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Understanding Cultural Analytics - a conversation with Chris Golby PhD
21 Plays8 days ago
In this episode of the Abeceder podcast The Independent Minds Chris Golby the founder of CultureNav explains the difference between engagement surveys and cultural analytics, and the challenges that not understanding an organisational culure creates for organisations and their employees.
As Chris explains to host Michael Millward, how to navigate culture to discover potential so that potential can be converted into performance.
Chris mentions
· Research conducted by the Wellbeing research centre University of Oxford.
· An article from the Harvard Business Review: Evolution and Revolution as Organizations Grow
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Find out more about both Michael Millward and Chris Golby at Abeceder.co.uk
Matchmaker.fm
Thank you to the team at Matchmaker.fmthe introduction to Chris Golby.
If you are a podcaster looking for interesting guests or if like Chris, you have something interesting to say Matchmaker.fm is where matches of great hosts and great guests are made. Use our offer code MILW10for a discount on membership.
Travel
Chris is based in Warwick, a city famous for its castle.
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Transcript
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencastr.
Introduction to The Independent Minds Podcast
00:00:07
Speaker
Hello and welcome to The Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abysida and people who think outside the box about how work works, with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
00:00:23
Speaker
I am your host, Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abysida. As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, The Independent Minds is made on Zencastr.
00:00:37
Speaker
Zencaster is the all-in-one podcasting platform on which you can make your podcast in one place and then distribute it to the major platforms like Spotify, Apple, Amazon and Google YouTube.
00:00:51
Speaker
It really does make making content so easy. If you would like to try podcasting using zencastr was it Zencaster, forward slash pricing and use my offer code, Abysida.
00:01:06
Speaker
All the details are in the description. Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencastr is for making podcasts, we should make one. One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to.
00:01:21
Speaker
As with every episode of The Independent Minds, we won't be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think.
Introducing Dr. Chris Golby and Lumion
00:01:29
Speaker
Today, my guest independent mind is Dr. Chris Golby, the founder of Lumion.
00:01:36
Speaker
Lumion is based in Warwick, which is in Warwickshire. It's a city famous for its castle. When I visit Warwick, I make my travel arrangements with the Ultimate Travel Club,
00:01:47
Speaker
because that is where I get access to trade prices on hotels, flights and all sorts of other travel related purchases. Now, my next trip to Warwick might include a night in war in the Warwick Castle Hotel, which is inside the castle walls.
00:02:06
Speaker
Sounds of very medieval, but there is a link and a membership discount code in the description. now. Hello Chris. Hi Michael. How are you today?
00:02:17
Speaker
Yeah good thanks, thanks for having me on It's a great pleasure. I'm really looking forward to this because Lumion deals with culture and culture is one of those like dark arts in many ways, he said, because it's it's not something that you can really put some figures around. But I think that's what you do with Lumion. You assess and measure and come up with the factual information around what a culture within an organization is. But Before we get into that, could you please tell me a little bit about your experience and what led you to founding Lumion?
00:02:53
Speaker
Yeah, sure.
Understanding Organizational Culture with Lumion
00:02:54
Speaker
So my personal background, i originally did a degree in computer science. <unk> spent some time programming in industry for a little while and then went on to do a PhD at Warwick University, hence the reason of ending up in Warwickshire.
00:03:10
Speaker
That was in digital healthcare, so I spent a period of time working with the university's PhD student and then a research fellow and with the nhs developing digital health projects They're very much themed around people and wellbeing and predominantly user-centred design as well. So how to design ah products for the end user.
00:03:33
Speaker
I then moved on to form an initial company, which was called Everlist. And Everlist was involved again within digital health projects, very much around the wellbeing of individuals that had some great successes eventually appearing on the one show for work we did with King's College of London and South London Mauds and NHS Trust and help patients with psychosis but that was a group of ah digital health projects but around looking at well-being we very much realised that it's difficult to just look after the well-being of an individual if they're in an environment that is not conducive to supporting them and hence the move into the culture space
00:04:16
Speaker
Very interesting. It's a great point really, isn't it? You can be trying to be as healthy as possible, but if you're in an environment, a physical environment or in a culture where your attempts to be healthy, to have good wellbeing are not either being supported by the organisation or by the environment that you're in or by the people that you're associating with, your chances of success are fairly limited.
00:04:41
Speaker
Absolutely. I would say it doesn't matter how much stress resilience training you give somebody if your manager is expecting email responses at three o'clock in the morning. If there is a toxic environment around you it's hard to look after the well-being of an individual.
