What's the best culture? Whatever you believe in

ALSO: More details on productivity and WFH

Midjourney 5.2: a simple ink cartoon shows a girl having a thought bubble above her head, in the style of bill watterson, minimalist black ink on white, barbizon school, solarpunk, flickering light, yup'ik art

Belief is such an underestimated quality. All too readily ignored.

The most powerful illustration of the power of belief is in the testing of medicines.

We’ve all heard of the placebo effect and, in fact, we know it mainly because we know that scientists set it aside in their studies. As if to say that part doesn’t matter, it’s a distraction. But think about the real implications of it. Believing something plays a huge part in outcomes.

In one study of the placebo effect, Nurofen branded painkillers and falsely branded placebos were tested versus unbranded alternatives. 

It was found that the branded painkiller performed better than the unbranded painkiller, but also that the placebo branded Nurofen performed better than the unbranded placebo. 

(Fascinatingly the branded placebo performed better than the unbranded real medicine). Belief was a huge difference.

This is one of the reasons that when some people swear that Nurofen works better for them than an generic ibuprofen they’re right - what’s happening in their heads is the differentiator.

If a child believes that a superhero sticking plaster is better than the unbranded one, they’re right. This blows my mind.

This has a direct bearing for a discussion about work that is happening right now.

Before we get to that let’s consider two pieces of research that have come out this week about productivity that seek to explore the effectiveness of home working.

Firstly a new study from Stanford University this week suggested that fully remote work is 10-20% less productive than in person work (while being considerably cheaper for firms to use).

“Hybrid working... appears to be associated with flat or positive average impacts on productivity." The conclusion is that to mitigate this and to make WFH work you need a good system of performance management

Secondly, The Economist updated a piece of research that had previously found that working from home yielded productivity gains, the work has been revised to say that in fact productivity fell by 4%.

Thankfully The Economist makes a vital point clear in its conclusion:

“There is more to work (and life) than productivity. Perhaps the greatest virtue of remote work is that it leads to happier employees”

This is the critical consideration for most firms right now - if the previous version of working was creating burnout, then a version of work that eliminates that, but is marginally less productive, is still an improvement. (New data this week: British workers rank working from home as the benefit that contributes most to their wellbeing).

This is where the importance of belief kicks in. So many companies are looking for the right answer for their culture, to try to get the perfect combination of WFH and office days. The most important factor in team success is whether the team believes this formulation will succeed. If the team are happy with it then that belief is the secret sauce.

• Local government minister, Lee Rowley, demanded an immediate end to a 4-day week trial in a Cambridgeshire council. The council had declared the early stages of their trial to be a success, mentioning the positive impact on recruitment and the wellbeing of staff

• Research by Slack suggests that giving more flexibility is regarded as improving company culture

• I mentioned Slack research above, at Adam Grant’s People Analytics Conference they outlined some of the components of their culture (watch the talk here) 1) Focus Friday meets they have no internal meetings on Friday 2) Maker Weeks are two weeks a quarter with no internal meetings at all - people just get on with work. (The presenter talks about how the sales team weren’t a fan on this in the first version). They talk about using the 4D model of meetings, meetings should be to discuss, debate, decide or to develop.

• At the same event, Professor Ethan Mollick gave a whistlestop 10 minute presentation of how you could be using AI in your job right now.

• NABS is an organisation that supports the mental health of those in the advertising and media industries. I went on their podcast to talk mental health and resilience

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