COLIN ON CULTURE
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Anomie
Anomie is ‘a lack of rules’ and it's the silent killer of great work. It's what happens when nobody knows which standards matter anymore.
Truth without the thorns
Lose the jargon and communicate with directness because when your team know where they stand they feel safer.
Laughter
Life can be a pretty serious business so take the opportunity to lean in to laughter. It’s good for you!
Facts matter
When leaders make decisions based on facts they build trust and reinforce the culture they want to see.
Emotionally excellent
It takes more than technical skills to build a team and create a culture.
Effective communication
When you have mastered a clear message you have a skill that you will use every day.
Subcultures the catalyst for change
By understanding and nurturing subcultures, organisations can drive culture change and improve overall employee engagement
Won’t AI just make employees lazy?
To be successful, AI implementation must be part of a broader evolution of the existing culture, with good practice principles agreed in advance.
Space for everyone
We don’t all work the same so why do we persist with culture killing monolithic office spaces?
Communication: the key to success
Communication permeates every aspect of our working lives. From explaining strategies, crafting compelling presentations and negotiating deals to resolving conflicts and building trust-based relationships. Effective communication shapes outcomes at every turn.
A case of the Mondays
We all have bad days but your mood is contagious and spreading negativity is a culture killer.
The Five Levels of Management Mastery
Middle managers are the difference between organisation success and failure and yet most managers lack the training to make a real difference every day. I share my experiences to help fast-track your learning.
Saying no
One of the best skills we can learn, therefore, is the ability to say ‘no’ and sometimes, ‘no’ is a complete sentence. That’s not to say that we deliver the message rudely or with attitude, indeed the opposite is true.
Agency, the culture secret
When employees are given the opportunity to define their own working conditions — how they connect, behave, work together and be creative — they gain not only a sense of pride in what they’ve built, but also a determination to uphold it.
Anchored in the past
The stories in your culture will determine whether you sail or sink.
Toxic culture and UFOs
In almost all cases of reports into toxic cultures, the first response from senior leaders has either been to deny the existence of toxic culture or else to pretend that what’s obvious to everyone else, isn’t obvious to them.
Winning
Winning is not about crushing the competition or stepping on colleagues; it's about creating an environment where winning becomes a natural outcome of doing things properly.
The quote that never was
In every office, every sports team, every startup, every Fortune 500 company, we've seen it happen. The perfect strategy, meticulously planned, beautifully presented... and it falls flat. Not because the strategy was wrong, but because the people weren't ready.
Cynics and sceptics
What’s the difference and why does it matter for your workplace culture?
Is it still worth doing?
The real measure of a project isn't the resources it consumes but the value that the change creates. When we fixate on time and cost, we optimise activity for predictability instead of possibility.