Erica D'Eramo 0:05

Hello and welcome to the Two Piers podcast. I'm your host Erica D'Eramo. And today we have special guest joining us, Kirsty Bashforth. Kirsty is the Chief People and Culture Officer at Delinian limited, an information services company. She also sits on two FTSE 350 boards and is the chair of the Northern Superchargers cricket franchise team in the UK. She spent 24 years at bp starting on the oil trading floor in a career of general commercial roles based in the US, Denmark, Belgium and the UK, culminating in leading the culture reset of the company following the Deepwater Horizon incident in the Gulf of Mexico. She's the author of Culture Shift published by Bloomsbury in 2018. And she specializes in organizational culture, behavioral economics, change management, and communications.

Erica D'Eramo 1:03

Welcome to the podcast Kirsty. Thanks for joining us.

Kirsty Bashforth 1:06

It's great to be here. Nice to reconnect.

Erica D'Eramo 1:10

So tell us a little bit I mean, I just, you know, shared your kind of recap of your biography with listeners. But how did you arrive where you are? What's the Kirsty origin story?

Kirsty Bashforth 1:22

I think it's it's always easy to post rationalize and say this is how I planned it all. So I, first of all, I'd say I didn't plan it all. But as I look back, you can see some patterns and some themes. So I've thought about this a bit. And there's about four things, I think that have helped me arrive where I am. But the first thing is, I'm from a very small island, a place called the Isle of Man, which has a sort of deep and unique history, a mixture of Viking and Celtic. I went to a tiny girls only school. And so what did those do? What did those two things do? They gave me a voice and identity, which is very strong. I have no sense of subjects at school that were for girls or for boys, there were just subjects that you could choose to take. So I had a chance to explore them all. And because I was from a very small island, my focus was very much on beyond borders. And what's out there in the bigger world, very passionate about my island, but what's out in the bigger world. So really fascinated by different cultures. So that's a first thing. The second thing, I'm one of two siblings, I have an older sister who was extremely intellectually intelligent. And I didn't want to fall short. So I became very competitive with my sister, including chasing her all the way to Cambridge University where she did maths. I couldn't do that. But I did economics. A third thing is both my parents worked, one as a teacher, one was a physiotherapist that... I say "was." They are. Work was very important, but we had no money. And so predictable finances were an important thing. And actually risk aversion and stability. You know, it wasn't that any of that was sort of rammed down my throat. It was just it was the context I was working in. So I ended up doing this quite traditional route. I went to high school. Then I went straight to university and did an undergrad and then I went straight into work. I didn't take any years off. I didn't tramp the world, I didn't sort of go without finance. I wanted to do the traditional thing. So and I went to work for a big company bp, which I never thought I'd leave. I worked very hard. I always did my best. So quite a traditional background. And then bringing it up to, "Okay, so what happened then?" I did 24 years at bp and I absolutely loved it. I went straight into a completely male dominated environment because my first role was on the trading floor. But I found that I held my ground and I actually enjoyed it. And maybe that's because of the school background I had, meant that I just sort of laughed at the stereotypes and went, "This is quite odd," and also decided still that good work would get rewarded. Maybe that was naive, but I just kept, you know, working hard and hoping I would shine. And I would just take no bullshit. If it wasn't fair, and I had the evidence, it wasn't fair. I would stand up and say it. I just didn't, couldn't tolerate any anything like that. As a result, I progressed fast. People rated me because I delivered so I was reliable. You could always, I would always get the job done. And I managed to do it in quite a forthright way. But maintaining relationships because they've always been so fundamental to me. And I do think still, it's it really helps if people enjoy working with you. That doesn't mean you have to be a pushover. But don't underestimate the value of people enjoying working with you. And so I ended up in bp as one of the top 10 women globally in 2015 by the time I left. I'd also I also went for roles that weren't traditional ones. I wasn't an engineer, I wasn't a chemist, I wasn't a lawyer. I wasn't an accountant. I wasn't a geologist. But I was very good at relationships and connecting and seeing patterns. And understanding and being fascinated in cultural contexts. And bp was a completely global company, cultural context. And I was also very numerous and very fast and sharp. And that underpins it all. You can't just be good at relationships and not have any of that. That culminated, in me taking actually the one big career risk of bp, which I mean, risk wasn't really a risk. But in my head, it was, the role where I led the cultural reset after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, because bp needed a cultural reset, and I put myself right in there saying, "This is the work that needs to happen, this is how I would do it." And because I think I had a background of delivery, and I was pretty damn senior, and three or four people on the top executive team had seen me work, and I've worked with them across a number of years. You know, they went for it, and I went for it. But I had to be quite pigheaded because I was offering an approach that was very different from the traditional approach. And, you know, you will know, everybody's an expert on culture. You can't be an expert on accountancy or geology, but everybody's an expert on culture. So I had to hold my ground quite quite firmly. So I left that work for three years, which was a complete privilege, an emotionally and mentally exhausting privilege, but it was a complete privilege. And that role included the diversity and inclusion agenda, which was so much part of the cultural one. So that's how I arrived up until my origins of the real background of me, from which then I left bp and continued to do a number of other things.

