The Edge of Work
The Edge of Work provides new insights and ideas to help leaders navigate the changing world of work. In each episode, we’ll talk to leaders, practitioners, and innovators to explore new ideas for attracting and developing talent, leadership, and workplace culture, all to help you lead and succeed in a changing world of work.
The Edge of Work
Best Hits: Designing Your Company Culture For a Changing World of Work
Note: This is a replay of a popular episode of Season 2 From The Edge of Work with Melissa Daimler, Chief Learning Officer at Udemy, and Author of Reculturing: Design Your Company Culture to Connect with Strategy and Purpose for Lasting Success.
An experienced executive in learning and people, Melissa has been a student and practitioner of culture and has seen and led cultural transformations at leading companies including Adobe and Twitter. But while designing a great culture is a good start, in a complex and ever-changing world, setting a static culture is no longer enough, in fact, companies can and should re-culture their organizations, as their people, customers, and business evolves.
During this LinkedIn live, we spoke about the importance of company culture in today’s changing world of work, lessons from Melissa’s experiences at leading companies like Adobe and Twitter, and key aspects of both designing and re-designing company culture.
Links:
- Melissa’s Book: https://www.melissadaimler.com/reculturing/
Welcome to the Edge of Work podcast. I'm your host, al D. This is a podcast for leaders who want to make sense of workplace trends and are looking for new ideas about how to lead people and grow their business in a changing world of work. During each episode, I'll bring you the latest experts, researchers, founders and leaders to share new and unique ideas, as well as actionable advice around attracting and retaining talent, developing people and building healthy and sustainable organizations. Hi everyone, welcome to the Edge of Work podcast. My name is Al D.
Speaker 1:Today I have a special episode for you. This is actually a recording from a LinkedIn live that we did earlier this week, and my guest is Melissa Daimler. For those of you who do not know Melissa. Melissa is the author of the book Reculturing Design your Company Culture to Connect with Strategy and Purpose for Lasting Success. She's also the chief learning officer at Udemy. During our conversation, we spent a lot of time talking about this concept of reculturing and the importance of it or companies as markets and industries and business involves and, as companies change, the importance of really both defining and redefining what your company culture is, as well as the behaviors that are aligned to what their company culture is. This was a great conversation, particularly for anyone who's interested in the topic of culture, so make sure you listen in and let us know what you think. All right, welcome, hello everyone. Good afternoon, good evening, good morning, maybe wherever you are.
Speaker 1:My name is Al D, I'm the host of the Edgework podcast and we are on LinkedIn Live, where this is the first LinkedIn Live with the Edgework podcast. We're so grateful to have this opportunity, and today I am privileged to be joined by Melissa Daimler, who is the chief learning officer at Udemy, but in addition to that, she is the author of Reculturing Design your Company Culture to Connect with Strategy and Purpose for Lasting Success. For those of you following along online, you can see the book is right over my shoulder, right there. I was trying to do that the right way, but one of the big themes of the Edgework podcast is this idea about how do we think about work in a different way and how do we lead in a different way, and we can't talk about that without talking about culture. And I think you're going to really enjoy this, because we're going to talk a little bit about this idea of reculturing, which I'm going to turn it over to Melissa to talk about in a minute.
Speaker 1:But before we get started, thank you so much everyone for joining. If you're live with us, feel free to say hello in the chat, tell us where you're from. If you're listening to this later on, don't worry about that, you'll just be along for the ride. But I guess, just to start, melissa, I always love starting with a warm-up question, and so my warm-up question for you, melissa, was think back. What was your first job and what did you learn from that experience?
Speaker 2:OK, well, first of all, great to be here. I'm excited. This is the first LinkedIn Live, so that's really great. I think way back when I was a babysitter I think that was my official first job and I think I learned how to be flexible in leading those two kids. But they each had a very different idea of what they wanted to do and what fun looked like, so I had to adjust how I was taking care of each of them. I think one was in and the other one was for at the time, so yeah, it was a good experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I was a pretty good babysitter.
Speaker 1:OK, I think that I was. You've certainly come a long way since those days in babysitting and you certainly had a number of different jobs. But I guess, just to start for those of the folks out there who may not know you, could you share a little bit about what is your role right now and what inspires you to do the work that you do each and every day?
