- [Daryl] All right, we are recording.
So today, I'm really lucky
to have the opportunity
to interview Phil Lewis.
Phil Lewis is the founder
of fantastic organization
called Corporate Punk,
which is a leading global organization
for driving, responsive
and resilient innovation
in companies large and
small around the world.
I've known Phil for a few years now.
And I know that his work is really unique
and high impact and very agile,
and very much a great focus
on people and ethical business as well.
And with Phil's experience
in the business world,
and as an entrepreneur in himself,
I thought he'd be a great person
to share his perspective experience
of mental health with a spin
on impact culture in organizations.
So Phil, thank you for making the time
to share your experience
and wisdom with us today.
Would you like to tell us
a little bit about yourself
in your own words and your background?
- [Phil] Well, great
to have the opportunity
to chat with you about
what I think is a really
important subject.
So my background is 22 years,
I think it is now in both
the creative industries
and the consulting industries.
Creative industries, I
think it's fair to say
that haven't done a great job of looking
after people very well over the years.
And the interesting thing
for me about my journey,
and the reason I set
Corporate Punk was ultimately
I was working with loads of smart people
who are really talented
and have good ideas
and lots of energy to
bring to their businesses.
And yet I was watching those businesses
that could have benefited
from that energy.
And that experience,
that is the talent simply
trampled over by people.
And I couldn't work out why that is.
And so, you know, the answer
is actually quite complicated.
It's to do with things like
you know, systems they build
and structures they build
all sorts of extended attitudes to things
like mental health and wellbeing.
But I found in Corporate Punk,
really with a view to going,
there's got to be a
better way to do business.
Actually a better way to do business
that makes people more happy.
Treat them like human beings, actually,
as a result of that sees
improvements to productivity,
and sees improvements in
the end to profitability.
And we've been doing that
work for five years now.
Pretty successfully.
- [Daryl] Brilliant. Fantastic.
Thank you for sharing that, Phil.
And what would you say
mental health is to you?
Cause the reason why I'm asking this is
because there are there
still are very different
understandings and perspectives
of what mental health means.
So with your fantastic
experience of working
with many companies, what's
mental health to you,
and why do you think people
should do more about it?
- [Phil] Well, I can't give
you the only encompassing
definition of mental health.
I'm sure there's loads of
super smart professionals
and health practitioners
out there that can do this.
But, I'll give you my take.
And my take on it is
that really mental health
means two things. Alright?
So the first thing, both of
them share the same concepts.
So the first thing is
actually about energy.
Do I have positive energy
to bring into my life
to bring into my work every day?
And do I feel that that
energy is you know, serving me
and serving people around me.
So poor mental health shows
service in depression,
for example, really low levels of energy.
Burnout is what happened
when energy you know,
just gets exhausted.
The second thing actually
is about authenticity,
which is the only thing depends punk.
So authenticity in this
context means the ability
to be your natural self
everyday going to work.
So for me great mental health is
not actually having to put on the masks
not having to hide from colleagues
not having to be anything
other than you actually are.
Knowing that what you are
is good enough, you know.
And I think that, you
know, we call our business
Corporate Punk just because ultimately
we wanted to do about
helping organizations
to be their natural selves.
But the level of mental health I think
I've noticed in my own
personal experience as well
but that actually having, you know,
having great oneself
means I've got energy,
I've got that authenticity.
You know, I'm not sure my mental health
is embodied once I've tipped
to being perhaps a less
true version of who I am.
And my energy has been a lot
lower, partly as a result.
So that's the reason.
- [Daryl] Fantastic. Thanks
for sharing that verse.
Brilliant explanation there,
and a brilliant perspective.
And so now let's transfer
the conversation a little bit
into your deep expertise in change,
organization development
and impact culture arena.
Where does mental health
sit in that world?
From your perspective.
- [Phil] So we talk about impact
culture at Corporate Punk,
as being really culture is like,
it's like, well, comedians.
So I'll give you a story actually.
So David Foster Wallace
tells this great story
of two young fish.
This old fish goes past them.
The old fish says,
hey boys, how's the water?
And the two young fish swim on for a bit,
and then one says to the
other, hey, what's water?
And that feels to me like
what organizational culture actually is.
It's environment. It's all
of the implicit stuff about
which for us to within, which
for us to work every day,
that can be narratives, it can be legends,
it can be implied hierarchies,
it can be implied priorities,
it can be about sometimes you
just have the true purpose
of the organization is hidden,
all that stuff kind of
contributes to culture.
So impact culture is where
the water if you will
is at the right temperature
to be able to get the best
workout with people within it.
So we talked about impact
coaches have been once again
that gear businesses for
responsiveness for resilience
and for innovation.
And if you take mental health,
then you would go well,
you know, mental health is
basically a good mental health
is a building block of any impact culture.