Erica D'Eramo 7:03

So when we talk about kind of this work around culture, around change, and you know, how elements like diversity or inclusion, tie into that, what drew you to that work? Like, what made it important to you? And then kind of, I think springboarded you into some other, you know, like the next trajectory of what you took on after bp?

Kirsty Bashforth 7:29

Yeah. So if I come at this in three things, one, why did I leave bp in the first place since I loved it so much? How did I end up doing what I'm doing today? And and why is that important to me? I love variety. I'm fascinated by what makes people tick. absolutely fascinated. And I know that the mindset, the energy, the focus, you have absolutely underpins delivery, you can't just get there with a theoretical strategy. I'm obsessed with history and geopolitics. And I'm also completely committed to every human being has a brilliance in there, whether we know it ourselves for what it is or not it. It's there. Everybody has one.

Erica D'Eramo 8:15

Yeah.

Kirsty Bashforth 8:16

And once I've completed my dream role at bp and woken up to the fact that, actually that was my dream role, it was a Kirsty-shaped role. Any other role I was looking at a bp was less appetizing, it was sort of less me. And I would have had to wait years for the next move up. And all of the stuff I love, the variety and what makes people tick, the all of that that was in the previous role. I sort of couldn't not do again, in a new role. And I couldn't find a good way to get comfortable with doing a role that was the traditional role, that I just sort of have to wait for the next move up. I couldn't get I couldn't get comfortable with it. It surprised me. So I took some time to sort of mourn my future career at bp and, and, and parted company with the company. And it was I mean, wonderfully mutual decision. And it all worked brilliantly. And I'm still in touch with lots of people. So I didn't leave under a cloud, just I came to terms the fact I'd had my best role. So how did I end up doing what I'm doing today? I was already on a couple of boards and had found that that work really, really suited me. It played to all the things I loved and all my passions and strengths. At the same time, I set up my own business, advising on culture and wrote a book to ensure I got my knowledge down that I'd learned at bp because I was offering a different approach and I could see that it worked. And my approach was about not spending money and so I could see that that could be an enticement for people to go, "Oh, great. She can come in and advise us without us having to spend loads of money." And I'm also not good at only being moderately busy. I know that. So, at the same time, I've gone back into some exec roles as well for a short number of years at a time, with specific remit. So that's how I've ended up running my own business, doing some advice, being on boards, doing exec roles, and just all of that variety, being really busy, working with global organizations, love it. And why is this important to me? Culture is finally coming out of being a soft issue and the shadow that's around that, in people's minds and being properly recognized in all business angles as core and mainstream. And whether that's ESG has driven that or younger generations, deciding that is a core factor in where they want to work and how they want to work, whether it's regulatory issues, whatever, it's becoming more mainstream. And I've lots of experience now on that. And I can add value by deploying my knowledge. And that's personally satisfying, as well as rewarding. And it's, it's really satisfying, after all of the pushing and shoving and nudging of my career to try and help people recognize the absolute foundational commercial value from focusing on their culture to be proved right. And I know it's not very humble to say that, but let's be honest, it is very nice for your own self confidence and self, and your edification that actually what you've been pushing and knew was right, is being proved validated. So that's partly why I work and I do also, I just love understanding what makes people tick. And I find it endlessly fascinating.

