 31st January 2022

Business Advice, News

How to manage a growing business in uncertain times

With the furlough scheme ending and economic recovery in sight, many businesses still face an uncertain future. Tony Machin, CEO of TrustID, shares his key learnings on maintaining a growing business in times of change.

The importance of long-term planning

There’s always a danger, when looking back on a particular set of circumstances, of falling into the classic business error of focusing on the tactical response. It’s true that to run a successful business you need to prepare for challenges. But firstly, you don’t know what the next challenge will be, and, secondly, there’s rarely a one-size fits all solution to any given challenge. Different sectors and businesses will always be affected in different ways.

For me, the underpinning principle of growing a business is to get the fundamentals right. Having grown organisations in many countries, I’ve learned that the real challenge is in embedding those principals into the business and building a long-term strategy – not in responding tactically to short term problems.

The pillars for growing a successful business will vary for different business models and sectors – but for TrustID they are good products, good operational delivery, and credibility.

These three pillars are themselves built on three key foundations: people, culture, and technology. Why? Because you can’t create good products without good technology and good developers, and you can’t achieve good operational delivery, or gain credibility, without great people operating within the right culture.

In short, my advice on how to maintain business growth in uncertain times is to make sure you have good people behaving and operating the right way, supported by great technology. The two main challenges, then, are: to recruit, retain, develop, and maintain company culture when the business is growing through a changing environment, and to rapidly evolve technology to meet current circumstances.

Maintaining the culture

TrustID is a mid-sized (but fast-growing) company with an entrepreneurial outlook. We’re highly dependent on our team, so it’s important to create an enjoyable place to work where everybody feels that they are valued.

There’s no question that it’s hard to recruit the right people and that there’s a lot of competition for skilled workers – so it’s worth putting in the effort to retain them. Developers are a particularly interesting group to recruit for. Typically, they’ll join a company, work on project, and then look elsewhere. But we work hard on retention because they build such intimate knowledge of our products.

Our strategy for retaining developers is simply to make sure the work they’re doing is interesting, and to reward them fairly. We also give them visibility of where the business is developing over the next two to three years. If they can see that they are in an exciting sector that is growing, they are more likely to stay.

It’s also important to hire people that fit in with the company culture. Staff need to buy into what TrustID is trying to do from day one. For example, we don’t look for salespeople who are highly focused and driven by commission. They may be right for another business – one that’s purely focused on rapid growth – but not for TrustID. We look for people who will only recommend products that are right for the client – and offering high commission won’t always achieve that.

Another way to maintain company culture is to invest in the staff that you have. Over the last 8 years, Trust ID has grown from a start up with just two or three people, to a mid-sized business with 35 people and counting. We’ve mentored the people that have joined the company during this time, given them scope to develop, and provided the opportunity for career progression. And of course, we pay and reward them well.

I also think it’s important to have a clear sense of purpose that everyone can buy into. At TrustID, we detect and deter crime. Through our Right to Work (RtW) service, we prevent people from working illegally, thereby safeguarding an organisation’s staff, its clients, and the public. And through our Know Your Customer (KYC) checks, we help businesses avoid unintentionally supporting terrorism through money-laundering and protect them from fraud. That’s something that our staff can understand – and gives them the knowledge and satisfaction that they’re doing important work.

Culture is central to another important pillar, credibility – because in a sector like ours, without credibility, however good your products and service delivery are, you’re not going to grow your business. At TrustID we’ve built credibility by investing in the training and development of our staff to create a knowledge centre for our clients, and by being very active in our interaction with those government agencies that require identity documents to be checked. We are also one of the few organisations in our sector that is able and willing to share our fake document detection intelligence with appropriate authorities – something that sets us apart from many of our competitors and helps raise our profile. In short, we have become the trusted experts in our field – and that gives us the all-important credibility we need.

Delivering the right technology

Good product is one of our three pillars for growing a successful business – and as a tech company, we need to make sure that we’re always delivering the right technology at the right time for our customer.

When TrustID first began offering identity checking services, most of our clients were using purpose-built scanners to check original documents face-to-face. However, we quickly realised that these scanners weren’t suitable for every organisation’s processes, so we evolved a suite of cloud products, enabling them to access our services remotely. We now offer a flexible suite of office- and cloud-based products, all based around the core principle of identity. Customers can pick and choose the access method and level of validation they want – whether that’s a straightforward document check, facial recognition for greater security, address verification, or PEPs and Sanction checks to meet KYC and AML regulations.

