In a world where stress, misalignment, and disengagement are all too common, how can leaders transform their organizations into thriving, high-performing cultures? On this episode of Sticky From The Inside, Andy Goram is joined by Wall Street bestselling author Magi Graziano to answer that very question.
The Context: Why This Episode Matters
Many organizations struggle with cultural friction—the subtle, often unspoken barriers that hinder collaboration, innovation, and joy at work. Magi Graziano has spent decades helping organizations recognize and overcome these barriers by blending conscious leadership with science-backed strategies. Her book, Ignite Culture, serves as a roadmap for leaders looking to align their vision, behaviours, and processes to create a culture where people and businesses thrive.
Key Takeaways
Diagnosing Friction: Understand the root causes of cultural dysfunction, from subconscious programming to systemic misalignment.
The Role of Leaders: Cultural transformation starts at the top. Leaders must model self-awareness and growth to inspire their teams.
The Noble Cause: Aligning behind a compelling purpose taps into intrinsic motivation and fuels engagement.
Systems and Structures: Peak performance requires clear frameworks, processes, and communication strategies.
Continuous Evolution: Personal and organizational growth are ongoing. Investing in self-awareness builds resilience for an uncertain future.
Why You Should Listen
Whether you’re a leader, team member, or simply curious about thriving workplace cultures, this episode is packed with actionable insights. Magi’s practical tools and transformative wisdom make this a must-listen for anyone looking to turn friction into flow.
Ready to dive in? Listen to the full episode below or explore the complete transcript to absorb every nugget of wisdom.
Full Transcript
Below is a full, automated transcript of the full episode.
Introduction: Meet Magi Graziano and Her Inspiring Journey
[Andy Goram] (0:10 - 3:34)
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 tons 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, we are diving head first into the world of organisational culture with someone who knows a thing or two about turning the friction that many of us experience in trying to drive that stuff into a state of flow. My guest today is the fabulous Magi Graziano and if you don't know her yet, trust me, by the end of this episode you will and you'll be as big a fan as I am, I'm sure. Magi is a Wall Street bestselling author of the incredible book Ignite Culture and is a pioneering voice in conscious leadership and an expert in helping organisations align their culture to unlock happiness, joy and peak performance at work, which is why she's such a cracking guest for this podcast.
She's spent her life turning challenges into lessons, failures into fuel and she's here to show us how to do the same, not just as individuals but as entire organisations. From being a single mother at 19, hustling at the first cable TV company to now leading one of the fastest growing consultancies in the business and empowering countless leaders along the way, I think Magi's journey is nothing short of inspiring and our focus today is on helping leaders and teams take responsibility, move beyond their constraints and create workplaces where people actually want to sharpen and fully contribute. Now in this episode, we'll, I hope, uncover how to properly diagnose the cultural friction that's holding your organisation back and explore Magi's unique blend of science-backed tools, experiential coaching and practical strategies to make that shift from friction to flow. We'll talk about the role of conscious leadership, why happiness and joy at work aren't just nice to haves but essential if you want peak performance.
So whether you're a leader looking to spark some change, a team member wondering how to influence your workplace culture or just someone who's curious about what it takes to truly thrive at work, I'm sure this episode will be packed with insights and inspiration that you won't want to miss. So enough from me gabbling on, let's get stuck in. Magi, welcome to the show.
[Magi Graziano] (3:35 - 3:42)
Thank you. It's so great to be here. And as you were reading my bio, I'm like, I want to write all that stuff down.
[Andy Goram] (3:43 - 4:09)
Well, we're recording it so you can kind of take it from there. I think it's a fabulous story and I can't wait to hear more about it. In fact, let's just dive right in because time is short, Magi, right?
So even in that little bit of intro, the life you've led sounds extraordinary, I'm sure to many people. Why don't we start with sharing a bit more about your background and where your focus is today, just so we can all get on the same page?
