EP067 - Creating a Thriving Company Culture with Kate Wood & Ian Luckett

First things first, I mention how Kate and I met which was during the previous Managed Service Summit in London where I attended her keynote speech and within about 10 minutes of Kate's presentation I said, "You are coming to my podcast, so many more people need to hear about this.", so here we are.  To start with, Kate shares a little bit more about her, her career history, and how she became to be a company culture expert which now offers culture as a service to organisations. She shares how she helps businesses in their employee engagement to make sure all their employees feel valued and cared for, as well as communication with leadership teams.  I then asked Kate what company culture is?   Kate says company culture is identifying who you are as a business, the behaviours and values you have as an organisation, from the leadership team right down to every single person in your business, that's your culture. She then continues to explain why company culture matters.  Kate and I then weigh in on how the words "change" and "progress" differ. We then eventually agree that it's up to the person who looks at those two words and assess what those words mean to them. We also tackle communication within team members and why it plays an important role in people understanding what "change" and "progress" mean.  I then asked Kate how people develop and embed culture within their business. Kate advises to not try and do it yourself.   She then talks about having a team of cultural ambassadors and explains the roles they play in building that company culture, most especially in living the company's values.  I then ask Kate the very same question I asked her during her keynote speech at Managed Services Summit in London, and that is "How do we measure culture". Kate said that the overall annual measurement should be the business growth and she continues to explain why.  Finally, to wrap up the episode, Kate shares one tip she can give to people working on building that great company culture, and that is to go and ask the people in your organisation because they will help you with the answers.  I hope you enjoy this value-loaded episode as much as we enjoyed creating it. I suggest you listen to this episode as many times as you want to make sure you get every drop of value you can get.    You can reach out to Kate Wood in her LinkedIn profile here – https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-wood-pocketsforall/   Kate Wood and I are both going to be in the Managed Services Summit – North next week, November 16th, together will other experts in the industry to provide tonnes of value and high-level presentations, discuss channel issues, meet, debate, network. If you are an IT/MSP Business Owner, VAR or System Integrator, and you want to get involved in this amazing event, you can secure your space right here – https://managedservicessummit.com/north/     You can access all the other IT Experts Podcasts here –  https://innovatetosuccess.com/podcast/  If you're looking to scale your IT & MSP business and you don't know where to start, just navigate and explore here on our website www.innovatetosuccess.com where we've got a whole load of tips, tricks, strategies and community to help you grow and scale your IT and your MSP business.  I also invite you to come and take the IT experts test and we can help you to work out what to focus on right now to get you the quickest results in your business. You can take the test here – https://bit.ly/ITEtest  If we're not connected already, let's connect on LinkedIn, YouTube and over here at our website, innovatetosuccess.com  Alternatively, you can drop me an email at [email protected]  Until next time, you look after yourself and I'll catch up with you soon!