00:04:57
Speaker
There's a paper came out about July 23 I believe it was that states it's from Oxford is a collection of research around various studies on well-being of staff and basically implies that If you just target wellbeing of staff individually and don't collect don't correct the culture around them, you can actually cause damage to the organisation as a whole.
00:05:25
Speaker
What you want to be looking at doing is looking at the environment that supports the individuals within it. So you've done all this research, you've worked on some big projects within the NHS and organizations that were supporting the and NHS.
00:05:37
Speaker
You then make the decision as you know to move into the management of culture and set up this company with this name that I have real problems pronouncing. and Lumion, Lumion. What does the name of the company mean? Is it a made up word? what What is it? Where's the origins of the name?
00:05:52
Speaker
the name The name comes from light. So as you alluded to at the start, it's it's an area that I think you actually mentioned the words dark arts of culture. yeah So it's about the area of shining a light on something that classically doesn't get noticed under the discovery side of things, particularly the numerical side and how to dig into that and how to really dig under the surface and shine light on on what's really happening.
Exploring Unique Team Dynamics
00:06:16
Speaker
We always talk about the fact that every culture yeah culture is different it's unique to its own organization you can't just copy a culture from another organization but we can help by supporting companies by providing them with a map.
00:06:31
Speaker
And with that map, you know it's up to the company where they want to go within it but we can shine a eye on that map and certainly help them help them to navigate through it in the direction they you want to go. The organisation culture will, in every organisation, the culture will be completely different. Absolutely. regardless Regardless of what it is that somebody aims to be, oh, we used to work at this organisation, had a great culture, we'll try and replicate that here.
00:06:56
Speaker
That will be impossible because you're dealing with completely different people who come from completely different backgrounds who haven't had the experience that you have had. That's what you mean, isn't it?
00:07:07
Speaker
I believe so. So when I go into organisations, we often run workshops with individuals within the organisations. And one of the key questions we always ask at start is, what is culture?
00:07:21
Speaker
We talk about it so often, but we often don't stop to think that everybody has a shared collective understanding of what it is in the first place. So we often start in our workshops by asking that question.
00:07:33
Speaker
And I hear a few different definitions over time, but the one I particularly like is how how we get things done around here. What do we do to get things done? And it's our processes. And to demonstrate that, I'll often give groups of people a set of cards and ask them ah to sort them into particular orders, which I'll give them off the cuff.
00:07:53
Speaker
And every team we give them to will always come up with a different way of organising those cards between themselves. and never to Inevitably, they will be racing to complete the game and as quick as possible, but they'll be competing with the teams around them.
00:08:08
Speaker
And they'll arrive at a certain process of doing it. The other team will arrive at a different process of doing it, but inevit inevitably, they'll arrive there at roughly the same time. Now, it's really interesting because obviously that's just as simple as sorting cards out.
00:08:23
Speaker
But inevitably you've already got a different team dynamic growing there. You've already got a different culture growing. And even if you take one person out of one group and drop them in another, it will take them a little while to figure out what the new system is and how that is going about.
00:08:36
Speaker
and obviously there's processes in there that have been developed, but predominantly there's a way of going about things, a way of improving things that they will need to adapt to. going need to adapt to that culture. And that's just sorting some cards, let alone moving that into entire company structures and how that operates.
00:08:52
Speaker
That is really very interesting with my HR professional hat on. I'm thinking that is really interesting. I do a similar type of exercise with cards in a team game that I use within ah first line management training where people all have to get to 21 using the cards. It gets very, very competitive.
00:09:15
Speaker
And then we realized at the end of it that if everyone had just so said, what cards have I been dealt? What cards have you been dealt? Let's make them into 21s and then everyone's a winner. it's its We've become very individual.
00:09:27
Speaker
But from what you're saying there about how each individual team will have its own way of doing things made me think that that if they've come from an organization with a really good culture, a strong culture might be a better word to use, a strong culture, which is, you know, like you say, how things get done around here is defined by our culture. We have a strong culture, which everybody's bought into and everybody operates to.
00:09:57
Speaker
If it's got a strong culture, then you'd see fewer differences between the individual teams. Would that be right? Potentially. Yeah. it's, it's an interesting one because it it can be, it can be good to have that collective culture, but not necessarily all the time.
00:10:15
Speaker
There can be success in some kind of micro cultures, if that's right for the organization. If you've got certain cultures that are offering, ah operating in different spaces internationally, there may be a reason why those cultures need be tweaked.