[Magi Graziano] (4:10 - 5:59)
Okay, great. So today I work with companies and work with them on moving friction into flow specifically around leadership, change, evolution, and that dream became a dream 20 years ago when I was still doing recruiting. I was having some struggles personally inside feeling that, yes, placing people was a noble cause, getting people employment was a noble calling, but I wanted to do more to help them and help their employers do a better job of integrating them into the organization and do a better job of using their best talents.
And so I was feeling a little friction in my own self and I went to a large group self-awareness training and over the course of that weekend, towards the last day, they put us into a 20 year meditation, like go 20 years into the future. It wasn't a 20 year meditation, it was like 20 minutes, but they took us into the future and I was in such a grounded, easy place that for the first time in my adult life, I got to see a future that was more than recruiting. In the past, in every single goal setting session or visioning session, I always looked at a better way to skin the recruiting cat, but this time there was no box, the box was gone.
And I saw myself, I was living in Chicago at the time, living in Northern California. So that was 1998, 20 years into the future would be, uh, I don't even know when it was.
[Andy Goram] (6:00 - 6:01)
Yeah, 2018, 2018.
[Magi Graziano] (6:02 - 7:38)
2018. So I saw myself living in Northern California at that point, didn't even really know what Northern California was besides wine country. And I was working with companies, working with CEOs to align their vision with their behaviour, with the kind of people they surrounded themselves with and delivering their heart's passion.
And that was a great vision. It was so exciting. And I went and bought a big painting of Napa Valley and, and had it behind the couch that I raised my family in.
And, but then did nothing about that vision. It was like, someday, maybe this is what I'll do. And then in 2008, 2006, I was leading a seminar for another large group awareness because this became a hobby for me, still did recruiting, but my avocation was empowering people and liberating people and having them bust through the constraints that were keeping them stopped.
And I'm leading this retreat called the, I'm in this workshop seminar called the velocity seminar. And one of the questions was, where in your life have you given up on a dream? And I saw that I had given up on my dream of this Northern California leading organizations.
And, uh, shortly thereafter sold everything I had sold my business in recruiting, sold my house and moved to California to get started. And that's just the beginning. There's way more to it that we can get into as the interview goes.
[Andy Goram] (7:38 - 8:40)
Well, I mean, I, I found fascinating the sort of book ending of, I guess that piece of Brown being a single mother at 19 and specifically Glenna hustling around that cable TV company and getting stuff done and really working to where you've ended up today. And I, I, I think we have a bit of a connection and I'll in the visualization piece, because you've talked now, I think really powerfully about that, that vision, that meditation, that 20, 20 year thing. And I, I get to do what I get to do today because of a wonderful lady that I still work with today.
Maggie, who was the, um, the facilitator on my first ever kind of leadership development, uh, program, you know, Oh, you've got the potential to be leader. And she did a visualization exercise with us. And, uh, that is a little longer than 20 years ago.
And I still, I still have that and I still use it. And I was working with Maggie only yesterday. I get to work with her now is fascinating.
Those visualizations can be incredibly powerful, right?
[Magi Graziano] (8:40 - 9:06)
Yeah. It, it, they're now, you know, for years and years and years, the Eastern philosophy was visualizing works now, neuroscience, Berkeley, Stanford, Yale, Harvard, Cambridge, everybody's saying, Oh yeah, visualization at works. And, and athletes know about visualization.
90% of Olympians visualize getting that medal over and over and over again. And it happens.
Diagnosing Friction in Organizational Culture
[Andy Goram] (9:07 - 9:23)
Yeah. I mean, that's fantastic. I, where do we even begin with this topic of this friction to flow, trying to understand and diagnose the sort of cultural, uh, dysfunctions.
[Magi Graziano] (9:24 - 9:26)
If you like, let's start with what causes it.
[Andy Goram] (9:27 - 9:28)
Okay. Let's go there. Yeah.
Great.
[Magi Graziano] (9:28 - 13:14)
So 70% of people are now saying they're experiencing unprecedented stress people, whether they're working or not, like the world is coming at them. And we know that the average person gets 140,000 bits of information, pummelling them every day. But the brain, the prefrontal cortex, the executive seat of the brain, all your critical thinking can only even process 120 of those bits.
