# The secret of culture (it's simpler than you think)

- **Episode:** [160](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/160.md) (2025-01-07)
- **Type:** other
- **Tags:** workplace-culture, simplicity, culture-secrets
- **Time:** 30:16–35:36 (start 1816s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/160?t=1816](https://truthliesandwork.com/160?t=1816)

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[30:16] Leanne Elliott: It is that simple. I mean, it sounds silly. I mean, you think, oh no, it can't be that. It is. That's what that— who's your culture as an employee? Your culture is your boss and your work colleagues that you see every week, right? That's your— it's not the chief exec. The chief exec has his or her own team. That's their culture. You know, they talk about a— it's like the National Health Service in the UK. Everybody talks about it like we've got to do this with the NHS as if it's Uh, uh, uh, an oil tanker heading toward a port, right? And now we're gonna do that and it's gonna shift the whole war. They don't think about it as a flotilla of tons of little ships, i.e., hospitals. And you say, if you're smart, you would say, if you were the head of the NHS, do you see that port over there? How you get to that port, I don't care, because you have different demographics than the, than another boat in the flotilla. So you decide how you're going to get there. You determine your navigation toward that port, given the context of your demographics, the problems you face, and everything else. And that's what it's all about. So for me, in an organization, The culture that affects you the most are your work group, your team. Those are the ones who affect you and the line manager. And so the more we can get that good communication within everybody there who feels safe and comfortable and talking about issues and problems, the better. And so it's not, I don't think it's that complicated. It's only complicated because we don't have enough of those people who are in managerial roles who have that competency
[32:16] Al Elliott: I love it. I love it. My wife is going to be so devastated she's not part of this conversation. She just loves all this kind of thing. In fact, I think she always, if you listen to any one of our podcast episodes, she'll always say at one point, it's the manager, it's down to the line manager. So in the report, you identified there were 4 dimensions to financial wellbeing in the workplace. I've got written down here, reward, Reward and benefits, in-work progression, education and support. Can you just take me through these? Is there any kind of order we should be looking at these in?
[32:48] Leanne Elliott: Not really. I think it's about, in terms of financial wellbeing, it's about partly your career. It's about the rewards you get. By the way, there are psychological rewards as well as financial rewards. Right? In other words, if you think about this, I might be asked to go somewhere. I might be recruited for a job. It's a job I actually would like to do, but they don't pay me half of what I currently get paid. So that's a career issue, but it's also a financial issue for me. I had that happen to me once where I got offered a job at a very prestigious just university or, you know, much earlier in my, in my career and everything else. But it wasn't gonna pay me very much. And I had 4 kids, or I can't remember at that time, maybe it was only 2. I can't remember. I just can't remember. It was ages and ages ago. Okay. So I decided to stay with the money, but I could do my own thing where I was anyway. So what do I need to, you know, those kinds of issues come up all the time. And that determines, that affects your financial circumstance. Say I would've taken the job at this place, but ended up ending up with 4 kids. Probably would've stayed with 2 at the time, but say I would've, 4, that would've been, that would've cost me, caused me a lot of problems. Maybe my wife, oh, my wife actually was working at the time anyway, but let's say she wasn't. She may then have to go to work. So
[34:27] Al Elliott: Yeah
[34:28] Leanne Elliott: All those kinds of issues about your career, your rewards. And there are a lot of rewards you get from a job which are not necessarily financial, and you might want to stick with the job, but it causes financial complications for you if you do. So a lot of people can say that, I'd love to do that, but I can't do that because it doesn't pay me enough money. So I think all those 4 kind of constructs, you know, just are interactive, interdependent, and they affect your financial wellbeing
[35:09] Al Elliott: Fabulous. Well, I'll definitely link to that as well in the show notes. I just want to kind of finish this off by talking a little bit more about The signs that I'm not doing it right. So if there's a leader or business owner listening and they're thinking, I've not really thought about this before, what are some of the signs that they're not addressing this problem? Okay