00:10:28
Speaker
If you've got an operational team and a sales team, there might be slight differences between the cultures of them that are needed in order to support that culture. Um, we often when we talk about cultures one of the new things that's sort of coming to the forefront at the moment is this idea of generalization versus individualization. So how do we spot trends of generalization, which is often being done by trying to quantify culture?
00:10:53
Speaker
but also with the latest release in technology and tools, how do we spot that individualization? How do we spot what unique individuals and unique teams need in addition or slightly separately from the main overarching culture of the organization?
00:11:05
Speaker
So I think there can be pros and cons to that approach. I think gonna show selected shared and common purpose then having wanting people to behave in the same way, if that makes sense. It does.
00:11:19
Speaker
It does. It makes a lot of sense. And it's almost like, yes, we have a common shared aims, values, purpose, but how each individual team actually puts that into practice is defined by their own culture. And that will be defined almost by the the group of people that are working in that team and the role of the team.
00:11:41
Speaker
that's Yeah, this the generalization or the individualization you have to accept that everybody is an individual, don't you? Absolutely. and And I do think it's been one of the the problem areas in this space. We always talk about the idea of hr analytics and people analytics versus what we've been working in the space. of culture analytics So where the HR analytics and people analytics relies on identifying a problem, identifying usually quantitative or collected small-scale qualitative studies to understand what's happening with that particular problem, that the culture analytics piece really looks more holistically across the organization.
Mapping Organizational Culture with Data
00:12:25
Speaker
So how would we look holistically at what's happening and how do we spot large-scale of the spot talking about, but how do we also look at those unique individualizations of ways certain certain teams or certain certain demographics, for instance, would need to be able to do their jobs more efficiently according to them? How do we adopt that employee listening to be able to achieve that?
00:12:49
Speaker
the The more you talk, the more complicated it sounds. And the more justified that I feel in describing it at the beginning as a dark art, which I didn't plan to do. It's just one of those sorts of things when you start thinking about culture.
00:13:04
Speaker
If you take it as a very simplistic approach, you're not doing the the issue, the challenge, the problem justice. And you can understand I suppose, do out on all sorts of different levels, depending upon your organization, where you're at in your own organizational evolution development and what issues you want to face.
00:13:26
Speaker
And so thinking like, so Lumion approach, tell me a little bit more about, you know you're talking about data and different forms of data and all the scientific ah analysis of, of culture.
00:13:38
Speaker
What is the Lumion approach to solving this, this sort of challenge? Absolutely. So we put on a look at that culture analytics piece. So when we talk about things, we talk about a holistic and actionable culture analytics process.
00:13:55
Speaker
So Hacker, we shorten it to quite nicely. It's hacker is a lot simpler. That's exactly what an an acronym should be, but say it again, please, just so that we can get it. It's holistic. Holistic and actionable culture analytics.
00:14:10
Speaker
It's a H-A-C-A. Right. Tell me more. So the idea of that is what we're looking to do is we're looking to deploy our own software platform, which opens up a window for users in an organization to be able to access and allows them to access various tools and check-ins around their own employee experience and their own well-being.
00:14:33
Speaker
This is about getting some high-level data about individuals across the organization. We capture quantitative data there. We also ah run interviews across the organization and we consistently do those.
00:14:46
Speaker
We use ai tools to help transcribe that and have keep a human in the loop to make sure those transcriptions are correct and summarized correctly. We also run workshops across the organization, which use something called a double diamond method, which my original research background is in.
00:15:03
Speaker
um What we're doing effectively is using quantitative data from the platform, qualitative data from interviews and collective data from the workshops and putting them together in what's almost a data room.
00:15:16
Speaker
And what we're looking to do is establish that data room so we can constantly grow big data piece. So how can we grow that upwards and be constantly using the AI tools to spot unstructured data patterns?
00:15:34
Speaker
So what we're not looking to do here is necessarily identify a problem in advance. We're looking to build the data sets, use the AI tools to spot bigger trends and bigger patterns than maybe a human would.
00:15:46
Speaker
We then use that to then grill down, ask the right questions, and then produce actionable and tangible outputs out the other side. So what we're really looking to do in summary is collect large pockets of data, quantitative and qualitative, understand that data,
00:16:03
Speaker
and produce the most actionable results coming out the other end of it as possible and not just the numbers you would receive out something like HR analytics. You've reminded me of an experience I had when I was working in Asia.