So the average person has cognitive scattering, cognitive overload. Then they go to work and the work day starts and what most people, if not all people are bringing into work. 95% of the time is their subconscious programming and their subconscious programming is their natural fixed way of being, whether it works or doesn't work.
And when chaos hits the fan or shit hits the fan and we bring in our old mechanism, our internet super highway in our neural pathways of how we process trouble or friction, mostly we metastasize exaggerate the amount of friction because our internet super highway is processing it through our childhood programming. And nobody talks about this in the business world. They talk about it in the human development world.
They talk about it in human potential and neuroscience, but in the business world, they don't often say, oh my gosh, we're behaving like two eight year olds at the playground fighting for the ball. And that is what's happening. And so when I go into companies, I think Gallup just did a survey, 65% of us workers.
So, you know, England, England and everywhere else is I'm sure the same experience that they have stress at work, but 45% of those people blame the stress on the company and the senior level leadership. Most human beings. When I wrote the book Ignite Culture, we did a lot of research and the research that we uncovered is that 85% of the human race is not conscious to their own subconscious programming.
They're walking around in their dream, in their unconscious mind, their subconscious programming, just doing what they've always done and behaving the way they've always behaved. And they're not really ready to be in a world that's constantly evolving. And so there's this level of stress and upset.
And then how they cope is the same way they coped when they were three years old or eight years old or 19 years old. And they don't see that that's happening. And they don't even see that they see it.
Like one, one VP of sales says to me, well, Maji, this is just the way I am. I said, you're, that is not the way you are. That is the way you've developed yourself to be.
And as an executive, what you did as a salesman is no longer going to work. Now you're a steward of the organization. You're a steward of culture.
You cannot humble people and run over people just to get your way. You won't be an executive very long. And he really, this is a top producer, multiple millions.
And he really believes his internet super highway in his brain is the only way he can ever be. And to me, that's where you begin with friction. Because if you have a hundred person company and a hundred people are bringing in their subconscious programming, and they don't know how to respond to stress, pressure, volatility, and uncertainty, and they spin out, they don't contribute to solve problems.
They make problems worse.
The Role of Subconscious Programming in Workplace Stress
[Andy Goram] (13:15 - 13:15)
Yeah.
[Magi Graziano] (13:15 - 15:05)
They, they check it out. They, you know, it's fight, flight, freeze, or fate. They do one of the four things.
And, and what other people tell me when I get in there, start working with a company is 30 to 40% of the people in the room say that they're in a state of friction, 40 to 50% of their workdays. Could you imagine the financial impact to these companies? 30 or 40 to 50% of their workdays are spent in a state of frustration, annoyance, agitation, fear, anxiety, worry, concern, or even hopelessness and despair.
You can only be effective maybe 50% of the time in frustration, but as you go down that level of effectiveness, it gets worse. And if you believe that we're all vibrating beings, I mean, the, the universe has a vibration. Sound has a vibration.
Electricity has a vibration and we have a vibration. When you're vibrating in a state of joy, in a state of engagement, you're at 550 on the megahertz scale. When you're in hopelessness, you're at 10.
Can you imagine how much money is being wasted because organizations do not put the human system before objectives and goals? So that's a long answer for what's in the way, what causes all the friction is it's the human system and how the human system is cultivated, nurtured, trained, developed. And when I say to people, you can train people to navigate and dance in the moment of chaos and uncertainty and volatility, they look at me like I've just spoken Chinese.
[Andy Goram] (15:06 - 16:19)
Yeah. I think this is what is brilliant about this whole topic, because I love the piece around, uh, human performance and potential and organizational performance. And we don't talk about that sort of stuff.
I mean, it's such a ridiculous statement when you say it out loud, right? Because organizational potential and performance is entirely or largely driven by the liberation of the human potential and performance in that business. So why wouldn't we look at the human level?
I've been saying for a long time, stimulated by COVID, where we saw this bow wave of humanity coming back into business. What you've just explained in far more granular detail isn't just the nice, happy, clappy bit of thinking about humans in business. It's the practical, deliverable, performance-related piece around really tuning into where potential comes from and what hinders it.
All the opposites that you've talked about in those behaviours from happiness and fulfilment and excitement and engagement and motivation, where we, I'm sure, are vibrating at a huge amount of hertz. You know, why wouldn't we tune into those things more? Why wouldn't we try and liberate those?
[Magi Graziano] (16:19 - 18:39)
Yeah, and my clients are working on it. It's not easy. It takes years and years and years and years to reprogram the program.
Now, if you're, just think about if you're 35 years old, you've had your subconscious programming since you've been in third trimester in the womb. So this stuff is, you know, let's say your parents were really stressed out. Believe it or not, the baby feels the stress.
Let's say there was a divorce or a house under construction, or we moved to a new neighbourhood, or maybe you have one parent who's really a nervous Nelly and another parent who is a kick-ass and take names. The kid, like, gets all of that. Maybe you had a grandmother who was in a concentration camp or came over here or came even to England and, you know, there was a lot of people escaping.
That stuff gets handed down through epigenetics. So you're dealing with human beings and the human system inside of the human system. And if we just teach people how to be aware and awake to who they are and what's really running the show, then they're truly empowered to do their job or to solve problems.
The other thing is hire people and invest in people who actually want to be there. People these days are running scared for money. They're taking things they don't really want to take, and then they just can't give everything they need to give.
Or they're taking a job for the money, but not really thinking beyond that. So they've got tunnel vision with how they contribute. And so the whole, you know, my whole career, even in recruiting, was always about what do people really want to do and how can they contribute?
And then they get to bring themselves into work. And then the people that are running the company get to say, okay, whether we have a RIF, a reduction in force, whether we're launching a new project or a new product or moving to a new area or have a new CEO, how is this going to impact the humans in the system? And what amount of leeway or groundwork do we need to do to make sure that our environment is fertile ground for people to feel okay about what's happening?
Conscious Leadership: A Catalyst for Change
[Andy Goram] (18:39 - 19:30)
I love, I really, I really love that. I want to pick up on the great point, and it's not a new point, but it's a great point to make about the investment in time and over time that this is going to take. And it isn't easy, you know, because it's, we're humans, it's so easy to communicate and get on with each other and do the right thing.
Wrong. If that was true, everybody would be killing it in this space, and people are not. The whole point of change, and particularly changing human behaviour, that is tough.
But as an individual, my interpretation of what I know of your journey is that you've had to reinvent yourself a number of times, right? And so, what have you done and how does that prepare you and, I guess, legitimize you going into businesses and helping people and organizations through that same transition?
[Magi Graziano] (19:31 - 29:50)
Yeah, that's so good, that's so good. So, as a recruiter, you know, I grew up in a pretty dysfunctional underscore household. My father was an addict, and my mother was in denial about my father being an addict.
He was a provider, we always had food on the table, and we even had a swimming pool. So, you know, people on the outside thought we were doing pretty good, but drug addiction is a pretty severe thing. So, as a kid, we each coped our own way.
The way I coped was nobody was ever going to take their hand to me, and I was going to make it in this world no matter what, and I was never going to be homeless, ever. Which, believe it or not, a lot of leaders in a lot of organizations have achieved success because they're outrunning some childhood trauma that they didn't deal with. So, I was at the top of my game in recruiting.
Once I saw there was more to life than just making money and I could actually contribute to sustainability of companies versus just putting the right people in the right jobs, which was noble, I went for it. I drove to California, and I had that vision, and it was strong. What I didn't understand at the time, and this was 2014, and time was running out for my 20-year vision, I didn't see that I didn't have the environmental security that I needed, even though I was taking a big risk going out on the skinny branches, moving from mid-America to the West Coast.
I knew nobody out here. I had no friends, no clients. I just had kind of a nest egg that I was going to spend on my own survival.
Somewhere around Utah or Wyoming to Utah, I had an oh, shit moment. From that point for about a year and a half, I was under the surface. The gears were spinning in a very low vibration.
