Rethink Culture

"I always ask people right from the start to talk to me and decide what you want to be famous for… So, what's your intention in terms of that space and getting tasks done? … What's your intention in terms of the relationships that you want to have? What's your intention for the reputation of the team that you will serve?"   S02E07 of the Rethink Culture podcast shines the spotlight on Bruce Sulliv...

"If you're listening, you're on one or the other side of this quote, and the quote is, none of us will build great companies. We will lead incredible people who will build great companies. You either agree with that or you don't… It's a choice. It's a conscious choice." S02E06 of the Rethink Culture podcast shines the spotlight on Canadian entrepreneur Ron Lovett , CEO and chief community officer...

“You lead human beings and human beings have lives and sometimes those lives are going really well and other times are dealing with challenges. Recognize the humanity in the people that you lead… If we lean in with curiosity and lean in with compassion first and we make people feel like they are genuinely cared about and valued as part of our team, you will see people accomplish things that you ju...

“In the first 100 days in most organizations, employees feel overwhelmed. They feel unconnected. They feel unseen, unheard, unappreciated … I think lots of times leaders will say, well, it will be better if we're all back in the office. Why? What proof do you have? What data do you have? Because as we look anecdotally at anecdata or we look systemically or statistically at research data, it seems...

"Culture is not about popcorn, peanuts, ping pong. It's about having a heart of gold and a backbone of steel. […] Be a caring organization […] It's a balance between being tough minded and tenderhearted. […] It's simple, it's not easy, and time is not your friend." Episode S02E03 of the Rethink Culture podcast shines the spotlight on the incredible Garry Ridge. Garry is a “champion-of-hope” leader...

“The thing to be careful about, which always worried me, was just drinking your own Kool-Aid too much… “strong convictions, loosely held” the value of the company, which means that this is our culture, this is how we do things. We're very, very committed to this... if you come along and you speak a truth that's going to improve or… invalidate something in here we are not attached to it. We will th...

"I always think of culture like a garden. […] We're always in the middle of the journey. There's no real finish line to culture. It's always like that garden. You're always replanting it. You're always finding new crops. You're finding a new kind of seed to plant. And sometimes it doesn't work out and it's a failure. That's OK, too. There's learning in that as well." S02E01 of the Rethink Culture...

“Is it companies who put employees first? Do they perform better than companies who put customers first? Or those that put stakeholders first?. I thought it was a fundamental question needed to be answered. And the answer [the came through John Kotter’s research] surprised everybody… The companies that outperformed by a factor of 10 were those that treated all 3 equally. That the employees, custom...

“I think that culture has always been there […] There are two fish swimming in a pond, and a bigger fish swims past them and says, “How's the water?”. And when he swims away, the fish look at each other and say, “What's water?” […] Culture is always there. It's always around you. You can feel it, but you don't even realize you're in it.” S01E11 of the Rethink Culture podcast shines the spotlight o...

“Who you choose as your partner, what you choose as your vacation or your place of work, or the community you choose to live in, I think if these are not aligned to your values, you have a very low chance of success in the long run.” S01E10 of the Rethink Culture podcast shines the spotlight on Robert Glazer, founder and chairman of Acceleration Partners, a global affiliate marketing agency that’s...

“We ‘re a service business that just happens to to collect waste. I never get out of the bed in the morning thinking I’ m in the waste industry. Never, ever, ever. I don’t go to the waste management trade shows. Personally I can’t think of anything worse to do. It doesn’t inspire me. But I will read every book about the service industry. I wanna know what’s the best service industry in Asia. I wan...

“The first thing that I needed to do was to start creating a safe space for my staff to challenge me. The harder part was for my staff to fail. And sometimes when they failed, we lost clients. And that was really bitter, bitter pills to swallow. But I realised very quickly that if I was to create the safe space, I had to stop micromanaging. Because the minute I started micromanaging, the space was...

“Why should I constrain myself with Seattle’s geographic region when I can get talent throughout the world. Yes, it’s more challenging and I have to do more processes and technology to facilitate, but I believe fundamentally that there’s more talent that I can access and that outweighs having geographic proximity to the office.” S01E07 of the Rethink Culture podcast features David Niu, a serial en...

“The culture I had at the time was the wrong culture, but it was the culture I deserved. It wasn’t my people. It wasn’t my clients. It wasn’t the environment. It wasn’t the economy. It was me. It was me trying to be the boss, to drive my team as opposed to the leader to lead my team” S01E06 of the Rethink Culture podcast features Arnie Malham, author of Worth Doing Wrong, founder of BetterBookClub...

In S01E05 of the Rethink Culture podcast, Mehmet Yitmen, co-founder at ACM Agile, talks about the principles of autonomous organisations and the process he uses to transform traditional hierarchical organisations into self-organising ones. Yitmen has worked with tens of organisations in Europe and the Middle East to transform them using agile and self-management principles over 20 years and carrie...

"A lot of entrepreneurs often believe that they have to have it all figured out, before they introduce it to their team. I ve always believed that if lead with authenticity and I say when we really know what's going on and when we testing something, people give us a lot of grace. " In S01E04 of the Rethink Culture podcast, David Nilssen, CEO of DOXA Talent, a 600-strong outsourcing group talks abo...

In this episode of Rethink Culture podcast we talk to Alexis Pantazis, Exec Director and Co-Founder of HellasDirect, a 200-strong disruptive insurance company, built ona culture of shared vision and self-managing, diverse teams. "You always think of a strong leader as a general in the army, as opposed to somebody that has emotions and is much more open. Having people that are constantly learning o...

"If leaders are willing to be vulnerable and listen to their employees.. those are cultures which empower everyone to feel safe and to bring their whole selves to work... A lot of leaders are still trying to hide behind stuff.. and they are not sleeping well at night. The most peaceful place for a leader to be is to have stated values and then can stand in the spotlight of those values." The secon...

In this pilot episode of Rethink Culture we speak with Haluk Can Hur, founder of Latro Chemical, a company pioneering a no-hierarchy, self-management model, that in 2022 received the 2nd Best Place to Work in Europe award.  Latro is a 70-person company in Turkey running on a no-hierarchy, completely autonomous model with no titles, sales targets, OKRs, KPIs, no HR department and where decisions ar...