Workplace Culture and Business Strategy: How Management Consultants Can Help Executives Make the Connection

[MUSIC] Thank you for joining us on this podcast, your expert advantage, a higher level of management consulting. This podcast is produced by the Canadian Association of Management Consultants, CMC Canada. My name is James Grieve and I am a certified management consultant based in Kelona, British Columbia. I'm joined today by co-host Ashgawork, another certified management consultant, or CMC based at a British Columbia and a member of CMC Canada. Our aim with this podcast is to provide members of the business community management consultants and their clients, as well as aspiring management consultants with great thought leadership, case studies, and actionable information on conversational format. We hope that you'll be able to take this information back to your workplace, or discussion, and implementation. Part of what we'll be telling is some great stories from those who have earned their certified management consultant designation and show the value of CMC to others in the management consulting community and the business community at large. CMC is the consulting professions only international certification, recognized in over 40 countries. In this episode, we'll be speaking with Kate Fagan Taylor. Kate Fagan Taylor is a certified management consultant and organization cultural strategist. Kate has a graduate degree in values-based leadership from the University of Notre Dame, with experience in organization development and expertise in leadership coaching. Her approach is informed by 20 years of practical experience as a strategic leader and executive, including being employee number one at a successful tech startup. Kate previously led strategy, governance, and policy development across several sectors, and directed executive talent management for the BC public service. Kate's current focus as a management consultant is showing executives how to build exceptional company cultures that support and propel their business strategies. Welcome to your expert advantage podcast, Kate. Thanks so much, James. Glad to be here. Great. Before we get started, the good value for our listeners, if you told us about your practice, and what brought to this point where we are today? Sure. I'm a management consultant. I work in Victoria, BC, and I tend to work mostly with companies in British Columbia, but have done some work in Alberta as well. And I really specialize in work that has to do with solving problems related to work culture. So that can look like when a company is updating its strategy, having an assessment of the work cultures to see if the strategy and the work culture actually line up, or if there needs to be adjustments to the work culture, so that the company can really be successful in its business. And that can also look like everything from designing strategic plans, doing values assessments, doing team development events, doing organizational design and redesign, and coaching as well. Hey, fantastic. Maybe you could tell us to set the table a little bit here on some of the organizations that you've worked with both in the private and public sector and what you've gleaned from those experiences. You know, that's kind of what led me to this work is I have had a pretty diverse career. I worked for the first 10 years of my career as a interfaith chaplain at the University of Victoria. So I was working kind of in a not-for-profit community-based role, and then also had the exposure to the academia, the academic culture. Went from that, had a big career change when I was 30 and moved into work that had to do with governance. For about six or seven years, worked in university governance and then moved over to government and worked on the governance projects and strategy projects across government. And also had them exposure in the health sector, the education sector, and in the public sector as a whole designing leadership and executive development programs, and then worked with crowns. So I've had exposure to so many different types of organizations. It was almost like an informal education in different cultures and how they work. Especially when I then moved over to the tech sector, I worked as the lead of a tech startup, and that was that was a very different kind of culture because I'd always worked in either public service or not-for-profit. And then working in tech really gave me exposure to how does how do tech organizations line up a culture that helps them to attract the talent and the ways of thinking and the ways of behaving that they need to be successful. So that, you know, is kind of a circuitous route to where I am now as a management consultant, but it's fun to look back at your life and realize all the things you experience can really be like an education. And I find I draw on that sort of informally as I work with different types of organizations and different companies. And the insights I get from having lived in those cultures sometimes can be really helpful. Now this is great. It really sets a nice foundation for tech, as you're aware, our audience on the podcast is aspiring consultants, the business community at large, our consultants, or certified management consultants, and also their clients. So this is great. I'll turn it over to Ashkin out to explore a little deeper. Thanks, James. And thanks for being with us on this podcast today. Maybe we'll just jump in with just our opening question. You mentioned your area of focus in your practice is work culture. Can you kick things off with us by talking about how you define work culture? And, you know, other similar terms I've heard are company culture or organizational culture. Do you see any difference in those terminologies? Yeah, I think they're kind of interchangeable depending on how people think of their organization, whether they see it as a company or they see it as just a workplace. And what I usually find as a helpful definition is really what culture comes down to is it's the way people behave and interact with each other day to day. Like, what are the social norms of an organization? And they're all about behaviors and, you