So, I made decisions that weren't the best decisions. I didn't even know how to start doing this thing I wanted to do. What I knew I could do is I had a hiring process that was pretty amazing.
It helped me be in the top 3% in the country of producers. I wanted to take that hiring process to Silicon Valley and turn it into a software. Nobody was picking up what I was laying down.
I was calling it conscious hiring. People were like, you think people are unconscious when they're hiring? I would say, well, yes, they are.
They weren't buying it. I was pretty nervous and afraid. Remember, I took my son on a vacation to Sorrento, Amalfi Coast.
I'm standing on a mountain in the Amalfi Coast saying, God, please show me if I'm on the right path. Tell me if I'm on the right path. Send me somebody who can turn conscious hiring into a software.
By the way, if you could throw a husband in, I would love that. I came home and less than a week later, I kid you not, I'm walking down the street and I see a doorway. It says, Harry Knows.
We turn your HR process into automation at your fingertips. I was like, oh my God, he came down himself and is making this happen. I was so excited.
I walked in the office, said, is Harry in and what does he know? I saw in the back of where the three men were sitting this floor to ceiling imagery of what I wanted to create. I really did think my vision, my vision and my aim, everything was happening.
I had blindness to everything that wasn't right. We not only started creating the software, giving them my intellectual property that day, we didn't stop for seven months. I brought in customer advisors.
I brought in board members. I brought in my own son. I started seeing the president of that company, not knowing he was married.
The day I found out he was married, I said, no more, I'm done. He said, well, your job is going to change. You're going to go from being the chief evangelist.
Now you're the chief sales officer and we need 30,000 users in six months. By the way, I'm changing our partnership agreement, which was never in writing. You're no longer 50-50, you're now 90-10.
I was at the lowest point in my adult life. Talk about despair. I couldn't even open the door to the office the next day after this.
I had to sign this document or I had to leave. Instead of going to work, I crawled in bed. My son walked in the room.
Two hours later, he's like, where is she? She's not here. He came home.
He said, what are you doing? I gave him the song and dance of everything that was wrong, played my violin. He said, the woman who raised me would never take this lying down, get up and do something about it.
When we're in a state of despair and hopelessness, we often need to be jolted out of it. I did what all enlightened people do. I called a therapist.
After an hour with the therapist, he said, you don't need Prozac. You don't need shock treatment. This is Silicon Valley and you need a lawyer.
In that process, it took a year and a half, almost two years to get my intellectual property back. I couldn't work. I couldn't do recruiting anymore.
I had to be done because that software was a recruiting software, so it was a conflict of interest. I had to go back to cultivating myself, my soul, my environment. I had to really look at where I went off the rails.
Where was I out of alignment? I think I spent 300 hours that year in retreats, in coaches training school, in residential leadership training to really deal with everything that I sold out on. While I had the vision, I lost my alignment.
I had no bearings. I wasn't making good decisions. I wasn't seeing things for what they were.
With hindsight being 2020, all of the signs were there that this was not a good person. The signs were there. He had a company before.
He had an affair before. The company was taken away from him before. He got venture capital funding and then the VCs fired him.
I wasn't paying attention to all those little things. He said time and time again he wanted to compete with LinkedIn. That's not what I wanted.
I wanted a workflow process that would help people's lives be easier. Towards the end, he was saying things like disintermediate the human and human resources. That's another long way of saying I lost my bearings completely and had to rebuild them.
The name of my first company was Keen Hiring. This company was Keen Alignment. When I created Keen Alignment, I said I will never, ever lose my connection to my higher purpose and my values of integrity, of contribution again.
When things are not working, I'm going to be overly transparent with people. I'm going to let them know way in advance that things are not working and give them an opportunity to shore it up. I'm not going to be pretending that I don't see what's going on.
To wrap the whole story around, remember I said one of my parents was an addict and the other parent pretended that the addiction wasn't happening. My subconscious programming is to step over that which is not working. I have this rose-colored glasses.
My mother's name is Rose, to just see the good. I love my mom completely. She now does face the reality that it was pretty tough to grow up in that household for all of us.
It was tough for her too. There's compassion on both sides. Blame nowhere.
When we're blaming people, really the fingers got to come back to us because it's all our version of what happened, maybe not even reality. Anyway, the two things that didn't work for me was holding on to hope without rigor and stepping over what doesn't work. A lot of the executives I work with, a lot of people in the C-suite, children of alcoholics, children of a parent with deep anxiety, children of families that divorced.
Let's just look at the statistics of society. Fifty percent of people are from divorced families. A third of all people have addiction in their family, if not more.
The kids that grew up that became high achievers, a lot of them are achieving to overcome something. Some are just achieving because they have such a damn big vision for the world. The percentage of the people are about two to three percent that are achieving because they want to make such a big difference in the world.
Steve Jobs was an orphan. He was adopted. That was an issue for him that you read about in the final book.
So anyway, you can go back to your question, but oh, my journey. Yeah, it's never-ending. I just went to the jungle.
Two years ago, I went to Iquitos, Peru, because Gabor Mate was recommending that if people really want to once and for all get to the source of that subconscious programming, they got to do that. So everything in my life is working. I'm on track.
My company made it to the Inc. 5000. But the one thing that's still lingering is this, I'm still single and I haven't met anybody who would even be a candidate for the job, and I'm yakking around dating them, knowing I will never marry them.
And I said, I'm going to the jungle. And I spent 12 days in the jungle, six iterations of ayahuasca. And really, you know what I got to?
[Andy Goram] (29:50 - 29:51)
Go ahead.
[Magi Graziano] (29:51 - 32:08)
At a very visceral level, I knew it intellectually, but knowing things intellectually doesn't make a difference. But at a visceral level, I was still trying to fix my dad. So I was dating people who were wounded birds.
So I've had a lot less dates in the last two years. Doing a better job of vetting, but it's never over. I just took a one-week meditation course.
My next conversation right after this is with Mark Abrams. He's a Stanford professor of meditation. And in that course, I got to see the quality of my thoughts.
And I got to really look at the quality of my thoughts. And when you can be the observer and be aware of your own awareness, you calm the nervous system down. So you're not freaked out by all the things and all the uncertainty coming at you.
So you asked about my journey. It's been a never-ending deep dive, and it'll never be over. I love this stuff.
I love the people I meet. I'm still friends with people I met in Peru, with people. Every conference I do, Ram Dass, I'm having a call next week with one of the original people who went to India with him because she's in the same, or she was in the same business as me.
She's now retired. But I just want to know what she has to say to me about what's the best way to do it. So if it's true that we all have subconscious programming, and they're saying it is true, and if it's true that it's an internet superhighway, and we don't have a lot of other options of operating, that means to build new pathways of thinking, behaving, reacting is going to really take something.
Why wouldn't we all be lifetime learners in evolving and elevating and evolving and elevating? Because in the world of work, there's always something new we're going to face, like COVID, like a RIF, a reduction in force for the first time, like a new product, like a competitor coming into our space who's using AI and offering way bigger discounts than we can. We're always going to be in a new beginning, and so our physiology has to be ready for that new beginning at any time, any place, anywhere.
[Andy Goram] (32:09 - 33:30)
I kind of knew what I was getting into when you were coming on this show, Magi, because I have a plan about where a conversation is going to go. Sometimes that comes off. Other times, it goes in different directions.
Today, it's going in a different direction, and it's brilliant. I love it. I said that your journey was inspirational and fascinating for all the reasons you've just kind of talked about.
I think I'm interested in the time that we have together to make some connections back to this kind of releasing organizational potential and performance and getting into that place of having fulfilling work lives, right? Because I am listening to you, and in my head, I'm trying to make the connection between diagnosis of this learnt or behaviour, the conscious leader who is, I guess, investing in and recognizes the need to have some introspection, have some self-awareness, discovery time. Now, if we link that to this question about diagnosing dysfunctionality within organizational culture and actually moving an organization forward, is that how those two things kind of come together?
Does it start with the leadership consciousness?