Speaker 2:Sure, I am the chief learning officer at Udemy. I've been there for about a year and a half. I feel like I have such a great job because I not only get to do and lead internal development and learning, organizational development, but I also get to have my hand in our product and solutions for customers and I get to work directly with customers. So we are essentially working with people like myself and I get a lot of say in what will work best for our company. In working with customers like myself and CTO, I get to do a lot of different things in that company and I also get to be part of our own reculturing process. So we are as I talk about in the book and we'll get into. It is an ongoing process. It is not a one-off change initiative. So we're continuing to figure out how to integrate our value-based behaviors into everything we're doing.
Speaker 2:Prior to that, just quickly, my work history and kind of a one-minute snapshot is I was fortunate enough to be at Adobe in the years that had very fast growth. I did a lot of different roles there in HR and OD and learning. I was at Twitter for about four years heading up learning and OD, and then I was at WeWork, which was actually a huge impetus for me to write this book, because, after having a year-long stint there, I realized that not every company has a great culture and, in fact, culture is something that you need to intentionally design and create from the top down and bottom up.
Speaker 1:I've worked in tech for most of my career and one of the things that I've known is just from when you were at Adobe and also when you were at Twitter. First off, adobe has just always, in my opinion, always had a very strong reputation for having a great culture, and for the time period that you were at Twitter, I have talked to and spoken with many employees there who just raved about the opportunities that they had there and just a lot of that. Ultimately, back to the culture, and now you're obviously at Udemy, and so maybe just to set the stage here, why is reculturing and this idea of reculturing so important? On one hand, I could easily say a lot of people saying that these are all great companies. They've done well for so long. Clearly there's something in their DNA that enables them to be successful. But could you talk to and tease out a little bit about it? What is reculturing and maybe, perhaps why is it so important, just given where we are in the world of work right now?
Speaker 2:Sure, I think one of the reasons I wanted to write the book is because, again, having had the stint at WeWork, I realized that I was lucky to be part of such great cultures and was supported and had the opportunity to lead with values, but that also those cultures weren't wasn't like we had a great culture and we were set in our ways. I learned very quickly early on at Adobe that we didn't call it that at the time, but we recultured three or four different times while I was there because we had some major changes in our business model. We had a change in a CEO, we had many other leadership changes, and those are all great inflection points where I think it's an opportunity, really a necessity, for an organization to look at not just how their strategy is shifting but also how we're working needs to shift. And so, as I was reflecting on my experience at WeWork, where you didn't necessarily have a model culture, you had a company that was kind of confused with what it even was strategically and you had values on a wall, but you didn't really experience what those were day to day or have those incorporated into any of the people processes I just felt like it was time to update this idea of what culture was. It wasn't until I started doing some research that, when I wrote the article for HBR in 2018, after rework, I realized that culture itself had been studied for about 70 years and we still had this really antiquated definition of what it is, which, to me, was a lot about what is actually in an office so the happy hours, the games, you know all of the kind of fun stuff and I just thought it we were doing ourselves a disservice as leaders not just as people, leaders, but as leaders to think about culture as just the fun stuff. And in fact, I think it is something that is an ongoing. It's an active set of practices that you have to continue to design intentionally, and often people ask me is it really that important? Do we need to focus on this, especially for a younger company? And my response to that is always culture is happening, whether by design or default, so you might as well be designing it intentionally.
Speaker 2:But ultimately, if I think about and describe re-culturing, it's three things. It's values based behaviors, so really going beyond just defining your values and identifying what those behaviors look like in your organization, if you were to exemplify those values. And then the second piece is embedding those behaviors into your processes. So everything from how you hire your interview questions to how you onboard, to how you develop, to how you reward and performance manage. And then the other piece I talk a lot about is just practices. These are our daily rituals or daily habits. So are we reinforcing or taking opportunities on a daily basis in our meetings and how we communicate in our one-on-ones and how we're spending our time together? Are we reinforcing those behaviors that we said are important and really exemplify our culture? So it's behaviors, processes and practices that I believe make up a healthy culture.