know, I'm sure Ashkin, you've joined, when you joined an organization, you kind of get a sense of, here's how we do things here. And, you know, nine times out of 10, it's something you pick up implicitly like you just absorb it. People don't say to you, you know, when you show up at a meeting, here's where you need to sit. You'll just notice where people tend to sit and you'll just sign a slide into your seat, right? That's kind of as human beings, we're all in a way experts in culture because we've all grown up in specific families that have their own norms of how people behave. We've all been in schools. We've all been in other social settings where there's norms. This is how we do things. And we've we get pretty good at adapting. And so what my job is to help people raise that expertise that they have to a level of awareness so that they can think critically about it and decide, you know, is this how we want to be? And if not, what are other ways we could learn to behave? And then what are the different levers that can influence that behavior that we could, we could make use of to change and enhance the culture? Great. Thanks for that. I like what you said there around culture with intention. Tell us a little bit more about that, like that idea of culture is being something that you that you intentionally focus on as an organization or workplace versus something that kind of maybe just happens. Absolutely, because you know culture is there whether we see it or not, right? There's a couple analogies that I like to use for that. And one is there's an old saying that that goes whoever discovered the water, it wasn't the fish. And that kind of gets to the point that, you know, when we're immersed in something and it's just the way things are, we can know it well on one level, but we may not be aware of it. Like we may be so close to it. It's hard to see. That's where it's consultants. I think we can really help. And I think most consultants end up doing this too. Coming in and just describing what they see so that people can then hear that and you know, question that, decide if they also can see it that way or if not, what have they seen from someone who's living in it? And then, you know, if this is working for us, let's celebrate it. Let's, you know, that's fine ways to bring it to that level of awareness. So if we have a culture where people are highly collaborative and where everybody's always checking in with each other and keeping each other up to date, that kind of culture can be super helpful. I see that in a lot of not-for-profits where people have a high sense of ownership of their work and a high sense of commitment to it. And there's ways to reinforce that. So there's ways to sort of celebrate that and, you know, build that into performance reviews or build that into the company values. And have that be something that is praised and celebrated. And, you know, sometimes there's things that become normal that are not healthy or that we feel maybe this worked for us when our strategy was, for example, being very hands on with customers. But if we're shifting to become more innovative, and we need to come up with new ways of doing business, maybe we need different norms for how we relate to our customers and relate to each other. So just helping people realize they are experts in their culture, they just have to raise that to level of consciousness so that they can talk about it can be really helpful. And part of what we do, I think, is consultants would give people a language to talk about that. So categories of, how do you break a culture down to understand its different facets? And how do you give a group of basic vocabulary to talk about culture so that when things are happening, they can name that and they can brute forward and have a good discussion about it? Excellent. Thanks, Keith. One thing that you mentioned there is culture is subconscious and I think it's so important and bedrock of many organizations and how they perform. And in speaking with you prior to this, the podcast and what you said today, you mentioned that the success of companies' rises and falls on their work culture. And you'll elaborate a little bit on that. But if you could go deeper into that, that'd be great and why it's so important in propelling businesses forward. Sure, yeah. So I know most of us as consultants, we've probably done work with clients to develop their strategies or to help them manage change or come up with plans to manage change when they have to change direction. And sometimes that companies, 'cause some kind of orgery design as well, but it's rare that they actually have a culture conversation. And I find that's really the missing puzzle piece for why some of these changes can work. And in other cases, they don't work because it's normally a mismatch between culture and strategy. So for example, I worked a lot in the public sector in BC and I worked with them as a consultant as well with different ministries and different crowns and organizations and I work with tech companies. And I think tech company culture kind of had its, you know, had a moment of being seen as the cool way to work. You know, it's flexible. People innovate. They, you know, the company dedicates time for people to come up with ideas and be able to change things quickly. And it's interesting, the public sector in BC, I think they went through a time when they thought, well, that's how we have to be. We have to innovate. So they tried to, they tried to shift their culture more toward innovation. I think a lot of teams and ministries are still trying to do this. What's challenging about that is that a lot of areas in government, for them to be successful as business areas, they don't need to be focused on innovation. They actually have accountabilities that means they need to focus on service delivery that is, that is, you know, consistent and reliable and that is accountable because there's high risk in some areas, right? So if they all of a sudden started like letting all their frontline staff improvise and come up with different ways of providing service just across the board, they actually wouldn't be supporting their business