00:16:14
Speaker
When I started, I was, there were fewer than five employees when I started. When I finished, there were more than 50, all from sorts of different nationalities and everybody was working on the single floor of this tower block.
00:16:26
Speaker
And one morning I arrived And as I walked through the office, I was thinking, there's something not quite right here. I don't know what it is, but there's something not quite right.
00:16:37
Speaker
And I went to the chief executive and I said, there's something not quite right here today. And he said, I know what you mean. I know what you mean. And we said, have any ideas what it might be? no no but that's exactly what you're talking about in using lumion software to actually help identify ask people the questions the question the answers change that indicates that there is something when you've got the whole database of information that indicates that something is not right but then will also answer the question that we were frustrated by on that day
00:17:12
Speaker
We know something's not quite right. The atmosphere in the office is not the same as it has been over the last few weeks, but we didn't know what was wrong. And what you're saying is that with Hacker, it would help you to identify what the issue was and give you actions to take to actually put you back where you want to be.
00:17:34
Speaker
um Absolutely, yeah. And it's all about that constant constant listening and collecting data along the process and and ah as i said at the start that the map analogy so we can give you the map but we can't tell you how to run a culture, we can't tell you which direction to go in. you know The culture is unique to every organisation, but what we can do is listen to the people who are in that culture and who understand what's needed in order to make it to perform to its best.
00:18:02
Speaker
and And how many times have we heard someone sit in a boardroom or an SRT meeting and say, there's something wrong with this area over here or this this particular process.
00:18:14
Speaker
and I think we could speak to these people about it and we should probably do something about it at some point. Nothing ever quite gets done or someone can't quite place their finger on what's happening.
00:18:25
Speaker
And I think that's that that feel you get within an organization that there's a notion that maybe something needs to be done, but no one's quite sure what to do or not quite sure how to pick up on the data patterns within it. um And realistically, we're in a very ah exciting time whereby the birth of generative AI has allowed us to really progress forwards in terms of this listening at scale and in terms of this data analysis and driving that forwards.
00:18:49
Speaker
And I think we're going to be able to see that understanding of cultures in a way we've just never seen before and ability to hear at scale. And I think that is really, really fascinating where it's going.
00:18:59
Speaker
Yes, I agree with you. But how does Lumion do its listening? Is it something that people are sent some type of questionnaire and they fill it in or they're answering individual questions? how does it and How does Lumion listen to the people?
00:19:17
Speaker
Absolutely. So Lumion mix of the software and the processes within it. So the the easiest part, and sorry, can give you to that section is just talking about the interviews that we do.
00:19:30
Speaker
So those interviews will have engagement questions in that are more like your classic engagement survey, but they will also have questions in it that are guided by previous data that has come out, including quantitative data from the software platform that arrives.
00:19:45
Speaker
And we use that to guide some of the questions. Interestingly, who have conversations with HR people about engagement surveys and then you sort of hear this disappointed sigh, that, oh, another engagement survey.
00:19:58
Speaker
It's often shared between HR and the people answering it because there's the there's the, what are we going to ask? How often are we going to have to chase people? then we're going to have to do the analysis, figure out what to do, and then we realise we're going to have to do the whole thing again.
00:20:12
Speaker
Whereas with the process, we're looking at the interviews, the automatic transcriptions in our process. and the analysis drawing goal. So it's really interesting when you ask an individual, would they like to fill out an engagement survey? No one particularly wants to do it.
00:20:26
Speaker
But ask them to sit on Teams for 20 to 30 minutes and talk about their job one of our hardest points is actually keeping the interview short enough because people just want to talk about it and when they become expressive and emotive, they're more likely to do that in person.
00:20:40
Speaker
And we can pick up on those transcriptions quite quickly now and the AI actually auto summarizes that with a human checking the auto summary to then go into the data pool. So then we can begin to spot trends from one interview to another that might not have been picked up and particularly if we've got multiple interviewers.
00:20:57
Speaker
They might not have been picked up. And so this transcription data is helping us quite quickly to do those analysis at scale. And that can be done almost on the fly.
Navigating Organizational Evolution with Lumion
00:21:06
Speaker
And so that allows us to listen at quite large volumes in a way that any employee engagement survey is inherently three months out of date by the time you've got the it everything coming back in the first place. If you want to do classic transcription, it's going to take you a long time to collect the data and analyze it.
