CultureLab with Aga Bajer

Garry Ridge is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the WD-40 Company, a billion-dollar business with a 93% employee engagement index. WD-40 has been making history when it comes to harnessing the power of organizational culture. It has kept its values aligned for over six decades by making them the heart and soul of the company. On its culture homepage, WD-40 has the following message for job applicants: "Please consider employment with WD-40 Company only if you feel as strongly about our values as we do." Here's a message from Garry on how to navigate this difficult period. For the interview with Garry, click here: https://www.agabajer.com/podcast-list... To be the first to receive the new audio postcards, please click here: https://mailchi.mp/eafee17fef25/audio...

This audio postcard comes from Bobby Herrera, from Michigan. Bobby Herrera is the co-founder and CEO of Populus Group - one of the fastest-growing HR services companies in the United States with annual revenue of $500 million and many Fortune 100 customers. Bobby speaks beautifully about how he sees his role as the CEO during the times of Coronavirus. I hope you enjoy his message.

Today, on the CultureLab podcast, we welcome Aaron Dignan - the author of one of my favorite business books of the past few years - Brave New Work and the founder of the Ready. If you feel like the way we work hasn't worked for a while and if you are curious about what new ways of working we could adopt, you'll enjoy this conversation. In this interview, Aaron and I talk about why scale and bureaucracy that once made companies strong have become huge liabilities. Today, it's the companies that operate with transparency, autonomy, decentralization, and empowerment that are better positioned to navigate disruptive changes. Our conversation was set in the context of the current events, especially the COVID-19 pandemic. And while there's a lot of tragedy happening right now, Aaron believes that there's a lot of promise in this moment as well. He says that the current disruption has challenged a lot of assumptions that we hold about trust, remote work and empowerment. It looks like we have been presented with a unique opportunity to rethink the way we work and renegotiate our social contracts. Now it's up to us to take advantage of this opportunity.

It's in times like these that our values and ethical standards are put to the test. COVID-19 emergency and its aftermath will call for empathy, compassion, and generosity. If business leaders don't rise to the occasion, they'll put their companies at risk. In this audio postcard, crisis expert, Melissa Agnes, encourages us to put ourselves in our stakeholders' shoes and ask: how can we serve them to the best of our capabilities?

When people don't speak up, the organization's ability to innovate and grow is at great risk. A culture of silence is a dangerous culture. A culture of openness and candor, on the other hand, offers immense benefits for creativity, learning, and innovation. But for people to speak up, they need to experience psychological safety and this is what Amy Edmondson, my guest today, has studied for more than 25 years.

It looks like we might be in a pretty long tunnel. And while there's certainly light at the end of it, why wait? We can create some light right now by building human connections through the means we have available. Here's Thimon De Jong speaking on this topic.

We have a new postcard - this time from Ron Carucci. Ron says that we are currently in an odd, liminal space, in between chapters. And while it's undoubtedly a difficult season, things will resume eventually. So how can we prepare for our new normal? Listen in!

We have created the Audio Postcards series to help you tackle the challenges of COVID-19 pandemic in a calmer and wiser way. This week, the postcard comes from Aga Bajer and she shares three questions to explore with your team to regain a sense of control and purpose in these crazy times.

As time goes by, we all realize that the Coronavirus outbreak is, first and foremost, a human tragedy. But it has also become increasingly clear that COVID-19 is having a growing impact on the global economy, causing many businesses to switch to full-on survival mode. While taking short-term measures to mitigate the effects of the current disruption, many leaders ask themselves: How do you deal with the current issues without losing sight of the long-term goals? And how do you embrace an infinite mindset in times of a crisis of such vast proportions? Simon Sinek shares his thoughts on the subject.

We have created the Audio Postcards series to help us tackle the challenges of the Coronavirus pandemic in a calmer and wiser way. This week we have a postcard from Toronto, from my dear friend Liane Davey who speaks about how not to let a good crisis go to waste. If you want to be on our postcard mailing list, sign up here: http://tiny.cc/5utvnz