strategy. They could be really throwing a fork in the blender in terms of being able to deliver on what's expected of them in a high-risk, high-accountability culture. And so, you know, when you've got a culture where you're expected to kind of stain your lane and deliver well and deliver with excellence on certain very specific pieces of work, the innovation has to happen still, but it has to happen with more of a deliberate kind of stepping outside of that operational focus and saying, all right, let's look at how we've been operating and if we're going to make a change, it has to be really well thought out. So innovation has to be done differently in government. Whereas in tech, what you see with a lot of startups, is they're still trying to figure out how to do what they do and often being really responsive to customers and being creative and having frontline people empowered to just do what needs to be done to have happy customers is really important. And so, if you were to have a culture there of people who are risk averse, people who are afraid to try new things or worry about getting approval and you had owner's approval processes where they had to go through several layers of management before they could try something new, that would be a misfit between what their business requires and what their culture supports. So, one of the conversations we have initially and a lot of the ways I do, like culture assessments is to try to understand what's happening now, like what is the norm now? How does that fit the current business needs? Where does it fit and where is it like a strong match where it's really propelling and supporting the business strategy? And where are there some areas of strength that we can build on, where we could do even better? And then where the areas where there's a mismatch. So, that's a helpful framework for people because then they don't feel like there's only one culture that everybody has to try to aspire to. In fact, every business can and will have a slightly different culture that's attractive to certain people. And what I find that the most successful companies figure out who they really are and who they really want to be and then the own that, you know, and the find ways to live that in a unique way, which actually I think that's true for management consultants as well, you know, and for most of us in our lives, you want to figure out who you really are and then work with that, you know, and not try to be what you're not. - And I think that's such a good comment that you know, the key takeaway I took there is the word fit because it's not just within the walls of the organization, it's a fit for the clients that they're serving or their customers, as well as who they're working with what type of work they take as well. So I really appreciate you sharing that and the key takeaway there for me is fit both inside the organization and at all stages of value chain. That's fantastic. Thank you. - Yeah, I think, you know, there's that old saying, it's been a scribe to a number of different people, but that the culture eats strategy for breakfast. And I think that's because of that insight that a company's culture is just inseparable from its business strategy. And if you think of them as, like if you think of culture as just HR stuff where it's like we go out for beer or, you know, where it's about that sense of belonging only, you're missing the fact that what's normal in terms of behaviors is going to be the essence of your business and how you either successfully achieve your goals or you don't. - What do you notice in Kate in terms of how, so picking up on that threat of culture with, you know, with intentionality, how are companies weaving in this commitment to inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility and the conversations that they're having around culture? Like how, what are the inner plays that you're noticing in between those two, those two threads? - Yeah, I think, and I'm sure other consultants have noticed this, there's a really range between how enthusiastic companies are about diversity inclusion and whether they see it as just HR, that's some of your HR deals with, whether they see it that is, it's actually a business advantage to embrace diversity and get different points of view, different sets of skills and abilities to bear on different parts of the work. So you see different companies have a different commitment and I think when executives have a mature kind of well, nuance, understanding of their role as leaders of culture, that's when companies really take off and shine. Like I think there's just about any story that you see about a CEO who's led as a successful startup and has a company that people are wanting to work for and wanting to join, you've got a leader who usually has a pretty, pretty well-fought out understanding of culture and those are the people that are most open to diversity inclusion initiatives that really are integrated with the whole company and they're not just about having quotas or trying to be changing a few policies here and there to become more inclusive. But for many clients actually, they can come to me saying, we wanna do more with diversity inclusion and often that's like a doorway into them just getting more of an awareness about culture as a whole. - Yeah, right? - It seems often like a door that opens for that conversation. - And we're living in like a time of, I don't know, unprecedented. I don't even know what the word is, but like elevation in terms of what employees are looking for in terms of their work experience, the choices that they're making about how they spend their time, what organizations they work with and for and in service of what overarching mission or purpose. What do you notice thing about that in terms of employees and the trends in terms of the choices that they're making about the companies that they're working with and the organization cultures of those organizations? - That's a really good question, especially now. Like when you look at the pandemic and how it, there's been some, interesting studies about how it really fundamentally gave us all time and opportunity to think about what we