Confidentiality

The value (and otherwise) of public discourse.   

From Day 1, we decided not to put our Culture Reviews into the public arena. 

No press releases. No public discourse. No media chats with us about the details. 

There’s not a day goes by, when someone learns who we work with and the impact we’ve had over time, that they don’t say ‘put all those impressive logos on your site’. 

It’s tempting, but we go back to why we made the decision. 

There were five reasons why we do it this way. They remain true over time. 

Here are the five simple reasons. 

1. Trust & safety

When you look at people, culture and leadership, you can only do so with deep trust. You have to create as safe an environment as possible, for small things and big things, never assuming you can tell the difference. 

While we never stop an organisation from self-selecting to put the review into the public arena, organisations and individuals can trust that we will not. They know that we will tell them the truth – no embellishments, no sugar coating, no catastrophising – and we will be clear on accountabilities, escalations, and what needs to happen to 

address problems, risks and challenges. 

2. Not our stories to tell

This is true of both individuals and whole organisations. 

You can learn from people’s stories, and aggregate common experiences into an understanding of a system, but the individual stories are not ours to tell. 

Following a trauma-informed approach, we will listen, learn, and support – during our work and after – but their stories remain theirs to tell – their way and as they’re ready. 

This is true whether the story is traumatic or positive, challenging or something to be proud of. 

3. Where the work gets done

While we appreciate the value of public discourse to get legislation or 

policy changed or written, evidence says that legislation and policies 

don’t change culture. People do. 

While creating an environment where people are safe to tell and hear the truth, we’re also creating space people to be learn, to be accountable and to make change. We know the best way to do this, is to get the data and understanding of the truth into the hands of the people in the organisation, so they can get the work done. Public discourse can be a distraction, and requires resources to be refocused away from the work, and into PR and reputation.  We’re not in the reputation business. We’re in the improving 

culture business. Reputation improves when the work is done. 

4. Its almost always ‘system’ not ‘one bad person’

For too long, poor data and approaches to measuring and understanding culture, have meant that public discourse is ‘bad’ versus ‘good’ cultures, ‘bad’ versus ‘good’ leaders, and the outcries are often for one public hanging rather than genuine change.

While there are, and must be, consequences for poor behaviour, culture is almost always a system. A bad culture will remain long after that one individual is hung. 

As we say, ‘we’ve never seen a perfect culture’ so you can always find faults, and ‘even bad cultures have some redeeming strengths’ so you can find something to work with. 

You need to play the strengths, take the opportunities, address the challenges, and mitigate the risks concurrently to create a truly great culture. 

5. Real change take times

Real change takes longer than a media cycle.  We want to grow people, culture and organisations. It’s the why of our work. To see all three lift and improve. 

That takes time. 

Longer than the hasty response to the hurt of keyboard warriors. 

Doing this work is about getting timing right. Not too slow, so things don’t change. Not so fast, you miss things, or take hasty actions that aren’t effective. 

In Summary: 

Public discourse is important for some change. It moves legislation and public policy. 

But its not the only path to improve an organisation. 

Real culture change is slower than any media cycle. 

Culture improves when the people inside an organisation decide to do the work. 

Because we measure culture longitudinally, we know that this is right. 

Time and again, the cultures we measure improve significantly over time. 

The arm’s length public scrutiny can start when they’re ready to tell the story of where they came from and the work it took to get where they are now. 

The planned compromise: 

Many of our clients are proud of their culture work, and keen to tell their story. 

With permission, and in partnership, we have published a few case studies in the past. 

We’re now working to bring more of the work into the public arena, but we’ll do it in ways where we retain the integrity of the work, protect every commitment we’ve made to individuals and organisations, and with the guardrails of the five key reasons.