Remote & Hybrid Didn't Break Your Culture, They Revealed It

Andy Goram (left) and Ellie Holbert (right) discuss the secrets to making a remote or hybrid culture work

When performance dips in remote or hybrid teams, the default explanation is usually distance.

“It’s harder to manage people now.”“We’ve lost our culture.”“Remote just doesn’t work for us.” But what if remote and hybrid didn’t break anything at all? What if they simply removed the scaffolding?

What This Means for Hybrid and Remote Team Performance

If we want to improve hybrid and remote team performance, we have to stop blaming location and start examining clarity. Ellie Holbert from Empact Advisory Services, argues that remote working didn’t change human behaviour — it exposed the systems we’d accidentally built . Systems that relied on proximity instead of clarity. Presence instead of trust. Time served instead of defined outcomes. When distance removes informal cues, ambiguity becomes visible. And ambiguity has consequences.

Culture Is “How We Get Work Done Around Here”

Ellie reframes culture not as office buzz or belonging rituals, but as:

“How we get work done around here.”

In hybrid and fully remote environments, “here” is no longer physical. It’s behavioural.

That means:

• Process clarity matters more.

• Role clarity matters more.

• Communication matters more.

Not because people changed — but because shortcuts disappeared.

Why Hybrid and Remote Reduce Communication Signals

In co-located teams, we rely on tone, posture, eye contact and proximity to interpret meaning. In hybrid and remote environments, most of that disappears. We are left primarily with words.

That reduction in signals increases the likelihood of misunderstanding, assumption and threat detection. Which brings us to the neuroscience.

The Neuroscience of Ambiguity and Threat

Human brains are constantly scanning for safety. When expectations are unclear, the brain interprets ambiguity as potential threat. The amygdala activates. The prefrontal cortex, responsible for strategic thinking, becomes less dominant. Innovation reduces. Risk tolerance drops. People hedge.

So when someone repeatedly asks for validation, seeks feedback mid-task, or appears hesitant to act independently, leaders may see dependence.

But often, it’s simply a lack of shared clarity.

When Ambiguity Drives Feedback-Seeking Behaviour

As Ellie explains:

“When we see that ambiguity in a system, people are seeking feedback and understanding all throughout the flow of their work and at the end to validate that what they have delivered is on target and it meets expectations.”

Leaders may interpret this as unnecessary reassurance-seeking.

But from a systems perspective, it’s a signal.

The Power of a Shared Definition of Done

Ellie continues:

“This is a signal that the system needs more clarity. It needs a better definition of done and that definition of done needs to be shared by all…”

Clarity cools the nervous system. Clarity restores autonomy. Clarity improves hybrid and remote team performance more reliably than presence ever did.

A Team in Crisis: Starting at 2.4 Out of 5

Ellie shares a real-world example of a high-visibility technology team inside a large financial services organisation. Their Initial effectiveness score was :

“The average score… was a 2.4 out of 5.”

That equalled low trust. Low connection. Low clarity.

From 2.4 to 4.8: Unlocking Hybrid and Remote Team Performance

But just eight weeks later:

“Eight weeks later… the average score was 4.8 out of 5.”

So, what changed?

Not headcount.Not technology.Not structure. They clarified roles.Defined shared outcomes.Implemented retrospectives.Created simple connection rituals.

The results:

• Zero regrettable turnover for nearly two years

• 95% engagement

• Critical initiative delivered six months early

• 4.5 million dollars of added value

• 45x return on consulting investment

The 45x Return on Clarity and Leadership

“Across an 18-month period… these efforts enabled 4.5 million dollars of added value… this organization saw a 45x return…”

Hybrid and remote working didn’t destroy performance. Ambiguity did. And clarity restored it.

Three Fundamentals for Stronger Hybrid Leadership

At the end of the episdoe, Ellie leaves us with three simple sticky notes to help close the gap that remote and hybrid working has revealed :

1. Define what everyone is responsible for.

2. Define the north star and the shared definition of done.

3. Create one consistent forum to improve how the team works together.

These are free. They are simple. And they unlock value that’s already there.

Listen To The Full Episode Here

You can listen to the whole episode using the player below, or read the full transcript that follows:

Read The Full Transcript

[Andy Goram] (0:10 - 3:28)

Hello and welcome to Sticky from the Inside, the employee engagement podcast that looks at how to build stickier, competition-smashing, consistently successful organisations from the inside out. I'm your host Andy Goram and I'm on a mission to help more businesses turn the lights on behind the eyes of their employees, light the fires within them and create tonnes more success for everyone. This podcast is for all those who believe that's something worth going after and would like a little help and guidance in achieving that.

Each episode we dive into the topics that can help create what I call stickier businesses, the sort of businesses where people thrive and love to work, and where more customers stay with you and recommend you to others because they love what you do and why you do it. So, if you want to take the tricky out of being sticky, listen on. Okay then, so let's just start with a story most of us will probably recognise.