want from work. Those of us who are able to have the opportunity to think, is my work? Is it okay that my work kind of takes over my whole life? Or do I need to have more kind of balance and time for other things that matter to me? And how does work integrate with my life in a way that helps me be a healthy person? Because I think the pandemic really made people think about all the aspects of health, like the social aspects of health, the mental health aspects, the physical health aspects of work, right? Because we were all a sudden home and having to work from home. So what I see a lot of employees now have much different expectations than they did back in say 2019 about flexible work. And that is a fascinating conversation that's still happening as employers try to figure out how they manage the practical aspects of that, how they manage all the commitments they had in terms of office spaces, and the norms of how teams used to come together and work together, and how do you form a sense of belonging if most of your employees are virtual or hybrid? And so I think what employees are really looking for is flexibility in work arrangements. And they're also looking for businesses that align to their personal values. And that's really where culture comes in because your values come through in your culture in ways you don't even realize, you know, as an outsider and as management consultants, as you get more experience, you can really, in your first interactions with the leadership of an organization and your first sort of sort of peering into an organization, you can see things in the culture that that job applicants often notice, right? And that's everything from, you know, how do the compensation systems work? What happens at the interview? How do people talk to each other at the interview? How do they talk to you? How considerate is the employer? How open is the employer to people with different points of view, people who dress differently, people who who want accommodations? And what's a social environment like? What's the expectation there? So I would say overall it's about flexibility, it's about being inclusive, being a place where people can belong, even if they're a little different, you know, and they don't, they don't have to always fit into a certain culture that they want to see a culture where they can belong. Does that make sense? It totally makes sense. And when you talked about values, what I found interesting here and I'm sure our listeners as well as well is that culture is dynamic, it's not fixed and it's flexible. And when companies talk about culture, they, you know, as you mentioned, they speak of value. So as things are changing and the world is changing as Ashka mentioned rapidly, what are some of the values to hear that companies are embracing today and what are they value? Some of the values that employees are looking for in this ultra competitive market for talent right now. Well, I think generally like the values, values are often confused with principles, right? So principles are kind of universal and changing things that things like respect, right? Or honesty, things that you can't really argue with. Obviously, you want to have those in any workplace. And where values comes in is it's more specific. It's more about how do we want to, what are the things we want to drive our decisions day to day and inform the way we relate to our customers and to each other and inform our decisions when we have to make tough decisions. Values have to be that specific. So it really just depend on the company. So when I recently worked with the Victoria Hospitals Foundation on their values and they're again very tied to strategy, right? Like when you want to be an organization that inspires people to be generous and be engaged with the needs of their community and of their hospitals, the kind of values that you want to have are things that will inspire people both within the organization and external to the organization to to be generous and to be engaged. And that can be very different from a tech company, right? Like a tech company that's a place that where you have maybe people who are really looking to grow in their careers. What matters to them is they want to be happy at work. They want to have fun. They want to feel that they've got a career path. They get to do creative work. So the values there could be just different because the strategy is different. The reason that people work there is different. Right. And how we talked earlier about the values of the customer or the patient or the client. How much does that shape the values internally for the organization or do you see it as both? There is a delicate balance or how do you see that offsetting one another or there are certain times when if the culture doesn't match who the client may be or if you're prospecting a client, there are times when the organization just may have to say this is not the right fit. You know, often it's because of how the company is evolving that they've inherited values or maybe they're part of a really big organization like the DC government. The DC Public Service has a set of values. Right. So often it's, you know, it's looking at those and thinking, how have we changed from the time that these values were articulated and how free are we to either, you know, within that large organization or as a smaller team have a discussion about what really matters to us and what are the values that are going to guide us. So sometimes it's about needing to update the values and sometimes it's about saying, we're kind of a unique group and we do a unique thing. And how do we, how do we live values that are going to both help us to do our work well and help us to attract and appeal to the partners or customers that we want to engage with? Great. Thank you. Tell us about, you've done a lot of work in the area of culture. Can you share with us a particular culture change initiative that you're either aware of or we're a part of that, that sparked some insights that you thought were particularly interesting and maybe what the top three takeaways from from an initiative like that that you can share with our listeners. Just going to take