E27: The Value of Culture: Basecamp to Summit w/ Miriam Jones & Adam Rumack
Episode 27 of We are Open Circle’s Beyond ListeningPodcast saw our very own co-hosts Adam Rumack and Miriam Jones get to grips with the value of culture: both during structural change and as an inseparable part of strategy.
How to keep staff along with you when things get hard.
The importance of culture’s relationship with strategy and growth.
The relationship between a company culture and its value.
“Miriam Jones is CXO and Co-Founder of We Are Open Circle. She is an serial entrepreneur who has headed up a range of organizations - from not-for-profits to corporations to co-operatives. Her clients have included PWC, Bank of America and Snapchat.”
”Adam Rumack is CEO and Co-Founder of We Are Open Circle, as well as an educator, facilitator, and organizational consultant. He has led workshops at Esalen and The Ojai Foundation, Land of the Medicine Buddha and Mangalam Center, and other centers of alternative learning and higher education”
Here are some of the key insights from the conversation
It’s important to identify the crossover between what a company wants, how it thinks it can get there and what it actually needs to do. A clear culture can help work out which path to take.
“So when we put all those things together: what an organisation thinks they want, what they actually want and what they need. There can be a great challenge in delivering those, it might not be directly why we got hired. Maybe there is a different way, maybe we need to do something first before we climb Everest or maybe we need to stop climbing.”
Culture is crucial to planning for growth. It's important to integrate what is important alongside any strategy for growth.
“We needed to start with looking at the relationship with culture. Considering culture as inseparable to a potential growth phase is the complete opposite to what I was doing in the corporate world”
Something is in-built in human beings that seeks to reach high goals. Companies can work in exactly the same way.
“There is something thats in the human mind that wants that goal, that gets off the couch, that climbs that mountain, so we can go for that horizon that we might never reach. Its the same with groups”