A team goes remote or hybrid. All of a sudden, performance starts to dip, maybe a bit of tension creeps in, misunderstandings start to grow, trust begins to fade and is eventually maybe even lost. The leaders and managers of that organisation start saying and believing things like, oh it's so much harder to manage people now, this hybrid working thing has, well it's broken our culture, remote just doesn't work for us.

And you know what, maybe that's true, but maybe it's not. I just wonder if, I wonder if today's working environment actually broke anything at all. Did it really break it or perhaps has it just removed the scaffolding or pulled back the curtain to reveal what was probably already there before?

You know, the stuff like the office talk, the body language we feel and see, the glances, the tones, the subtle cues, we didn't even realise we were relying on to keep work, well, working. What if it didn't change human behaviour at all but exposed the human systems we'd accidentally built and showed them to be far more fragile than perhaps we imagined, or even if we even thought about in the first place. Systems that relied on proximity instead of clarity, presence instead of trust, time instead of output, that kind of thing.

Well my guest today thinks that when we stop blaming people and start examining the conditions they're working in, a very interesting picture emerges. Ellie Holbert is the founder of Impact Advisory Services and she works with leaders and teams to understand why good people end up behaving oddly, why performance slips without anyone quite knowing why, and how to redesign the fundamentals so work actually works again. So to be clear, I don't expect this to be a conversation about whether remote or hybrid work is good or bad.

I expect it to be a conversation about what it has revealed. Ellie, welcome to the show.

[Ellie Holbert] (3:29 - 3:33)

Thank you so much for having me, Andy. I'm so excited to be here with you today.

[Andy Goram] (3:33 - 4:09)

I'm really really looking forward to this conversation. I think we have talked a lot and when I say we, I mean the world has talked a lot about the pros and cons of hybrid and remote and I don't know we've always been talking about the right things and maybe we'll get a chance to sort of dig into some of that today. So yeah, I'm really looking forward to it.

It's a topic I think a lot of people are sort of facing into at the moment. Before we start getting all excited and passionate about the things we're going to kind of go through today, let's just take a pause. Do us a favor, Ellie.

Give us a nice better introduction to you, what you do, and what you focus on today for us.

[Ellie Holbert] (4:09 - 5:22)

Sure, absolutely. Well, as you mentioned, I'm Ellie Holbert. I founded a consultancy called Impact Advisory Services where I work with HR leaders and executives to improve the resilience and the performance of their remote and dispersed teams.

So I have about a decade of management consulting experience and as a management consultant, what I found time and time again was that organizations would be willing to invest resources into new tools, new technologies, re-orgs, but that they did not necessarily achieve the value and the output they were looking for because the team required to deliver that work was not set up for success. And so in my experience, I decided to take a different approach and I developed a playbook for creating the framework that enables high performance across teams regardless of location. And I found that this playbook works regardless of industry, regardless of business size.

And since then I have been on a quest, if you will, to unlock the value that is hidden within organizations simply because the conditions for that top performance need to be refined and specifically to do that for remote and dispersed teams.

[Andy Goram] (5:22 - 5:48)

I love that. I love actually also speaking to somebody who's had so much focus on remote and dispersed pre and post pandemic because I think that's fascinating because you will have seen what was already in existence before and organizations that made this stuff work post the kind of hot mess we've all got embroiled in post pandemic when we've, I guess a larger number of people have had to look at this pretty quickly and make a lot of decisions on the fly.

[Ellie Holbert] (5:50 - 6:28)

Absolutely. What I found in terms of work before the pandemic was that there were still very much gaps. It was not perfect by any means, but that people were able to lean into the performance of work rather than the proof of the work itself.

And that the performance of work is much harder to conduct in a remote setting. We do not have those informal cues, the body language to signal influence and authority. Really our work has to speak for itself in a more clear way.

And that's really the crux of why it has been so challenging is that remote just revealed gaps that were already there and it took away our ability to smooth over those gaps.

[Andy Goram] (6:29 - 7:06)

I think that's the thing I'd like to kind of dig into this. I don't know. I might use the word myth, but I don't know if hybrid and remote has broken culture.

I mean, there's been enough stuff written to say that it has, but in your experience from what you've just sort of said, that doesn't necessarily ring true, right? So if you were to sort of like talk to your past self in from your future position, what would you be whispering in your ear right now to say, hey, hey, hey, pull back the curtain, have a little closer look at this. What are the sort of, I guess, elements of that myth that you've seen?

[Ellie Holbert] (7:07 - 9:14)

Yes, absolutely. I think it depends on how culture is defined. So when people describe their experience of closeness in a collective environment as culture, yes, remote does complicate that.

Connection can still, of course, be established. I've seen incredibly well-connected remote teams, but it does look different. However, I describe or rather define culture as how we get work done around here.

And here is not physical. It's not bound by time and space. It's simply, how do we get work done here?

And so remote culture, it is different from in-person culture in that it requires a different level of intention and it requires a different level of structure, process clarity, role clarity, but also communication. Part of why this is the case is that in a remote setting, we lose so many of the signals that we use to detect, but also communicate safety and belonging and influence. So when we look at human communication, there are nine different forms of human communication.

In a remote setting, only one is fully available, and that is our verbal words. There are others that are somewhat available, like our pace, our cadence, our tone, our facial expressions, but those are actually somewhat distorted by technology. And so often those signals can add more ambiguity than they do clarity.

So what that means is we are trying to communicate the same level of clarity and influence and connection with one of the nine available forms of communication. And so that's why remote can feel so challenging is because the direct verbal communication required, it is an outsized amount. It can feel very unnatural for the communicator and the person being communicated to.

It can feel a bit off-putting, sometimes even threatening if trust is not in place. All of that to say this is why it's so important to lean into creating trust and clarity and systems because in our interpersonal work remotely, we need to communicate in a very direct verbal manner to be effective.

[Andy Goram] (9:15 - 10:11)

So this sounds fascinating to me, right? You've chucked in some numbers in there. You've talked about the sort of levels of communication or even methods, channels of communication, and actually sort of saying, well, remote hybrid, whatever you want to call it, cuts a lot of them out, right?

And it only leaves one maybe behind. Can we dig into that a little bit? Because I'm interested to try and think about and get your sense on, as humans, how we actually function in the work setting and communication must play such a fundamental role in that.

What do you think are the key lessons that we can learn then from very successful remote organisations, dispersed organisations, and take into more of the, well, maybe less intentionally remote, but now working in this new environment, we've got a blend going on. What are some of the key things you think we need to lean into?

[Ellie Holbert] (10:12 - 12:51)

Yes, I would say it is incredibly beneficial to think about the neuroscience behind our collective human behaviour and organisations, but also as it pertains to communication. And specifically, I mean, the level of threat detection that our brains conduct on an ongoing basis, completely unconsciously. Our brains scan our environment, I believe a recent statistic I read was every six seconds, we subconsciously scan our environment for signs of safety.

And we do that virtually as well as in person. And so I think leaders of organisations especially need to recognise how frequently their employees are looking for signs that they are safe and that they belong or trying to detect threat that may suggest they are not safe and they do not belong. And the reason I bring that up is when we think of the neuroscience behind this, there are different parts of the brain, they're responsible for different things, it's very important that they are all supported in doing their job well.

So we have the amygdala, that's the fight or flight part of our brain, we have the prefrontal cortex that's responsible for our personalities, judgment, strategic thinking. What happens is when we are in an environment of high ambiguity, our brains generally speaking will interpret that ambiguity as threat. And our amygdala comes online, the prefrontal cortex essentially goes offline, we don't have access to it.

And so what we want to see is an environment where people are able to cool down their amygdalas and be able to access their prefrontal cortex because that's where bold action comes from, that's where innovation comes from, that's where strategy comes from. And so we can actually use neuroscience as an advantage in understanding the goal here is to transmit signals of safety so that people can do their best work. And I love warm and fuzzy, don't get me wrong, I love warm and fuzzy, but this is actually not even about warm and fuzzy, this is neuroscience and applying these principles is highly profitable and will lead to better business outcomes.

So I would say we need to think about how do we transmit and connect, transmit those signals of safety and to do so consistently over time. That applies to in-person settings, hybrid settings, but especially applies in a remote setting. We need to think about how do we create clarity and structure and process so that people have less ambiguity, so that the ambiguity they do need to manage is not so overwhelming and interpreted as so threatening that they shut down and are not able to do their best work.

[Andy Goram] (12:51 - 13:56)

I think this is what I find fascinating because those things still are just as important in a non-dispersed organisation, right? They're just human fundamentals. It's just our ability to pick up on them when we're not necessarily in the proximity of people that's different.

I love the fact that you talk about it needing to be more intentional. So we've really got to design the systems, the processes, the methods of communication where we're, I guess, echoing or at least communicating the structure around clarity or giving people clarity, helping them feel safe. I think the thing about this is that I found fascinating is if we think about the structure of empowerment, right, the need for clarity and freedom, that lovely blend of knowing exactly where you're going and what you've got to do, but being given the opportunity for self-expression within that framework, that sounds from what you're saying to take on a very different guise in a remote and hybrid setting. Have I interpreted that correctly?

[Ellie Holbert] (13:57 - 15:33)

Absolutely, because in an in-person setting we are able to organically understand with a bit more context what is appropriate and inappropriate risk-taking within that organisational culture. We can pick up on that pretty easily in an in-person setting with those nine signals available to us. In a remote setting, we're trying to understand the level of experimentation that is acceptable using only verbal communication.

So what does that mean? That means that people, employees, individual contributors, they are put in a position of having to experiment and find the guardrails often by bumping right into them or stepping on each other's toes. And that's what we don't want to see.

I think often leaders, because leaders are generally speaking in a hierarchical position of authority or status or power, they sometimes forget what it feels like at the different levels where those things are not in place. And so in my advisory and coaching work with leaders, I often encourage them to remember we need to lower the bravery bar here and help people experiment more boldly. And it is the leader's job to set up those guardrails of what is appropriate experimentation, what types of pushing back, constructive criticism, continuous learning, innovation as a team.

It's on the leader to create the forums for that to occur and it's on the leader to make clear what is the boundary in terms of bold experimentation.

[Andy Goram] (15:34 - 16:42)

I love that. You make me smile when you talk about we forget when we get to different levels. I mean, I instantly think of the sort of whole Dunning-Kruger effect and the bit that, you know, you don't know what you don't know at the beginning and you have huge amounts of confidence around that sort of stuff.

But as soon as you see it, you start to wonder if you'll ever get to grips with this. And by the time you've mastered it, you forget the poor people at the end. And that happens all the time, right?

Unintentionally, maybe, but it happens all the time and causes lots of issues. I think this reliance on verbal or even the backup, I guess, of written communication also leans into the fact that the understanding of psychological traits and behavioural preferences in this setting is really important, right? Because I would imagine that there is more danger for misinterpretation of message in this setting based on our behavioural preferences.

If we don't recognise those different communication preferences, then we're going to get ourselves in hot water more often. We're going to lead to perhaps more ambiguity or lack of clarity. And that's a different challenge for leaders in that dispersed world.

[Ellie Holbert] (16:43 - 18:11)

Absolutely. And I think, Andy, you bring up a great point, which is we need to make the invisible visible. There are many different ways that we can do this.

Like you said, with those behavioural preferences, those thinking styles, I see a lot of effective teams apply assessments, both for understanding of themselves, but also to have a shared language for communicating with one another, where there's no personalisation of blame. It's a matter of styles. And all of the styles are equally valid.

We just need to work through understanding one another's natural styles and also being able to flex our own so that we are able to work effectively with others that may think or communicate differently. So I do recommend assessments as a great way to have shared language that is not personal. It provides a great framework for doing that.

And in addition to the assessments, when we think about making the invisible visible, I find that many teams often take the very basics for granted. And by that, I mean, there's an assumption about people knowing what they are supposed to do, about others knowing what everybody else is there to do. These very basic things, we can't take them for granted, especially in a remote setting.

Gallup actually found that only 47% of employees know what is expected of them at work. So as a baseline, and this included co-located teams, as a baseline, there is a less than 50% chance that each person on your team knows what they are there to do.

[Andy Goram] (18:12 - 18:31)

And then, oh, go ahead. No, no, no. I've heard this stat.

I work with this stat many, many, many times. And every time someone else utters it, I have a bit of a brain meltdown because I'm just like, that's just madness, right? Like over 50% of the workforce state that they don't know what they're there to do.

[Ellie Holbert] (18:31 - 19:06)

Exactly. I will say as well, I see that in my work with organizations. I see evidence for that statistic all the time.

And part of my role often is to go into an organization. I assess the health, the effectiveness of their teams. I help them come up with very specific plans and programs for improving their performance and their effectiveness.

And in doing so, I've assessed many teams. I have yet to assess a team where when I come in, everybody can name what everybody else is there to do. That has not happened a single time.

[Andy Goram] (19:06 - 19:29)

That is such a great point. Again, living in our own heads, living in our own four walls, not making the connection to the person, maybe in the old way of working was sat next to us. We might be able to get a bit more of a feeling on that.

But yeah, having a broader sense of what everybody else is going on, that must contribute not only to clarity, but to that sense of community and belonging in that organization as well, right?

[Ellie Holbert] (19:30 - 20:33)

Absolutely. Because to remedy this, people have to basically admit that they don't know. And that requires a level of emotional exposure that most people are not willing to take very understandably.

Especially, I will say in the United States, I see more dramatic examples of this because so much depends on our employment. Our access to health care depends on our employment. So leaders need to understand that how much they are asking people to risk when they're asking people to speak openly and honestly.

So to remedy that, you have to admit that you don't know. And then other people likely have to meet you halfway and admit that they don't know either. And that is not necessarily what often happens.

And asking these basic questions, I'm amazed at the value and the performance enablement that can happen from just working on those two specific practices of defining what everybody is there to do and making sure everybody knows what everybody else is there to do. Teams transform when they address just those two incredibly basic fundamentals.

[Andy Goram] (20:34 - 22:20)

I don't know about you, Ellie. Maybe it's just my own imposter. But when we start talking about these things, I feel like a proper fraud because these feel, like you've said, like basic, fundamental, foundational things that everybody should understand and every leader should have at the top of their list.