00:21:23
Speaker
If you take three months to do employee engagement surveys, that's going to the same term time, it's already out date. It's hard to get the information. Whereas getting people to talk for half an hour in interview is actually relatively easy to do. People want to do it. They want to talk about their jobs. They want to give feedback. They want to talk about themselves and how they're being affected.
00:21:40
Speaker
And so that's what we really do is carry on with that. Keep a human in the loop, but keeping the technology but underpinning and assisting the human. Yeah. It's getting more and more interesting, actually. I was thinking, can any organisation do this?
00:21:55
Speaker
Or are there likes prerequisites before an organisation is ready to go down this type of route? we We tend to work with organisations above 25 to 30 people.
00:22:07
Speaker
So we tend to often pick them up around... that phase when they've just gone over thirty and getting towards a hundred obviously we work with larger organizations as well. and We particularly like high growth organizations where the culture becomes so critical.
00:22:21
Speaker
yes that's true Yes, that's There's an interesting, there's actually a Harvard Business Review article which talks about various stages of growth and that each organization when they're growing has to flip between five stages.
00:22:34
Speaker
and And it's almost like a continuum of very process driven through to very culturally driven. At the start, you're very culturally driven up to 15 people and up to 30, you flip and go the other way. you have to insert some processes, but then it becomes too process driven and you have to go back to being cultural.
00:22:51
Speaker
There's certain numbers where this flip happens, 15, 30, 50, and 100 people where it tends to balance out a little bit. You tend to have to keep in certain cultural processes. But there's stages the companies consistently have to go through and there will be change during that period.
00:23:08
Speaker
And so We tend to pick up companies post 30 because it's when they really need that cultural piece building in the background. But obviously we we scale upwards with them and then afterwards, but it's about often that high growth side of things.
00:23:22
Speaker
Yes, my experience is that when you're in a startup organization, everybody's just wanting to get everything done. And then as you sort of go into the teenage years of the organization, you need to start putting some structure because you've got more than one person doing each job.
00:23:40
Speaker
Therefore, you have to have some sort of standardization. And standardization means structure. And if you're not careful, that then impacts people. the culture of the organization because you could talk all day about this couldn't we chris this evolution of organizations and understanding which stage of an organization's evolution you are at and then working out what you need to do to go to the next stage and how that will impact both the way in which the business functions and the culture of the organization can be the key to making sure that the continued growth, development and evolution of the organization is successful.
00:24:20
Speaker
Absolutely. if And when we do that, that listening to the employees and the constant analysis, it often tends to trend one way or the other. So either you'll notice a lot of talk about we need certain policies and we need certain processes in place. there's a lack of understanding here.
00:24:37
Speaker
And you start see that the the of organization is starting to need that more process-driven side. But there's a flip side to that as well, where people start to talk about red tape, bureaucracy, I can't get things done, it's too slow. And that's a point we need to flip. And often ah that exercise that we do do and can can be really proactive in terms of spotting that in advance, because the people that will spot it the most of the people on the shop floor They, they, people in your office who are ability to spot that just one way, one way, the other too fast.
Conclusion and Engagement Encouragement
00:25:07
Speaker
it's really interesting to pick that up at scale and quickly before it becomes a problem. I can see all sorts of area. Well, I'm fascinated. Yeah. I'm fascinated by this whole sort of way in which organizations develop and how people within those organizations adapt and change to those changes in the, in the environment in which they're working.
00:25:28
Speaker
And it's true what you say that the people who often pick it up first are the people with the least input into the decision making process, the people on the shop floor.
00:25:41
Speaker
So if Lumion is giving those people a voice by listening to them and presenting the information in a way that which people who sit around at big desks want to see it, then it's only going to help organizations as far as I can see. it' like I could talk to you all day about this and it's really very, it is fascinating, really fascinating.
00:26:07
Speaker
Thank you very much. I really appreciate your time. Thank you. No problem. thanks Thanks for your time as well, Michael. Really enjoyed it. Thank you, Chris. I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasida, and I have been having a conversation with the independent mind, Chris Golby, the founder of Lumion.
00:26:24
Speaker
You can find out more about both of us at abbasida.co.uk. There is a link in the description. If you are listening to the independent minds on your smartphone in the United Kingdom, you may like to know that 3.0 has the UK's fastest 5G network with unlimited data.
00:26:42
Speaker
So listening on 3.0 means you can wave goodbye to buffering. There is a link in the description that will take you to more information about business and personal telecom solutions from 3 and the special offers available when you quote my referral code.
00:26:59
Speaker
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00:27:10
Speaker
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00:27:23
Speaker
Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye.