Most executive teams are currently focused on the same question: how quickly can we implement AI?

One of the most significant things happening inside organisations right now is also one of the least openly discussed.

AI anxiety.

Not public anxiety or media commentary, but quiet organisational anxiety, the kind that rarely appears in executive reports but absolutely shapes behaviour.

Something fundamental is shifting in the white collar workplace, and most leaders are sleep-walking off a cliff. AI is coming for jobs - not in some distant sci-fi future, but right now, in the form of tools that can write reports, analyse data, draft contracts, summarise meetings and produce strategies faster than any human team.

Have you ever wondered why so many change efforts fail? This is why. Maslow was wrong.

Humans want to belong.

One of my favourite thinkers is Yuval Noah Harari, author of the seminal work Sapiens – highly recommended if you’re interested in the human condition.

There are lots of important dimensions of culture, but few have such a profound impact as candour – the extent to which people say what they really think.

Concepts such as ‘collaboration’ can have such an innately positive connotation that increasing them can appear to be an obvious goal.

The degree of autonomy that makes sense for any given team at any given time will be different depending on the context.

Think back to the last time you tried a new approach at work, and it wasn’t successful. Did your boss and colleagues criticise you?

Humans want to belong. In fact, humans want to belong so strongly that they will do almost anything to ensure they do.

The human brain is a threat detection, pattern recognition machine. Its main job is to continually scan your environment for any threat of physical or social pain, and help you avoid situations that put you at risk of either.

I recently heard that phrase from a colleague. Turns out it’s the name of a self-help book designed to guide individuals through a personal crisis, but it’s also the perfect way for organisations to think about Covid-19.

Micro-management isn’t new, it’s been a challenge for employees forever. But in this age of remote working, we’re seeing a rise in the stress levels of our boss, our colleagues and ourselves.

One of my favourite researchers is Mathew Lieberman, Professor at UCLA's Department of Psychology, Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and also Director of their Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab.

We humans are the ultimate social animals. So much so that lack of belonging (or loneliness) increases our chances of dying earlier. By 45%. That's a lot.

Here are ten ways you can make yours better

We’ve turned our attention to what’s next.

Our cultures are changing as a result of Covid-19. It will happen by accident or we can choose to make it deliberate. But we have to notice before we can choose.

You can feel it. We’re just getting past the initial shock of organising our days differently and managing the unexpected fatigue of endless video conferences*. Now we’re starting to wonder what’s next.

Take any group of people, even those who have never met each other before, and split them into two teams. Give them some kind of symbol, perhaps call one the yellow team and the other purple.

You have a team member who has behaved unethically and you decide to end their employment as a result. If your people think you made that decision because the person was behaving unethically, it is likely to have a significantly positive impact on your organisation's culture.

We're often told that life is a journey. The renowned British philosopher Alan Wilson Watts had a different point of view. He described the traditional western educational system as setting up this analogy from our earliest years.

Think about the last time you were about to join a new group of people. It might have been starting a new school or university, joining a sports team, volunteering for a new organisation or the big one: starting a new job.

Have you ever noticed that the most useful models and frameworks are often also the simplest? At least partly I’m sure that’s because they’re easy to remember and our brains are so full these days that complicated models are quickly forgotten.

You're a well-loved and respected leader. Your people trust you and genuinely believe you have their best interests at heart. But you're not part of your culture. Wait, what?

Now don't get me wrong, no-one is more convinced than I am that senior leader behaviour makes the defining difference in organisational culture. But what if it's our reactions to the behaviour of others that makes even more of a difference?

In my varied career as a culture change professional, I've had the great pleasure of being involved in several large scale property projects.

When you joined your current organisation, do you remember asking yourself 'I wonder why they do it like that?' fairly frequently in the first few months?

Chances are that you can readily identify someone in your workplace with a needy heart, a needy will and a needy mind.

One of my favourite researchers is Matthew Lieberman, Professor of Psychology, Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA.

The Royal Commission made it very clear, if it wasn't already, that organisational culture is at the root of most systemic business challenges.