Speaker 1:So, before I jump into another question again, we're live with the Edgeworth podcast with Melissa Daimler. We're talking about our book, re-culturing, and just want to give a quick shout out, first and foremost to Larry McAllister, who's here from Silicon Valley. If you don't know Larry, please follow Larry. He's an incredible talent leader. And Phillip is also here. Thank you so much, phillip. You're so kind. Rachel, thank you so much, it's great to see you, rach.
Speaker 1:So something you said there I want to glom onto a little bit longer, and it was this idea of being able to revisit culture as things change, and something that kind of comes up for me when you talk about this is just this idea of ways of working. Right, and you mentioned that culture really is in alignment with this idea of around ways of working. And when I think about ways of working, so much of many of our ways of working have changed To the example that you gave. Not all of our ways of working anymore require us to be in a physical office. They don't require us to be in different places. Could you share maybe just your own thoughts and perspective, just given how much our ways of working have changed for some of us over the past couple years how being able to re-culture can really facilitate new and improved ways of working, or better alignment with ways of working that are fit for the world of work. We're now many of us are now in.
Speaker 2:I think the timing of this book I'm grateful for, because I think the silver lining to the pandemic was that we realized that culture isn't something that is just in the office, because we weren't in the office for a couple of years and culture was still happening, and so I think culture is more of how we work with each other, and I think that everything that we have, that I've talked about my entire career, just got amplified during the pandemic. So it's not like all of a sudden. We thought that you need to have empathy when you interact with your employees. We've said that for a long time, but we realized that, especially in times of crisis, when we're not necessarily in the same room together, that's even more important. So I feel like, again, the silver lining from the pandemic was that all the things that we knew know are so important to a workplace just got amplified further. I think that one of the other things I talk about a lot in the book is this idea of systems thinking and that a lot of us in this field really I think every good leader is a system think, systems thinkers. You're always looking at, kind of, how our pieces connected. How is the purpose that or the vision that we're driving as a company. How is that connected to the strategy, and how is the strategy then connected to the culture? And then how can they leverage each other more? So, to answer your question, I think you know how we're working at some level hasn't really changed.
Speaker 2:I think we're doubling down, though, in two areas. One, from a strategic standpoint. The clarity that employees need now is a lot more, so we can't rely on you know. Hey, al, I forgot to talk to you about something. Can I just catch up with you in the hallway? We have to be much more intentional about what it is we're expecting from our employees. So we have to have much more clarity on what our strategy is and then what our objectives, or whatever metrics you use KPIs, okrs, like what are those for the team, what are those for every individual, and then how do those connect up to the overall strategy of the organization? So that's one piece. And then the how of work has to also be much more intentional.
Speaker 2:So this is where the values and behaviors come in. If we expect employees to be. One of the values that we have at Udemy is always learning. Of course, we're a learning company, but the expectation is that we're really clear about what that really means. So one of the behaviors of always learning is we expect constructive debate with each other, and so we're. I'm constantly looking at as a leader in my team meetings and being conscious of how I'm also debating other team meetings and making sure that I'm getting different perspectives and that we are continuing to have constructive debate in our interactions. I would just say that we are needing to be much more intentional as leaders and employees in today's hybrid world than we were before. So the things that were implicit, if you will, are now needing to be much more explicit. Sure.
Speaker 1:Again, we're live with the Edgework podcast with Melissa Daimler, the author of Reculturing she's also the chief learning officer at Udemy and folks who are joining us on LinkedIn Live. It's so great to have you all here, lorraine, thank you for joining. If any folks have any questions they want to lob her away or that you want to lob to Melissa, please feel free to put them in. We're happy to take them and if not, we're going to keep rolling along. So one of my, I think, favorite quotes from the book is this idea that culture is, is a noun, or is a, is a, is a verb, not a noun. So I thought really encapsulated a lot of the ways of moving past this idea of culture as a thing to more of an action and a practice action. Could you talk a little bit more about just the importance of that quote and how do you see companies trying to actually actualize on that and make the shift from just treating it as a noun to actually making it a verb?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's interesting because, again in my research, the culture that word actually came from the Latin word coler, which means growth, ongoing growth, which I found really interesting and in a way, it always has been a verb. I think that the days of kind of change management and change initiatives that took six months to a year and you know to sponsor and you have a change team and all of this in place are gone, because things are moving way too fast now. So we need to be much more agile and adaptable as we're trying to take in new information, we're trying to now understand AI and chat, gbt and the digitization of so many things that we're working with now. I think, looking at culture in a similar way, frankly, that we've now had to shift even thinking about strategy is really necessary. Again, I think that I still remember when I think I made a mistake as a leader if we had to review strategy after kind of launched it in the new year. And now, if my team isn't looking at our strategy every couple of weeks and reprioritizing and trying to figure out when new things come in, where that gets reprioritized, then we're not doing our jobs effectively. Culture doesn't need to change quite as much as strategy, but it's still something that we should be looking at on a consistent basis Again, not necessarily to change, but to make sure that we're actively exemplifying it, and I'll give you a quick recent example that just happened yesterday.