How Alignment Drives Engagement and Performance
[Magi Graziano] (33:31 - 35:03)
Yeah. I mean, in the book Ignite Culture, the whole first third of that book is written to the person reading it. Now, I call that person the CEO, and frankly, we're all CEOs of our own life.
I start off with, if there's a problem, the first place to look is within. Then the second place to look is, what's your vision for your life? Then who do you want to be and how do you want to be there?
Now, if everyone on the executive team does that, the level of effectiveness and fluidity in the executive team raises by 25 to 30 percent. Now, everyone that reports to those teams, think about circles of influence like Tony Hsieh had in his company, circles. You've got one leader who has five to eight people reporting to them.
If each of those people do their work, and then each of those people do that work with their people, pretty soon you have a whole culture that is self-aware. When people are awake and aware to what they're bringing in that is healthy or unhealthy, they can then get responsible for, how do we fix this process? How do we get more innovative?
How do we stop a conflict between these two departments? But when we don't look at ourselves as having agency in the problem, then it's someone else's problem. Or we just keep going from company to company to company, wondering why things are not working out for us.
[Andy Goram] (35:03 - 35:41)
Keep coming in with the same problems, the same kind of barriers, the same kind of ceilings on our potential. There's definitely a piece in here which I totally subscribe to, which is that leaders having to first take responsibility for their own development, because that is the catalyst of that champagne fountain of trickling down through the organisation to really stimulate cultural transformation. In my experience, and maybe you have similar or different, often the top leader in the business is kind of like, well, the rest of the organisation needs to sort itself out, because I'm sorted.
And the reality is, well, maybe not so much as you need to be, because people all look to you.
[Magi Graziano] (35:41 - 36:01)
Anybody who says that they've already done all their work, anybody who says that or says, I'm an expert, I know all this, is a liar. And the only person they're really lying to is themself. Because every new situation we encounter needs a new development of our being.
It's evolution.
[Andy Goram] (36:02 - 36:38)
You've just got to take a pause and just let that sink in, right? Which is why I think Joe Rogan's got it right. Three hours is about what you need to get into this sort of stuff.
You can't really get into the detail of this in 40-odd minutes. But what I would like to try and explore, particularly within Ignite Culture as a book, and I heartily recommend it, is we talked about kind of understanding the poor behaviours, understanding that introspection and that self-discovery to kind of start that journey. But on that roadmap from friction to flow, how does that lay out?
From Vision to Action: Steps to Ignite Culture
[Magi Graziano] (36:38 - 37:36)
Let's talk about flow. How do you get to flow? You've got to create a vision for the company, a noble cause that is compelling enough that people want to be part of it.
And then you have to attract people who actually are healers. Like for my company, we are all about liberating the human spirit at work. I got to bring in people who want to do that.
And they seek me out. I have no shortage of coaches. People call me from all over and email me, I want to work with you.
I want to work with you. How do I do that? The, the, for whatever the noble cause of the company is, whether you're Patagonia or Zappos or the guy down the street fixing cars, what's the cause?
Is it to bring safety? A good example is we worked with a foundry in Oakland and before we worked with them, they used to say, we make shit pipe, plumbing pipe. When we were done with them, they created clean communities.
[Andy Goram] (37:36 - 37:39)
Right. You see the difference? Yeah.
[Magi Graziano] (37:39 - 38:37)
So you've got to create a noble cause that taps into people's intrinsic motivation. Then you've got to look at the environment and tell the truth about what is causing friction in that environment. Whether it's a process, a system, a person, a bunch of people, too many meetings, you know, you can come up with the list, but what kind of environment do we want to And then you've got to name that environment.
And then you have to bring in architecture framework for that environment. So I just did a phone call with 35 people in a finance department of a private equity company, investment company, and finance is the center of everything there because you're an investment company. And some of the framework that they created is that they're going to have a temperature check, a climate check before they ever get into a meeting.
They're going to check in with each other because it's a high stress environment and they never check it.
Practical Tools for Cultural Transformation
[Andy Goram] (38:38 - 38:40)
They just get to work.