a second think about that. For example, because sometimes I have to be careful about not exposing clients like I don't want to for sure. You've even broadened it out. Just just principles that you've noticed that organizations just writ large take undertaking culture change initiatives. What you've noticed works really well. What you know the the the what the kind of domino drop for organizations that have undertaken some you know authentic work in the area of culture change. Okay. Yeah. So one I can give an example of is a company that was a tech company that was expanding. Actually it had been bought and it was joining a larger company and it really had a strong sense of identity. So people you know it was a pretty small company but people really felt strongly about being part of it and they really valued the systems they had that were about you know the rituals of belonging. What do you do when somebody knew arrives right and how do you welcome them and what do you do when somebody's leaving? How do you celebrate that? How does the group get together socially and what's normal there? And you know how do people share work? How do you share ideas? How do you innovate? How do you get things done in a certain tone? You know a certain way they didn't want to lose that even as they joined a larger company and they were going to be working very closely with a company who was that was actually from a different country. And so you know they they wanted some support to be able to go into this kind of merger or this this experience of joining a larger company and talk explicitly about how do we stay who we are and yet become part of this larger company? How do we help them understand who we are maybe even bring some of what we are to this company and you know keep our integrity while also learning and being able to function well within the other company. So we really broke things down in terms of this company. How does it understand itself and the different components of of a culture? So so to get that clear current state. So we looked at everything from how do people communicate in this company? What's the norm for communication? Everything from you know communications across you know day-to-day between employees, communications with a CEO, the kind of information flow that happens with different different working groups within the organization. And then what are the recognition and reward systems and how how are they now? How did they work? What kind of values did they actually promote? Because you know our reward systems are always reinforcing behaviors whether we are aware of it or not and our recognition systems are always kind of calling out the things we like or that the CEO or the leadership like. And that's tends to tell people how to behave suddenly. And the social environment. So how do we relate socially, both virtually and in person? What are the structures and policies that make up the norms of how people treat each other? And other things about language. How do we talk about ourselves? How do we define who we are and our values? So with that kind of baseline, we then looked at the larger company. We actually facilitated some really good conversations with the larger company to say, in this change initiative, who are you? And how can you join with this smaller company and value its uniqueness? Because clearly you do value it. That's why you wanted to buy it. How do you want to keep it special in its own way? And how does it need to evolve? And then how can it influence the larger company? So we did a similar kind of assessment of the larger company. What are all those communications and reward systems and social environments and structures and policies and rituals and symbols that in the language? And then we looked at how are they like and how are they different? And even just doing that helped both the leaders and the directors and the executives just become conscious of what's normal and where they are and be open to learning more about how to relate effectively to each other. And some of it was just straight up, geographic culture about how people tend to behave or what's normal what they like. And just understanding the other, help them to move from us and them to a we, to a sense of what are we going to be together? And it led to some tweaky because when you joined a large company to a smaller structures and policies that get changed, right? They get tweaked. But they were able to do it with an awareness and a consciousness and a thoughtfulness that would meet it much smoother and made it less of a shock in a way. It wasn't the way that changes were communicated, took into account how communication normally happened with the smaller company. And it just made it that much more effective. And we're going to check in in a couple of years to see how that is going and see if there's further changes and discussions that need to happen. But in my experience, what comes out of that is really good discussions that turn into relationships. And that is really what you want. Like you want to the work that we do is consultants to have a ripple effect that can be carried on by people in the organization because you've helped them form deeper, more thoughtful relationships, which I find super rewarding. I really love that part of the work. Yeah, that's a really great example. Just two different organizations coming together and addressing the cultural shifts that could take place. And you could see how in a situation like that, if it didn't have the leadership of the helm to undertake an initiative like that, it would again be somewhere where things would happen to them instead of them coming into that change and really kind of getting ahead of some of the rubs that could potentially take place. Another, what comes to mind for me in terms of real, I guess, points in the life cycle of an organization where culture comes to mind is when there's a leadership change, both from a leader coming into a new organization and then an organization taking in, taking in a new leader. Have you worked in that space? And if so, what have you noticed as, again, good things that people have done or organizations have done during