And yet it's just based on assumption most of the time that people know these things. And I think as soon as you do start to sort of pull back the curtain, lots of this stuff is revealed, right? Lots of this stuff is revealed.

And to your point, if you don't have the trust, people aren't even going to admit to this stuff. So they're going to say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've got it. But the reality is they don't feel safe enough to be vulnerable enough to say, hang on, I don't understand.

You know, that's bad. I wonder whether this is the right point to start thinking about the cost of this stuff. Because you said right at the beginning, when you're going and you help businesses, there's a tangible sort of revenue profit piece that you're tying this behavioural stuff in, this system stuff in, this people stuff in.

And I'm really interested to hear about the cost when these systems that we've put in place just do not work and don't function. And I wonder whether we could look at it in a pretty funky way. You can say no, if I've got this kind of a bit weird.

But when we listen to what was really, really going on, what sort of behaviours do you hear leadership complain about that are actually just human responses to pretty poorly designed systems that they're trying to work in? Do you encounter that you're nodding? I love that.

Do you encounter that in your work?

[Ellie Holbert] (22:21 - 23:54)

Absolutely, I encounter this in my work. And specifically, what I often observe is leadership at the leadership layer, I often observe complaints about how much praise or recognition people seem to be seeking simply for doing their job and meeting expectations. There's a frustration on the leadership level of do I need to be patting backs, you know, just for doing a job well done.

And what I find is that that's a scenario that most leaders can relate to. I have found that that is not actually an indication of a personal failure or that an employee is seeking more validation than is appropriate. What I find is that is actually a signal that there has not been enough clarity and communication from the beginning of a process so that people know what good looks like and they have a clear definition of done.

So when we see that ambiguity in a system, people are seeking feedback and understanding all throughout the flow of their work and at the end to validate that what they have delivered is on target and it meets expectations. So that is people looking for clarity so that they can do their job well. But leaders often observe it as a need for handholding and kudos that goes above and beyond what they find to be acceptable.

When we look at it from a human systems perspective, this is a signal that the system needs more clarity. It needs a better definition of done and that definition of done needs to be shared by all and that will drastically reduce that one behavior. So that's just one example of what I often see.

[Andy Goram] (23:55 - 24:09)

Is that a common thing that you see in all organizations? Yes. It's fascinating, isn't it?

Because I suspect that attitude, it's not an intentional attitude to be annoyed by that sort of stuff. This stuff's accidental in most places, right?

[Ellie Holbert] (24:10 - 24:30)

Yes, exactly. And part of it is that it distracts leaders from what they would like to focus on and what they can do best, which is often making contact externally with the market, focusing on the strategy of the business. So it does valid point.

It distracts them from the work that they need to do. But that is a signal that the system can be refined.

[Andy Goram] (24:30 - 25:45)

Yeah. I think what you've said here also about the difference between acknowledging someone for doing their job and praising and recognizing somebody for going into the realms of excellence and doing something extraordinary is a really fascinating point. We had Jen Mueller, the sports broadcaster on the show a few episodes ago, and this was a point she was making really, really strongly.

And you can feel people's frustration with this apparent need now to get a lollipop for every time you show up for work. This is not what we're talking about. But again, the conversations, the systems, the processes, the relationship between the leader and the team needs to make this stuff really, really, really clear.

And not just in written stuff, but in the behavior that's witnessed. So I think we're pretty good as people sussing out how things work around here if we're seeing these consistent signals. If the leadership behaves in a consistent, constant way, then we get that we're not looking for a pat on the back every time we show up.

But actually, we're going to make the effort to do more things if we want the recognition, if we want to go for it, because that's what gets rewarded. So I think there's a lot of that consistency piece that's at play here.

[Ellie Holbert] (25:47 - 27:59)

Absolutely. I agree. And I think if I had to distill that down into what is the role of the leader in this, I would say effective leaders of remote teams, especially, they engage in proactive pattern detecting, and then wayfinding.

So it's that combination of what am I hearing from those that are bold enough to share feedback, and also proactively seeking that feedback. Too often, I see an organization do an employee engagement survey maybe once a year, and leaders aren't necessarily translating those insights to their leadership style and refining it over time. I recommend a different approach.

I recommend that leaders intentionally carve out spaces to receive feedback from their teammates, and that often can look like a retrospective. So for anybody that is not familiar with agile software development methodologies, a retrospective is simply a time-boxed moment where the team comes together to talk about how they conduct work together. They're not focused on the technical aspects of their work.

They're focused on how they work together. A very simple format is to do a stop-start-continue method, which is the team discussing what should we stop doing, what should we start doing, what should we continue doing. There are so many amazing tools to do this virtually.