If you've got people who
aren't feeling particularly
resilient, for example, and
because their mental health
is suffering, for whatever
reason, well, almost
whatever you do environmentally,
you're not gonna be able
to compensate fully for that, right?
So again, looking after your
people at the individual level,
and helping them bring
the best out of themselves
and helping them support each other
is almost like a prerequisite.
So for me, the work that we
do in organizational change
goes to things like how you structure it
and what your system and processes
and how are your leaders behaving?
What are the hidden
incentives in the machine,
all those sorts of things,
things that we look at, help
and help you to crack.
But a precondition of that
is that people are in a place
energetically to be able to do that,
and that they're in a
place to be able to lean
into these discussions,
feel good about themselves
feel good about the people,
and therefore feel energized and authentic
in being able to do that change work.
So, for me that innate
belief, but at the same time,
mental health is a foundation,
the cornerstone of effective
organizational culture.
- [Daryl] Fantastic. Thank you, Phil.
Brilliant. Really appreciate
you sharing this with us.
And now from your perspective,
there may be two or three key tips
or piece of advice you would
give to other business leaders
and other working adults around supporting
mental wellbeing through
change and impact culture.
- [Phil] Well, I think in
terms of that cultural level,
which is to say, really at the level
of how people working together,
I think sometimes the stuff that actually
you're already seeing
the way in organizations
is really healthy.
So promoting conversations
about mental health
and wellbeing I think is
probably the number one thing
and encouraging people
and giving them tools.
I know you're doing some
fantastic work in the space,
giving them tools through
which they can actually look at
and quantify how they're feeling
and quantify the contribution
that their work life
is making to their health
and understand the relationships
between their mental health
and productivity.
Those sorts of conversations,
I think are absolutely essential.
And a note of caution,
I think, for me, anyway,
is that the conversation
about mental health
has to come from a place of,
we're gonna make this optimal.
We want to try and find fixes.
We want to try and find resolutions
and we want to be able
to have healthy balancing
our culture.
You know, a healthy culture
is not a stress free culture.
For example, there's ample
evidence to support the fact
that a little bit of
stress in an environment
actually does a lot of good
for people's development,
lessons of energy,
lessons of accomplishment,
all those sorts of things.
So I think the conversations
that we need to be having about
mental health in the workplace
are conversations that say,
A, this is really important.
B, let's get practical on it.
So how do we connect?
And how do we connect, you know,
the question of mental health
the question of productivity,
for example.
And then thirdly, how do we
strike the right balance here.
So at the same time, we're
creating an environment,
which actually is still
encouraging and motivating people
to do their best work and
not ruling out things like
a little bit of stress that
actually can be very, very
beneficial for the human spirit.
So those things for me again,
feel like the integral bits
of work for businesses to be doing...
- [Daryl] Brilliant. Thank you Phil.
- [Phil] Okay, so one more thing. Sorry.
- [Daryl] Yeah.
- [Phil] Just hold a sec.
Particularly important
given what's going on.
I mean, I think what we're going
to see with remote working,
what we're going to see with
all the sort of post COVID-19
stuff is people feeling
perhaps more isolated
or disconnected from colleagues
more uncertain about the future,
all those kind of things.
And, you know, remote working productivity
is its own question,
uncertainty about the future only means
that we have to have more
conversations about things
like mental health as well.
So I think this is only going
to become more important
actually in the coming weeks.
(mumbles)
- [Daryl] Yeah, fantastic.
Thank you, Phil.
And just to reinforce the
we incentivize your points
for our audience.
Historically, a lot of
companies have only been
unfortunately only been
doing employee wellbeing
and mental health stuff as
a tick box exercise. Fact.
They don't, they're not they
don't really care about people,
they're very much short
term profit focused first.
And that's been a real shame.
And to see that in
organizations, and it's been,
that's been around for quite a long time.
Not all organizations like this,
but there are a number of unfortunately.
But the good news is that in recent years,
we've been blessed with
fantastic research and insights
that have come out to show
you that the companies
that really do invest in
supporting mental health,
employee well being,
and they actually are seeing
a significant increase
in productivity.
Increased productivity
drives increased profit.
So now people can actually
do the right thing
and look after their their staff properly,
and actually, they can make more money.
So we're expecting to see a
big increase when this message
gets out there more,
that companies will be willing
and really doing more to properly
transform their companies
from a wellbeing perspective.
- [Phil] I think 2014 I think
he wants how business should
be published a useful thing for us.
That talks about how in
the 21st century success
is driven by two things.
It's driven by prioritizing
increasing revenues
and decreasing the cost from
competing differentiators
over the price, right?
And what I heard in
that was, hang a second,
it's an organization's ability
to solve difficult problems
in an original way.
It's an organization's
ability to innovate, to create
to get new products to
market really quickly,
are the things that are
gonna help organizations
get ahead instead.
So if you didn't go okay,
well, what does that mean?