that really important change point in the life cycle of an organization? Mm-hmm. Yeah, and that's another thing where it's interesting as consultants how we end up working with the right people because the people who know they need us will reach out, right? So the people I've worked with mostly, the pretty mature executives, or just mature people who have a sense that when they move into a new executive role, the big changes that they need to make and that sometimes the companies need to make are gonna be best supported with a really thoughtful kind of change management approach. And so part of how we can support that is by, you know, having a plan for the first say, six weeks at an executive is a very role where a part of their goals is to understand the culture, right? So even as they're trying to understand the strategy and the people and the structures, what are they learning about the culture? And so I'm sure you do this too at Ashka and Coaching is a lot of what you're helping people with in their first days and their job is understanding, understanding culture, understanding how people communicate what's normal, helping people adjust their style of communication so that they can really be heard and they can really listen. Do you find that too in your work? - Yeah, absolutely. And I think what people on both sides is a new leader coming into an organization and those, you know, those who they'll be working with, like the first question that comes into everyone's mind is it's right down to the individual level, right? Is how is this change or this new leader going to impact me and the work that I do and the way things, as you said, that the way things are done around here. So just being really mindful that that's just what's going on on both sides of that transition. And what you said earlier around, it's about taking the time and individual relationships and the impact that that has can't be underestimated. Like things can happen organizational wide, but really it's all about each of us have such an impact, individually on the culture of our organizations. And that's, yeah, that's another interesting thing that I've noticed that, you know, it's not something that's just floating out there. It's actually, like it's common, it's living because the people are living that culture and contributing to what it is. - Totally. And the CEOs and executives, they really powerfully impact that because people are watching them, right? Especially in more traditional hierarchical organizations. Everybody is just fixed to understand, you know, what are they doing? How are they doing it? And what does that tell me about how I need to be successful here? And what's equally true is that everybody in an organization is constantly building the culture. So even if you have a leader who's maybe has a top down approach, and you can still choose to relate to others in your organization with collegiality and collaboration and, you know, keep that going. And you'll, you will be influencing what's normal in the organization. - Mm-hmm, yeah, that's so empowering for sure. - Hey, you really elevated my knowledge of organizational culture here and the importance of having culture, consultant, a coach, so both, you know, the work that you do and what Ashka does as well. To bring this in, 'cause it's so important. Are there some steps that you would recommend, like practical steps that an executive can take to build a culture that then they can perhaps work with a coach and consultant on this or perhaps your methodology that you use to work with them that are very practical and that they can apply as they're coming into an organization, or maybe when they're going through a shift in their strategy. Is there anything that you recommend that just a few steps they can take that you've seen that have worked in the past? - Yeah, absolutely. And I try to keep this pretty high level for them at first because a lot of the whole topic of culture can seem a little overwhelming, right? Like it can seem too complex or too messy. For executives, when they're coming in and they need to focus on the big picture things. So really what I invite them to think about is, it's a mindset thing, right? Are they thinking about the fact that they as executives, one of their main responsibilities is to create the social conditions that will make it possible for their employees to work at their highest potential. When you say that to them, they all get it. They're like, yes, absolutely. I know that I need to do that, but they may have never thought of it that way. That it's not just about having, having HR take care of that. It's something that leaders have to be really involved with. And so the big shift that I find many of them are really happy to make is to be thinking of themselves as conscious architects of culture, that being an executive or being leader, you are an architect of culture and you're building it every day by every introduction you have, whether you know it or not. And leading by example is so important. Both because you want to show people how you expect others to treat you and to treat everybody else, but also it's inspiring, right? As a leader, you have the opportunity to inspire people. And that can include looking at in the company, asking questions for people to say, how would you describe our culture? How do people tend to relate to each other here? What do you think are our strengths? And what do you think of the things we do really well that makes us feel? special to work at. One of the things you think makes it tough to work here. So that's a really big piece is to realize if you want to be a culture architect, you're not going to see everything you need to see from where you sit. You've got to get out there and listen to what other people are seeing, particularly people at different levels of the organization or different locations of the organization, and that that is gold as an executive to hear what people really think. Even if you might not totally think they've got the full picture, they've got a part of the picture that is absolutely valuable to you as an executive to understand because you can't architect a culture. You don't