William Ingham

▶0:00IntroWelcome to the Built by People podcast, where we share the stories and insights of the world's top HR leaders. Join us as we dive deep into the minds of HR executives, uncovering their strategies, challenges, and triumphs in shaping today's workforce.

▶0:38HostI'm excited to welcome Will to the Built By People Podcast. Will, thank you so much for joining us today. And as a starting question, I always love to ask if you can share a little bit more about your career journey.

▶0:48GuestSure. Thanks, Dave. And it's really a pleasure to be here and thanks so much for having me on. Yeah, I've been, I've had about 20+ years of experience in the people function. I've done 4 chief people officer roles. One was for International Banana Republic. The second was Visa in Europe, where I was based in London and helped run the Visa Europe integration. They were a separate company that Visa bought in 2016. Then I went on to do 2 startups. So I did Poshmark, which is a marketplace company here in the US, and then a fintech company called Oro, which is also in the payment space., and, now I'm embarking on writing a book and doing some other fun things with leadership development. And, so that's a little bit about my background.

▶1:27HostWill, in your upcoming book, you mentioned that culture is an untapped frontier for company performance. Can you share a specific case study from your CHRO experience where you identified a problematic culture that was affecting business results and what initially made you realize this was an issue that needed to be addressed?

▶1:44GuestSure. I think culture, Dave, is one of those things that many leaders and executives talk about, but no one knows what to do with it in order to really leverage it and maximize it for the value of driving company growth and profitability. And so to answer your question directly, I'll use an example for a large multinational bank that used a product that I'm very familiar with that I'm sure we'll get into talking about a little bit later. The problem that they found was They wanted to find out where internal fraud was most likely to occur in their offices around the world. And by the way, this is a very well-known bank. And so they use this culture measurement tool where they went out and surveyed the organization and measured the difference between what I do and what I observe and the gaps between the two. And through that, they distill human behaviors down into 30 core behaviors and then determine which of those are most likely to determine where internal fraud is most likely to occur. Long story short, they were able to identify that in 7 jurisdictions around the world and get regulatory bodies off their backs, which avoided hundreds of millions of dollars of fines for this financial institution. So there's real money to be made there in terms of profitability as well as cost avoidance if you measure culture in the right way.

▶3:02HostCould you walk us through a situation where you implemented a more effective culture measurement approach and what specific metrics or indicators you found most valuable in that process?

▶3:12GuestCulture survey or excuse me, engagement surveys are a complete waste of time. Like literally, here's what happens in companies and many people will identify this with this. You do the annual survey, everybody goes out and answers questions like, would you refer this as a place to work for your friends and family? Are you likely to return to work on a regular basis? Where does your discretionary effort come within the company? And people answer these questions and they can be answered based on How you're feeling in any given moment. If you go through a crisis the day before or an issue with your family, you might answer it positively or more negatively in a moment in time. And so the survey gets answered. Everybody does all these action plans around the survey. These action plans sit on a shelf and nothing gets done. So that's the traditional engagement survey. So as I mentioned, culture is behavior. And so each culture, each company culture should have a very specific DNA. It's kind of like brand architecture, right? What are the attribute truths? What's the functional benefit? What's the emotional experience? And what's the concept of something bigger as you build a brand? Culture is the same way, but it's tied to what's the behavior that you want in the organization? Do you want to be more strategic or tactical? Do you want to be innovative? Do you want to be risk-averse? What's the DNA for the company that you want? And then you measure in the organization where that's happening or not happening. I've implemented this at a number of companies that I've been at in the past, which have pinpointed specifically what behaviors we want in the organization in order to drive our strategic purpose. And then we've seen progress towards that, which is a remarkable thing to be able to do.

▶4:52HostLast we talked, you discussed how the Trump factor is creating harsh corporate environments where companies don't care about people and teams. Can you share a story about how you've successfully balanced performance expectations with building a healthy culture and what specific actions you took to achieve it?

▶5:10GuestYeah, this is one that's really near and dear to my heart. If you look at employment over the last 20 years, you'll see times where people will move toward the company having the power or the employees having the power. And it's really an issue of supply and demand, right? If employees are in high demand, the employees have the power. Companies are in high demand or employees are in low demand, companies have the power. And I firmly believe that just like you want to define a core culture, you want to be able to connect people to the purpose of that organization. And so I believe that's really one of the keys, to the extent that you connect people to the higher purpose of the company and get people really to self-identify with that, you can drive a much higher form of engagement. At the last company I was at, we had a term, the company company was named Oro, and we had a philosophy that was called Ouroboros. Boros is a mythical dragon creature where you consume yourself in order to improve on a regular basis. People that had a mindset of, how do I reinvent myself, not just on a weekly basis, but on a daily basis, or even in a moment, like, how do I constantly reinvent myself? Those people really fit in well with the culture and were really, really helped to contribute to the culture of the company.

▶6:32HostYou're working with a company in the UK that measures culture in a way that is predictive and can change the needle. Could you explain how this approach differs from traditional methods, what results you've seen from implementing it, and how HR leaders might begin adopting similar approaches within their organizations?

▶6:49GuestYeah. And by the way, Dave, I'm actually not working with them. I have used their products at 3 companies that I've been at, and I do believe that they will be the future of culture measurement and molding going forward. And it could become a global standard, especially as regulatory bodies in the UK and now in Canada are holding boards accountable for how you drive culture in an organization. And so this company is called iPsychTech. They have products called CultureScope, TalentScope, and TeamScope. CultureScope is the measurement tool. What they've done is they've used behavioral science and they've distilled 230-some human behaviors into 30 common human behaviors. And then those 30 common behaviors, they'll go out and survey the organization, measuring the difference again between what I do and what I observe. And the gaps between the two. And then you can show where people are operating with the intended behaviors and where it might not be happening. And for the ones that are operating in the intended way, are they driving a different business outcome? And if so, how do you move the organization in that direction? And so it's a remarkable way of looking at and measuring culture. I believe they're working on a series of metrics that will be able to be reported to the board of directors with the same rigor that you report financials like revenue and EBITDA. I believe that culture culture should be talked about with equal weighting to financial results. And I think that time is coming when we're gonna be doing that pretty regularly.

▶8:19HostWhat parting advice would you like to share with our community?

▶8:23GuestWow. So first of all, I'm very passionate about leadership and really incredible leaders. I think we're going through a process where leadership is becoming less about 5 senses and more about multisensory dimensions, if you will. And there's some remarkable things that are going on with how you train leaders to become very intuitive and trust your instinct in terms of what you believe. And so those leaders and those individuals that can tap into kind of a multisensory experience and then validate that with data, I think are going to be highly successful. That's why I love the whole space of culture as well, because culture is somewhat intuitive. It's historically, it's been difficult to measure, but I think we're entering into an incredible time where those people who will be able to tap into kind of multisensory leadership are going to be incredibly successful. And so I think it's an exciting time ahead. And I also think as a result of that, people will be more rewarded and more fulfilled in work. So that's the advice that I would leave.

▶9:23HostThanks so much for joining us today on the Built by People podcast. It was a pleasure to have you involved.

▶9:27GuestThanks, Dave.