Erica D'Eramo 11:51

It always cracks me up when we think about this in terms of like, soft versus hard. And you mentioned, you know, you didn't do engineering, and although, you know, economics is pretty is pretty technical math heavy. But I there's some area under the curve in there. But um, I think that I mean, was it like, it was Peter Drucker that said, culture eats strategy for breakfast, like we we've known for a long time, intellectually, that culture is important. But I think you're right, that organizations are understanding that this is, well, many organizations, at least probably not all, are understanding, really the role that culture plays in sustainability, for their long term results that nothing else they do will work if they haven't figured out their culture?

Kirsty Bashforth 12:39

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It will drag you down, it will will, you know, come back and bite you. It can you can, you know, limp along a bit. But underneath it will come and get you if you're not focusing on it. Absolutely.

Erica D'Eramo 12:51

Yeah, absolutely. So, where do you see in this work that you do and have been doing with, you know, a multitude of organizations, where do you typically see companies or organizations struggling with this concept?

Speaker 1 13:10

A lot of them, throw money at it, and give it to somebody as a project. And that is a that is a first sort of wrong thing to do. Because the culture is the is the culmination of beliefs, mindsets, practices, habits, behaviors, acts, decisions, that in the organization we make together. So outsourcing it to somebody else as a project and throwing money at it is not going to "fix it," in inverted commas. So I think that's the first one. Throwing money at it is the wrong way to approach it. Treating it like a project was swimlanes. And by it's done by a certain timeline is also the wrong way to think about it. And I think some companies struggle with it, because the leadership, the top leadership isn't yet comfortable, capable or willing to look in the mirror and say, we probably cast the longer shadow. And what we're doing is probably amplified more than others, and therefore, perhaps we're the issue. And as I say, whether its capability or lack of comfort, or just refusal to admit it. That's where companies really struggle as well. I think another place they really struggle is they give it to HR. And yes, HR is, are the people people in terms of accountabilities, but you can't just give it to HR again to run it because that's that's sort of deploying a sense that it's a project internally. So yes, HR are fundamental because they've got eyes and ears all the time on the people aspects. But really it has to be found at the top. And the person who coordinates it is more like an air traffic controller or an orchestra conductor. But it's the orchestra who's playing, not the conductor. So it's everybody who has to come together to shift things. So those are a few of some of the ways that organizations struggle. And finally, they don't give it enough time. They think, "Okay, in six months time, we'll have a new culture." That's not how it works. It takes years, I would say, three performance cycles before you can say new habits are embedded or start to be embedded.

Erica D'Eramo 15:37

Yeah, it's almost like, it's almost like remediating, like, if we turn this into a garden analogy, right, you're like remediating the entire ground that you're growing things and like, you're changing the soil composition, you're like, you know, from the literal ground up. So it's not a matter of trimming stuff back, or maybe changing out the plants, like you're fundamentally changing the composition of the organization and how it operates throughout. So

Kirsty Bashforth 16:04

Absolutely. And as you know, you can't just fundamentally shift, flip shift a garden like that you can't take three months time, it's done well, there's seasons, there's cycles, there's, there's an ecosystem you're talking about here. And that's the same with human behavior and habits. I mean, how long does it take us to shift habits, and that's one person. And when you've got 1000s, coming together, all of whom have got different ambitions, backgrounds, perceptions, mindsets, capabilities. It is that old analogy, herding cats, and it is pretty darn difficult to do. It can be done. Absolutely. But don't expect perfection and don't measure it for perfection.