It's very effective. It's the leader's job to create these spaces for these insights to reach them. And the effective leaders that I see of remote teams are the leaders that intentionally carve out these forums and see them as very important, and they act on the insights that are made available in these forums.

So the leader's job is the detecting, finding spaces for people to provide feedback, and then it's the wayfinding, saying, I don't know exactly where we are headed, but directionally, let's go that way. Understand what is the level of experimentation that is acceptable, stating the definition of done, stating expectations, the wayfinding. Leaders don't need to give everybody all of the answers all of the time, but they are a wayfinder and a pattern detector when they are doing it well remotely.

[Andy Goram] (27:59 - 29:25)

I love the whole notion of the pattern detector because it takes us out of the individual transaction or thing with an employee and starts to take a leadership role in looking up, looking ahead, and putting some of these things together. I think one of the costs of these things can be particularly, and again, you must hold me accountable to sort of say, Andy, that's not how it works, if it's not how it works. But my impression in dealing with some organisations that have a much heavier remote or hybrid basis, and I found this particularly within an IT function particularly, is that one of the costs, I think, is this expectation that there is no sense of belonging, there is no sense of greater part.

And so actually, retention of people is really hard because people just move to the next project for the next check, and there is no sense of us. And some of it is due to the systems, some of it is due to the communication. Some of it, to me, feels like, well, they've accepted that there is going to be none of this extra stuff within their function, within that organisation, and so they don't expect it.

And so there isn't that level of connection and commitment inside some of those organisations. I'm not saying this is everybody, by the way. And I think that's a huge cost.

If you're having to constantly hire, retrain people because that lack of belonging and connection, that's a huge cost to businesses.

[Ellie Holbert] (29:25 - 29:32)

Yes, absolutely. I could illustrate that as well with a specific case study that made.

[Andy Goram] (29:32 - 29:33)

Please do. Yeah, yeah.

[Ellie Holbert] (29:33 - 34:42)

Because I've seen these dynamics play out, and specifically on a technology team. So absolutely, I've seen that play out. I worked with a team, they were within a financial services organisation that had thousands of employees, and this team was tasked with a very high visibility, well-funded, key initiative, critical for the future of this organisation.

And the team that was assembled to conduct this work, it included some full-time employees from the organisation, but also a collection of different vendors. There were no formal teaming agreements in place. The team did not understand what they were there to do.

It was a critical risk. I assessed the effectiveness of this team and the health of the team. The average score of the assessment tool we used was a 2.4 out of 5 when I walked into this team. So it was critically low. We conducted an eight-week, what I call a team accelerator program, where we addressed the fundamentals. We assessed the health, we helped everyone understand what they are there to do, what everybody else was there to do.

We also found that the lowest score in that assessment was people feeling that they did not know each other well as people. That was a 2.2 out of 5. So we created personal canvases, and these were with technologists, and they were very happy to do this.

It's a simple PowerPoint slide about me and what I care about and my hobbies and interests. And during a standing meeting that was already in place, we just took 10 minutes and gave one person per week the floor to share about them, and we asked them questions. We also tried to carry through that connection on an ongoing basis by creating a Microsoft Teams water cooler channel.

So this was a channel just dedicated to chitchat, talking about weekend plans, travel plans, restaurant recommendations. And it enabled people to continue to get to know one another asynchronously, but it didn't clog critical business channels with fluff, if you will. But we made clear that we want to connect, and if you want, this is the channel to do that.

We also did cross-functional knowledge sharing sessions, where people were able to share their work in more detail and also make clear to the other teammates what helped them do their role very well, what was the information they need from others, and what role are they trying to play in enabling others to succeed. And those information sharing sessions were invaluable for this team. We also implemented retrospectives.

We started out every two weeks because we really needed to turn this team around. Eventually, we were able to hold back on that and do about once a month. So within this eight weeks, again, all of this was not expensive.

It was not groundbreaking. But we applied these practices, and we did it consistently. Eight weeks later, we assessed the health and effectiveness of the team, and the average score was 4.8 out of 5. And that was incredible within eight weeks. And these results, what I found so striking, they were sustained for such a long time. So when we talk about turnover, like you mentioned, this team had zero percent regrettable turnover.

And that was sustained for almost two years. So for two years, not a single person left the team that the team wanted to retain. Not only did they have incredible retention of top performers, the team also accelerated their delivery because they were communicating so effectively.

They were surfacing risks and dependencies very early on. So they were able to complete a critical initiative six months ahead of schedule. This team also, I love the employee engagement scores.

That stands out to me. We were able to achieve 95 percent employee engagement for 18 months. And then vendors that were supporting this team, they saw an increase of 11x in their revenue because they were performing so strongly that they grew, their account grew in this organization.

And then the C-suite recognized this team as the top performing team in the enterprise. Other teams were reaching out to this team, trying to understand what they were doing differently. And a critical initiative that this team was responsible for, the C-suite funded them at 20 percent more than they even asked for because they felt that they were doing so well, they wanted to invest heavily in this team.