Speaker 2:One of our behaviors is around making time and space for reflection and thinking, and we have practice throughout the organization every Wednesday afternoon.
Speaker 2:Whatever your time zone is, there's four hours of focused time. So no meetings, no slacks they're supposed to happen no text and I, inadvertently, I've been out and scheduled a couple of meetings during this focused time and one of our employees gave a nudge yesterday to say, hey, one of our behaviors is to make sure we have space, and this is my one time in the week where I can actually have some thinking time, and it was such a great reminder and the fact that he felt safe enough to be able to share that and push back on these couple of meetings was seemingly small, but to me it was a big deal because, one, again, he felt safe in pushing back and two, that is what we said we wanted as part of our culture. We know that in order to be a learning organization, that we want to be, in order to learn. Part of learning is about reflection and having that space and that time. So it's important to keep that practice and that ritual in place and to call each other on it when we don't.
Speaker 1:What I also appreciate about that example is that I was going to ask you later, and I still may, but in that specific moment what happened was someone who I presume, just given the nature of your title, who probably was a little bit lower in the organization chart than you, and because of the culture that you created and because this was a value, it gave them the permission to speak up.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I certainly think that some of that probably is due to the psychological safety that they felt present, but another element of it is something I think that is also really important and critical in that while if you're a founder in a garage, you might be in charge of building that culture. There is an opportunity for anyone in the organization to participate in making that culture more than a noun and into a verb.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, yeah, yeah, I. That is a core principle that I talked about in the book that I also get that question a lot like. Shouldn't it be top down? Absolutely. The leaders need to model the behaviors and it's a co created process. I expect employees to do exactly what that employee did to hold me accountable, to hold each other accountable.
Speaker 2:In what we said defined a good culture, and that, to me, is an active culture we're always practicing and learning and calling each other out on what it is we said we expected of each other. I'll give you another example. We're continuing to embed our behaviors in our company and we've just gotten done with kind of looking at our growth framework. We call it leveling framework, most companies call it, but you know what? What does it look like when we're defining kind of an IC three or kind of an individual contributor level all the way up to a VP? What is their decision making role, what is their scope, the basic components that a lot of companies look at.
Speaker 2:But in addition to that, we mapped what are kind of the brightest behaviors that we expect at each level, and so I'm I'm a VP and I'm exemplifying, always learning what does that look like versus an IC three, and so when we're looking at internal mobility or looking at promotion or looking at performance management, we now have a blueprint of what it looks like to both be it be a an employee that is performing effectively in those basic components of decision making and scope and responsibilities, as well as how they're working. So so our values based behaviors show up there. I've been in companies where, even at Adobe at one time, we definitely were challenged earlier on with employees who had really good results but weren't necessarily showing up in the way that we expected.
Speaker 2:But, we hadn't really defined it in a way that people could comment on and kind of level set with. So that was something that it's just a tool that I think is really important for companies to build if they want those behaviors to be exemplified.
Speaker 1:One other thing I think theme in the book or part of the book that really stuck out to me was this idea into concept of polarities. Could you talk just about what polarities mean and the implications of that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think Peter Senge is such a great model, I think, of a good. He wrote the fifth discipline. He was one of the first to call out what a what a good learning organization is. He talked about systems thinking. He also talked about this idea, this concept of both, and and you know what I call polarity thinking, and I do think that in order to be a good, effective systems thinker, regardless of your level in an organization, and especially now in this agile world, it is important that we kind of we hold these polarities, that we don't think in a bifurcated way.