[Magi Graziano] (38:40 - 40:15)
But if we want an environment of flow and flow is high performance, actually peak performance, people are synergized, they're working together. You have exceptional teamwork. What do we need to build for?
What is the architecture so that can happen? So maybe we need training in responsibility. Maybe we need coaches, you know, this, these coaching factories that they're giving people.
I interviewed somebody yesterday and she says, well, yeah, I do six sessions with a person. And I said, and then you're done. She said, yeah.
And this is companies like Nassau. So it's nice that they're offering people coaching, but six sessions isn't going to do it. So you need the intent, the noble cause, you need to determine what kind of environment you want people to have to work in.
Not talking about jelly beans and free lunch and ping pong tables, but what is it that you want those things to deliver? Nourishment, health, camaraderie, and then what's the structures that we need to put in? You can put a ping pong table in, but do we give people opportunities to onboard properly?
Do we give proper management training? Do we have a strategy that works? Do we communicate that strategy?
So people often miss the details. They create a great noble cause, and then they forget that they're human and everyone around them is human. And people need you to connect the dots, just like you've asked me to do in this podcast.
We need to connect the dots for people because they won't just guess it.
[Andy Goram] (40:16 - 41:03)
I think that is fascinating. I only wish I had a ton more time with you to kind of get into this because I feel like a bit of a fraud that we're just scratching at the surface. And I can't tell you how many times I say that Magi on my podcast, because there's so many wonderful things to talk about.
But before I have to let you go, and by the way, I stress the word have to let you go, right? I don't want to. I have this part of the show called Sticky Notes, right?
Which is an attempt to summarize some key takeouts for the audience. And I want to ask you specifically, if you were going to leave behind three sticky notes of advice or wisdom, where organizations or leaders are trying to increase the amount of fulfilment at work?
[Magi Graziano] (41:03 - 41:04)
Yeah, great. I have them.
[Andy Goram] (41:05 - 41:06)
What would they be?
Sticky Notes: Moving From Friction to Flow
[Magi Graziano] (41:06 - 41:59)
Aim for the self and the company. Alignment. What does it look like, feel like, taste like, smell like to be in alignment, personally and for the teams and for the whole company?
And it could be values, but it's deeper than values. It's what resonates with alignment. Who do we need to be?
How do we need to behave? How does it need to feel around here to naturally fulfill that intent, that aim? And then third, what's our pathway?
What are our breadcrumbs, our stepping stones? What do we need to put in place so that people feel they have the agency to be, do, say, act in a way that's congruent so we can all deliver our ultimate intent?
[Andy Goram] (42:00 - 42:22)
Fantastic. I mean, how to synthesize an approach to building a great culture on three sticky notes. That's brilliant.
Love it. Absolutely love it. Magi, I have really enjoyed meeting you, loved listening to you.
My head's buzzing with all sorts of things. If people want to find out a bit more about you and all the stuff you get up to and get hold of the book, where can they go?
Closing Thoughts and Resources to Explore Further
[Magi Graziano] (42:23 - 42:57)
Well, they can find out about me at margaretgraziano.com. If they want to learn more about culture, keenalignment.com. And the book is at Amazon or any places books are sold.
And we have all sorts of online training. We do free trainings. We have a retreat that we lead quarterly.
There's no shortage. I'm really committed to making a positive impact and liberating people at work. We've got a YouTube channel, you name it, we got it.
[Andy Goram] (42:57 - 43:07)
Well, I'm going to stick all the links to that in the show notes so people can easily get hold of you and find out some more. Thank you so much for coming on, Magi. I've really enjoyed our time together.
[Magi Graziano] (43:08 - 43:09)
Thank you. It's been fun.
[Andy Goram] (43:09 - 43:11)
Okay, brilliant. You take care.
[Magi Graziano] (43:11 - 43:12)
Nice to meet you.
[Andy Goram] (43:12 - 43:54)
And you. Okay, everyone. That was Magi Graziano.
And if you'd like to find out a bit more about her or any of the topics we've talked about in today's show, please 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.
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