“There's this old phrase, 'Culture eats strategy for breakfast.' I'm a firm believer in that one. I learned it the hard way. When I first started my career, I was a consultant. When I jumped off into startups, I honestly really struggled. The first couple years were pretty bad, because I was not a very good manager. It took a while to realize that the needs of people from different backgrounds and different skill sets, even different functions, were vastly different, and that if I wanted my startup to survive and thrive, during some really hard times, it was going to be all about whether or not I could not only get of buy in on the direction we were going, but I could get people understanding why this was beneficial for them and find ways to help people see and understand each other better so that we can make the trade offs we need to make together as a team. That's what builds real loyalty to an organization, but it's also what builds better outcomes. Honestly, it makes people's lives better.” - Brian Elliott

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Brian Elliott about his career as an Executive and Future Of Work thought leader.  He starts with reflections on how he’d like to influence the future of work.  Later, Brian discusses the importance of building a source of understanding between people.  We also discuss how somewhere in every organization there’s a pocket of people doing things differently and getting better results.  Listen in for insights like why we should look at the principles by which we’d like to behave and start from there before change redesign.