Speaker 2:I gave some examples of kind of scrappy and strategic. You have to be able to kind of dive deep but also come back out and be really strategic in your work. You have to think both in a responsive short term way, but also in a in a way that provides long term thinking. So I share that just as a concept around thinking about again what a systems thinker is and how we need to be thinking differently in our workplaces today and how do we both be strategic and focus on what it is we're doing and also make sure that we're focused on our culture and how we're doing it. And so it's not. It's not one or the other. I think all of us need to be continuing to think about that. Both and concept.
Speaker 1:So part of why this is timely for me is, on season one of the Edge of Work, we had Noah Rabinowitz on the podcast, who is the VP of learning at Moderna, and, ironically enough, this should not come as a surprise.
Speaker 1:Noah was, I believe, heavily influenced by both Edgar Shine as well as Peter Sengay, and so he talked a lot about this concept of polarities when he came on the show, and one of the kind of themes or, I guess, phrases that they use as part of their culture is this concept of dynamic range, and it speaks to what you're saying in terms of really being able to have the ability to be good at some things that seem like polar opposites, like aim strategic and being scrappy.
Speaker 1:But what was interesting when he talked about it and I think you can appreciate this is he said we're explicitly asking a lot and we say, yeah, that's the point, and like we're very clear about the fact that we are asking a lot of our people, but we're reinforcing it along the way and we're supporting people along the way as we try to enable them and empower them to do this, and so I think what stuck out to me about that was it was by design, to your language. They were intentionally saying yes, we are expecting a lot of you, and that is the point. And it's not by accident. It's not without acknowledgement that it is a very difficult thing, but it was a stated choice of how they believe they wanted to run that organization and the behaviors that they were looking.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. That's great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think where I started thinking more about this is earlier in my career when I one of the leaders that I worked with said we can't, we can't work on strategy and culture at the same time.
Speaker 2:It just let us get done with the strategy first and then we'll figure out our values, and it just like it just would not make sense to me at all. And again, I just don't think as leaders in an organization we leverage those two enough, as well as the purpose. In fact, I made fun of the quote from Peter Drucker where he said culture, each strategy for breakfast and I said I think they need to eat breakfast together because I think you can't have you can't have really one without the other and have a healthy organization. I'm very clear that even if you have a good culture, obviously if your strategy isn't doing well, nobody's going to want to work there. But if you only focus on your results and your strategy, nobody's going to want to work there either, and we have to figure out how to leverage these two in a way that works for us as leaders as well as an organization.
Speaker 1:So it's funny. You said that because I was literally going to ask you that question and, a fun fact for those people out there, peter Drucker actually did not in fact say that it is a misattributed quote. I will. If anyone wants the quote, they can ping me offline. I don't have it with me off the top of my head, but he legitimately never said culture, each strategy.
Speaker 2:Who said it then?
Speaker 1:It was an inference off of it, I think. What I think the story goes is that he was quoted by someone else who said that he said that who was a famous CEO, but the I think the general sentiment of his statement was just this idea that you can build a great strategy, but you still need a culture that enables it. But he never actually explicitly said the words culture, each strategy.
Speaker 2:I think I saw that after the book came out.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, but I think it's a really important and critical point because, while it sounds really great and it's an awesome platitude to say culture, each strategy and believe me, like I do think it's like really important Like the reality of it is that, whatever your strategy is, it needs to be in a like it should be coming out of your culture, right, right, right, like they need each other. They need each other and yes to the.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, great, we're live here at the Edward podcast with Melissa. I do have another question for you. I would love for you to perhaps talk a little bit about what you might see as the role of a we'll call it a first line manager, but perhaps not necessarily like a leader in organization. And what specifically do you see as the role of that first line manager in terms of being being involved in the culture or facilitating the culture or reculturing for that?
Speaker 2:matter.
