If we were giving 2023 a score at Nature, it would have definitely received a high distinction.
I’m not just saying this because it was my first year here. Great things take time. We’re entering our 18th year at Nature and the achievements of 2023 reflected a culmination of what has been happening here for a long time.
In April 2023, we were named one of AFR’s best places to work.
In November 2023, we won the B&T People and Culture award.
In the same month, we also won a number of Research Society Effectiveness Awards as well as the Research Agency of the Year.
This made for a mighty swag of recognition for our thinking, our work, and our people and culture.
It also sparked a lot of conversations with people who know us, with the biggest question being (unsurprisingly) what are we doing differently and how are we doing it?
To answer that question, I wanted to try and bottle the big themes that I think have been driving our positive momentum at Nature, with the view this might be useful and thought provoking, as well as give an idea of what life looks like on the inside here at Nature.
When you join a new workplace, you are naturally a fresh pair of eyes in that business. A lot of stuff looks pretty similar to what you’re familiar with, but at the same time, there’s this massive amount of new and exotic things you get to soak up – the people, the culture, the rituals and the systems for how things work.
When I joined Nature in November 2022, it was obvious to me that I had landed in a place that invested greatly into growing and developing its people, treated them generously, had an incredibly fun culture and a very engaged workplace, and yet was kind of naively unaware of how special it was. I realised that a lot of people had been here for a long period of time and it was really hard for them to know how Nature truly compares to other workplaces, given they hadn’t experienced another one for many years (if ever).
It’s a powerful thing to be a fresh pair of eyes in any business as an incoming newbie. You see what’s special and different but also, importantly, you are often able to see the blind spots.
We all know that the fresh pair of eyes doesn’t last long as people get embedded into the business, so we know we must have the ‘fresh pair of eyes’ conversation early and often.
Every new joiner to Nature is openly invited to share their fresh perspectives on what they see and any ideas they think could help make Nature even better than it is today.
It’s not lip service; it’s an invitation that is reiterated over days, weeks and months. It’s an essential part of our onboarding experience and led by our leadership team.
Recent advice from our new joiners has resulted in us improving the expat onboarding experience, adding more playbooks that explain some of our specific research philosophies, as well as creating one of our favourite rituals in the past year, Tools Down Thursday – stopping work at 4pm each Thursday and taking time to connect over a drink in the office or somewhere nearby.
Fresh eyes help you see the blind spots. How can you genuinely and openly invite your newest joiners to share their observations in your business?
In the marketing and advertising industry, it’s no big secret that industry turnover is ~36%.
Imagine more than a third of your team shuffling in and out each year – that's a lot of turnover! And it's not just about the financial hit, which can range from 30% to a whopping 150% of an individual’s salary. There's also the emotional toll it takes on the team and the loss of valuable employee intelligence. Ultimately, this ambiguity is the crappy byproduct of turnover and it is an absolute culture killer.
Our turnover at Nature over the last few years is less than half the industry standard, so whilst we haven’t had to contend with this kind of uncertainty, there are things we do here which are a deliberate attempt to minimize ambiguity.
We are always hiring ahead of the curve. That might sound like a luxury but it’s better to have more people than we need across projects than to suddenly have people working day and night with huge holes in their team, which ends up costing a lot more than hiring ahead.
We have a folder structure architecture across teams and the broader business that ensures clarity, and process is baked into how we document the way we work. Having a clear way to manage documentation in your team or business might not exactly sound groundbreaking, but I can vouch for this one being a brilliant way to reduce ambiguity, not to mention its untold benefits on efficiency.
Without going through every aspect of how we onboard new joiners, relationships are the centrepiece for how we set people up for success. Getting to know everyone across the business is fundamental and we never skimp on that.
Ambiguity is a culture killer. What can you do in your business to reflect on ways to minimise it across your employee experience?
When you work in the marketing industry, it’s surprising how quickly people forget that the fundamental rules of marketing apply to internal programs and initiatives too.
Launching a new program, idea or ritual within your workplace? You might have been labouring over your latest internal idea – whether it be related to your values, your learning and development program, a cultural initiative…ultimately anything!
I am sure we’ve all learnt the hard way that just sharing an awesome idea or announcing it at your town hall won’t create the magical momentum you envisaged when the idea first came to you.