So these are shocking results for most organizational effectiveness consultants. I added up the financial benefit of all of these, all of this value add, and I found that across an 18-month period, these efforts enabled 4.5 million dollars of added value, essentially out of thin air. There were some consulting fees associated with this work, of course, but even taking those fees into account, this organization saw a 45x return on their consulting fees.

And you don't see 45x in business hardly ever. I mean, 2x would be great, 3x is great. But I kid you not, I'm so passionate about this work because the results that I have seen, creating 45 million dollars of value out of thin air, everyone on this team, they loved being on this team, they said this was their favorite team they worked on.

It's so simple, it's so basic, but the business results are absolutely shocking.

[Andy Goram] (34:43 - 35:34)

Yeah, I mean, this stuff sort of makes my heart sing because I think some of the solutions to some of this disconnection and team malfunction are far simpler than other people would have you believe. I suspect a lot of the answers sit within the team themselves if they're just engaged and asked about what do we need to do, how do we improve this. I guess a couple of things I would ask you to help me evangelize about this stuff is because regardless of those numbers, some cynical people will still be sitting there going, really?

45x based on some like Tinder profiling within the business and sharing some stuff about yourself and talking more and having communicated. Really? And I want to say yes, really.

So help me out here. That's the crux of it, right?

[Ellie Holbert] (35:35 - 36:56)

Yes. I mean, I am asked this by some skeptical executives when I come into executive teams to support them. And essentially, yes, my answer is yes, this works.

I can say it in many different ways, but if the question is, is this true? Does it work? Yes, it does.

And I would say as well, it's not even a question of how we can add more value. Organizations are leaving money on the table by not addressing these problems today. And especially in our current economic environment, so many teams are being asked to do a lot more with a lot less.

Headcounts have been drastically reduced in most organizations. And I am of the opinion, based on the evidence and what I have seen to be true, is that this is the only value left that has not yet been unlocked more broadly. There is value and human potential sitting within organizations completely untapped because of these very core fundamentals.

And so for leaders that are skeptical of this, the proof is in the pudding. You improve these fundamentals, you will see profitability as a result. And I would argue this is probably your faster path to profitability than a shiny new ball.

[Andy Goram] (36:57 - 38:14)

Yeah, I think, well, I mean, that's why I ended up jumping out of the work that I was doing in doing my own thing for that very reason. I just believe there is so much latent potential in the vast majority of people sitting in their jobs or doing whatever they're doing in their venues, just untapped. No one has even asked a question of them.

No one has even attempted to engage more than the role they're performing, how else they can contribute. And I think as humans, I think genuinely most of us, we want to contribute something. We want to feel like we're doing something, like we're making a difference somewhere.

I would like to ask you a little question just on the case study there, in terms of the role of momentum in making these things happen and how things kind of grow. Because I suspect in there, we would have had, in all the communication stuff you talk about that team, I guess there would have been some members of the team right at the front of that momentum curve, like, yes, we should do this and let's crack on. And they were right behind it.

And maybe some others who were sitting on the fence going, well, we'll have a little look. Let's see what's happening. Did you experience that?

Did that sort of play a part in the momentum? Was it the fact that you find those first followers who really get it, and they're the ones that stimulate and encourage everybody else?

[Ellie Holbert] (38:15 - 39:57)

There were a few critical elements of why this was so successful. Something that's unique is number one, every single person on that team was new to the organization. They did not have an existing reputation or relationship network or organizational inertia holding them back from trying something new.

They simply had not been there long enough to know how stagnant performance was in other places. So the newness of the team worked in their favor. It somewhat did not work in their favor in terms of organizational context and being successful in that aspect.

It worked in their favor in terms of their willingness to experiment simply because there was no status quo for most people on this team. The leader was also very invested in these strategies. And that's key.

When you try to make a change like this, people look to the leaders to see how palatable are these concepts to these leaders. And if leaders show an ounce of dismissiveness or resistance, you will not see the results that you could see. That leader was completely bought into these concepts.

I was able to coach him and advise him individually on how to model these specific observable leadership behaviors over time that would enable this performance. And so because of that, those were the two elements that I think helped this team be very successful. But it's still possible to achieve this, even when you're working against organizational inertia, even if leaders are maybe just a little bit resistant to some of these concepts.

I have found that with enough proof points, typically a few retrospectives and finding some actual data to support these assertions, you can still achieve these results.

[Andy Goram] (39:57 - 40:49)

I'm with you. I believe you. I've felt it and I've seen it.

I just think a lot of people struggling with this false badge of remote and hybrid, I think it's because it's new to a lot of places. But the stories you've told, the organizations you worked before were doing this before it became a thing that everyone else is trying to do and making a success of it. We can learn a lot from those things.