Erica D'Eramo 16:49

You mentioned too you know, sometimes there's this resistance, you know, from senior leadership to maybe look in the mirror, that cognitive dissonance, always a hurdle that can be really tricky to identify. I mean, to throw another name out there, it was, maybe it was Upton Sinclair that said, like, it's really hard to get a man to understand something that his his career, you know, depends on him not understanding or his like, you know, finances require him to not understand. So do you feel comfortable sharing a little bit more about like, where you've seen that go well?

Kirsty Bashforth 17:24

It's a well, certainly at bp, it was... We did, otherwise, we wouldn't have got the work done. But we took a while to do it. So rather than piling into writing some new words and issuing them in the first month, we actually spent, myself with the exec team, we spent a number of sessions across actually a year, behind closed doors going "Well, what do we really think the issues are? What what fundamentally do we think we've got to get right? What, what are the real priorities this company must have? What is much, is precious and must be kept?" And we spend a lot of time looking at the history of the culture, as well as the composition of who was here now. And the makeup of the different background organizations before we came to some new words. And the words, by the time we've done that conversation, which sounds very simple, it sounds like we just sat around chatting around the fire. We didn't. It was very structured with lots of sessions. But by the time we came to distilling that into a set of words that the organization could hold by, those words came pretty simply because we'd had all the conversations. Now, yeah, there were times when people wanted to go faster. But it took a lot of introspection, which I tried to hold us longer than people were comfortable with, to making sure we really had had that introspection. And, you know, I commend the leaders for doing that. Because it was a really difficult time. I mean, for everybody, not well, you know, everybody everywhere, it was a very difficult time.

Erica D'Eramo 19:21

Yes.

Kirsty Bashforth 19:23

And it was, it was not easy for leaders to take two or three hours out of, you know, a time and say, "Right, we're gonna spend time thinking about ourselves." There's a natural tendency at that point to go "There's loads of stuff to fix!"

Erica D'Eramo 19:37

Yeah.

Kirsty Bashforth 19:38

But they did. And in the end, I think, you know, the organization would reflect that that felt like the right culture for the right time. And it stood the test of time.

Erica D'Eramo 19:52

Yeah. I want to just reflect on something there because it's, there's this interesting tension that change is almost always underpinned by some sense of urgency, right? In order to have successful change implementation, you need that sense of urgency. And so how many organizations, for bp, it was Deepwater Horizon, if you look back at, you know, 2020, and some of the changes that companies were facing in 2020, due to like social awareness, due to the pandemic, all of these things, these moments of urgency come and there can be this kind of pressure to act quickly. And what I'm hearing you talk about is resisting the pressure to act quickly. And instead, make sure you're acting thoughtfully, while also, you know, making use of that urgency in the moment, because that's what's driving some of the change. And it can also drive some, you know, knee jerk reactions, perhaps.

Kirsty Bashforth 20:49

Yeah, and I think the trick there is to deal with some of the urgent stuff that has to be dealt with maybe more tactical, and to find and make the right space to just take a little bit more time on the strategic because that's the stuff that's going to shape long term into the future. And that's, it's really, it's really difficult. Yeah, partly, that's why I say the, it was a massive privilege, but also a mentally and emotionally exhausting privilege. Because I, my role was to make sure we did this work really well, which meant I was trying to pull back the sort of, "But we've got to go faster. And we've got to get this stuff out there!" And there's sort of one of you trying to hold back the waves, and then you go and find other people who will help you do that. So yeah, I think the balance is, you've got this load of stuff you have to do urgently. And there's there's other stuff that you've got to work out what is that other stuff that you must not just rush into, but must take time to think about. It's tough.

Erica D'Eramo 22:03

Yeah, that triage. Yeah.