Apply marketing 101. Consistent, repetitive branding is how you get great ideas to stick!
You might also do yourself a favour and make sure you’ve got a champion or two to help you embed your newest idea / concept or campaign.
Treat every new internal idea you launch like a marketing campaign.
Be clear on what it is and why this is so good for the people in your business.
Adapt the narrative for your different internal audiences.
Share it in different channels – in person, across all your channels.
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
Last year Mark Ritson wrote an article in Marketing Week titled ‘Consumers don’t get tired of ads, only marketers do’. I realise that this message was intended to encourage marketers to keep leveraging existing advertising before they develop a new campaign, but there is potency here for how all initiative owners can take responsibility for driving their internal efforts.
What’s the next internal program, idea or initiative you are planning to launch in your workplace? Remember Marketing 101 and become a broken record on it.
Are you starting something new like a big internal initiative or comms campaign, a program, or a team ritual? The crawl walk run approach is one of my favourite ways to get something off the ground.
We’re an open source workplace at Nature when it comes to suggesting new ideas and ways of doing things at Nature that help us keep on growing. One of our values at Nature is what we call Owner’s Mindset. In essence, this is about encouraging everyone to pitch any idea they have that has the potential to add value or improve the way we do things or introduces a potentially new and meaningful system or thing. Some examples of this are the self-funded research work we conduct and share publicly as well as the cultural connection ideas that people generate for the team to have fun beyond the work.
When a new idea gets buy in, momentum is key. We like our ideas to come to life as quickly as we can possibly make them We launch them small, refining them as they grow, and sharing them widely to fuel their success. It's all about preventing great ideas from stalling before they take off.
What I’ve been slow to learn over the years is you can’t get from 0%-100% overnight. Ideas need a committed champion, plenty of nurturing and a plan you can share with everyone along the way to help them grow and reach their potential.
Make sure that the owner of the next big important idea at your workplace has support and champions to help them.
A new idea or a change in how things are done needs to start small. As we all know, most of us are creatures of habit, so find the easiest smallest version of your idea to get it going.
It could be a trial of your new idea with a small group of people to test and learn. Perhaps there’s a way to break down the idea into small, tiny ideas that you can try bit by bit.
The other biggie here is to combo this approach with point 3 and remember that repetition is the ongoing reminder.
No one learnt to run before they could crawl or walk. Ideas are the same. Crawl. Walk. Run.
Candor is a core value at Nature, woven into our culture as being ‘dependably candid’. Newcomers receive a copy of Radical Candor by Kim Scott, highlighting its significance in our collaborative ethos. This book serves as a guiding light for leadership and relationship-building, emphasising direct challenges paired with personal care.
Ensuring you combine clear and honest direction with the right amount of compassion and nurturing is a balancing act when you are creating and retaining a high-performance team. It doesn’t matter how driven individuals or a team are around high performance – we are also human and therefore we want and need good guidance that encourages us and helps us course correct in the moment.
At Nature, this is our greatest shortcut to ensure we run fast with the work we do and, vitally, how we can continue to do our greatest work together. Not being candid in the right way slows everything down and creates too many conversations rather than simply having the right ones.
Read the book if you haven’t already or go and have a listen to the Radical Candor podcast. This foundational understanding sets the stage for cultivating a culture of candid communication within your own team or organisation.
Time is of the essence when it comes to feedback and advice. When there is a conversation that needs to be had, whether this is positive or constructive, the greatest thing you can do is start that conversation as soon as possible.
For most of us, candor isn’t something we are born with. It takes time and practice and that means also needing to be willing to get it wrong occasionally too. This idea is perfectly encapsulated by Andy Grove who, speaking about Steve Jobs while being interviewed as the CEO at Intel, said: ‘Steve wasn’t always right but he was the person who always gets it right’. That’s what it takes.
Keen to create a candid culture at your workplace? You’ll need to bake it in from the top with leaders in your team or organisation, making it an ongoing practice to get it right whilst realising you won’t always be right.
As a final thought, please feel free to steal any of these ideas I’ve included in here or reach out for a chat about them. In the spirit of reciprocity, I’m also keen to hear of any ideas or themes big and small that you know are helping you do some unique or special stuff in your people and culture strategy. Drop me a line!
Connect with Trudi on LinkedIn by clicking here.