Speaker 2:A couple of things. I mean. I think it's really important that managers are clear on what a person's role is. It sounds really funny to say that, but so often, especially first time, managers assume that employees know what their role is and assume that they're clear on what they're being measured on. And it's not only important that they share that, but that there's an again, an ongoing conversation of what are my goals, what are my expectations? How have those changed week to week If new priorities come in? The manager needs to help that person, identify that employee, identify what gets moved to the bottom of the stack, and so I think clarity on their role and what it is they're supposed to be producing at the end of every quarter, at the end of every year, is really important and how that ties to the overall strategy of the organization.
Speaker 2:I think one of the other things that came out of the pandemic again I think this was always there, but it got amplified is this focus on meaning and purpose and making sure that I am not just in a job and it's not as much about moving up anymore, it's that I have an at making an impact.
Speaker 2:So it's really important that the manager gets that right and continues to make sure that they're aligned.
Speaker 2:And then secondly, I think, making sure and providing ongoing feedback on how that person is doing, how their whatever skills they're trying to develop. I think it's the manager's role to provide opportunities, provide experiences, provide projects, give feedback on how it is they're improving those skills and you know how they can continue to practice those skills. I think those are two pretty critical. They seem small, but I managers still to this day to don't get it. And then just making sure that the delegation is always such a hard thing, especially for new managers, I think, being clear about you know what it is they're delegating and you know what the specific expectation is, what's the deadline, all of those little details that, again, we just assume we communicated where they get it, and a lot of times employees who are disengaged or who want to move on to another company are not clear, aren't getting the growth opportunities that they're wanting and they don't feel like they're getting enough responsibilities being delegated to them. So those are the things that I would say are our managers role.
Speaker 1:So the two other ones I would add to that so that, if we're looking at, for those who are familiar with Gallup's engagement survey, one of the questions they always ask about because it is a predictor of engagement is to the degree you believe the statement, I know what is expected of me at work.
Speaker 1:So again to your point, clarity. It doesn't seem like anything that is super complex or anything, but it just again underscoring the importance of sometimes just simple clarity is one of those things that is simple but not easy in terms of it sounds really simple but isn't always easy to do, but it really goes a long way. And then the other one I just came up with and thought about a lot is this idea of of feedback and, in particular, public feedback. And the reason why I say public feedback is that one of the benefits of a manager is they do have the ability to scale and so to degree, in particular, that someone is doing or acting in a way that is in alignment with the culture. Being able to use that feedback and acknowledge that publicly also can help other people understand and realize oh, this is a behavior that I should also be practicing to that aligns with the culture.
Speaker 1:And that is something that is rewarded here, or something that our company would like us to see here, because it is an alignment with those practices or behaviors that we have. So that would the other, the other one that I would add to that.
Speaker 2:I love that. I think that's great. I mean, one of the things we do as a team is we share with each other what we're wanting to develop.
Speaker 2:And one of our behaviors is around being clear about when we're especially cross functional collaboration, being clear about what each of our roles is across that team. I'm still not, as I move fast and sometimes I'm not always clear about who's the driver, who's the game, and so, again, the team can call me on that, especially since I've explicitly stated that this is something I'm working on. It just gives them more of an opportunity to share when there's a game there.
Speaker 1:Okay, a couple of comments coming in. So one is from Megan Kraus-Lingon. Hey, megan. Megan says I agree culture and strategy need to be together. Melissa, I just noticed you are an MSOD alumna, not surprised. A lot of the concepts from your book resonate, so that's wonderful.
Speaker 2:Hey, thank you.
Speaker 1:And then Phillip has a question for Melissa. What are the challenges, if any? Are you finding at Udemy teaching managers how to have those development conversations with their employees?
Speaker 2:Yes, there are challenges. I think one is just time when do I do it? Is there a special time to do it? And then, just how do I do it? What is, what is that development conversation look like? Should I be focused on skills that they want to learn versus what we want them to learn as an organization? Those are some of the questions I get.
Speaker 2:I think common theme here right Ongoing development is ongoing. I think gone are the days where once a year you evaluate performance and once a year you have a development conversation. I think that needs to be looked at at least monthly, having to check in on. Hey, we said you were going to focus on these particular skills and you're you want to develop in this area. How is that going? Or here's some of the things that I saw. Or you were just in a meeting last week and you presented, and here's what I think worked, here's what I thought didn't work. So I think that it needs to be ongoing. And then I do think and here's another theme with the and the combination, to have a development conversation.