Kirsty Bashforth 22:05

There's no, there's no exact right answer. Yeah, there is. What's the triage stuff? And what's the stuff that is for your long term health?

Erica D'Eramo 22:13

Yeah, yep. Yeah, I love that. So you've covered some items. When you kind of talked about the challenges that organizations see, you dispelled some myths or misconceptions, I love dispelling myths and misconceptions, or like highlighting where people make assumptions. What, what do you see as some of the common misconceptions when it comes to culture change, or this this, you know, endeavor?

Kirsty Bashforth 22:39

There's lots, so I'll, rather than taking a week, I'll share a few.

Erica D'Eramo 22:45

A couple highlights.

Kirsty Bashforth 22:46

A couple of highlights. So I think we've got about five quick ones. People, there's often people who are quite grumpy about culture and make lots of noise about it. But don't necessarily dismiss those people as, they're culture deniers. They can often be uncomfortable, because they're not sure how to fix it. And they like precision. "So if I'm not sure, if I haven't got a checklist, I'm gonna shout about it."

Erica D'Eramo 23:09

Engineers, maybe.

Kirsty Bashforth 23:10

And they may feel uncomfortable not being an expert, it may feel quite exposing, or they find change personally uncomfortable. So just just don't assume people to dismiss culture or hate it. There may be other reasons. The second one is, don't spend all your focus on the people who are noisy detractors about culture. Because there's a, I find this, the population of any organization splits into three those that I would say 1/3, who love change, focus on culture, yep, point and click. There's a third who are uncomfortable, noisy, grumpy deniers, whatever, there's a bunch of difference in there, as I've just said, and there's third in the middle who are silent, spend a lot of time with the Silent Ones, go find out why they're quiet, because you can often find that they are waiting to be pointed, directed, find confidence, because they've seen somebody else move and they are a huge bunch of often untapped resource. The third one is, and this counts with inclusion, equity and diversity as well. Yes, there are some bigots out there. But often people are scared to use the wrong language. And so they don't talk about it at all and don't face into it at all. And then that turns out that they are viewed as against something. And because people are avoiding it because they don't want to be wrong. And I found that very much in in the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion conversation that people would not give feedback or would not dive into a topic. And in the end, somebody who wasn't performing had never received any feedback and then in the end, goes, but this is unfair. And you've sort of created your own your own problems. So dive in, try it, hold your hands up, say, you know, "I know I'm using the wrong word, but..." So that's the third one. Two more... Another misconception, myth is culture is about being nice. There may be some cultures that are nice at work, but it's not about that. It's about being clear and consistent and aligned with strategy and following through on the behavioral expectations that you need for this business to be successful. It's not about being nice, it can be pretty hard edged. And the final one is, is culture is is not about defining the fanciest words, the most unique words that make us look different. It's, you can use the simplest, the most dull, the most often used words. But it's about everyone in your organization, being able to make sense of that, simply recall the key expectations, and know how they fit into their daily work life. So it makes sense. So make sense to everybody. So those are five sort of common myths, I would say.

Kirsty Bashforth 23:34

I think that the environment of an international, you know, energy company is an interesting, not experiment, but sort of a Petri dish here for looking at embedding culture. Because really, in that case, this messaging needed to go all the way through from headquarters in a city to multiple countries, regions, cultures, facilities, types of facilities, each with its own microculture. And each, each being able to look at what this meant, and interpret it and apply it day to day and be able to, like you said, listed off and how it, you know, with without having to think too hard about it and explain how it impacted how they turn a wrench that day, right, how they what that means for their safety when they wake up in the morning, floating on a facility in the middle of the ocean. And so I think that that's a pretty unique situation. But it makes it that much more applicable to pretty much any other situation you can think of.

Kirsty Bashforth 27:23

Yeah, no, absolutely. If you can sort of, I hesitate using the word solve it, because that sounds like it's an equation. But if you can make progress on it, in that sort of an organization where as you say, you've got so many different environments and micro cultures from a gas station to an offshore installation to a wind farm to an office environment to... Yeah, whatever.

