Culture Makers

From super regulated defence agencies to super energetic Red Bull,   Jonathan Walton , Director of Web and Mobile Services and Project Delivery for Red Bull North America, leverages all of his experience to ensure that his teams are engaged, enjoying their work and delivering great outcomes.  I've been lucky enought to work with Jon and his team at Red Bull's North American HQ in Santa M...

The truly inspiring Katty Coulson, VP Oracle NetSuite Information Technology, talks to me about forging a leadership career in tech and what team culture means to her. Katty poses important questions, including: What is the bond that transcends the work?  Who is on your team? Because you can't do anything of importance alone.  What feeds the soul? We need giving and goodness in our...

Rick A. Morris is a true multi-hyphenate. He's an accomplished project manager and certified Scrum Agile Master, the author of six books including Project Management That Works , a sought-after mentor and public speaker with skin in the game across sectors including banking, technology and entertainment. He also has a heart as big as his resume and I'm proud to call him a friend!  In this epi...

Didier Elzinga is CEO and co-founder of Culture Amp - a people and culture platform that helps companies around the world to gather insight and analytics on engagement and performance so that they can build and evolve high achieving teams.  Didier left a highly successful career in Hollywood to, in his own words, 'make a bigger dent on the universe' by building a global software company on a...

Creative entrepreneur Cathryn Wills - founder of luxury vegan accessories brand Sans Beast and former managing director of Mimco - reinforced for me what distinguishes Culture Makers: they are always looking for smarter ways of doing things, for ideas and inspiration. They never assume they are the smartest person in the room (even when they probably are). They empower those around them to take th...

I caught up with Dominick on a trip to New York and it was easy to see why he loves the energy of the 'city that never sleeps' as Dominick is someone who is fully committed to living life to the fullest. But that doesn't mean he is hooked on busy - quite the opposite and that is one of the many topics we talk about: the danger of validating ourselves by the metric of 'busy'; creating cultures wher...

In this episode I'm having a laugh with Simon Dowling, author of Work With Me and someone who knows the importance of finding the time and space to bring some playfulness into workplace culture - and, crucially, how to do it in a way that boosts productivity and collaboration.  Formerly a commercial lawyer, Simon had his 'aha' moment after performing improv at a Bar Mitzvah! The realisation t...

Mary Butler is the author of Recreate Your Career Story and has a vast amount of experience working in people and culture roles across a range of global organisations, government departments and start-ups. Mary now helps organisations, teams and individuals to address their career planning challenges to ensure they are future-ready in terms of both people and practices. In this podcast we talk abo...

Turning advertising and marketing agency convention on its head and winning awards and accolades along the way, Ben Kirshner puts people first and has built a culture of motivated, loyal employees in a highly competitive industry.  In this episode we talk about many culture, people and workplace factors including: ⚡ What inspires Ben to create, maintain and evolve a culture that is cons...

I'm chatting with Zappos' Christa Foley in a closet (all will be revealed!) about the many wonderful and intentional things that make up the Zappos workplace culture, including: ⚡ How Zappos Insights and the Culture Camp came to be ⚡ Living the company values ⚡ Peer-to-peer recognition ⚡ Catering HR policies to suit the majority not the minority ⚡ Encouraging a growth mindset ⚡ Experimenting...

Welcome to the very first episode of Culture Makers - the podcast that will help you to create a great place to work and hopefully have some fun along the way. In this first episode I am delighted to be speaking to my friend Dom Price who also happens to be Atlassian's work futurist (what does that even mean? We find out!). Dom is as passionate about people and culture as I am and also as practica...

I'm Colin D Ellis and I write books, deliver speeches and organisational programs about creating great places to work that consistently deliver results. The Culture Makers podcast is all about helping you to be a culture maker, whatever your seniority or sector.