Thanks to our cloud-based solutions we were already in a great position at the start of the pandemic because clients were able to access our services remotely. But our solutions also put us in a good position to quickly react to the new circumstances.

One thing we did immediately in March 2020 was to develop a Guest Link facility. Our clients were already able to access our services remotely, but the Guest Link enables them to onboard their own customers and staff remotely, too – helping them maintain social distancing. We developed the Guest Link in about six weeks and made it available to all online users at no additional cost.

The key to being able to react to change in this way is to make sure you have the technology and the team in place to help deliver those products when they are needed.

Looking ahead

TrustID is in the fortunate position that there’s no shortage of opportunity in our sector. While there are likely to be changes in compliance legislation in the next few years – and these may affect what technology we need and what services our customers require – the need for identity checking won’t go away. So, my challenge, looking ahead is, how do I ensure TrustID picks up the right parts of that opportunity? And I think that’s true for many other businesses too.

Businesses need to be very disciplined about what opportunities they choose to pursue. And the way to make sure you’re in a position to take advantage of those opportunities is to have the right people operating in the right culture, supported by the right technology. Put those foundations down, and add the three pillars of good products, good operational delivery, and credibility, and you’ll have a solid recipe for success.

News

Keeping an organisation’s culture, values and sense of joy alive during Covid-19

Written by Sid Madge, Meee

Delivering exceptional service, extraordinary food, and unforgettable experiences takes amazing ideas, passion and talented people. For Fortnum & Mason the goal that can be simply expressed: to make joy.  But, when the global pandemic hit us all, the organisation was forced to make rapid changes.

Many of its employees had to open or close stores with very little notice, others had to take on different responsibilities to support a changing business model, and office-based employees had to adapt to working from home. Facing all this change, how could they continue to perform at their best? How could the organisation’s values, culture and sense of joy be kept alive at a time of immense uncertainty?

 

Being your true self

Alexandra Buxton, Fortnum’s Culture and Talent Director explained that they wanted all their staff to be their best, and above all to be their true selves. By embracing each other’s differences and sharing common values, extraordinary things can be achieved.

They decided to bring in the Meee team. Meee is founded on the idea that everyone is unique and, by using our values and natural strengths, combined with support from others, we can thrive in all aspects of our lives. Sometimes all we need to achieve this is a shift in perspective, a nudge to reset our thoughts and mindset.

So, working closely together Meee tailored a virtual version of the ‘Be The Best You’ programme that enables each employee to understand their unique qualities and how these can help them perform at their best more of the time. Online modules, including Meee Values and Balanced exercises, helped each team member identify their unique talents. Additional content was also created to help employees understand how they can bring Fortnum’s values to life.

Along with these exercises a series of small group virtual workshops allowed the team to share insights and ideas, while also creating an all-important sense of connection. A number of employees were also trained to be programme facilitators and roll out the programme across the retail organisation.

 

Engaging, energising and enabling

With a powerful digital platform underpinning the programme, which gave valuable insights into progress both before and after the virtual workshops, employees could see how they had developed. They also had access to supporting resources, articles and videos. Meanwhile, Fortnum’s Culture and Talent team could use the aggregated and anonymised data to understand how colleagues were performing and quickly identify where more support was needed.

 

Making a positive impact

At a time of huge anxiety, the programme had a tremendously positive impact. Participants have gained new insights about themselves, built stronger connections with colleagues and the organisation, and left the workshops feeling more energised and positive.

 

After completing the programme:

  • 93% felt that they can achieve more together with their colleagues
  • 91% felt closer to Fortnum’s purpose and values
  • 90% felt they had a better understanding of how to help and develop others
  • 88% felt they had a better understanding of how to deliver a wonderful customer experience

 

The ultimate goal

Fortnum’s is now planning to incorporate the values work in other areas like recruitment, onboarding, recognition, learning and development. And that all adds up to more purpose, positivity and ultimately more joy.

The management team wanted all their people, whatever their role, to feel that the business was investing in them and supporting them as best as possible during a very challenging period.

 

About Meee

Sid Madge is founder of Meee (My Education Employment Enterprise) which draws on the best creativity and thinking from the worlds of branding, psychology, neuroscience, education and sociology, to help people achieve extraordinary lives.

To date, Meee has transformed the lives of over 20,000 people, from leaders of PLC’s and SME’s to parents, teachers, students, carers, the unemployed and prison inmates.