I think the leadership role here cannot be underplayed. The whole point about pattern spotting and wayfinding, all that sort of stuff is critical. Your point here about leadership commitment, even if a team does have baggage, even if a team maybe doesn't have the belief, it's down to the leader to show real commitment.

And sometimes belligerence to annoy people to say, hey, this is where we're going to go. This is what we're going to do. And I think that can set a huge tone of expectation going forward.

[Ellie Holbert] (40:50 - 41:47)

Absolutely. And without that, it simply asks too much of our people to really put their neck on the line and take a bold risk to go against the culture. Often politically, that is not advantageous for most members of a team.

So it really is up to the leader to do this. And I would say if you're on a team where you see potential for improvements, you want to be a part of the change. Your leader is not necessarily proactively wayfinding in this capacity.

I find that talking about future value that can be added is a more politically safe method than necessarily saying we have a problem here. This environment is not safe. Certain things are not effective.

That can cause a bit of a churn. It's a calculated risk for sure. In my experience, if people want to make a change, but they're concerned about the politics, I find that focusing on unlocking the value on your team is a more effective route.

[Andy Goram] (41:48 - 42:30)

That's definitely talking leadership language right there. Absolutely value. Ellie, it feels like I've blinked and I've lost some time, but I've gained so much within that time.

We have come to the part of the show I like to call sticky notes. This is where I'm putting you on the spot to say this is fab, but can you leave us with three simple nuggets to take away that we could fit on little sticky notes and maybe metaphorically stick them on our screens to give us a bit of a reminder. If we're thinking about your best pieces of advice for providing these enabling systems and approaches that we've talked about today for people to work in and to be of their best, what three bits of advice would you leave us with?

[Ellie Holbert] (42:30 - 43:35)

Great question. I would say address three fundamentals. One, define what everybody is supposed to do.

Make sure everyone knows what they're responsible for, that they understand what the others are responsible for. Revisit that on a weekly basis until it is very crisp and then revisit it a minimum once a quarter moving forward. Number two, define the north star of the team's efforts.

Clarify what is that definition of done. Be very clear on what the team is trying to produce, what is the expected manner of producing it, when are they complete. And then the third, create just one consistent way to improve from the inside of the team.

I would recommend create a retrospective, reflect on how the team works together, identify improvements, and more importantly, act on them and then do another retrospective and see how it went. If you do these three things, which are free, you don't even need a consultant to do it, you are going to see an incredible transformation on a team, most likely within a couple months.

[Andy Goram] (43:36 - 44:07)

I love that. And for goodness sake, do not underplay the act on them element of that. All the talk in the world is amazing.

Acting actually makes things happen. I love it. Ellie, I've loved talking to you today.

It's been so wonderful to hear the things I believe in the normal world of work absolutely apply in the world of remote. And you've shared some wonderful things. You've shared some incredible numbers in terms of how this stuff works.

If people would like to find out a bit more about you and the work that you do, where can they track you down, Ellie?

[Ellie Holbert] (44:08 - 45:00)

Absolutely. You can find me on LinkedIn. I will put the link in the show notes for you, Andy.

Please come say hello. I am just so grateful that in this crazy world we can connect with one another across the globe and help each other create more healthy, effective workplaces for all. So please do come say hello on LinkedIn.

And then if you would like to apply these insights to your organization, I have a complimentary assessment. It's called the team health assessment. I'll provide that link for the show notes.

It takes a couple minutes. You'll receive an overall score. You'll receive a score against some key dimensions of effective teams and some very specific guidance to support you moving forward.

And I always meet with the people that complete that assessment to talk through the results completely complimentary. I just want to help everybody make a better workplace for all. And I love to find my co-conspirators in doing this work.

[Andy Goram] (45:00 - 45:07)

I love it. I love the work that you're doing. It's been an absolute pleasure to meet you and get to speak with you.

Thank you so much for coming on, Ellie.

[Ellie Holbert] (45:08 - 45:10)

Thank you, Andy. Really appreciate it.

[Andy Goram] (45:10 - 45:12)

Okay, you take care. All the best with your work.

[Ellie Holbert] (45:12 - 45:13)

Thank you so much.

[Andy Goram] (45:14 - 45:52)

Okay, everyone. Well, that was Ellie Holbert. And if you'd like to find a little bit more out about her or any of the things that we've talked about today, please go ahead and check out the show notes.

So that concludes today's episode. I hope you've enjoyed it, found it interesting, and heard something maybe that will help you become a stickier, more successful business from the inside going forward. If you have, please like, comment and subscribe.

It really helps. I'm Andy Goram, and you've been listening to the Sticky from the Inside podcast. Until next time, thanks for listening.

Andy Goram is the owner of Bizjuicer, an employee engagement and workplace culture consultancy that's on a mission to help people have more fulfilling work lives. He's also the host of the Sticky From The Inside Podcast, which talks to experts on these topics from around the world.