understand what's there now. You'd be like trying to build, you know, build a new house on ground that you that you haven't really understood. You know, what's the geography of the land? What's built there now that you want to add on to or change or renovate? So I find a lot of executives find that empowering and it gives purpose to them in going out and having those discussions with people because you can't really identify how you want a culture to change until you understand what it is now. What where where its strengths are that you can build on, where the gaps that you really want to address. And then another thing that executives are used to the idea that what gets measured gets done, right? So if you're an executive and you own this role as a culture architect, you want to be able to say, all right, here's where we are now. Here's the future vision for us both strategically and culturally and socially. And what does progress look like? How do we measure that progress? And what's our commitment to do that and to have regular discussions? Because ultimately, if you want to change culture, you've got to engage people right across the organization to do it. So if you can involve people informing those those culture milestones or goals and both in measuring them but also taking actions to achieve them, that can be super empowering for people and it really helps them to feel they too. They may not be the master architect building it, but they are they are the builders of the culture. They live in this house, right? So they're the people that will have really valuable insights into how to make it a great place to work. Excellent. Thank you. Hey, you started this conversation with us by giving us a little bit of an overview about your background and you described it as a circuitous route. I know that you've done a TED Talk recently. I think based on your journey, tell us a little bit about that. Thanks. Yeah. The TED Talk was telling a bit of a story about my own journey from the first phase of my graduate studies and my career and how I managed the transition when I began to realize that however committed I was to that work and however much I did enjoy it, there were things about it that just weren't healthy for me that I just didn't want to continue doing. So the TED Talk kind of goes through how that experience led me to take a 40 day silent retreat just to get away from the norm and get away from, in a sense, the culture of where I was and get really attached with myself and what I truly wanted deep down and to own that and realize that that was, I need to follow my heart and I need to follow what was going to be healthy for me. And in that process, the way I framed it is I really came to realize there's a lot of ways I was thinking about time that was keeping me suck. So the way I talked about time, the way I thought about time and whether this was the right time for me to make this change and it gave me some really helpful insights that I've continued to use through my life that helps me make decisions with greater freedom. And so I just shared the story and I shared free specific insights about that and that talk will be up in a few weeks and happy to happy to share that with you. But that again too, that was an experience as a consultant. Always have to be challenging ourselves, right? And for me, I like to sit down at the start of every year with a friend who also runs her own business. And we set audacious goals for ourselves, right? Like in our respective companies and doing a TED Talk with something I just decided a year ago, I'd like to do that. And my friend said, well, you're crazy, but go ahead. I think you should go for it. And so like sometimes it helps to set aspirational goals for ourselves as consultants and pursue them, especially for the things that maybe you're a little bit scary or you know, they're definitely stretch goals for us. And this was definitely like I had done public speaking in the past, but this was a level of, you know, took a level of work and practice and memorization, which was my kind of thing I was most worried about being able to do. But the sense of achievement I got from it and the way it helped me connect with people right across the community here in Victoria, it was so rewarding. It was really fun. So this thing, it wanted to turn that into an encouragement to others to say, set goals for yourself that maybe feel a little intimidating because they might just be the ones that are going to be most interesting and rewarding for you. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. And on that note, we really appreciate you being on this podcast and sharing your experience and expertise in the area of workplace culture. If people want to reach out to you or ask you questions, how can they reach you Kate? My website is growth.ca. And I'm also on LinkedIn if anybody wants to reach out there. And yeah, I'm looking at Victoria, but these days, you know, the way we all work, there's so much virtual connection. I'd love to keep connecting with other certified management consultants and then anybody who'd be interested in chatting about working together. Thank you for listening to our podcast, brought to you by CMC Canada. CMC Canada administers and its provincial institutes confer the certified management consultant, CMC designation in Canada. And the CMC designation is the profession's only international certification recognized in over 40 countries. You can learn more about what it takes to earn your CMC and all the great benefits of becoming a member that come along with joining CMC Canada on our website, CMC-Canada.ca. If you like the show, tell some about us or leave us a rating in the Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. If you are a management consultant, a member of the business community and have a great story to share and would like to be a guest on the podcast, please reach out. You can contact us at CMC-Canada.ca. Thank you all for listening. And if you like this podcast, you can access all the complete library of your expert-advanced podcast by googling your expert-advanced podcast or searching your favorite podcast provider, apps and websites.