Season one comes to a close with perhaps the most timely question we have explored this series: what actually happens to organisations when the pressure is on?

In this episode, Kate Nicholroy and Maddie Fox look at the research behind threat rigidity, a well-documented pattern where individuals and systems under stress narrow their thinking, restrict communication, and default to familiar behaviour at precisely the moment when more expansive responses are needed. It is predictable, it is biological, and it is entirely possible to prepare for.

Drawing on real examples from the COVID era and beyond, including the better.com mass layoffs, the Marriott response, the Wells Fargo accounts scandal, and the LEGO turnaround, Kate and Maddy explore the difference between organisations that come through sustained and acute pressure with their culture intact and those that don't.

The answer is rarely strategy alone. It is almost always the quality of the humanity that leaders choose to maintain under pressure, and the degree to which open, curious, above-the-line practices have been built into organisational life before the crisis arrives.

In this episode:

Threat rigidity: what it is, where it comes from, and how it shows up in individuals and organisations

Why pressure narrows thinking at the neurological level, and what that means for leadership teams

The contrast between the better.com Zoom layoffs and Arne Sorenson's Marriott response

Wells Fargo, rule beating, and why removing people from a broken system does not fix the system

Lego's early 2000s turnaround and the practice of leading at eye level

Practical tools: naming what is happening in the room, somatic awareness, above-the-line practice, and the seventh generation question

Resources mentioned:

Staw, Sandelands and Dutton on threat rigidity

Arne Sorenson's March 2020 video to Marriott staff (available publicly online)

better.com CEO Zoom call, December 2021 (available publicly online)

Donella Meadows on rule beating and systems traps

"If You Aspire to Be a Great Leader, Be Present," Harvard Business Review

Richard Strozzi-Heckler, Embodied Leadership (available on Audible via Sounds True)

Connect with us:

We would love to know what has landed for you across season one, and what you would like us to explore in season two. Email us at hello@acuriousspacepodcast.com or find us at www.acuriousspacepodcast.com

Many thanks to Tim Fox for producing the show, and to Richard Flindell for the music throughout.

Kate Nicholroy and Maddie Fox dig into one of the most persistent frustrations in organisational life: why culture change programmes so often fail to deliver, and what leaders can do differently.

They explore the gap between change as an event and transition as an internal process, why the leadership team is always further ahead than the people hearing the news, and why culture does not live in the big moments. It lives in what happens every day in between.

• Why 70% of organisational transformations fail, and why the announcement is rarely the problem
• The Bridges Transition Model: change versus transition, and the three stages of endings, neutral zone, and new beginnings
• Why the change team is always ahead of everyone else in the room, and how to account for that gap
• The elephant and the rider: why logical business cases are not enough to shift behaviour
• What leaders signal through what they measure, and how those signals shape culture more than any values statement
• Why acknowledging what came before is not sentiment. It is a structural requirement for change that sticks
• Culture change as a daily leadership practice rather than a project with a launch date

• The Bridges Transition Model, William Bridges (1991)
• The Elephant and the Rider, Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis (2006)
• Family Constellations and systemic principles, Bert Hellinger
• Appreciative Inquiry (mentioned briefly; worth exploring further)

Take these into your week:

• What am I measuring as a leader, and what does that signal to my people about what I actually value?
• When did I last ask someone what they would be sad to lose in any change we are making?
• What is one thing I can do differently in the ordinary spaces between the big moments?

For the next seven days, try noticing one moment each day where culture happens in the margins rather than in a staged event or formal communication. What do you notice, and what does it tell you about where your team really is?

We would love to hear from you. If you have been part of a culture change programme that genuinely worked, we want to know about it. Reach us at hello@acuriousspacepodcast.com.

Find all episodes and resources at www.acuriousspacepodcast.com.

Episode 10: Purpose and Values Under Pressure. How do you hold yourself to the culture you want when things get hard? That is when it gets crunchy, and we cannot wait to get into it.

With thanks to Tim Fox for producing A Curious Space and to Richard Flindell for the music.