Sid Madge is also author of the ‘Meee in Minute’ series of books which each offer 60 ways to change your life, work-, or family-life in 60 seconds.

Web: www.meee.global

Web: www.meeebooks.com

News

AKO Foundation Agrees to Support Aalto EE in Development of Leadership in the Nordic Cultural Sector

The London based AKO Foundation, starts to collaborate with Aalto University Executive Education’s (Aalto EE) Business of Culture program, which is the largest executive program for leaders in the arts and culture in the Nordic and Baltic region.

According to Philip Lawford, CEO of the AKO Foundation, “A vibrant and evolving arts and cultural life needs the best possible leaders and a multidisciplinary approach to meeting its challenges. We are pleased to assist Aalto EE in working to ensure the well-being of society as a whole through these organizations.”

The Business of Culture program equips leaders and executives with insights and tools that help them with strategic development, change leadership, and organizational renewals. The faculty in the program consists of international top-level experts in science, culture, and business.

“Business of Culture Program has proven to be very much appreciated and needed in the arts and culture field. Implementation at this level of ambition is possible only through the financial input and vision of our supporters and partners. The program is a platform for personal growth as a leader while strengthening understanding of non-profit business logic and building networks within the arts sector and towards business,” states Dr. Pekka Mattila, Managing Director of Aalto EE.

In addition to the AKO Foundation, the main partners in the Business of Culture program are Saastamoinen Foundation and Föreningen Konstsamfundet, as well as Karelian Cultural Foundation. The program has been designed in collaboration with BI Norwegian Business School.

The AKO Foundation supports various actors in the fields of education and arts, and organizations that fight against the climate crisis. Established in 2013 by the Norwegian hedge fund manager Nicolai Tangen, the foundation has to date been funded with a total of more than £400 million and has made charitable grants over £100 million. The Foundation supports all actors on its own initiative and does not accept applications for funding.

For more information visit: https://www.aaltoee.com/home

Cybersecurity, News, Technology

Teleconferencing – Have we learned from our past?

Vemun Waksvik, Business Development Manager at Synergy Sky, considers the challenges of using new tech in lockdown and the lessons we should have learned from previous technology

It’s easy to look back and laugh at the time we all papered our public Facebook walls with content that was supposed to be private. We cringe at how we (and government officials with us) shared passwords and sensitive information in e-mails and later could not understand how our accounts got compromised. You would think we had learned, but the truth is that we are in fact reliving these exact scenarios today, only this time it’s for video conferencing.

Many companies have introduced remote working measures under exceptional circumstances and without clear policies in place. Conferencing vendors such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex have been quick with the assist. While they have been throwing out business communications lifelines to millions of companies worldwide, often free of charge, users have been faced with some major challenges in regard to how their data is secured while using the conferencing tools.

But, is it right to put all the responsibility on the vendors? Was it right to blame our e-mail clients in the 90’s when our accounts – protected with our self-constructed paper padlocks of “password123” – got hacked?

Normally most of the implemented solutions companies use are enterprise grade offers. However, currently the versions being used widely are free consumer offers with best effort quality.

These solutions are ideal in situations where you need something quickly and they have been very helpful in our scramble to maintain collaboration and workflow from home. However, they tend to lack centralised control. There are no IT policies in place such as password strength, the ability to assign features to certain users or software version control.

Many of the security issues we have read about over the past few months would most likely have been avoided with more centralised control by the IT department – better passwords, unique or randomised conference ID’s, unique or randomised meeting passwords, waiting rooms or the ability to exclude anonymous joiners.

Today we know not to email our passwords or to post sensitive information on our social media. We have learned how to work the technology to our advantage and how to protect ourselves from breaches. We have also created a culture on how to behave while using these tools. Now we need to do the same for video in the workplace.

Establishing a good company culture to support the use of video conferencing is important. This can include subtle things like muting your microphone when not speaking, avoid back light and wearing appropriate clothing to reflect it’s business.

While much of this might be common sense, someone who has downloaded a free version of a web conferencing tool may not yet have the experience to realise that they should mute themselves whilst their dog is barking in the background. Putting an official policy in place for an emerging video conferencing culture could be useful to maintain efficiency and security.

At the end of the day, there is no doubt that the ability to work remotely has some major benefits. It provides a better work-life balance, lets companies recruit talent to work from all around the world and not to mention it cuts down on our travel, saving cost and our environment.
So, let your IT security team implement the policies needed so we can all move forward and utilise the amazing technology video conferencing offers, in controlled, secure environments.