Well, what that means is you
have to have people who are
able to be really
adaptive, really energized
and really creative every day
when they come into work, right?
Now, therefore, treating
of people like robots
or treating of people like
numbers on a spreadsheet,
like ultimatums on the
factory production line
and just going work hard,
work hard, work hard!
Gets you precisely nowhere,
because you know all you're doing then
it's actually driving out that creative,
that innovative capability.
Driving out (mumbles)
the best value to work.
And actually what's doing
is compromising economic advantage.
So I think it goes
beyond just productivity
into capitalist about how
generous is convenient as well.
- [Daryl] Definitely, I
completely agree with you.
Thank you for sharing that, Phil .
And right and my next
question for you today was,
if you're comfortable and
sharing a bit on this Phil,
are there any good or bad
experience of mental health
that you that you'd be comfortable
to share with us today?
- [Phil] Well, I mean, I always
say that I've never learned
the lesson the easy way, right?
So I've always been a
very driven character.
I've always wanted to get ahead.
I'm very ambitious in terms
of, you know, my business.
I've been ambitious for years and years
before that.
I mean not just ambitious though,
intellectually ambitious
and want to work with great people
and I want my work to have impact
and all that kind of stuff.
Consequence of that, is you know,
I've had a quite two quite
serious bouts of depression
over the course last 20 years.
One when a business partnership
fell apart a few years ago,
and that was extremely rough.
And I've been there as well
in the past too, you know,
in a relatively serious way.
And as you know, it's an
ongoing journey for me,
because it's an ongoing journey
for me to be able to go,
how do I balance the drive,
and the ambition that I've got
with the need to look after myself,
and it's taken a very, very long time
for me to install, and join the dots.
Looking after myself is my
own behavior and habits,
but looking after myself,
actually only increases my
ability to fulfill those drives
and those ambitions.
That's been a really, really long journey.
I remember reading something
that followed from on to say
that people usually just
isn't very smart things.
And he says, you know,
he's 50, he realized
that he had to stop treating
his body like an inconvenience.
And I thought this was a
really, really, really kind
of encapsulation how ambitious
people can often view
their bodies especially if
their bodies are telling them
things like, please slow down,
I'm not coping very well with
what's going on around me.
So for me, it's been a lifelong
journey towards looking
after myself as is, you know,
is worthwhile, important
and actually I'm learning
how to get you know,
it helped me stay the course really.
This isn't so common, but it's, you know,
it's been a whole journey the whole time.
I would say and, you know,
but one that I'm, you know,
but one that I've sort
of been aware of just me
and I try and have tried
to carry them forward
into my life.
- [Daryl] Yeah, pretty amazing.
Thank you for sharing that, Phil.
And it's just on my own health
journey and over the years
it's amazing really
that the more we open up about this stuff
and make it okay to talk about it
and okay to share and
not be ashamed of it.
And actually how many other people
either are or have been in the same boat
and very successful people
like talk itself as well,
you know, this topic can
destroy lives, you know, even the
perceived most successful
and happiest people you know,
personal trauma can change
things overnight, for example.
- [Phil] This is so.
- [Daryl] Yeah. Fantastic.
Thank you, Phil.
And it's very kind of you,
what you are sharing with us today.
I have a final question, if I may.
And it's really on the point of
what advice would you give to someone
who might be concerned about
their own mental health
at the moment or maybe someone
in their wider circle of influence
could be one of their colleagues
or teammates alignment
at work, or even outside of work
a friend or family member,
any advice we give them?
- [Phil] We know what to say.
I will say one thing just
for everybody in general,
my great life lesson has been
listen to your body, right?
Ongoing insight, I suppose
is that my physical
condition gives me a huge
insight into my mental,
and emotional condition.
And your body's sending
the signals all the time.
I think to your direct question,
the one piece of advice
I would actually give is,
don't be afraid, particularly
if you're with somebody
who you think is suffering.
Don't be afraid to have
pretty direct conversation
about that.
I think sometimes people who
are going through a really
tough time.
It can take a little bit of
time for them to actually
open up about it like and I think,
generally circling back around,
sometimes more wants to have
in quite direct conversation
about what you're receiving
and the intensity behind
that is pure evil.
And the purity of intent is
always the thing that people
pick up on in the end.
(mumbles)
So I would just say that thing.
I would say, a combination
of being gentle,
gentle persistence and direct
conversation sometimes,
it's actually the way
to help other people
have the conversations.
- [Daryl] Yeah. Fantastic.
Brilliant. Thank you, Phil.
It's been brilliant to
hear your successes,
your experience and your perspective
on not just mental health,
but where that can sit
in an individual person's life
but also on a much larger
scale within an organization.
And it's great to hear your
experience as a leading
global expert on impact culture
and organizational change.
So thank you for making
the time today, Phil.
And I'll see you.
Keep well and no doubt
speak to you even soon.
- [Phil] I look forward to that.