Erica D'Eramo 27:45

A trading floor, right.

Kirsty Bashforth 27:47

And you can find common red thread, that is the lifeblood that goes through the organization, then you can probably, that approach will probably work for most organizations. Yes.

Erica D'Eramo 28:01

Yeah. And the piece too, I love how you really lean into this curiosity element and being effective, because I think that, you're right, everyone, sort of, I shouldn't say everyone, many people see culture, and they think like, I don't necessarily know what that means. Or the, you know, the engineers like me, or like, how, what, how does this affect my day to day, this is extra, it doesn't, you know, I don't need culture to be able to solve an equation and do my job. And yet, really, what we're doing is almost like a root cause failure analysis on hey, we don't have a situation here that's as effective as we need it to be. What are the root causes that are leading us to this? And what would be more effective in terms of how people interact with each other, and how they show up at work? And what the beliefs are that are driving these behaviors? So I mean, it fits perfectly with engineering, to be honest.

Kirsty Bashforth 28:55

Yeah. Because when you ask all those why's, why why why, why why it comes down to understanding behavior, ambition, rationale, consistency, all of this stuff, which is actually culture. Yes, the culmination of these thoughts, perceptions, commitment, understanding behaviors, actions, decisions, etc? Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of stuff.

Erica D'Eramo 29:22

Yeah. So in your, in your own words, like how would you? We could look at this two ways. What What would you say the costs are for organizations that don't tackle this and or, you know, the prize? If they do.

Kirsty Bashforth 29:39

So I think it, quite bluntly, the costs are, you know, ask yourself wherever the biggest corporate organization failures come from. It always comes down to, and you then see it in the media, "It's a failure of culture." So it's at the core of what goes right and what goes wrong in terms of delivery. So to me the the cost to an organization are, at some point, it will come and bite you, if you're not focusing on it, managing it and trying to align it ,culture and strategy, and taking it seriously. Whether that is it bites you in a mini way, whether it is a massive corporate crisis, it will bite you. And it is therefore holding back sustainable positive delivery. I do recognize it is hard to look in the mirror for leadership because it you know, it's often us who are making it not right, we're the problem. But we're also the solution. When you get it, right, it's not like everybody goes, "Oh, that's because of the culture." But it's, you're probably going to get more sustainable results for longer. And you will probably have better talent that you are able to attract or who actively want to come and work with you. Because something good is going on in there, whatever that or what is good is. And that works for all generations. That's not just younger generation saying I'm only going to make a choice to work somewhere because of the culture. Everybody wants to work somewhere that there's something good going on in there. It's a good feeling. We're humans, we quite enjoy this. So the, you'll never look at a company and say, "It's absolutely knocking out of the park, because it's culture." You're more likely to notice when it's not there. So it's quite hard. It's one of those things that you need to keep investing in all of the time. And you only really know it's not right when something really goes wrong.

Erica D'Eramo 31:53

It's ironic, too, because I think that the health, I think a healthy culture can look a lot of different ways, right? Like what works for one company might be very different from another company, we even see it just with like the oil majors, they are known to have very different cultures, and they attract certain people, right, who thrive in those cultures. I think that's that's great. And, oftentimes, a quote unquote, healthy culture will be characterized by like, flow of information. And so it might even look sometimes once you sort of got culture dialed in that you're hearing more, maybe you're hearing more complaints, maybe you're surfacing more issues. So that's kind of an interesting tension. But the alternative is that you don't surface those issues that they go underground that you don't hear them.

Kirsty Bashforth 32:42

I think that's spot on. The cultures that I would most worry about are the ones where everybody says it's perfect, and there's no problems and everything's absolutely fine. To me, that is the moment when you should be feeling the most vulnerable about your culture. It's, it's almost when you become sort of unconsciously complacent. And you need to start again, going, "Okay, what could go wrong? Why are we not hearing things?" Because nothing is ever perfect. And that's...