Speaker 2:That is both a push and a pull. I think is really important. So we have three priority capabilities at Udemy right now tying back to our behaviors. One is on collaboration, another one is on courageously experimental and one is on constructive debate, and so we're building out learning experiences, leveraging our own platform and building out cohorts that will build these skillsets. So these are skills that we say it is culturally important for us and, given what's on our plate this year, we think these are the most important skills for every employee to have.
Speaker 2:That's a push. Then we also want to know what it is you individually want to learn, and sometimes that's individual, sometimes it's a team my team right now we are all studying AI and chat GPT and we have a whole curriculum. We're having discussions at every team meeting. We each have a challenge this week that for a whole day we have to use chat GPT for everything we're doing. So there's different ways that you can develop employees individually, by team, or pushing from the organizational level. But I think it's important to look at development and at all of those levels.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I think we got time for one more question for wrap up, and this one comes from Christine Murphy Christine, great to see you. And she says do you measure any of the everyday learning or developmental coaching conversations? Do you have a guess that maybe the proxy question is how do you know if it's happening or not?
Speaker 2:A million dollar question that we're going to end with. Yes, measurement has been the question of my career. We were just having this conversation today too, I think with our specific skills that we're looking at this year we leverage our engagement survey. We had a particular question there around. There was around constructed debate, one around collaboration, so that's a good way to measure. I also think that there's different kind of team experiences that we're looking at right now with regard to collaboration, rolling out different tools.
Speaker 2:So we're thinking about metrics in terms of giving feedback to leaders. We work a lot with our people, partners who are in meetings with leaders who are trying to encourage more constructive debate and collaboration. So we're still mapping out what that looks like. But we're trying to create real time learning opportunities in the flow of work where we can give feedback in the moment, in addition to leveraging some of our content and some more of the formal training. So we look at did everybody go through this learning path around collaborate as a baseline metric. So it's a mix of kind of formal learning metrics as well as using the everyday meetings communications to measure. We're also looking at we want at least four stories a quarter that kind of exemplify constructive debate that we will highlight in our all hands meetings so people really get a feel of what it is to constructively debate each other. So those are some ways that we're looking at metrics. Metrics is hard, as we know, but we're continuing to try.
Speaker 1:Thank you for answering that and great question, Christine. Okay, I think we'll start to wrap up here, Melissa. It's been so great to talk to you on the Edge of Work Live podcast and thank you all for your one questions for joining us. Maybe just to wrap my last question here, Melissa, what advice might you have, or maybe what's one thing that perhaps just an everyday employee so someone who maybe isn't in a formal leadership role or isn't an executive can do to perhaps make a dent on the culture in their organization in a positive way?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think if you have values, I would ask a question around what are the behaviors that would be expected around that value? So if you have a value of innovation as an example, what would we be doing in this company to exemplify that value of innovation? So I think, just asking the questions in an open and curious way of what it would look like to exemplify our values, or if you don't have values, what start with a basic question of what does a good culture look like here? Maybe your leaders haven't thought about it. I think if you ask it in again a curious and open way, I think it could create and be the start of a really constructive dialogue.
Speaker 1:Well, melissa Daimler, the Chief Learning Officer, you to me, as well as the author of Reculturing, thank you so much for joining us on the Live Edge of Work podcast and thank you everyone for listening in and for joining us. Please make sure to pick up Melissa's book. Reculturing designed your company to connect with strategy and purpose for elastic success. You can get it wherever. I believe you get your books. But, melissa, anything else of where people can go or where people can find more information about you, or Reculturing, or anything else that you're working on at the moment, Sure, you can get the book on Amazon or your favorite local bookstore, hopefully.
Speaker 2:I have a website, melissadaimlercom. I update that pretty regularly so you can join my newsletter or go to my website and see what's happening.
Speaker 1:Hi everyone Aldi here. Thank you so much for listening to the Edge of Work podcast. If you like what you heard, encourage you to share the episode with a friend, as well as to head over to Apple Podcasts to leave a review and let us know what you think. I would be forever grateful if you did that. I would also love to hear directly from you about what episodes you're listening to or any suggestions you have for how we can make it better. You can find me on LinkedIn.