Erica D'Eramo 33:10

Beware the all green...

Kirsty Bashforth 33:11

Yeah, I mean, that's not me being a pessimist. I'm a massive optimist. But I'm always at my most uncomfortable in a culture when everybody says everything is fine, because it clearly isn't.

Erica D'Eramo 33:26

Right? It's like the emperor has no clothes or in operations, we always used to say like, beware of the all green dashboard, right? That's the biggest red flag is the all green dashboard.

Kirsty Bashforth 33:38

That's not reality.

Erica D'Eramo 33:40

Something is wrong in the in the system.

Kirsty Bashforth 33:43

I'd rather see all reds and know what I've got to fix that actually see all greens, and I'd be expecting to believe it. Because I don't believe

Erica D'Eramo 33:50

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So what would you say, you know, just kind of looking at the entirety of some of your really in depth experience here, your wisdom, what what are some of the key takeaways that you would want listen listeners to, to walk away from this episode with?

Kirsty Bashforth 34:09

How about five? First one, you would expect me to say this culture is core and is going mainstream. So get focused on it. It's not going away. Second one, there will always be people who push back on it. Some of them just don't get it, but often it's because it's a craft rather than a science and people are uncomfortable as there isn't a simple checklist to fix it. Third one, think really hard about how to approach it. Never just throw money at it. Fourth one, it has to start with the willing commitment of the most senior leadership and they have to be willing to look in the mirror first or else you won't get going well. And the final one, I would like people to think about is really something we haven't talked about at all, or I haven't raised, but it's about yourself at work. And it's because this impacts the culture, really, if you can spend time understanding what makes you tick yourself, and when, where and how you work at your best, because that will have an impact on your performance, but also how you perform with others. You know, everyone is different, whether you're a night owl or a skylark, whether you like to work with others or on your own, whether you like a familiar environment, or you like to be traveling in different environments every day. And if you can, and if you're in a role, where you have that space or ability, as you learn more about yourself, then try to sort out your diary, and priorities, according to, for want of a better word, your bio rhythms and what makes you tick, because it can and will make the most enormous difference to your impact, and therefore, how you're impacting on the team's delivery. And the culture overall.

Erica D'Eramo 36:09

Yeah, that is such a big one. And I think it can be really, really difficult for folks in large organizations to have the self awareness to kind of take a pause and wonder, "Do I do my best work at 6am? Or do I do my best work at 6pm? And how do I set expectations around that? How do I craft a life where I can contribute to the best of my abilities?" And that really does tie into the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion conversation a lot. And it ties into how companies are seeing themselves, and how they're making the best use of the talent that they have. So, all really important, really challenging stuff. But I think we're making a lot of progress in terms of understanding that.

Kirsty Bashforth 36:50

Absolutely.

Erica D'Eramo 36:53

So for folks who would love to kind of either follow along with your journey or read your book, where where should we point people.

Kirsty Bashforth 37:01

So if you want to read my book, it's also available in the audiobook version, so you can find it on amazon.com or listening to this in theUK, amazon.co.uk. I'm on LinkedIn, there is only one Kirsty Bashforth on LinkedIn. So find me there. I'm also on Twitter, but I'm not so active or sorry, X, but I'm not so active on that I haven't posted in a while. So it's mostly on LinkedIn.

Erica D'Eramo 37:23

Yeah, excellent. Well, we will link to your LinkedIn and we've actually included Culture Shift in our book list for the month on bookshop.org. So folks can find it there as well. And yeah, and we really appreciate you coming on and sharing all of your insights that have been hard-earned over the years and, and your story so thank you so much, Kirsty.

Kirsty Bashforth 37:46

It's a pleasure Erica, and as I said, it's really nice to reconnect.

Erica D'Eramo 37:50

Yeah, absolutely. And for anyone looking to find those links, they can find them in the show notes or you can find the full transcript on our website. So we look forward to seeing you next episode.